7Mar/100
Pak Nobel laureate’s Ahmedi status hurdle for documentary
I was quoted in this story - a slight spin but an important point nevertheless..
Wednesday, March 03, Islamabad: Two young Pakistanis are battling all odds to make the first-ever documentary on the country's only Nobel laureate Abdus Salam though the going has not been easy so far because he was an Ahmedi.
18Feb/100
Killing Shias is not jihad – stop this carnage in Pakistan
This is an old article – When the state kills – authored by Pakistan’s eminent intellectual Khaled Ahmed. It remains relevant for what is happening today – the carnage in Karachi and targetted killing of the Shia minority is a cause for concern for Pakistanis who want the country to become a plural, tolerant and progressive society for all its citizens irrespective of their faith, caste or creed.
Many of us - who identify themselves as neither Sunni nor Shia (only Muslims) - strongly condemn the Karachi incidents and will continue to raise voice against extremism and sectarianism.
15Feb/103
The closed minds that deny a civilisation’s glories – where I was quoted
I was most pleased to read this piece by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown entitled The closed minds that deny a civilisation's glories. I would like to thank Yasmin Alibhai, whom I have always respected for her integrity and courage, to have quoted a few hurried lines posted by me in response to tge butchery perpeterated by the extremists in Pakistan and elsewhere:
Muslims are seeing Koranic injunctions where none exist
Confused Dad Mohamed from somewhere in the US sends his dilemma to an Islamic guidance website through whom Allah apparently communicates his orders - on how we dress, what we do minute by minute, unholy TV programmes, wicked vitamins and even wickeder relations between males and females.
I paraphrase Mohamed's frantic appeal for clarity. His children watch cartoons, and have stuffed toys, quilts and pillow cases with Mickey Mouse on them. Is all that halal? Now many of us detest the addictive and manipulative Disney brand which targets young children. But this fully grown, procreative adult cannot trust his own mind and seeks instructions from unverified voices of authority. How abject is that?
These global sites control people, push through Maoist "cleansing". Miserable mullahs are closing down the Muslim mind and heart the world over. Meanwhile "true believers" desperately seek enslavement and thank their enslavers. The questions posed are startling in their naiveté. May we sing? Is it OK for a man to listen to a woman singer? Do I watch a female newsreader? Yes, says a wise one - as long as she is properly covered up and not wearing perfume. Don't laugh. It is tragic, not funny.
Somehow in the last decade or so, millions of believers have been persuaded that they are repositories of sin because they watch films, love music and paintings, read books, experience temporal pleasures and ecstasies. Remember the ferocity with which the Taliban destroyed all pre-Islamic treasures? Saudi Arabia is guilty of similar vandalism. Thus they seek to recreate the piety of triumphant Islam. Well they didn't have cameras, mobile phones, cars and computers then. Should these be banned too?
Muslim children are now programmed to obey - robbed of imagination, independent thought and refinement. UK Muslim parents are increasingly coming out against school visits, music and drama, novels, exercise, scientific facts. Teachers know these parental demands leave Muslim children under-educated and emotionally numbed, rendered unresponsive to artistic words, sights and sounds.
This is a travesty of our history, our love of truth and beauty, the intellectual energy that throughout history uplifted Muslim civilisations. The current Science Museum exhibition of Muslim inventions that shaped the modern world proves we were never the barbarians promoted in Western demonology. Some of the earliest manuals on surgery and optics, astronomy and flying machines came out of Muslim regions. And those same places were creative hubs producing great works of art, incredible buildings and intricate crafts.
There is no Koranic injunction against the depiction of the human form, yet pictures from previous ages would today not be painted - a kneeling, sensual angel by an Ottoman artist in the mid-16th century, a man filling his cup of wine. Passion plays were performed through the centuries in all main Arabian conurbations. Poetry was written and recited by both men and women. Music, devotional and romantic, was in every household. All that is under threat today.
The Pakistani blogger Raza Rumi writes: "Who are these butchers of culture? What religion do they follow? They have no religion except barbarism." Exactly. British Muslims for Secular Democracy (of which I am chair), supported by the British Council, is tomorrow organising a conference on artistic and cultural freedom at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Speakers include Miss Pakistan (who is also a professor), fashion designers, the entrepreneur Saira Khan, painters, stand-up comics, musicians, writers, others who are concerned. The event is open to all. Check the BMSD site. We will be launching an advisory guide for teachers on protecting the interests of the Muslim child.
12Feb/101
The Speech of Mr. Sris Chandra Chattopadhya (Opposition to Objectives Resolution, Constitutent Assembly of Pak, 12 March 1949)
This is a historic speech and a document that posterity will re-examine. Seldom has one piece of legislation caused so much trepidation. Thanks to my firebrand friend Usman Qazi, I got to read this speech that I had heard about from many people. Here is the text of the address of Sris Chandra Chattopadhya (Opposition to Objectives Resolution, Constitutent Assembly of Pak, 12 March 1949).
Mr. Sris Chandra Chattopadhya (East Bengal : General) : Mr. President, I thought, after my colleague, Mr. Bhupendra Kumar Datta, had spoken on the two amendments on behalf of the Congress Party, I would not take any part in this discussion. He appealed, he reasoned and made the Congress position fully clear, but after I heard some of the speakers from the majority party, viz, Muslim League Party, the manner in which they had interpreted the Resolution, it became incumbent on me to take part in this discussion.
I have heard Dr. Malik and appreciate his standpoint. He says that "we got Pakistan for establishing a Muslim State, and the Muslims suffered for it and therefore it was not desireable that anybody should speak against it". I quite agree with him. He said; "If we establish a Muslim State and even if we become reactionaries, who are you to say anything against it?" That is a standpoint which I understand, but here there is some difficulty. We also, on this side, fought for the independence of the country. We worked for the independence of the entire country. When our erstwhile masters, Britishers, were practically in the mood of going away, the country was divided – one part became Pakistan and the other remained India. If in the Pakistan State there would have been only Muslims, the question would have been different. But there are some non-muslims also in Pakistan. When they wanted a division there was no talk of an exchange of population. If there was an exchange of population, there would have been an end of the matter, and Dr. Malik could establish his Pakistan in his own way and frame constitution accordingly. It is also true that the part of Pakistan in which Dr. Malik lives is denuded of non-Muslims. That is clear.
Dr. Omar Hayat Malik: On a point of order, Sir, I never said that. He has understood me quite wrongly.
Mr. Omar Hayat Malik: I never said that Pakistan was denuded of non-Muslims. My friend on the opposite has misunderstood me.
10Feb/103
The Destruction of Holy Sites in Mecca & Medina – Destroying Islamic Heritage
The Asian Age: The Arabian Peninsula, the cradle of Islam, is being demolished by hardliners. In countries such as Saudi Arabia almost all of the Islamic historical sites are gone, but this is not the first time they have been destroyed.In 1802, and army led by the sons of Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab (the founder of Wahhabism) and Muhammad ibn Saud occupied Taif and began a bloody massacre. A year later, the forces occupied the holy city of Mecca. They executed a campaign of destruction in many sacred places and leveled all the existing domes, even those built over the well of Zamzam. However, after the army left, Sharif Ghalib breached the truce, inciting the Wahhabis to re-occupy Mecca in 1805.
