An organization of top American Muslim religious scholars plans to issue a formal ruling today condemning terrorism and forbidding Muslims to cooperate with anyone involved in a terrorist act, according to officials of two leading Islamic organizations.
The one-page ruling, or fatwa, will be issued by the Fiqh Council of North America, an association of Islamic legal scholars that interprets Islamic law for the Muslim community. Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an advocacy group, said the ruling does not represent a new position on terrorism.
In other Islam-related news from the WashPost this week:
A local radio talk show host touched off complaints from an Islamic civil rights organization yesterday after repeatedly describing Islam on the air as “a terrorist organization” that is “at war with America.”
The organization, the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), asked the station to take disciplinary action against Michael Graham, who hosts WMAL-AM’s late-morning call-in program.
A station executive, Randall Bloomquist, said yesterday that Graham’s comments were “amped up” but justified within the context of the program. He said the station, which is owned by the Walt Disney Co., had no plans to reprimand Graham.
The show host touched off the flap during a discussion of the Muslim community’s response to recent acts of terrorism. Graham suggested the fault lies with Muslims generally because religious leaders and followers haven’t done enough to condemn and root out extreme elements. “The problem is not extremism,” Graham said, according to both CAIR and the station. “The problem is Islam.” He also said, “We are at war with a terrorist organization named Islam.”
CAIR denounced the comments yesterday as “hate-filled” and “Islamophobic” and asked its members to contact the station’s advertisers to express their dismay.
“It’s amazing,” said Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR’s communications director. “I talked with Mr. Bloomquist and asked him if he would reprimand someone who used the n-word on the air. He said yes. I asked him if he would reprimand someone who read [approvingly] from the [anti-Semitic] ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion.’ He said yes. So I asked him if he would do the same if someone had called Islam a terroristic organization. Well, he said, it’s all about context, but he never quite explained it to me.”
