By 2004, the strength of this belief (which is the basis of Islamic finance) was demonstrated in the world's second largest Muslim country—Pakistan—when a minority (non-Muslim) member of the Pakistani parliament questioned it, pointing out that a scholar from Al-Azhar University, (one of the oldest Islamic Universities in the world), had issued a decree that bank interest was not un-Islamic. His statement resulted in "pandemonium" in the parliament, a demand by members of leading Islamist political party to immediately respond to these allegedly derogatory remarks, followed by a walkout when they were denied it. When the upset members of parliament returned, their leader (Sahibzada Fazal Karim), stated that since the Pakistan Council of Islamic ideology had decreed that interest in all its forms was "haram" (forbidden) in an Islamic society, no member of parliament had the right to "negate this settled issue".