Shaykh-ul-Islam Dr Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri has said that Islam is a religion of peace and love and it rejects and denounces all forms of violence, extremism and terrorism. A small minority of people whose thoughts are based on extremism and terrorism, violation of women rights, desecration of the holy places, massacre of humanity, suicide bombings, rebellion against the state institutions, rejection of the Pakistani Constitution, and armed revolt against an Islamic state, are in fact trying to obliterate the true identity of Islam; no way have they anything to do with real teachings of Islam. Their heinous designs, he added, are part of a malicious campaign to deform and defame the bright face of Islam. Dr Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri said that Islam offers a guarantee for the protection of minority rights but the actions of these misguided and bigoted elements have served to taint the image of Islam and Pakistan at international level. “It is the responsibility of religious scholars to shake off complacency and come into action to guide the people out of these scary times,” he held.

Dr Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri expressed these views while delivering his keynote speech at a seminar organized at the Minhaj University Lahore. He said that Islam conferred rights on women 1400 years ago and women were assigned important positions in the state bureaucracy of that time but regretted that the so-called champions of Islam today denounce the women education and are bent on making them captives of homes, which is a manifest violation of Islamic teachings. Those who shut the door of education on the women by invoking religion do not know anything about real teachings of Islam. He said that Islam gives equal opportunities to women side by side with men and there is no gender discrimination in this regard. It enjoins upon its followers to hold them in due regard and treat them most gently and guarantees them to play their full role in the national development. “Such self-styled interpretations that manifestly violate real Islamic teachings represent the intellectual attack, which all of us need to foil and it is the responsibility of the religious scholars to show the real face of Islam to the world,” he added. Dr Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri said that a conspiracy is afoot to prove that Islamic teachings have not been practicable anymore, while the fact remains that Islam offers proactive solutions to the problems of every nature that humanity is faced with.