Muhammad Al-Asi: Muslims should refrain from excumminication

Excommunication has been one of the key topics brought up at the 26th International Muslim Unity Conference in Tehran, Muhammad al-Asi, the former prayer leader at the Islamic Center of Washington said.

“The new development in the past year was intensification and media concentration on the issue of Takfir (excommunication. The number one pre-occupation of many Muslims almost everywhere, is with accusing other Muslims with being Kafers (Pagan). I thing the issue must be dealt with in a more principled way and in a more systematic way rather than just a couple of papers and a conference that is held once or twice a year here and there. This needs a much more consolidated effort and it needs a variety of approaches, opinions coming from different directions scholarly; scholarly presentation that approach the issue of Takfir from different directions so that they could knock wish issues out of the public round and thereby Muslims, can go back to look in at each other as Muslims without this Takfiri interference,” al-Asi told Taqrib News Agency (TNA).

Asked about the developments in Muslim world since the former Muslim reunion in Tehran, al-Asi said ” May be someone, or a government organization or governmental department should have a conference about kofr (Paganism) so that this can be saturated and there could be some literature about it , be come media coverage of it. This is an issue which has been growing throughout the past year and it looks to come to grow in the coming year. So there has to be preemptive procedures or policies that would contain this problem and arrest it. So it doesn’t disturb the well being, harmony of the Muslims with the variations that they have.

The 26th International Muslim Unity Conference has kicked off in Tehran on Sunday. The two day confab will wrap up on Monday.
Some 102 Shiia and Sunni scholars from Muslim and non-Muslim countries have participated the conference.