The Conservative Muslim Forum is horrified by the deaths of at least 135 people, most of them children, in today’s attack by the Pakistani Taliban on an army-run school in Peshawar, Pakistan. We understand that the Pakistani Taliban have claimed responsibility for this attack.

There is no political cause which can justify mass murder of this kind. It is also an abomination when organisations such as the Pakistani Taliban use the language of religion to justify their crimes.

We call for all citizens of Pakistan to give the utmost assistance to the Pakistan Government in its quest to bring to justice those who organised this crime. We also call for Pakistani society to root out the pernicious ideology that underlies the Pakistani Taliban, and which seeks to impose its own view of Islam upon the rest of Pakistani society.

Today we pray for the deceased and our hearts go out to their relatives who have been robbed of their loved ones so cruelly.