** Muslim Clerics at Influential Conference Declare Terrorism Un-Islamic **
You may have missed this in the nightly news…
Buried in the Pakistani Daily Times today is the report on a letter sent by Muslim leaders to the world’s Jewish Community offering reconciliation:
An international group of Muslim leaders has sent a letter to the world’s Jewish community appealing for better relationships between the faiths, according to a report in the Telegraph on Tuesday.
The unprecedented letter, which is being seen as a significant gesture of reconciliation, said: “Many Jews and Muslims today stand apart from each other due to feelings of anger, which in some parts of the world translates into violence.
“It is our contention that we are faced today not with ‘a clash of civilisations’ but with ‘a clash of ill-informed misunderstandings’.”
Signatories of the letter include Professor Akbar Ahmed, a former Pakistan high commissioner to Great Britain, who also signed a similar statement earlier this year from Muslim scholars to Christian leaders around the world.
The new letter said: “Deep-seated stereotypes and prejudices have resulted in a distancing of the communities and even a dehumanising of the ‘Other’. We urgently need to address this situation. We must strive towards turning ignorance into knowledge, intolerance into understanding, and pain into courage and sensitivity for the ‘Other’.”
Meanwhile… At the the Darul Uloom school in India Muslim scholars condemned terrorism in all of its forms in a declaration this week.
AKI reported:
Terrorism and violence in all forms was condemned in a declaration that was issued at the end of the anti-terrorism conference held at the leading Islamic school in northern India, the Darul Uloom in Deoband.
The school, which is more than 150 years old, promotes a brand of Islam which some say was an inspiration to Afghanistan’s Taliban, but the school has always denied this.
Scholars from 6,000 religious schools attended the meeting on Monday. Among other things, the declaration also called upon the Indian government to stop maligning madrassas or Islamic schools and Muslims, both of which are often accused of being associated with terrorist acts.
The declaration, while describing Islam as the “religion of mercy for all humanity” also noted that it regards the killing of a single person akin to “killing the entire humanity”. Moreover, the declaration said that “Islam sternly condemns all kinds of oppression, violence and terrorism”.
UPDATE: Meanwhile, Turkey is set to publish a revolutionary interpretation of Islam.
UPDATE 2: Al-Qaeda #2 Ayman al-Zawahri attacked the Indian Muslim scholars today for their declaration against terrorism:
Al Qaeda condemns as sell-outs Muslim clerics, including renowned scholars, who have said its jihadist ideology is un-Islamic.
UPDATE: It looks like their conference turned into an anti-American hatefest.
