SHARJAH (Reuters) - Just days before he died when a Taliban militant detonated a bomb hidden in his turban, Burhanuddin Rabbani was trying to persuade Islamic scholars to issue a religious edict banning suicide bombings. The former presidents 29-year-old daughter said in an interview that her father died shortly after he spoke at a conference on Islamic Awakening in Tehran. Right before he was assassinated, he talked about the suicide bombing issue, Fatima Rabbani, who had watched a replay of her fathers speech on television, told Reuters. He called on all Islamic scholars in the conference to release a fatwa. You know: in Islam killing yourself is forbidden. Several Taliban officials were present at the two-day event which brought together some 600 Islamic scholars. Rabbani did not sit with them at the same table. A former leader of a powerful mujahideen party during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, Rabbani was chosen last October by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to head the High Peace Council, created to negotiate peace with the Taliban. Fatima, who had lived in the United Arab Emirates since 1997, said she was planning to set up a foundation in her fathers memory to teach young Afghans that killing civilians contradicted Islamic values. Were thinking to basically raise awareness and teach Afghans the real Islam, something that my father had always encouraged the youth to do, she said, sitting next to her brother, Shuja, in their familys villa in an affluent neighbourhood in the UAE emirate Sharjah. Rabbani, was the most prominent surviving leader of the ethnic Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance of fighters and politicians that drove the Taliban from Kabul in 2001. He served as president in the 1990s when rival mujahideen factions waged war for control of the country after the Soviet withdrawal. Fatima, who is doing a Masters degree in post conflict studies and development at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London (SOAS), said those who plotted her fathers death wanted to cripple peace efforts. Killing my father sent out a really loud message, very loud and clear to us that they do not want peace, she said, adding that Rabbani had said after meeting Pashtun leaders in Kandahar, birthplace of the Taliban movement, that the idea of peace was very possible. He spent 45 to 50 years of his life just devoted to Afghanistan, to bring peace to Afghanistan, Fatima said. It was unclear how far his efforts to make peace with the Taliban went. Fatima said he had suggested to her that the majority of Afghan Taliban were keen to join the process.