Another clerics' body in Pak declares suicide attacks "un-Islamic"

Lahore, Oct 16 : In such second decision over the past couple of days, another body of Muslim clerics in Pakistan declared suicide attacks as "illegal" in Islam, and condemned the countrywide acts of terrorism against innocent people.

The Muttahida Ulema Board of Punjab (MUBP) announced its decision after a meeting here last evening.

Earlier, on Tuesday, a fatwa issued unanimously by the Muttahida Ulema Council (MUC), in Lahore, had declared the same while condemning the devastating suicide bomb attacks in the country that have claimed hundreds of lives.

Briefing reporters after the inaugural meeting of the MUBP at Aiwan-e-Auqaf, Board Chairman Sahibzada Haji Fazal Karim said: "We strongly condemn those who are causing anarchy and terrorism in the name of religion."

Meanwhile, Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan said the Taliban carry out 'Fidai' (sacrificial) attacks against the US and its allies and not suicide attacks. He was responding to a Tuesday fatwa (decree) issued by a council of clerics in Lahore.

He told the BBC that suicide was forbidden in Islam, but sacrifice was not. "Attacks are justified against those who rain bombs on people on the instructions of Americans and are displacing them from their houses. Those who had issued the decree should have visited the tribal region of Bajaur and the Swat valley," the Daily quoted the spokesman as saying.

As many as 17 clerics from various schools of thought, including Allama Sher Ali and Mufti Sarfraz Ahmad Naeemi, had participated in the Lahore meeting on Tuesday.

Fazal Karim said clerics would "use all energies for the promotion of brotherhood, amity and peace in the country".

He said the clerics had demanded the government protect "ideological and geographical boundaries of the country" and also endorsed during the meeting a set of recommendations on hate literature in line with the 'guiding principles' it agreed on in September 1997.

ANI