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Coventry, England (CNN) -- Tired
of Islamic terror camps grabbing headlines, a Pakistani Muslim cleric is
fighting back by holding his own "anti-terror camp."
Islamic cleric Shaykh Muhammad Tahir ul-Qadri is the man behind "Al-Hidayah," an
Islamic retreat at the University of Warwick, in the UK.
He preaches peace and love and tolerance -- but not for radical extremists.
"Al Hidayah" means guidance and the three-day retreat is billed as a summer camp
for Islamic learning, especially for a younger generation. This year the focus
is exclusively on fighting extremism.
Ul-Qadri runs a multimedia empire that showcases his lectures in Pakistan, but
in Britain he is promoting his recent fatwa
on terrorism.
He issued the fatwa in March 2010 -- a 600-page religious edict that denounces
terror attacks. It condemns suicide attackers to hell and disowns them from
Islam.
Available online in English, Arabic and Urdu, the fatwa meticulously sources the
Koran and other classical Islamic texts.
It's viewed by some as arguably the most comprehensive theological rejection of
terrorism to date. Something a silent Muslim majority has long demanded,
Ul-Qadri told CNN.
"The reality is that [Muslims] were waiting for a long, long time to get this
kind of voice," he said.
"Their hearts had become desert and their spirits and their souls were thirsty.
And unfortunately, the peaceful people are always silent. They don't create
news," Ul-Qadri added.
Al-Hidayah has been running for
six years in the UK. About 1,500 participants came this year, many of them
teenagers from across Europe and North America.
One participant, Qazi, is from Chicago. He says the events of 9/11 left many
young American Muslims in a state of confusion.
"Definitely people were getting confused, and were worrying about their
identity," Qazi told CNN. "What does it mean to be a Muslim? Does it mean to do
something like this?"
When Qazi heard about the fatwa on terrorism, he immediately booked a place at
Al-Hidayah.
"It's really an amazing feeling to know it's official and something's happening.
I just wish it could have happened a whole lot earlier," he said.
Ul-Qadri also loudly tackles women's rights among other things, saying women
should be allowed to pray with men in mosques with no separation -- a point he
makes with humor.
"No curtain there. No curtain at social gatherings. When they come to pray, a
10-foot high wall curtain is between them," he said.
It's a refreshing take on Islam for Dutch teenager Yasmin. "It's a place of
being home, returning back home," she told CNN. "So if I see all those people,
boys, girls, in Islamic clothes, it makes me happy, and in Holland, I miss that
feeling.
"You really missed something last year because one of the lectures was about
women's rights. I cried for, like, two hours," Yasmin said.
Next year, Al Hidayah will be in London and they are expecting more than 5,000
participants. Evidence, perhaps, that ul-Qadri's message is spreading.
--Muhammad Tahir ul-Qadri , Muslim cleric
"They don't feel need of any curtain when they send [women] to market for
grocery and shopping," he tells his audience at Al-Hidayah.
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