The police are now laying out a plan to involve religious opinion leaders across the country in the fight against militancy.
Islamist militant groups and organisations often wash the brains of mainly young people by using dubious interpretations of the religion.
Taking a leaf out of that, the Police are now planning to counter militant groups’ spreading of misinformation with appropriate and scripture-based messages and statements issued by the opinion leaders.
The field level officials of the law enforcement agency have been asked by the headquarters to emphasise on developing relationships with local mosque-based opinion leadership – imams and khatibs.
An imam is the de facto chief of a mosque who leads the daily, Friday and Eid prayers and usually gives sermons to gatherings of devotees after the prayers or on special religious occasions.
A khatib, meanwhile, can be the same person as the Imam or a different person, whose job is to pronounce or recite verses from the holy Qur’an after prayers at the mosques.
The police have recently held two meetings with these religious scholars from across the country where discussions were held on how they could be involved in the fight against militancy.
Among other outcomes of those meetings, which police are saying were fruitful, include a pledge from the Khatib of Sholakia, the biggest Eid prayer congregation in the country, to issue a fatwa to raise awareness against militancy.
A fatwa is a ruling on a point of Islamic law given by a recognised authority and the khatib of Sholakia pledged to make as many as 100,000 religious scholars from across the country signatories to that fatwa.
“Those who are killing innocent people and are getting involved in terrorism in the name of the religion are misguided. Islam does not support killing,” Fariduddin Masuud, khatib of Sholakia, said.
He also said that they had already started working to compile a book of quotes with materials from the Qur’an, Hadith and the biography of Prophet Hazrat Muhammad which they plan to distribute through the mosques and madrassas around the country.
