All Pakistan Ulema Council

The All Pakistan Ulema Council is a Muslim organization in Pakistan whose members include Islamic clerics and legal scholars from a range of Islamic traditions. Its head is Tahir Ashrafi.^[1]

In August 2012, the Council joined hands with the Pakistan Interfaith League, which includes Christians, Sikhs and other religions, and Tahir Ashrafi denounced the misuse of Pakistan's blasphemy law. The unprecedented move came after a young Christian girl thought to have Down's syndrome was charged with desecrating the Qur'an and held in prison.^[1]

However, in March 2013, the head of the council announced that suicide attacks are permitted in Afghanistan so long as US forces remain in the country. Tahir Ashrafi told TOLOnews,"Palestine is occupied by Israel, Kashmir by India, and Afghanistan by the US. So if the Muslims don't have the atomic bomb, they should sacrifice their lives for God."^[2]

Lisa Lundquist of The Long War Journal notes, "Significantly, Ashrafi's rhetoric on suicide attacks is identical to that of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan. In January 2009, the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan released a propaganda tape in which a jihadist said that "suicide bombers are the atomic weapons of Muslims."

In the tape, a teenage suicide bomber named Masood, who was involved with a May 2008 double suicide bombing in Lahore, stated: 'Suicide bombers are the atomic weapons of Muslims because Muslims do not have the latest weapons to fight enemies who are committing atrocities against Muslims in Kashmir, Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq.'"^[3]

Tahir Ashrafi later told Pajhwok Afghan News that he was quoted out of context and had “never supported suicide attacks that cause civilian casualties in Afghanistan,” explaining that the Taliban’s supreme leader Mullah Omar had also banned such bombings.^[4]