AIUMB To Counter Extremist Ideology Through Int’l Sufi Conference

New Delhi: Hundreds of religious scholars from India, Morocco, Bosnia, Chechnya, Pakistan, UAE and Syria –including those from the Shia community are expected to take part in a 3-day conference titled “International Sufi Conference” beginning 5th March, 2015 in Delhi.

“It’s for the first time that an Indian Sufi Sunni apex body of Muslims, Ulema & Mashaikh Board (AIUMB) has endeavoured to gather millions of mainstream Muslims and intellectually to demolish the ideology and theology of Al Qaeda and like-minded groups,” Maulana Syed Mohammad Ashraf Kichauchawi said in a press communiqué. “

He said it was the first time that an Indian Sufi Sunni apex body of Muslims, Ulama & Mashaikh Board (AIUMB) had gathered millions of mainstream Muslims and intellectually demolished the ideology and theology of Al Qaeda and like-minded groups.

An apex body of Sufi Sunni Muslims in India, All India Ulema & Mashaikh Board (AIUMB) hosted a special meet in its central office at New Delhi to discuss the issues of extremism finding ways to work out effective counter-narratives.

With a number of Sufi-minded  Islamic scholars, writers and journalists, university students, social activists and grassroots workers, the event was aimed at finding newer ways of spreading the Islamic message of peace and tolerance as a counterattack on the ideological extremism that seems to be growing faster in India too.

“Islam has been conflated in media with extremism,” Kichauchawi said. “We have to keep the Muslim youths away from the politically motivated ‘Islamists’ and recognize the real culprits who cause greater defamation of Islam and the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) than the Islamophobes.”

Maulana Abdul Moid Azhari, secretary (AIUMB) said that Islam is being wrongly identified with terrorism which has no ideological link with peaceful sufi doctrines. “Sufi ideology is based on peace, brotherhood and tolerance through which the message of peace and harmony is being circulated to the entire world,” he said.

The venue of the event has been decided at Delhi’s Ram Lila Maidan.