Bright yellow stickers have been posted around Leicester trying to encourage Muslims not to vote in the upcoming elections claiming it is against the teachings of Islam.
The stickers which claim ‘Voting for man made law is Shirk’ have been posted around Evington Road and Spinney Hill in areas with a large Muslim population.
A local Imam called the poster campaign “shallow and baseless”.
Dr Ather Hussain, said, “I don’t think the people behind it have any sound religious knowledge to equate voting with Shirk, in our religion Shirk is an act which is considered as the gravest of crimes, it is when a person considers there is another god other than Allah, or to be believe that someone else or some other being has god like qualities”
“I don’t see how participating in the political process is in anyway an infringement of Allah’s oneness, just because I vote for Labour or Conservative, it doesn’t mean that I am worshipping them, so its a rather silly and futile argument”
He goes on to explain that “Muslims might have many different reason to vote or to refrain from voting, for example some Muslims might be disillusioned like many non Muslims with the political process in this country, they might believe for example that there are no real differences between the main political parties but Muslims should not decide to refrain from the political system purely on this quite shallow and baseless poster campaign which has been seen in our city”
“even the people behind do not believe in what they are trying to propagate, if they did they would at the very least have left some contact details behind, so its quite cowardly from them”
Many of the stickers have been already been ripped.
