More than 6,000 high-ranking Muslim scholars and clerics from across India have put their name to a joint religious opinion, or fatwa, against terrorism issued by one of the world's most important centres of Islamic teaching, it emerged on Sunday.
The Darul Uloom in Deoband, north of Delhi, issued a fatwa on May 31 sharply condemning terrorist violence. Since then 6,000 scholars and clerics have endorsed the fatwa. In the southern Indian city of Hyderabad on Sunday, around 50,000 others are expected to do so at the open session of the 29th annual convention of the Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind, an association of Indian Muslim scholars, according to Indian media reports. A spokesman for Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind called Islam a "religion of peace," and said that the "the killing of innocents" was the "most inhumane" of crimes.
Darul Uloom is considered one of the world's most important schools of Islamic learning - and has frequently been criticised for being a centre of radicalisation.
India has suffered a series of bombings since the beginning of the year in which more than 200 people have died, most of which have been blamed on Islamist militants. Maulana Mahmood Madani, General Secretary of the Jamiat Ulama-i- Hind, said that "we must put an end to terrorism, because in the name of fighting terrorism, the whole of Islam is discredited."
Madani called for "wrongly-routed" young people to be put back "on the right path." Some 150 million Muslims live in India, making up around 14 per cent of the population.
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