General Chat

And maybe somebody can find a Christian counterpart for him to send to us in the Americas, where vastly more young (and old, and in between) people take a "wrong" outlook on the Christian religion, and do vastly more harm in the process.

'news' that didn't make the boards..(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10905070)

Muslim summer camp preaches 'anti-terror' message....By Dominic Casciani
BBC News home affairs correspondent

"Dr Muhammad Tahir ul-Qadri has issued a fatwa against terrorism It's the summer camp with a difference. No whittling of sticks or food on the open fire.

Warwick University this weekend is the venue for what is billed as the UK's first anti-terrorism camp and the BBC has been along to find out why so many Muslims turned up.

Inside the lecture hall, you could hear a pin drop.

Row upon row of earnest-looking young men and women were scribbling notes into a classily-bound journal handed out with their welcome pack.

'Love is purity'

The 1,300 delegates were listening to Dr Muhammad Tahir ul-Qadri, an Islamic scholar with a gift for rhetorical flourishes and what he describes as a message of love for mankind.

Talking in simple, slowly delivered sentences, the revivalist Pakistani-born cleric takes his audience of predominantly young British and European Muslims through what love means.

Love is purity, he tells them. The Arabic word for love used in the Koran is related to the word for seed. No plant can grow without a seed - and so no pious act can grow without love. If love is the seed of every act of piety, then how can an act of hate like terrorism please God?

The full argument takes him 15 minutes, but he holds the audience's attention.

"Extremists and terrorists are in the minority in the Muslim ummah [brotherhood]. But they have always been vocal", he says.

"The majority have always been against extremism and terrorism, but unfortunately they have always been silent.

"The Islamic solution is integration. Get integrated into British society. ?”

"It's not against your religion. Has the word Pakistan been revealed in the Koran? If you can be Pakistani and Muslim, why can you not be Muslim and British?"

That anti-extremism message is at the heart of Dr Qadri's worldwide movement and its efforts to rapidly expand in the UK.

Earlier this year, he arrived in London to launch a 600-page fatwa, or religious ruling against terrorism.

It is not the first such fatwa but Dr Qadri's followers say it is the first to have "no ifs or buts". "

As I say, just a bit of balance :)