Regarding Shaikh Dr. Tahir ul-Qadri’s Anti-Terrorism Fatwa, recently launched in London, I guess any steps forward in fighting terrorism should be considered a good thing. However, these initiatives can be read in many ways and I’ll give you a few points off the top of my head, replicating what many others are thinking in the Muslim community.
First, I doubt this will have the clout envisaged by one of it's apparent key promoters the Quilliam foundation (a counter-terrorism think tank) as the fatwa iteself does not have the unanimous backing of the most promoment scholars and Sheikhs, although the opinions and rulings of some prominent scholars do appear to have been involved in drawing it up. Also this is not the first fatwa to condemn suicide bombings/terrorism, and Qadri is not the first ‘important/eminent’ Sheikh to issue such a fatwa, as many more prominent scholars and Sheikhs have done so already, and these are ignored by those idiots that seek to commit suicide bombings and terorrism anyway. Furthermore, most Islamic scholars and Imams have already consistently condemned killing people in the name of Islam for a long, long time. There is simply minimal publicity about these earlier efforts and therefore the time spent promoting Shaikh Dr Tahir ul-Qadri’s Anti-Terrorism Fatwa would have been better spent promoting that Muslims have already been condemning terrorism for some time.
Second, regarding Qadri's status, the Sheikh in question appears to head a Sufi organisation and as such there will be many branches of the Muslim community that will not reconise his rulings. In fact, its likely that most of his own followers will accept his fatwa but then as his followers they are likely to not support terrorism or suicide bombings anyhow. Furthermore, another reason he is not a universally accepted figure by all individuals and branches of the Muslim community is because in the past has made segregating comments about some other Muslim communities such as Wahabbi’s and Deobandi’s. So I’d suggest that this fatwa is not really groundbreaking apart from inside his own organisation and will never be widely acknowledged apart from by his own followers.
Article comments
1 - Ruvy
I found this article very amusing. A fatwa against terrorism issued by a Sufi scholar is not Halál enough, eh?
And this shit is?
If Dr.ul-Qadri is recognized in the broader world of Muslim scholarship, in the end, that is really all that counts, Jamal.
2 - KS
I'm all for anti-terrorism measures. Unfortunatly nowhere does this condemn the terrorism committed by allied forces in the name of democracy, nor does it acknowledge in its promotion that many Muslims, Sheikhs, Scholars and Imams have already unanimously spoken out against terrorism by both Muslim and non-Muslim. In fact all it did was massage the egos of government agencies connected to it.