ahmedabad the gujarat governments bid to take a leaf out of the book of the muslim rashtriya manch mrm a body associated with the rss ended in disaster when the state cow welfare commission falsely quoted the holy quran to propagate cow protection in a statewide campaign coinciding with janmashtami the state government would have been spared the embarrassment had it stuck to mrms literature which carries the same message attributed to hadeesetibrani billboards put up in many minoritydominated areas of ahmedabad screamed quranesharif message on cow protection akar mul bakar fainah saiyadul bahaeem respect cows because cow is superior amongst animals cows milk ghee and butter is nectar and best for health cow beef is a cause of diseases as muslim scholars cried foul insisting that the text was definitely not from the quran the chairman of the cow welfare commission former union minister dr vallabh kathiriya beat a hasty retreat he apologized for misquoting the quran and said that the removal of the posters had been ordered someone in our campaign team used the reference of the quran but this message has been selected from a hadees said dr kathiriya our sole aim was to create awareness about the virtues of cow and certainly not to hurt any religious sentiment interestingly a leaflet of the cow protection committee of the mrm inviting muslim cattlerearers to the akhil bharatiya muslim gaupalak sammelan on sunday in mewat haryana attributes the same message to hadeesetibrani ghani qureshi from vadodara the national coconvener of the event told toi banners wrongly attribute the cow protection message to quran instead of hadeesetibrani in a first a national event for muslim cattlerearers is being held in india about 250 from gujarat are participating in the event said qureshi he said that several groups of mrm are active in gujarat to curb cow slaughter the gujarat unit chief of the all india milli council mufti rizwan tarapuri said the arabic line quoted in billboards merely says that cow is superior among the fourlegged animals and it needs to be respected it is not from the quran the cow welfare commission was established in gujarat by keshubhai patel when the bjp first came into power in the state in 1995 patel was the cm at the time cow slaughter has been prohibited in gujarat under the gujarat animal conservation act