An Apology

In my last post, I included an alleged fatwa by an alleged mufti Muhammad Idris Usmani associated allegedly with a seminary called Jamia Islamia. The alleged fatwa was sourced from the Let Us Build Pakistan (LUBP) blog and indicated as such but was reproduced in my post without the qualifiers it should have included.

Some readers correctly raised doubts about the authenticity of the religious opinion, after which we wrote to LUBP asking for the source of their information. A day has passed and we have not heard back from anyone at LUBP. Another reader Samad Khurram has pointed out that the alleged picture of Mufti Idris Usmani (also from LUBP) is actually of Mufti Fuzail-ur-Rahman (Fazl-ur-Rahman?) Hilal Usmani of the Darus Salaam Islamic Centre in Indian Punjab and Darul Uloom Deoband. We have also not been able to identify through our own research where Jamia Islamia is located and the only source for this fatwa seems to be the LUBP blog itself. All of this points to the fact that the so-called fatwa is a fabrication.

While the point of my earlier post stands, and this perhaps indicates how easy it is to manufacture fatwas about anything as well as their worth, there is no doubt that the inclusion of a seemingly fabricated fatwa without the disclaimers that should have been part of the post, is a lapse on our part and damages our credibility. It also detracts from the point of the post itself. And for this we offer unreserved apologies to our readers. Needless to say, we will far more skeptical of LUBP information and will attempt to be much more stringent about attaching disclaimers in the future.

To those readers who were happy to see that at least someone within the clergy was taking an unequivocal stand to condemn those guilty of praising a murderer, equivocating about moral issues and twisting religion to suit their own ends, I apologize for the disappointment. I guess we'll have to wait a little longer for sense to arrive among the mullah brigade.