Ben Venzke of IntelCenter, a U.S. group which monitors al-Qaida messages, said al-Qaida could target embassies and diplomatic personnel, possibly in Pakistan, from other countries where the cartoons also were published.

Venzke said Norway, the US and all European Union member countries, including Denmark, were most at risk.

Pak body backs Deoband fatwa against terror

A Pakistani religious party has endorsed a ‘fatwa’ against terrorism issued by Darul Uloom, a leading Islamic seminary in India. The Deoband madrassa issued the decree last week in New Delhi during a meeting attended by thousands of clerics and students who vowed to root out terrorism from society. “We fully support the anti-terrorism fatwa issued by the madrassa. They declared the edict according to the existing circumstances,” Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl’s NWFP President Maulana Gul Naseeb Khan told the Daily Times. Khan said Deoband was an educational, religious and spiritual institution for them and as such “we endorse its anti-terrorism fatwa”.

However, Khan noted that his party, which is led by Maulana Fazlur Rehman, had issued an anti-terrorism fatwa long before the Deoband madrassa.

He said his party had convened an ‘ulema’ convention on April 17 last year and issued a fatwa declaring suicide bombings and all kinds of terrorism as “haraam” or prohibited in Islam and against the law of the land.