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Grand Immam of Al
Azhar
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BOMBAY,
October 11 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Five people died and 50
were injured Friday, October 11, in the western Indian city of Solapur
during a protest over comments by U.S. Baptist minister Jerry Falwell
against Prophet Mohammed, which also drew criticism from world and
Islamic countries.
“Police
fired on crowds of Muslim youths who clashed with groups of Hindus,”
Agence France-Press (AFP) quoted a state police control spokesman as
saying.
"We
do not know for a fact at this stage whether the five people were killed
in police firing or in the sectarian clashes," the police spokesman
told AFP, adding that 50 others were injured.
He
said violence broke out when a crowd of Muslim youths gathered in the
city to protest remarks by Falwell, a leader of the U.S. evangelical
Christian right who, in a television interview broadcast Sunday, October
6 on the CBS network's "60 Minutes" news program equated
Prophet Mohammed with a "terrorist".
"Various
Muslim bodies in the city had called for a strike today to protest these
remarks. However, violence broke out when the mob clashed with some
Hindu groups," the police spokesman said.
A
similar strike called by Muslim bodies in India's financial capital
Bombay ended peacefully.
Pakistani
Islamic parties have also denounced Falwell's comments and called for a
nationwide protest on Friday to condemn his derogatory remarks against
Prophet Mohammed.
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Falwell |
British
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw Wednesday October 8, branded Falwell's
comment as "outrageous and insulting".
Speaking
during a visit to Iran, Straw sought to play down the affair by
asserting the evangelist was "not important".
"If
it has been reported accurately I regard his remarks as outrageous and
insulting," Straw said.
"I
am told that this man is well known in the U.S. and also that he is not
important," Straw added, saying that the comments were insulting
for both Christians and Muslims.
Commenting
on Falwell's statements, Shaikh Mohammad Sayed Tantawi, Grand Immam of
Al Azhar, the highest religious authority in the Islamic Sunni world,
stressed that Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him), was the
personification of peace.
A
terrorist is the one who assaults civilians, their property, their
freedom and their human dignity; demolishes their houses; besieges their
villages; confiscates their earnings; and destroys everything he can put
his hands on, Sheikh Tantawi elaborated.
Persecuted
by his people, Prophet Mohammad spent 13 years exhorting them to believe
in one God and never resorted to violence, he recalled.
He
founded the Islamic state on the bases of peace and only raised arms
against enemies who sought to destroy his fledging state, Sheikh Tantawi
said.
Even
at times of war, Prophet Mohammad also preached Muslims not to assault
women, children or elders; not to scoop up trees and not to attack
non-Muslim worship places, he said.
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Straw |
Ever
since the beginning of Islam, Christian and Jewish places of worship
have been protected in countries with Muslim majorities.
Falwell's
comments have drawn widespread wrath in several Muslim countries, with
neighbor Iran calling upon members of the 55-nation Organization of
Islamic Conference (OIC) to speak out over the matter.
"This
insult of the holy Prophet Mohammed by a Christian priest is part of a
propaganda war by the U.S. mass media and the Zionists," Iranian
Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi said on Sunday.
Speaking
during a meeting with OIC Secretary General Abdul Wahed Belqeziz,
Kharazi said Falwell's comments were "proof that the U.S. wants
political, cultural and military domination of the world," official
Iranian media said.
"Islamic
countries, and above all the OIC, must not stay silent in the face of
such unashamed accusations, and must not permit this clash of religions
and civilizations sought by the expansionist and aggressive
Zionists," he added.
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