In 1806, the Wahhabi army occupied Medina. They did not leave any religious building, including mosques, without demolishing it, whether inside or outside the Baqi’ (graveyard). They intended to
9Feb/103
Muslimness – shifting boundaries
Muslimness is an elusive state of being. There are watertight strictures of the theological identity defined by men, interpreted as the Sharia, on the one hand; and the broad political and cultural sense of the self, on the other. Identity, in any case, is a messy affair: shifty, shifting and eventually, imagined. While 9/11 placed Muslims at the centre stage of global politics, the broth had already been simmering in the cauldrons of biased academe and pop reality mirrored through the blood-thirsty lens of corporate media.
So what is it to be a Muslim? An inflexible bag of rituals? Or a cultural sense of belonging or a deeper dogma ingrained in young minds? I have never considered myself anything but a believer, a ‘practicing Muslim’. This has never been at variance with my secular and inclusive pretensions, despite the fact that the clergy in my country considers secularism akin to atheism, a sort of mirror image of the Pakistani political foundation. The clerics translate secular as la-deen , at best irreligious, and at worst, godless.
Ironical that this business of religious identity is articulated in a land that was the crucible of the secular Indus Valley civilization, non-militant Buddhism and a peculiar version of South Asian Islam that spread via the Sufi khanqahs and was a sort of amalgam of the Central Asian with the ancient South Asian. Even more ironical is the reality, neglected and veiled, that lived Islam is located around dargahs , tribal codes and customs which are irreligious in their own way. But who cares? Referred to as the world’s most dangerous country, Pakistan, according to the pundits of global opinion, is a haven for Islamic terrorists. Collateral damage, therefore, is kosher and a necessity to undo the unstated part of the ‘axis of evil’.
Labels and more labels. On the global shelves such products sell well and work in favour of a war machine hungry for energy resources, territory and blood.
27Jan/101
No priests needed – search of a Pakistani identity
Raza Rumi wonders why we remain in search of a Pakistani identity
Half-truths are what we love to indulge in. One of the countless crimes committed by President Asif Ali Zardari is that he wears a Sindhi cap instead of a Jinnah cap. That by preferring a Sindhi topi and thundering at the occasion of late Benazir Bhutto’s death anniversary, he undermined his Pakistani identity, is truly mystifying. After all, what is a Pakistani identity and why is the Jinnah cap being elevated to the level of an article of national faith?
If anything, Mr Jinnah’s patronage of Muslim identity mark was an afterthought. His usual attire was a well-tailored pucca-sahib-like suit. It was only in the nineteen forties and that too close to India’s independence that Mr Jinnah started donning the Muslim nobility’s attire.
So what is this fuss all about? Constructing Pakistan’s ideology based on theological interpretation of a universal religion like Islam has been a carefully executed project of the Pakistani establishment and its shadows in the non-state domains. Such cliques have grown bigger, mushroomed and are now essential to our lived reality. Therefore lambasting of Zardari on not sporting a Jinnah cap finds public resonance and broad acceptability within the populous Punjab province where the Urdu press flourishes and finds readers and writers aplenty.
18Nov/09Off
Iqbal – The Universal Reformer
29Oct/092
The Message of The Quran : By Leopold Weiss [Muhammad Asad]
‘The Message of The Qur'an’, has been acclaimed as one of the best, if
not the best, translations of the Quran into English. It is a
translation and brief commentary by ‘Leopold Weiss’ [Muhammad Asad] on
the Muslim holy book based on his own knowledge of classical Arabic
and on the authoritative classical commentaries. ,although it has been
criticised by some traditionalists for its Mutazilite leanings.
20Sep/096
Conversations with History
This is quite an interesting account. Am posting it for the readers - Eid Mubarak
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfAGnxKfwOg]
18Sep/095
Virginia synagogue doubles as mosque for Ramadan
This news item courtesy The Associated Press made a lovely reading...
On Friday afternoons, the people coming to pray at this building take off their shoes, unfurl rugs to kneel on and pray in Arabic. The ones that come Friday evenings put on yarmulkes, light candles and pray in Hebrew.
The building is a synagogue on a tree-lined street in suburban Virginia, but for the past few weeks - during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan - it has also been doubling daily as a mosque. Synagogue members suggested their building after hearing the Muslim congregation was looking to rent a place for overflow crowds.
"People look to the Jewish-Muslim relationship as conflict," said All Dulles Area Muslim Society Imam Mohamed Magid, saying it's usually disputes between the two groups in the Middle East that make news. "Here is a story that shatters the stereotype."
26Aug/097
Dealing with the dual challenge
I do not blame the young men and women of our age – they have been indoctrinated by the pernicious text-books, Zia’s ideology and the infiltration of Jamaat-i-Islami and jihadis into every nook and corner of Pakistan. This is why Pak Tea House (an e-zine I edit) as a voice of reason, faces the dual challenge of tackling the right wing and handling the global stereotyping of Pakistan as a jihadi haven. Not an easy challenge by any account — Raza Rumi
13Aug/091
Land of My Dreams – of Mushirul Hasan’s woes
This is such a well written piece. I had read it a few months ago and now my friend ARK sent it via email. I am sharing it for the readers who may not have seen it. Reading Mushir ul Hasan and about him is always a pleasure. The comments on Boston Globe that published it are equally revealing as they reek of bigotry and fundamentalism that the writer is trying to depict in her piece. In a way, the non-resident-Indian (NRI) mindset is quite amusing as it shows that education and success and living in 'open' societies has little to do with socialised attitudes.
Land of My Dreams
Islamic liberalism under fire in India Martha C. Nussbaum
As it became clear that Pakistani Muslims perpetrated the horrendous terrorist attacks in Mumbai last November, many feared a wave of violence against India’s own Muslim community. The community, which represents 13.4 percent of Hindu-;majority India, suffers from poverty and systemic discrimination, as the government’s recent Sachar Commission report documents. It has also been targeted by the Hindu right, which, in 2002, murdered as many as 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, in the state of Gujarat.
That violence, like the violence of Hindu-;right mobs against Christians in the eastern state of Orissa in 2008, surely deserves the name of “terrorism.” Yet, in India as elsewhere, the word “terrorism” is now frequently confined to the actions of Muslims, and Muslims are suspects almost by virtue of their religion alone. There was reason, then, to fear that mobs would take the Mumbai blasts as the occasion for a renewed assault on an already beleaguered minority.
