Thiruvananthapuram, March 6: The moderate-minded Indian Union Muslim League has latched on to an Islamic scholar?s decades-old fatwa against communist Muslims in the party?s fight for votes in Kerala.

Egypt-born Yusuf al Qaradawi?s fatwa rules that a communist, who is an atheist, has no place in Islam; that Muslim women should not be married to communists, and a communist Muslim has no right to Islamic burial in a mosque cemetery and to ancestral property.

The Islamic Publishing House in Kozhikode, which is pro-Jama?at-e-Islami, had published the fatwa 18 years ago. Qaradawi now lives in Qatar and has links with the Muslim Brotherhood, which is outlawed in Egypt.

His edict came in handy for the League?s Karuvarakundu unit to call for a social boycott of communists within the community. The League?s state leadership, however, sought to distance itself from the local unit?s efforts. ?The League has (issued) no fatwas,? Malappuram district secretary K.P.A. Majeed said. The party, he stressed, is a political entity and not a religious one.

The League has been in a war of nerves with the CPM since last month when the latter held its triennial state conference for the first time in the League citadel of Malappuram. CPM leaders had claimed that the huge Muslim turnout at a rally showed the community?s gravitation towards the party and its increasing alienation from the League.