Muslim clerics want radical march banned

Muslim intellectuals and clerics have demanded a ban on the March 3 rally by London-based Islamic group shairah4hind, which has denounced the Constitution and urged the community to gherao Parliament to press for implementing the shariah. M Tariq Khan reports.

Muslim intellectuals and clerics have demanded a ban on the March 3 rally by London-based Islamic group shairah4hind, which has denounced the Constitution and urged the community to gherao Parliament to press for implementing the shariah.

Acting on the suggestion of National Integration Council member Navaid Hamid, who wrote to home minister P Chidambaram on this issue, the telecom department has blocked the organisation’s website (shariah4hind.com). Hamid’s letter also asked for the rally ban.

Denouncing the Constitution, the website had urged Muslims in UP to boycott the elections, the last phase of which is on the day of the proposed rally, and issued a fatwa against PM Manmohan Singh, Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi, BJP leader LK Advani and Gujarat CM Narendra Modi.

Hamid, who is also secretary of the South Asian Council for Minorities, has drawn the home minister’s attention to the fact that a visa was granted by the Indian mission in the UK to Abu Baraa, chairman of the website, and Sheikh Anjem Choudary, website manager, allegedly without verifying their credentials.

Maulana Khalid Rasheed Farangi Mahli, imam of the Eidgah, Lucknow, said: “Such hate mongers should not be allowed to vitiate the country’s communal harmony.”