This assault did not materialize—largely because India’s Muslim community strongly condemned the terrorist acts and immediately took steps to demonstrate its loyalty to the nation. Muslim cemeteries refused burial to the perpetrators. Muslims wore black armbands on Eid, showing solidarity with mourners of all religions and nationalities. The world saw a deeply nationalist community, one loyal to the liberal values of a nation that has yet to treat it justly.
It was not the first time India’s Muslims have demonstrated a peaceful embrace of the country’s founding values. The personal experience of Mushirul Hasan exemplifies the same commitment. A leader of the community, Hasan has been at the center of controversy for his liberal, secular views and has weathered attempts to force him out of his job as Vice-;Chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia, a pluralistic university closely linked to Muslim contributions in India’s struggle for nationhood. His story illustrates three aspects of Indian and Muslim life that concerned Western observers regularly ignore.
First, the values we associate with classical liberalism—such as the defense of the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and procedural due process—are not exclusively Western values. During the independence movement in India, they were reinvented by a colonized people who had seen just how little their Western masters honored such norms.
Second, these values are not tepid and centrist, as we sometimes hear, but rather, truly radical in a world of nations increasingly under pressure both from external violence and from internal quasi-;fascist forces.
And finally, Hasan’s story shows that there is a distinctive and genuinely Islamic form of liberalism, long-;lived and drawing inspiration from religious texts and their central concepts.
Hasan was born on August 15, 1949, exactly two years after the cohort of “midnight’s children” whose birth coincided with that of modern India on August 15, 1947. He spent his childhood in cosmopolitan Calcutta (now Kolkata), and later moved North with his family to the Aligarh Muslim University, where his father, a well-;known historian, had accepted a post. From early childhood, Hasan encountered the variety and plurality of Muslim life in India.
Then, as now, Muslims were respected as equal citizens by the nation’s laws and by some of its citizens, those who followed the lead of Gandhi and Nehru. But Muslims still encountered ubiquitous suspicion and discrimination, and, despite his middle-;class upbringing, Hasan was no exception. He once recalled to me how he and his brother were refused when they tried to rent a flat in South Delhi on the grounds that the smell of beef from Muslim kitchens would disgust the local (Hindu) inhabitants.
Hasan received a Ph.D. in history from Cambridge University in 1977 and quickly became one of India’s most accomplished and respected historians of the nationalist movement and the modern nation. At the age of thirty-;one, he was the youngest historian ever named to a professorial chair in India. He took a teaching position at Jamia Millia Islamia and has published a dozen or so well-;regarded books on the nationalist struggle, the Nehru family, and the ideas of Gandhi, Nehru, and the liberal Muslims who joined with them.
Hasan addressed the student body, telling them that “the answer to this is to be more secular, to be more liberal in your outlook, to be more enlightened in your perspective.”
In spite of its name, Jamia has never been a Muslim university. Its location, in a predominantly Muslim residential area, and its historical association with secular liberal Muslims who took leading roles in the independence struggle have made it, over the years, an appealing place for Muslim students, but there has never been preferential admission for Muslims—the admissions form does not even ask the religion of the applicant—and the guiding values of the institution are firmly secular and pluralistic. Today about 60 percent of Jamia Millia Islamia’s students and 75 percent of its faculty are Muslim, but inclusiveness is the watchword (as it often is not in Hindu-;majority institutions, where both Muslim and lower-;caste students routinely suffer stigmatization and harassment).
Rumki Basu, a Hindu woman from West Bengal who currently chairs the university’s distinguished Political Science department, explained to me that she never encountered any discrimination or disparagement—even though, right after she got there, she proposed a radical revision of time-;honored syllabi, the sort of thing that usually drives at least some colleagues crazy. At Jamia, however, department discussions were always democratic, respectful, and cordial. (“No,” she says, “I am not making this up.”) “Jamia,” she concludes, “has busted a lot of unfair stereotypes and myths others hold about Muslims in modern India.” “Debate, dialogue, and discuss,” these are the principles that define Jamia—and that should be more common at other Indian universities.
In October 1988 Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses was banned in India. Hasan spoke out publicly against the ban, defending the freedom of speech. A group of radical students in the university, attempting to stop him from teaching, assaulted him physically, inflicting minor injuries. While pressing criminal charges against his assailants, Hasan, who was then Pro-;Vice-;Chancellor of the University, was forced to work from home. He was unable to resume administrative and teaching duties for more than four years. During this time he wrote the excellent book Legacy of a Divided Nation: India’s Muslims Since Independence.
Eventually he returned to the university, and the values for which he stood—always the institution’s dominant values—began to prevail even among its more radical students. Hasan dropped the criminal complaints against the ones who assaulted him (justice moves slowly in India, so by the time Hasan returned to Jamia, they were long since graduates with jobs and families to support), and his mercy made him a popular figure among students of all types. When the Congress Party took over in 2004, the President of the India, following the advice of a three-;member selection committee, asked him to become the Vice-;Chancellor of the university, equivalent to a U. S. university president.
In September 2008 police investigating a bomb blast in Delhi that had been tentatively linked to Islamic radicalism arrived at the off-;campus apartment of some Jamia students. In the ensuing violence, two suspects were killed, one a Jamia student; a police officer later died of his wounds. Two Jamia students were soon arrested on suspicion of aiding terrorism.The students were too poor to pay for competent legal counsel, and, while India’s constitution guarantees cost-;free legal assistance to “ensure that opportunities for securing justice are not denied to any citizen by reason of economic or other disabilities,” public defenders are low-;grade, and many had recently received threats of violence should they take any case associated with alleged Islamic terrorism. With no hesitation, Hasan said that the university would pay for their legal counsel. The university had done this in other cases, just as it pays students’ medical fees. No one objected on those earlier occasions.
But the political charge in the air ensured that this time would be different. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the political wing of the Hindu right, decided to make an issue of the legal support. Accusing Hasan of misusing public money (Jamia, like all Central Universities in India, is government-;funded), they demanded his resignation. Education Minister Arjun Singh quickly came to Hasan’s defense, noting that the money he was using did not come from the government, but from student activity fees and private donations. Like Hasan, he pointed out that the accused are innocent until proven guilty and have a right to a fair trial.
“What do you want us to do?” Hasan asked, “Stand on a terrace and announce that we are liberal Muslims and that we want to proclaim our loyalty to the nation?”
Meanwhile, Hasan addressed the student body, telling them that “the answer to this is to be more secular, to be more liberal in your outlook, to be more enlightened in your perspective.” He then led a peace march on the campus, a march so silent, so nonviolent and orderly, that even the press could find no incident of bad behavior to sensationalize. The national media have been decidedly unenthusiastic about Hasan’s defense of procedural due process and constitutional norms; they suggest, repeatedly, that he is part of some sinister Muslim cabal. (An honorable exception is The Hindu, India’s best daily, which published an editorial putting the matter in a balanced perspective; the Indian Express and Kolkata’s Telegraph published valuable op-;eds.)
