Pak clerics' refusal to issue 'fatwas' against terror raise sinister conspiracy theories

Islamabad, Oct 27 : With fatwas (legal pronouncements in Islam) playing an important role in Muslim countries, it is questionable why most prominent clerics and muftis in Pakistan refuse to issue them against terrorist organisations and suicide bombings, which are responsible for killings of over thousands of innocent Muslims.

"Rehman Malik and the Interior Ministry have tried their best to seek fatwas from influential Deobandi and Ahl-e-Hadith clerics but they simply refuse to give out fatwas," the Daily Times quoted a top Interior Ministry official, as saying.

Understandably, fatwas play a huge role within the terrorist community, where a rat race is on over who is giving out which fatwa against whom, the paper said.

So important is the business of fatwas that ex-prime minister of Pak-occupied Kashmir, Mumtaz Rathore, once famously said, "How can you stop us from jihad when religious scholars gave a fatwa that Rs 430 million Zakat Fund could be spent on jihad?" it added.

Rathore's remarks point towards what seems to be a conspiracy by religious scholars to support and encourage militancy in the country, and keep their influence in corridors of terror.

While in Islamabad, under the government's supervision, major Sunni Muslim scholars, academicians, thinkers and political leaders publicly condemned suicide bombings and universally agreed that suicide bombing is anathema, antithetical and abhorrent to Islam, they have shied away so far from issuing any fatwa in this regard.

"Not good enough. They are considered sell-offs - the legit clerics would never give out fatwas or even talk openly against suicide bombings because that would ruin there reputation within the respected sect and they can be killed," an intelligence chief pointed out.

It is noteworthy that Mufti Taqiuddin Usmani, the former 'grand mufti' of Pakistan and the vice chairman of the PIC's Islamic Fiqh Council, who has a huge clout over the Deoband sect and even Ahl-e-Hadith seminaries and followers, to this date has not signed the fatwa forbidding suicide attacks in Pakistan despite repeated efforts by the government, the paper said.

He did not come out openly to condemn the recent attacks on Sufi shrines, and even refused to speak on the subject, it added.

An Interior Ministry official said, "Taqi Usmani is a problem and a key man who can save a lot of lives by giving out one single statement."

"Even Osama Bin Laden needs fatwas," said a well-informed diplomatic source, adding, After all, it was an operational fatwa issued by an Egyptian leader of the Gama'ah Islamiya, Sheikh Omar Abd al-Rahman that resulted in the assassination of president Sadat and the first attack on the World Trade Centre in 1993. In Pakistan, we have many Sheikh Omar Abd al-Rahmans."

Over 400 people have so far been killed in suicide attacks in Pakistan alone, with three major Sufi shrines having been hit this year in what are being described as the worst attacks on the very foundation of Barelvi Islam.

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Asadullah Syed