Associating religion with terror weakens country's resolve to fight it: BJP

Slamming the Congress Party over former Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shide's 'Hindu terror' comment, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday said looking at terrorism from the point of view of religion weakens the country's resolve against terrorism.

"Sushil Kumar Shinde had said that India is concerned about Hindu terror. When Chidambaram was Home Minister he had also spoken about saffron terror. BJP's stand on this is clear, that terrorism has no belief, it has no religion. We have never spoken about Muslim terrorism, we have spoken about jihadi terror," Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told media persons.

"Prime Minister has clearly said that Muslims are patriots. Talks of Hindu terror and saffron terror weakens country's resolve against terrorism," he added.

The Congress had earlier in the day said that Home Minister Rajnath Singh was quoting Shinde's comment 'out of context' and alleged that the BJP Government was polarising the nation in the name of religion.

Earlier, Home Minister Rajnath Singh had said the term 'Hindu terrorism' coined by the previous UPA government had weakened the fight against the scourge by diverting the direction of probe into the incidents of terrorism.