Hasan’s fight for basic principles has been won for now, but he still faces a fight in the court of public opinion for the reputation of his university and the honor of its students and teachers. Stereotypes of the violent Muslim are so prevalent in India—as elsewhere in the world—that it is virtually impossible for Muslim liberals to be taken at their word when they say that they believe in free speech, pluralism, nonviolent persuasion, the rule of law, and the right of each person to a fair trial. ’Oh yes, a screen for darker motives,’ is the typical response, pervasive on Hindu blogs and common even in the mainstream press. You say you are a liberal, and that proves you are a radical Islamist.
Meanwhile, hooligans of the Bajrang Dal, a youth movement associated with the Hindu right, have been on a rampage in Orissa, murdering Christians who refuse to reconvert to Hinduism, but the media never refer to this carnage as “terrorism.” Nor did they use the term “terrorism” for the Gujarat pogrom. For the media, as for so much of our world, “terrorism” just means Muslim terrorism. To a skeptical Hindu journalist who had asked him why Muslim intellectuals do not condemn terrorism, Hasan (who had just finished condemning all terrorism, Hindu and Muslim alike) replied:
You probably don’t hear those voices because you don’t want to hear those voices. The media doesn’t represent those voices because the media is only interested in strident voices. They are not interested in the sane, liberal, rational voices. . . . What do you want us to do? Stand on a terrace and announce that we are liberal Muslims and that we want to proclaim our loyalty to the nation?
Hasan is a remarkable person, but his convictions are hardly sui generis. They are deeply rooted in Jamia Millia Islamia’s history: a home-;grown, tolerant, liberal pluralism has defined the institution from its anti-;colonial inception.
The university was born in internal struggles at Aligarh Muslim University, then a conservative institution very much under British control. Many wanted this situation to continue, holding that the mission of Aligarh ought to be to make Indian Muslims “worthy and useful subjects of the British Crown.” A group of younger intellectuals, however, inspired by Gandhi’s ideas and increasingly involved in resistance against the Raj, sought change. Part of their zeal was for Islamic politics: they took a passionate interest in the Khilafat movement, which worked to protect the Ottoman caliphate and sacred Muslim sites from British hijacking. But the Khilafat movement was inherently a campaign against British imperialism, and before long the young radicals of Jamia joined their Turkish concerns to Gandhi’s non-;cooperation movement, becoming apostles of nonviolent resistance to the local British rulers.
The campus soon split into two camps. The old guard, backed by the British, drove out the young radicals in 1920. Sir George Campbell, the district magistrate, confronted Mohammed Ali, one of the radical leaders, saying, “You want to bring up these students as disobedient boys.” Ali responded by reciting a verse of the eighteenth-;century Urdu poet Mir Taqi Mir that neatly epitomized the behavior of the Raj at this period (though tactfully omitting its heinous acts of violence):
To taunt and sneer and wound and speak unkindly,
She has all these accomplishments, my friend;
Friendship and love and graciousness and kindness
Are things she could never comprehend.
Jamia Millia Islamia was opened the following year. After a short time in Aligarh, it moved to Delhi.
Jamia was born radical. Its curriculum emphasized the study of nationalism as well as the study of Islamic history and the Qu’ran; its admissions policy welcomed male and female, Hindu and Muslim; its pedagogy emphasized debate and contestation in the teaching of all subjects, including religion, denouncing the mere “passive awareness of dead facts.” The school had strong links with theorists of progressive education such as Bertrand Russell and Rabindranath Tagore and thus gave substantial weight to the arts and vocational education. This philosophy was applied early, since the university included a residential primary school, where “learning by doing” was the progressive norm. One founder summarized: “We believe that formal instruction should serve as a support for the exercise of initiative, that the child’s mind should be active and responsive, not passive, that the body should be made efficient along with the mind.”
Older students, meanwhile, learned that the national ideal of independence from colonial domination could also become a personal ideal, as Ali stressed:
Jamia’s objective is that Muslims should [not] follow blindly the previous ‘fixed’ path . . . the Jamia has instilled hatred in the heart of every student—be he a Muslim or a Hindu—against subjugation by foreign powers. It has kept its air free of transgression and prejudice. For these reasons, the Jamia is both Jamia Millia Islamia and a national university.
The Jamians insisted that identity politics, with its preference for insiders, was foreign to Islam’s ideal universal brotherhood.
Jamia was coeducational from the start, but initially the number of female students was small. By 1930, however, the arrival of distinguished female faculty prepared the way for full integration. A later Vice-;Chancellor wrote of the way in which the university has helped women “not only break into the spaces which are male preserves, but also . . . fight back against male tyranny and violence.” Today, women compose about 25 percent of undergraduates, but more than 50 percent of those at the master’s degree stage.
Meanwhile, the institution’s progressive educational vision led to a stream of visitors from abroad. A distinguished British observer spoke of Jamia as having “an international breadth of vision” that most Britain-;oriented Indian universities lacked. Jamia’s degrees were not recognized by the British, but they were recognized in Germany, France, and the United States.
Teachers at Jamia report a glut of detentions and arrests of students. Politicians, the media, and the police try to paint a picture of the university as a hotbed of terrorism.
Jamia’s early years were marked by recurrent financial crises. To keep the young institution afloat, a group of distinguished scholars pledged to serve Jamia for twenty years, taking only a token salary. Chief among them was Zakir Hussain, an economist trained in Germany who became Vice Chancellor in 1928, serving for twenty-;one years (and who much later served as the third President of India). A man of tireless energy, enthusiasm, and self-;sacrifice, Hussain furthered both the university’s educational vision and the nationalist ideal, and did so in close conversation with Gandhi, who viewed Jamia as an important part of a tolerant India. In one letter to the university in 1930, Gandhi wrote:
Islam enjoins upon us tolerance towards others’ religions. It doesn’t say that other religions are false. He alone who does good to others is a true man. This is the principle of the [Qu’ran] as also the teaching of other religions. The students of the Jamia, I hope, will spread the message of unity and freedom throughout the country.
The teachers and students of Jamia were passionate about these ideas, as Gandhi acknowledged, saying, “When I come to the Jamia, I feel I have come home.” Again and again, the faculty wrote about the sort of nationalism they intended to foster: not “the jingo nationalism of the German or Italian type,” but “nationalism as a step to internationalism,” “nationalism of a liberal type.”
After Independence Jamia remained a favorite of the national leadership, Nehru in particular. In a letter of 1952 to Zakir Hussain, Nehru characterized Jamia as a pet project of Gandhi’s that he was committed to nurturing. He added a gloomy coda:
Whatever I can do for Jamia, I shall endeavour to do. The world seems a very dark, dismal and dreary place, full of people with wrong urges or no urge at all, living their lives trivially and without any significance. All the more, therefore, we seek the few sanctuaries and causes and try to derive sustenance from them.
And yet Jamia’s financial woes continued. Although some of its degree programs were recognized in 1945, and it achieved nationally recognized university status in 1962, it was only in 1988 that the university was recognized as a Central University, giving it access to more government funds. Having begun as a group of rebels departing from a government-;controlled institution (Aligarh), Jamia had finally achieved full recognition by the government of the independent nation.
