Barelvi Muslims' fatwa on Udaipur killing: Beheading is crime, slogan from Pak

In the fatwa issued against the the killers of Kanhaiya Lal, the Muslim body ruled both of the killers of Kanhaiya Lal criminals in the Sharia court.

Published on: Jul 7, 2022, 11:31:22 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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The Barelvi Ulema has taken a strong stand against the murder of a tailor in Udaipur for supporting the remarks of now-suspended BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma on Prophet Mohammed. The Barelvi sect from Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly issued fatwa, a non-binding legal opinion in Islam, against the the beheading of the tailor, Kanhaiya Lal, by two locals who were said to be influenced by radical Barelvi Islam preachers of Pakistan-based Dawat-e-Islami.

The photos of Mohammad Riyaz Akhtari, the prime accused in the Udaipur tailor murder case. (Sourced)

In the fatwa issued against the the killers of Kanhaiya Lal, the Muslim body ruled both of them criminals in the Sharia court. The fatwa cited the teachings of 19th-century Islamic scholar Ahmed Raza Khan Barelvi, commonly known as Aala Hazrat.

Maulana Shahabuddin Razvi, the national secretary-general of Barelvi Ulema, said Aala Hazrat has ruled that if a person kills someone under an Islamic regime “without the permission of the emperor, then such a person would be a criminal in the eyes of the Sharia” and would be punished severely. He further stated that under non-Islamic governments, such killings would be anyway deemed illegitimate according to the law of the land and the person would put his life in danger by committing such crime.

Razvi stressed that the slogans calling for beheading of those who insult the Prophet were first given by Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan, a far-right Islalmic extremist political party in the neighbouring country, to fulfill their political ambition. The killers of Kanhaiya Lal were heard raising the slogan "Gustakhi e Nabi ki Ek Hi Saza, Sar Tan se Juda Sar Tan se Juda," (there is only punishment for insult to the Prophet, beheading) in a video in which the duo were boasting about the murder. Rajasthan police also arrested three people, including a cleric, in Ajmer for delivering a hate speech in which they allegedly called for beheading to avenge the insult to Prophet Mohammad.

“Muslims should not take the law in their own hands, complain to the government, it is the government's job to punish,” Razvi added.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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