anti-terror camps

Muslim cleric holds 'anti-terror camps'.

Tired of Islamic terror camps grabbing headlines, a Pakistani Muslim cleric is fighting back by holding his own "anti-terror camp."

Islamic cleric Shaykh Muhammad Tahir ul-Qadri is the man behind "Al-Hidayah," an Islamic retreat at the University of Warwick, in the UK.

He preaches peace and love and tolerance -- but not for radical extremists.

"Al Hidayah" means guidance and the three-day retreat is billed as a summer camp for Islamic learning, especially for a younger generation. This year the focus is exclusively on fighting extremism.

Ul-Qadri runs a multimedia empire that showcases his lectures in Pakistan, but in Britain he is promoting his recent fatwa on terrorism.

He issued the fatwa in March 2010 -- a 600-page religious edict that denounces terror attacks. It condemns suicide attackers to hell and disowns them from Islam.

Available online in English, Arabic and Urdu, the fatwa meticulously sources the Koran and other classical Islamic texts.

It's viewed by some as arguably the most comprehensive theological rejection of terrorism to date. Something a silent Muslim majority has long demanded, Ul-Qadri told.

"The reality is that [Muslims] were waiting for a long, long time to get this kind of voice," he said.

"Their hearts had become desert and their spirits and their souls were thirsty. And unfortunately, the peaceful people are always silent. They don't create news," Ul-Qadri added.

Al-Hidayah has been running for six years in the UK. About 1,500 participants came this year, many of them teenagers from across Europe and North America.

One participant, Qazi, is from Chicago. He says the events of 9/11 left many young American Muslims in a state of confusion.

"Definitely people were getting confused, and were worrying about their identity," Qazi told CNN. "What does it mean to be a Muslim? Does it mean to do something like this?"

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