When Hasan arrived at Jamia, it had a glorious past, but faced many contemporary challenges. Even after it began to receive funds from the central government, it had a hard time becoming the sort of first-;rank, cutting-;edge university that could compete successfully for students and faculty against Delhi’s other prestigious Central Universities, Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).
Apart from his massive fundraising efforts, for which he has a gift, Hasan has insistently emphasized the institution’s pluralistic, secular character, making it clear to faculty and students from all regions and religions that it can be a very good place to be. One of his successes has been to put Jamia on the map as a dream university for students from some of India’s poorest states and regions. Such students might lack the preparation required to get into JNU, but talent and ambition could get them a place in Jamia. Another way Hasan highlights pluralism is by naming buildings after individuals from other nations and religions—including the aforementioned Hindu politician Arjun Singh, who, as Education Minister, has strongly supported the growth of the institution. Meanwhile, empowering faculty such as Basu sends a signal of religious pluralism and sex equality that aids both student and faculty recruitment.
In regard to curriculum, Hasan has strengethened specific areas in which Jamia can compete with the best: thus, a renowned Academy for Third-;World Studies (founded in 1988, but bolstered under Hasan’s leadership); an unparalleled human rights program; and both core and optional courses in public administration, social work, education management, and journalism that are not available in any other university in Delhi. Finally, as Basu emphasizes, Hasan has pushed for an educational climate of tolerance, debate, and difference that few Indian universities, where students raised on rote learning all too often find more of the same, can match.
Hasan’s own scholarship has often focused on Jawaharlal Nehru and his accomplishments, so it is not surprising that he sought, for Jamia, the Centre for Jawaharlal Nehru Studies, the first institution of its kind in the country. The Centre opened in October 2004 (shortly after the electoral defeat of the Hindu right and the victory of Congress), with Sonia Gandhi, Congress Party chair, in attendance. In his dedicatory speech, Hasan said that Nehru’s legacy is more important in India now than ever because Nehru “argued for the moral value and legitimacy of nationalism in a form compatible with liberal democratic principles and institutions.” Hasan said that he feels it particularly important to honor Nehru at Jamia, in order to break with the tendency to partition India’s heritage by “saying to each other, Azad is ‘yours,’ Nehru is ‘ours,’ Tagore is ‘ours’ because we are Bengalis,” etc. “This must stop . . . . We should teach Mir and Ghalib in Bengal, and Tagore and Nazrul Islam in north India.” The Nehru Centre should be a reminder of India’s identity as “tolerant and inclusive,” through its invitation to contemplate Nehru’s “own eclectic and broad-;minded outlook and the liberal and scientific temper he created in a society that had strong illiberal and authoritarian traits.”
But Hasan also understands, as did Gandhi, that liberal values and nonviolence need to be alluring, not just morally right. Unlike Gandhi, however, Hasan is thoroughly secular, a bon vivant who has a great interest in Urdu poetry and literature. The home he shares with his wife, Zoya, a leading political scientist at JNU and a member of the National Commission for Minorities, is full of beautiful art. And both, as hosts, exemplify Mir’s notion of “graciousness and kindness.” Closer, then, to his hero Nehru, who, despite the bleak tone of many of his letters, was famous for wit and zest at dinner parties.
Hasan, in short, exudes the kind of joyfulness and playfulness that make peple feel that moral principles are not only a duty, but a delight. That is a gift, unfortunately lacking in most of the giants of the Western Enlightenment, though Martin Luther King, Jr., surely had it. Liberal politics is based on respect for the person, but if it does not have something else as well, something more akin to love, it will not capture the hearts of people who long for meaning.
In May a national election may bring to power a coalition government in which the Hindu-;nationalist BJP will play a leading role. If that happens the BJP will no doubt continue their current agenda: attacking moderate Islam, trying to convert what exists at Jamia into the bogeyman of their rhetoric. Only determined public pressure can save the day, ensuring that someone who shares Hasan’s commitments, if not he himself (since his term ends this summer), is at the helm during a crucial period of growth and transition for the university.
The story of nonreligious terrorism (for example, the Tamil Tigers) is underreported, and Hindu terrorism against both Muslims and Christians has yet to appear on the American radar screen.
Other needs are even more pressing in the short term. The National Human Rights Commission has notified the Delhi police that it is investigating the bloody September 2008 incident and wants a complete report. The police write-;up is, indeed, full of inconsistencies and gaps. For example, the police arrived at the student dwelling without backup and without bulletproof vests, as if they were not preparing to encounter armed terrorists—yet, in retrospect, they say this is exactly what they were doing. The dwelling where the policeman was shot had only one entrance, yet we are supposed to believe that, with police lined up at the door, two students managed to escape unharmed. The students in the house had submitted the usual residential questionnaire with correct names, dates of birth, etc., all rather odd if their student identities were a ruse and they were really members of a widespread Muslim terrorist organization (the Indian Mujahideen), as is alleged. Finally, the two students whose legal fees Jamia is paying have a clean record, and all who know them describe them as peaceful, even dreamy and impractical. So we urgently need to know the quality of the evidence linking them to the case.
Meanwhile, teachers at Jamia report a glut of detentions and arrests of students. Politicians, the media, and the police try to paint a picture of the university as a hotbed of terrorism, and large numbers of students in off-;campus housing have been asked to vacate their flats by landlords who fear police reprisals. Police presence all around the campus is distressing, disrupting the climate of instruction. The unfairness of disturbing an entire university of 14,000 students over the alleged actions of two of its members is obvious, but hardly anyone is complaining about it, apart from the teachers and students themselves.
Perhaps the most alarming aspect of the Jamia case is the atmosphere surrounding those who provide legal counsel to people accused of terrorism. One after another, bar associations in different parts of the country are announcing boycotts of terror suspects. In Madhya Pradesh, two suspects were forced to hire counsel from a different state after all local lawyers refused them. A leading state BJP official supported the boycott, saying that “a distinction must be made between criminals and terrorists.” So much for the presumption of innocence. In Uttar Pradesh, lawyers have been faced with threats to their safety if they take on terror cases. Legal and social activists believe that the Hindu right has profoundly infiltrated the mechanisms of criminal justice making it very difficult for Muslims to get a fair trial. Often, moreover, Muslims remain in detention without trial for years. Muslims constitute 18 percent of convicts in Indian prisons, 21.8 percent of those whose cases are currently being tried, and 37.2 percent of those in detention awaiting either trial or specific charges.
When the legal system works this badly, essential constitutional rights become mere words on paper. Moreover, the rhetoric of the Hindu right, which constantly equates arrest with conviction, suggests at best a tenuous commitment to the rule of law. The contention that offering legal aid means being “soft on terrorism”—a ubiquitous charge against Hasan, despite his repeated condemnations of terrorism in any form—is a communitarian idea that betrays impatience with the very idea of due process. When lots of people in a democracy think this way, there is danger. In India its source has been the same for decades: a Hindu right that never accepted the liberal values of equal respect, due process, and religious non-;establishment.
