New Delhi: Days after a fatwa was issued against him for attending the consecration ceremony of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, Dr Umer Ahmed Ilyasi, chief Imam of All India Imam Organisation, said he would not issue an apology as India was not an Islamic state and a fatwa could not be issued here.
He suspected Pakistan’s hand in the social media campaign against him.
Ilyasi told ThePrint that he accepted the Ram Mandir invitation and sent a message of love from there, highlighting that each religion might be different but “our biggest religion was insan and insaniyat”.
“We live in Bharat… we are Bharatiya. We should all strengthen the country and the nation is supreme (above all),” he said in his office in New Delhi Tuesday.
Ilyasi said, after his speech went viral, those against “love and harmony” had issued a “fatwa of hatred” against him.
A mufti named Sabir Hussaini, who runs an institute called “Mufti Classes”, issued the fatwa against him after his return from the pran pratishtha ceremony,
“First of all, I don’t accept this fatwa because it is not applicable to me. This is Bharat. This is not an Islamic state. Sharia law is not applicable here. The law of Bharat is applicable here,” he added.
Incidentally, Muslims in India are allowed to follow the Sharia in matters such as family and inheritance. However, in 2014, the Supreme Court ruled that fatwas had “no place in independent India”, and could not be “used to punish innocents”. The top court had said that a fatwa was not binding on the court or the state or the individual.
Ilyasi also said this was the “first time in history” that a fatwa had been issued against an imam and a chief imam. “Hence, I don’t accept it,” he said.
‘Outside forces trying to disrupt progress in India’
Ilyasi also refuted the three points made in the fatwa.
According to him, the fatwa said as imam and chief imam he should not have attended the pran pratishtha ceremony. “Because I did, it says, I am rejected from Islam. My second sin is that I said the nation was supreme and above religion. Thirdly, it states that I have placed humanity before religion and that was not acceptable,” the chief cleric told ThePrint.
Defending his decision to attend the Ayodhya ceremony, Ilaysi said he went with a message of “love and harmony” and to strengthen the nation.
“One can only become a good Muslim once I become a good human being. One can become a good Hindu only once I become a good human being. My identity is that of a human being first,” the imam said.
Ilyasi received flak from several quarters over his decision to attend the consecration ceremony. He also received threatening calls as his number had been forwarded to radicals, he said.
The imam said those who felt hate towards him and his country, with him being Bharatiya, “should go to Pakistan where they might find love”.
He also hinted at Pakistan’s hand in the campaign being run on social media against him.
“Outside forces are trying to disrupt the progress India is currently witnessing. They want to create a Hindu-Muslim divide. They are trying to provoke my Muslim brothers,” the imam said.
He added that anti-social elements were trying to create unrest in the country before the Lok Sabha elections. “I wonder if opposing forces have gotten active… and whether they are using haters to create unrest…. Hindu-Muslim fights. I can give my life for this country. But I want to tell them that I am not scared. I am not going to apologise or step down from my post,” he said.
Ilyasi said Union Home Minister Amit Shah and the Delhi police chief had been informed about the fatwa.
Asked whether he would visit Ram Mandir again, Ilyasi said accepting the invitation to attend the pran pratistha was not an “easy decision” in the first place and that it took him two days to make up his mind.
“It was my life’s biggest decision. I knew I would face opposition but didn’t imagine it would be to this extent. But for me, the nation is supreme and I believe in humanity first,” he said.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)