Indian Muslim clerics reject terror despite threats

LUCKNOW, India, May 21 (Reuters) - Senior Muslim clerics in India rejected terrorism as anti-Islamic on Wednesday, despite receiving threats from an Islamist group.

Khalid Rasheed, head of the oldest madrasa, or Islamic religious school, in the northern city of Lucknow, said he and his colleagues had been accused of apostasy over their pacifist stance by the militant Islamist group Indian Mujahideen.

Indian Mujahideen made the threats last week in an email sent to local media channels in which they also claimed responsibility for last week's bomb blasts in Jaipur, western India, which killed 63 people.

"The reaction of terrorists to our stand against terror has shown that we were moving in the right direction," Rasheed told reporters. "We will continue to not only raise our voice against terror but also repeatedly educate the Muslim masses about the grossly un-Islamic practices adopted by terrorist bodies."

Rasheed said they had received support from the influential radical Darool-Uloom Deoband madrasa in northern India, whose strict interpretation of Islamic law is said to have inspired the Taliban in Afghanistan.

"Islam is a religion of peace," Ahmad Khazir Shah, the madrasa's vice chancellor, said in a statement on Wednesday. "To give it a bad name, unscrupulous elements are carrying out acts of violence and bloodshed, which is highly regrettable."

Muslims make up about 13 percent of mainly Hindu India's population. The country has the third-largest Islamic population after Indonesia and Pakistan. (Reporting by Sharat Pradhan; Editing by Jonathan Allen)