Hasan’s ordeal leaves us with four conclusions.
First, we should mistrust stereotypes of the violent Muslim. Current preconceptions, combined with media sensationalism, lead to selective reporting (in India as elsewhere). Stories of Muslim liberals, provoke boredom or skepticism. But the failure to report only confirms the preconceptions. Meanwhile, the story of nonreligious terrorism (for example, the Tamil Tigers) is underreported, and Hindu terrorism against both Muslims and Christians has yet to appear on the American radar screen. As Hasan points out, we need more prominent stories of Muslim nonviolence:
A whole auditorium can be filled up with books on Islam and violence but what about Islam and nonviolence? What about Gaffar Khan [a Muslim associate of Gandhi’s, who developed a philosophy of nonviolence using Islamic sources]? Does he not exist or is he of no consequence because he does not fit the stereotype that some people wish to create and perpetuate about an entire community?
For this reason, one of Hasan’s current priorities is the creation on Jamia’s campus of a museum of the nationalist struggle, devoted to the history elided at other museums: the prominent role played by Muslims in the nationalist movement. While we wait for the museum to be built, the book Partners in Freedom, which Hasan co-;authored with Rakhshanda Jalil, tells the story in both text and photographs.
Second, the stereotyping of Muslims as violent, when combined with economic and political discrimination, engenders among Muslims a justified anger that can all too easily spill over into unjustified violence. Gandhi knew well that the rage of his followers against the British had legitimate roots, yet he was able to convince people that the best response to oppression was nonviolent protest.
Mushirul Hasan follows Gandhi’s program. In fact, I am tempted to say, somewhat hyperbolically, that virtually the only place in today’s India where Gandhi’s ideas are being duly honored is on the campus of Jamia. But Hasan knows, like Gandhi, and like Martin Luther King, Jr., that anger will not go away, will not cease to create the possibility of violence, unless the subordination that fuels it is brought to an end.
Therefore, while working to promote nonviolence, one must also work to eradicate political and economic conditions that nourish the desire for violence. Noting the economic discrimination suffered by India’s Muslims (the lack of basic social services, such as clean water, in the poor residential areas surrounding Jamia is one ugly example)—now compounded by widespread political discrimination in the form of round-;ups on suspicion of terrorism (India’s analogue to the odious American tradition of racial profiling) and, more worrying, threats against lawyers who defend people accused of terrorism—Hasan says to that same skeptical reporter: “The fact that they are still liberals in this sort of situation—caught between the devil and the deep sea—you should give them a Padma award.” (The Padma Shri award is given by the Indian government each year to people who have performed some meritorious service to the nation. Hasan was awarded the Padma Shri in 2007.)
The third conclusion to be drawn from these events is the Gandhian one: the importance of the nonviolent response. Speaking about Muslim communities more generally, Hasan insists that the solution to Muslims’ problems lies in nonviolence and a grass-;roots demand for democracy:
The stranglehold of the orthodoxy, especially in its political and religious form, has to be loosened and slackened. The answer lies in more and more Muslim communities moving towards democracy. There is no short cut to democracy. . . . There is no place for pharaohs in the modern world.
Hasan thus joins such anti-;theocratic Muslims as Akbar Ganji of Iran in calling for a restructuring of Islamic nations through a popular demand for democratic self-;government, prominently including a commitment to the equality and empowerment of women. And he immediately adds that the move to democracy has been very much impeded by attempts on the part of the United States to impose democracy by force.
The final, and perhaps most important, lesson is that, following Gandhi, we must all rethink our understandings of strength and weakness, courage and timidity. Real strength, in an individual, is not manifested by bashing people over the head. Who does that? Only someone who feels threatened and weak. Real strength is manifested by the ability to show respect to others, to treat them as equals, and not to try to impose one’s will by force. Real strength in a community or a nation, similarly, is manifested not by a willingness to dispose of liberal values whenever violence seems easier or more fun, but by a commitment to them that does not bend when the going gets tough. That is radical. And if being radical means going “to the root” of the matter, it is the liberal, who subdues the violence and greed of the self, who is the true radical, while left and right communitarians casually allow the banal and constant desire for domination to carry the day.
In a world where so many anthems call for blood and equate manliness with abuse, here is what Jamia’s founders wrote for its students to sing as the official anthem of the university:
Here conscience alone is the beacon, . . .
It’s the Mecca of many faiths,
Travelling is the credo here, pausing a sacrilege, . . .
Cleaving against currents is the creed here,
The pleasure of arrival lies in countering crosscurrents.
This is the home of my yearnings,
This is the land of my dreams.
A radical song indeed.
Islamic liberalism under fire in India Martha C. Nussbaum
As it became clear that Pakistani Muslims perpetrated the horrendous terrorist attacks in Mumbai last November, many feared a wave of violence against India’s own Muslim community. The community, which represents 13.4 percent of Hindu-;majority India, suffers from poverty and systemic discrimination, as the government’s recent Sachar Commission report documents. It has also been targeted by the Hindu right, which, in 2002, murdered as many as 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, in the state of Gujarat.
That violence, like the violence of Hindu-;right mobs against Christians in the eastern state of Orissa in 2008, surely deserves the name of “terrorism.” Yet, in India as elsewhere, the word “terrorism” is now frequently confined to the actions of Muslims, and Muslims are suspects almost by virtue of their religion alone. There was reason, then, to fear that mobs would take the Mumbai blasts as the occasion for a renewed assault on an already beleaguered minority.
10Jul/09Off
Qurratulain Hyder – it is as if she were an oracle
It is not a coincidence that Qurratulain Hyder, grand dame of Urdu literature, is remembered whenever we are faced with crises of state and society. Hyder was not just a fiction writer but a chronicler, for her sense of history remains unparalleled in the annals of South Asian vernacular literature. Her magnum opus “Aag Ka Darya” (AKD) was written and published in the highly contested milieu of the post-partition Indian subcontinent, when the new nation states were re-writing their historical discourses. In Pakistan, AKD was a sensation right from the time when it was published in the late 1950s. The controversy it created remains pertinent despite the passage of five decades.
Hyder’s nuanced and highly sophisticated vision was not easily apparent to officialdom or to state-sponsored literary critics in Pakistan.
18Jun/093
This is a long war
Published in The NEWS
By Raza Rumi
This is a critical moment in our history perhaps unmatched for its severity and its brutal reality. The experiential nightmare that our country is passing through is perhaps unparalleled for the enemy is neither foreign nor fully identifiable. At the same time, never has there been a clear backing of a military campaign against domestic agents of subversion and anarchy. Forget the doctored samples of opinion polls, often conducted by foreign agencies. That by itself should make us ashamed for our proclivity to accept what others have to analyse and determine for us. Even ignore the fringe voices of dissent led by those who neither have credibility or sagacity to comprehend the existential crisis faced by Pakistan. The army has shown vision and displayed courage in tackling a menace that alas is a home-grown cancer due to our short-sighted strategies in pursuit of phantom depths. The battle to be won is now the country itself.
