In an apparent bid to blunt the campaign by militants, the Pakistan military has sought a religious edict whether soldiers laying down their lives in the war on terror or fighting against sectarian terror could be called martyrs or not.
The General Headquarters (GHQ) has approached the constitutional panel, the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) to issue a decree, or fatwa, stating whether a soldier killed in Pakistan while fighting terrorists or pre-empting sectarianism is a martyr. Militants fighting Pakistan Army in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan used clerics to issue the edict (fatwa) that a soldier supporting American crusade in the name of war on terror was committing an un-Islamic act and his death could not be called martyrdom. |