The chief of an organisation that claims to represent half a million imams in the country, a man known for his proximity to the ruling BJP and the RSS, and among just a few Muslim leaders invited to the Ram Temple’s consecration event in Ayodhya on January 22, Imam Umer Ahmed Ilyasi has said that he is the target of a “fatwa” now.

Ilyasi, the chief imam of the All India Imam Organisation (AIIO) since 2009, claims that Mufti Sabir Hussain, who runs a YouTube channel, has issued a fatwa against him after he attended the Ayodhya event. However, a statement put out by Hussain has only called for a fatwa to be issued against Ilyasi for his participation in the Temple’s consecration ceremony.

Ilyasi has also alleged that he received death threats and harassing phone calls calling for his removal as the chief imam. According to his son Suhaib, the cleric has been provided Y+ security by the government since 2016.

Ilyasi told The Indian Express he attended the consecration to express his “paigham-e-mohabbat (message of love)” and insisted his actions were motivated not by religious sentiments but by his “love for humanity”. “We are all humans first and our humanity is our character. One can only be a good Muslim or a good Hindu if one is a good person,” he said. “People can have different castes, their forms of worship can be different, our faiths can be different, but the biggest dharma should be humanity.”

Ilyasi also said he went to attend the Ayodhya ceremony as part of his “duty to the nation”. “The nation has given all so much, so we, too, must give back to the nation. We shouldn’t make Hindu or Muslim our identity but instead identify ourselves as Indian first… They say that it was wrong that I went for the Pran Pratishtha (consecration) ceremony, but I went for national interest and communal harmony,” he said.

Ilyasi, though, is undeterred by what he claims is a fatwa, saying it holds no legal weight and cannot be implemented since India is not an Islamic country.

This is not the first time Ilyasi finds himself in a spot, especially for his close ties with the Sangh Parivar.

Ilyasi has interacted with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on several occasions, including in 2015 as part of a delegation of Muslim leaders, and has also met Union Home Minister Amit Shah. He has also had meetings with spiritual leaders such as Jagadish Vasudev, who is known as Sadhguru, and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, among others.

On his 2015 meeting with PM Modi, Ilyasi had said, “We told the PM that while he speaks mann ki baat, we have come to tell him our dil ki baat, our concerns about how, when he was talking Make in India, some people were talking about destroying India. He told me, ‘I give you my word, if you knock on my door at 12 in the night, I will respond’. He assured us that he is responsible for every Indian.”

In June 2016, Ilyasi had also led a delegation to meet then Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, calling for peace in Jammu and Kashmir after protests broke out over civilians killed by security personnel there. “Kashmir is an integral part of India. We met Rajnath Singh ji and we proposed that we want Kashmir to make peace,” he had then said.

In September 2022, Ilyasi was among several Muslim intellectuals who met RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat. After the meeting, he, however, drew flak for referring to Bhagwat as “rashtra pita (father of the nation)”.

Questioning the RSS’s move, the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB)’s member Qasim Rasool Ilyas had then told The Indian Express that if Bhagwat and the RSS really wanted to reach out to the Muslim community, they would get in touch with organisations that actually have influence and following — such as the AIMPLB or the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind or the Jamaat-e-Islami.

Several members from various Muslim organisations have pointed out that Ilyasi has “little standing” within the community. One of them alleged that Ilyasi was “not even a recognised Islamic scholar”. Another said he has always been “pro-government for the sake of benefits”.