By IANS
Deoband (Uttar Pradesh): Around 50,000 Muslim students and clerics from madrassas across the country converged at the famed Darul-Uloom seminary here Monday to raise a united voice against what they termed as labelling of Muslims as “terrorists”.
The day-long meeting at Deoband’s renowned Islamic seminary condemned the growing tendency to associate every terrorist act with Islam.
“The government must stop linking every terrorist act with Islam, which preaches only peace and harmony. A terrorist act must be treated as a heinous crime and Islam too condemns it in the severest of terms,” said one of the key resolutions passed at the meet.
Alleging discrimination against Muslims, another resolution sought to ask why no community other than Muslim was labelled as terrorist even when they indulged in acts of sedition by demanding a separate nation in the northeast.
“Do not blame every act of terrorism on Muslim youth, The government ought to be more sensitive and act without prejudice,” said a resolution.
However, the meeting made it loud and clear that the Muslims have no intention to defend terrorism. “We are not trying to condone acts of terror; but we would like to emphasise that those actually guilty of indulging in terrorist acts must be dealt with a heavy hand under the laws of the land.”
The resolution also felt that the government’s policies were getting influenced by the current anti-Muslim tirade of certain powerful Western nations.
“This tendency must be stopped in the larger interest of the nation as well as in the interest of maintaining international harmony and peace,” the resolution added.
The meet was attended by Maulana Salman Nadwi from Nadwa-tul-Ulema Dar-ul-uloom, the Lucknow-based Islamic university, Jamat-ul-Ulma chief Maulana Arshad Nadwi, Jamat-ul-Ulema general secretary Maulana Masood Madni, All India Muslim Personal Law Board vice-president Maulana Salim Qasmi, and Maulana Khalid Rasheed, who heads Lucknow’s oldest Islamic seminary Firangi Mahal.
Rasheed told IANS: “Some of the participants sought to draw the attention of the authorities to the fact that Muslims have never tried to label the state-sponsored anti-Muslim tirade in Gujarat as an act of terror. Even the demolition of the Babri mosque was not branded as a terrorist act by us.”