#Uttar Pradesh Jamiat Ulema’s cleric Mufti Muhammad Ilyas stirred up a hornet’s nest here on Thursday by saying that Lord Shiva was first messenger of Islam.
The cleric also said that Muslims-‘followers of Sanatan Dharma (Hinduism)-should have no reservations in accepting that Lord Shiva and Goddess Parvati are their creators too.
Ilyas also said that he was open to the idea floated by RSS’s that every Indian is an Hindus.
“When citizens of Japan can be called Japanese and those of America called Americans, what’s wrong in terming Hindustani as Hindus. We are not opposed to declaring India a Hindu country,” he told newsmen in the holy city.
Ilyas was part of a delegation of clerics that was in Ayodhya on Wednesday to garner support for the Jamiat’s communal harmony seminar to be organized on February 27 in Balrampur.
For obvious reasons, llyas’s statement has not gone down very well with the cleric fraternity who have rubbished it as his personal take which has no proof, what so ever, in Islam.
“We know that the first prophet (messenger) of Islam was Prophet Adam and the last one was Prophet Mohammad. Quran has mentioned very few of them. Islam respects all religions and religious figures. But that Lord Shiva was a Prophet has no proof in Islam,” said Maulana Khalid Rasheed Farangi Mahali, head cleric of Aishbagh Eidgah in Lucknow.
“It must be his personal statement. It has nothing to do with Islam,” said Khalid who is also member of All India Muslim Personal Law Board. Likewise many other clerics also rubbished Maulan Ilyas’s statement un-Islamic.
Uttar Pradesh head of Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) Laxminkant Bajpai, has also termed it as a personal comment.