17 October 2007

Dear Sir,

A story in today's edition of the Daily Mail (1st October 2007) quotes me as saying:

'By selling alcohol you are not committing a sin.'

This is not what I said to your reporter Steve Doughty. I explained to him that there is a well known saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad in which he said that those who make alcohol, those who sell it and those who drink it are all committing a sin against God. Some Muslims adopt a strict interpretation of this saying and believe that even checkout staff at a superstore should not help pass alcohol through their checkouts. Others believe that Islamic law has allowances for people in such a situation and that checkout staff cannot be held to be sinning in such a situation. I added that Sainsbury's should be commended for adopting a tolerant approach. As you can see, my actual answer was rather more nuanced than the version as reported in your paper.

Yours faithfully,
Mr Inayat Bunglawala,
Assistant Secretary-General,
Muslim Council of Britain
PO Box 57330,
London
E1 2WJ