The political consensus of sorts that has accompanied the military action against the Taliban is also remarkable. Notwithstanding the spin doctors posing as analyst-anchors on the idiot box, the political class has recognised that its survival is embedded in the battle against extremism that predicates itself on elimination of sane, moderate and secular politics itself. This was the Swat model – blow the polity to bits and create a vacuum for a takeover. An age-old recipe employed by the hordes from Central Asia that invaded Muslim Delhi again and again during Sultanate and Mughal periods of our common histories which refuse to be partitioned.
10Jun/093
Sufi hearts in Delhi
Published in The Friday Times (May 22 issue)
Raza Rumi discusses a new book on Sufism by Sadia Dehlvi
Getting a visa to India is a nightmare for ordinary mortals. My application was not very politely returned last month with technical objections. It was only when a letter from Harper Collins arrived that the High Commission rather efficaciously allowed me to enter enemy territory, that too with special instructions that cantonments were out of bounds. I guess the South Asian officialdoms have yet to discover that Google Earth has permanently altered the shape of boundaries and secrecy.
31May/091
Misinterpreting Islam to Oppress Women
On Khalwat, Misyar & Mutaah
By Syed Akbar Ali
In Malaysia we frequently read reports of Muslim couples being arrested for the offense of committing ‘khalwat’ or being in ‘close proximity’ to each other. For the benefit of all thinking humans it is best that we explain a little what is meant by ‘Muslim couples’ and what is meant by ‘khalwat’ or close proximity.
For the purposes of khalwat a ‘couple’ refers to a man and a woman who can lawfully get married to each other. The word used to describe such a couple is ‘not muhreem’. ‘Muhreem’ is derived from the Arabic word ‘raheem’ which means womb.
22May/093
Review of Wahhabi Islam (Natana DeLong-Bas)
Natana DeLong Bas’ Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad is not a bad book, but it is not a particularly helpful book either. One of its strong points is how adroitly DeLong-Bas eases the reader into topics. This is no small feat since the protagonist is Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab (d. 1792) , a controversial Shaykh who lived during the eighteenth century. The reformer made an alliance with Muhammad ibn Saud, ruler of a small market town Diriyya, and this led to the formation of a state which claimed to live under the guidance of the Shariah and tried to bring the pastoral tribes all around it under its guidance too. More than I care to admit, the book was a page-turner for me, in spite of its moderate heft.
However, the simplicity comes at a price. The narrative, especially when it discusses Shaykh Ibn Abdul Wahhab, is afflicted by a linearity that becomes unconvincing after a while. The book proves incredibly readable throughout, but the one-dimensional character that DeLong-Bas chooses to maintain for the Shaykh quickly becomes a cartoon superhero- too good for his own good, so to speak, and quite unbelievable.
18May/092
Falsehoods about terrorism
I was fascinated by my dear friend Adnan's post - Falsehoods about terrorism: 'Islamic' and 'un-Islamic' terrorists [Indian Muslims and Media] - that was a breath of fresh air. In a non-ideological, dispassionate manner he critiques the media power and association of the word Muslim with terrorism. I have known Adnan since I started blogging. Even though I have never met him in real life, I know that we could have been great actual (as opposed to virtual) friends had the walls of borders, distrust and competing nationalisms not stood between us. But cyberspace has allowed us to be friends and this is remarkable by itself. Perhaps the tone of his post has to do with the essential good manners that come with the Ganga-Jamni tehzeeb (high Indo-Muslim culture) of which Adnan is a torchbearer. He is equally into politics, activism as much as he is steeped in the culture of internalising Urdu poetry and its refined nuances. See his blogs with the finest selections from Urdu poets.
Back to Adnan's excellent post. I am reproducing an excerpt here:
Believe me, had any of these attacks involved a Muslim, it would have been termed a Terrorist attack and for days, we would have been shown images of 'trained Muslim youths', their links, cell phone records, the masterminds, the names of obscure organisations with Arabic names and what not.
"...I would request you to just have a look at the frequency of attacks mentioned below:
1. 11 CISF personnel gunned down in Naxal attack on NALCO bauxite mine in Orissa (April 13) [Link courtesy The Hindu]
14May/09Off
Ghamdi on Islam and the Taliban
A friend sent this piece with an introductory message that ” Ghamdi’s life is under threat by the Taleban as they want to eliminate all who can challenge them. Can they eliminate 168 million of us?” Ghamdi is a beacon of hope and enlightenment in these dark days.
The Taliban say that democracy is a concept alien to Islam. According to them, the ideal method of establishing a government according to Islam is the method adopted by Mullah Omar in Afghanistan. Constitution, parliament and elections are evil innovations of modern times. Islam is not bound by any of these institutions for its enforcement. The interpretation of governance conveyed to us by the Hanifi School of jurisprudence is enough for us. The ijtehad of modern jurists are also vague. The ancient jurists have delivered their decisions regarding individual and collective life. These have all been arrived at
2May/090
Sadia Dehlvi’s book – Sufism: the Heart of Islam
Finally Sadia Dehlvi's book, Sufism: The Heart of Islam (HarperCollins), is published and was launched last week in Delhi. India's eminent writer Khushwant Singh and historian Mushirul Hasan launched the book while Vidya Rao and Oroon Das rendered Sufi verses with music and subtle intonations befitting the Sufi path.
The book is a labour of love and I am fortunate to have seen the book evolve over the last four years and it is finally a beautiful edition with tributes to the great saints and their teaching. Below is an excerpt and a report on the book launch.
Tariqa – the Way of the Sufi
At many stages in life I came close to giving up on the idea of God altogether. Growing up in the seventies one inherited a mixed bag of values. Progressive writers professed agnosticism and friends jeered at the idea of hell or heaven. Churches, temples, mosques and monasteries were simply not fashionable in the
28Apr/093
Understanding Islam and its history
Toby Lester's incisive article What Is the Koran? argues that researchers with a variety of academic and theological interests 'are proposing controversial theories about the Koran and Islamic history, and are striving to reinterpret Islam for the modern world...' I was struck by this passage at the end:
Increasingly diverse interpretations of the Koran and Islamic history will inevitably be proposed in the coming decades, as traditional cultural distinctions between East, West, North, and South continue to dissolve, as the population of the Muslim world continues to grow, as early historical sources continue to be scrutinized, and as feminism meets the Koran. With the diversity of interpretations will surely come increased fractiousness, perhaps intensified by the fact that Islam now exists in such a great variety of social and intellectual settings—Bosnia, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, the United States, and so on. More than ever before, anybody wishing to understand global affairs will need to understand Islamic civilization, in all its permutations. Surely the best way to start is with the study of the Koran—which promises in the years ahead to be at least as contentious, fascinating, and important as the study of the Bible has been in this century.
