Randall Hamud, described by CAIR's website as "a prominent Muslim civil rights lawyer," gave a workshop for CAIR-San Diego entitled, "Know Your Rights," on August 18, 2005. This was his response to a question from the audience:

Transcript:

Question: What's your opinion of this recent fatwa ruling about the condemnation of terrorism and so on and so forth, now we are trying to encourage various Islamic organizations and leaders to sign on to this?

Randall Hamud: Well I have a very different take on that. It is almost like the fatwa as I read it was a plea, "Please, we are not guilty of anything, we are good people or religious." It's this plaintive plea that we are not really guilty. We try and prove ourselves not guilty. And I thought they went too far in that direction. A fatwa can disavow the killing of innocents according to the Hadith and the Koran, and a fatwa can disavow suicide bombings. Because remember with a suicide bomber, a brother dies or a sister dies too, and that is not right. And we have to stop and ask ourselves that. We can condemn the actions, they're trying redefine Islam according to the tastes of the Western press and the United States government, and this fatwa I think is a mistake. OK I'd keep it more simple. But it is a fatwa, it is not binding.

Randall Hamud