A radical Muslim seminary in India that is considered the most influential school for Islamic law in Asia — and is said to have inspired the Taliban — has issued a fatwa, or edict, against terrorism in a meeting attended by thousands of clerics and students.
The Darool-Uloom Deoband, a 150 year-old institute controlling thousands of smaller Islamic seminaries in India, vowed to wipe out terrorism late on Saturday in New Delhi.
“In its [Islam’s] eyes, on any part over the surface of earth spreading mischief, rioting, breach of peace, bloodshed, killing of innocent persons and plundering are the most inhuman crime,” the fatwa said.
Reading out the fatwa, Riyasat Ali Bijnouri, cleric of the seminary, quoted the Koran as saying: “Do not mischief on the earth after it has been set in order.”
“Islam loves peace. Islam rejects all kinds of unjust violence,” the fatwa read, “and does not allow it in any form.”
Teachings of the Deoband school and its strict interpretation of Islamic law have spread to many countries, including Britain and Afghanistan.
Thousands of clerics and students, wearing white skull caps and flowing spotless tunics, cheered as Rehman read out a statement: “The religion of Islam has come to wipe out all kinds of terrorism and to spread the message of global peace.”
Senior clerics chanted slogans against terrorism and many held placards that said “Islam means peace” and “Terrorism is an enemy, finish it.”
Leaders asked those gathered to pledge and fight terror in all forms, witnesses said.
Analysts described the meet as a significant step towards addressing terrorism and bringing relief to India’s 140 million Muslims, who feel the acts of some individuals have tarnished the image of the community as a whole.
“It is an awakening among them [Muslim groups] to the dangers that face them as a fallout of terrorism and suspected association of terrorism with Muslims,” Pran Chopra, a political analyst, said yesterday.
Indian Muslims have been implicated in bomb attacks in India in 2006 and a failed attack in Britain last year.
Last month, a group calling themselves “Indian Mujahideen” claimed responsibility for a blast that killed 65 people in Rajasthan.
Analysts say more and more religious groups are openly denouncing terrorism.
“The response by the Muslim population ... has been worth noticing and the fatwa is a very welcome development,” Chopra said.
Muslims make up about 13 percent of India’s officially secular but predominantly Hindu population — giving it the third-largest Islamic population after Indonesia and Pakistan.
Religious leaders from different faiths voiced their support for the Deoband school’s stand yesterday.
India, with an estimated 151 million Muslims, is home to the third-largest Muslim population in the world.
In February, the Darul-Uloom Deoband denounced terrorism as “un-Islamic” and against the teachings of Islam.
The Deoband school was established in the late 19th century and has adherents from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Southeast Asia.
The Taliban have often claimed adherence to the Deoband seminary, which has been strongly denied by the scholars there.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
RSS