Lucknow, April 27: Leading Muslim organisation Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind has described terrorism as an effect of discrimination against the community, saying the symptom couldn’t be rooted out if the disease wasn’t cured.

This appeared to be a shift of focus from the uncompromising stand taken by the influential Deoband seminary, the Dar-ul Uloom, which in February declared all forms of terrorism “un-Islamic”.

“Terrorism thrives on discrimination. The best way to root out terrorism is to end discrimination,” new Jamiat president Maulana Q.M. Usman said at an anti-terror conference attended by leading clerics from across the country.

The Jamiat, the Dar-ul Uloom’s parent organisation, had split just when it was about to adopt the seminary’s anti-terror fatwa. The Jamiat’s pro-Congress president Arshad Madani was ousted by his nephew Mahmood Madani.

Mahmood Madani, Jamiat general secretary and Rashtriya Lok Dal MP, said a sort of “state terrorism is being waged against Muslims” by some state governments.

“Even the most hardened criminals are allowed their right to self-defence. But the suspects in the Muslim community who are arrested in connection with the so-called jihad are not allowed that,” Madani said last week.

Jamiat sources said the new leadership’s stand was meant to accommodate the dissenting voices in the organisation who were opposed to calling Islamic militancy an unmitigated evil.

The Dar-ul Uloom’s fatwa had raised hopes that Muslim clerics and opinion-makers would make a concerted effort to rid the community of its image as supporters and sympathisers of terrorism.

Accordingly, the Jamiat had called a series of anti-terror conventions across the country. But the split raised fears about the success of the meetings.

Thursday’s meeting drew a distinction between jihad and terrorism. “While one stands for peace, the other stands for destruction,” Maulana Saifuddin Azmi said.

Another cleric said: “Terrorism is the symptom of a bigger disease. To cure the bigger disease, atrocities against ordinary Muslims must stop.”

Usman today dismissed references to the recent power struggle in the Jamiat and said the 90-year-old organisation had always been apolitical. But he acknowledged that the Jamiat supported or opposed candidates in elections.

“Every one of us is free to join any party they like but not the BJP. The Jamiat will fight anyone who joins the BJP,” he said.