Sunday, 7 March 2010

The leader of a worldwide Muslim movement with thousands of followers in the UK issued a fatwa - or Islamic religious ruling - this week condemned terrorism and warned suicide bombers that they were "destined for hell".

Pakistan-born Dr Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri (pictured left), founder of the global Minhaj-ul-Koran movement, made the formal UK proclamation of a fatwa, or religious edict, condemning terrorism and suicide bombing at a news conference in London this week.

The 600-page fatwa announced that "suicide bombings and attacks against civilian targets are not only condemned by Islam, but render the perpetrators totally out of the fold of Islam, in other words, to be unbelievers".

Shahid Mursaleen, spokesman for Minhaj-ul-Koran UK, said: "He has hit hard on the terrorists as it prevents Islamists from considering suicide bombers as 'martyrs'. This fatwa injects doubt into the minds of potential suicide bombers.

"Extremist groups based in Britain recruit youth by brainwashing them that they will 'with certainty' be rewarded in the next life and Dr Qadri's fatwa has removed this key intellectual factor from their minds."

The Quilliam foundation, the counter-extremism think-tank, described the fatwa as "arguably the most comprehensive" theological refutation of Islamic terrorism to date.

A Quilliam spokesman said: "Terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda continue to justify their mass killings with self-serving readings of religious scripture.

"Fatwas that demolish and expose such theological innovations will consign Islamist terrorism to the dustbin of history."

The Minhaj-ul-Quaran movement runs courses in combating religious extremism in educational centres throughout Britain including London, Birmingham, Manchester, Nelson, Walsall, Glasgow and Dundee.