Read the full article here
26Apr/093
Abject surrender
My piece published in The Friday Times
How can I remain unaffected and quiet after seeing that my country might be disfigured and my roots pulled out, to be replaced by an ideology alien to my thousand-year old consciousness?
April 13 will be remembered as a black day in Pakistan’s history. This is the day, future historian will write, when its pampered and stuffed-up political elites opted for a grand surrender. We have to live with the pain, infamy and ignominy of the December 1971 surrender at Ramna Park, Dhaka. That black moment was faced by a General who shall remain the face of Pakistan’s atrocities against its own citizens, the interference of an irresponsible, vengeful neighbour and the bravado of Bengalis who had been excluded from the privileged ‘martial race’ category by none other than Field Marshal Ayub Khan and his junta. This exclusionary act by the Field Marshal, later recorded in his memoirs, set the tone for an agenda of discrimination that was subsequently responsible for the second amputation of South Asia in less than 25 years.
15Apr/090
Pakistan’s Sufis Preach Faith and Ecstasy
Read this great blog and was tempted to cross-post a few bits here:
Every year, a few hundred thousand Sufis converge in Seh- wan, a town in Pakistan's southeastern Sindh province, for a three-day festival marking the death of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, in 1274. Qalandar, as he is almost universally called, belonged to a cast of mystics who consolidated Islam's hold on this region; today, Pakistan's two most populous provinces, Sindh and Punjab, comprise a dense archipelago of shrines devoted to these men. Sufis travel from one shrine to another for festivals known as urs, an Arabic word for "marriage," symbolizing the union between Sufis and the divine.
14Apr/093
Civil society speaks
Zinda dilaan-e-Lahore say no to Talibanisation, reports Raza Rumi
Never before have we citizens been traumatised with an uncertain future and the knocks of destruction at our door as is the case in the year 2009. The celebrated twenty first century has, if nothing else, blown the contradictions of Pakistani society and state right into our faces. One hundred and eighty million people cannot be spectators to the imperial great games and a callous state that gropes in the dark trying to locate the ‘enemy’ outside, instead of looking into its own crevices and cracks.
Not that Lahore has been a haven of peace in recent years – the inequities, the crime levels have been on the rise. However, March 2009 witnessed two full-scale terror attacks in the city of gardens, shrines and a centuries-old tolerant culture. Media gurus were quick to involve India, RAW, the Americans, everyone under the sun except the enemy within. First the friends of Pakistan – the Sri Lankans and then the ill-equipped and vulnerable Police Academy at Manawan, were attacked by trained assassins who espouse a version of Islam that no sane Muslim can ever live with.The panic and fear generated by these two incidents had not ended when the brutal video of Chand Bibi getting lashed on the streets of Swat was released.
28Sep/087
Issues in Madrassa Education in India
Yoginder Sikand's new book Issues in Madrasa Education in India published by Hope India, Gurgaon is a promising publication. Here is a review by Nasir Khan:
A number of books have been recently published on the madrasas of India, and, in addition to this, madrasas have become a subject of considerable debate in the mass media. This latest addition to the writings on Indian madrasas makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of the subject.
The issue of madrasa reform is much debated today, and several of the articles in this volume examine the question from various angles. The opening article of the volume, titled 'A Day in Deoband', based on the author's visit to the Dar ul-Ulum madrasa in Deoband, India's largest madrasa, suggests that even many traditionalist ulema, wrongly berated as being wholly opposed to change, actually do support madrasa reforms to some extent, although the way in which they imagine the project of reform substantially differs from that advocated by many outside the madrasa system. This emerges even more clearly in the following article, titled 'The State and Madrasa Reform: An Indian Deobandi Perspective'. The point is reiterated in subsequent articles, such as one on a Deobandi madrasa in Kashmir which is engaged in providing new forms of technical education in addition to traditional religious instruction, another on traditionalist madrasas in Kerala that have launched innovative experiments to combine religious and secular education, and yet another, on the educational model of the founder of the Jamaat-e Islami, Syed Abul Ala Maududi. A piece on the growing number of women's madrasas in India makes the argument that promoting women's rights from within a broader Islamic paradigm is also part of the project of madrasa reforms as even several traditionalist ulema see it. The author argues that this might have important consequences
in the future for the nature of religious authority as well as gender-relations among the Indian Muslims.
27Sep/088
The dilemma of an educated [Indian] Muslim youth
, a patriotic Indian writes here on the predicament of those who want to stay away from the missions, the purges and typecasting of Indian media:
Terrorists once again played with deadly bombs in Delhi on September 13, bringing the usual destruction of life and property. By now, we Indians have become quite accustomed to death and destruction -- man made or natural.
My very first reaction was: Will it be Indian Mujahideen (IM) once again? Within minutes of the blasts IM claimed it was behind the savagery. I felt like crying and shouting from the rooftop that whatever the terrorists have done in the name of Islam was wrong; that I am an Indian, who also happens to be a Muslim. I would not rejoice at the bleeding of my very own countrymen.
23Sep/083
Revisiting the concept of Jihad in Islam
By Maulana Wahiduddin Khan
(Translated from Urdu by Yoginder Sikand)*
The word 'jihad' is derived from the root juhd, which means 'to strive' or 'to struggle'. It denotes the exertion of oneself to the utmost, to the limits of one's capacity, in some activity or for some purpose. This is how the word is understood in Arabic grammar.
Because fighting against one's enemies is also one form of this exertion or striving, it is also sometimes referred as jihad. However, the actual Arabic word for this is qital, not jihad. Fighting with one's enemies is something that might happen only occasionally or exceptionally. However, jihad, properly understood, is a continuous action or process that animates every day and night of the life of the true believer. Such a person does not let any hurdle affect his life, including desire for gain, the pressure of customs, the demands of pragmatism, lust for wealth, etc.. All these things serve as hurdles in the path of doing good deeds. Overcoming these hurdles and yet abiding by the commandments of God is the true jihad, and this is the essential meaning of the concept of jihad. There are many references to jihad, as understood in this way, in the collections of sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad.
15Sep/082
Pseudo-Messianic Movements in Contemporary Muslim South Asia
This new book by Yoginder Sikand has been published by Global Media Publications in 2008.
Messianic hopes and expectations are common to almost all religions. Jews expect the Messiah to arrive to re-establish their temple in Jerusalem; Christians pray for Jesus to return to earth in his 'Second Coming'; Hindus believe that Kalki, the tenth and last avatar of Vishnu, would appear just before the end of times; and the advent of the Imam Mahdi, who will usher in the end of the world, is a cardinal tent of the faith of Shia and many Sunni Muslims.
The messianic figure that almost all religions expect to arrive some time towards the end of the world is generally portrayed as representing the forces of good, as an agent of God and as eventually vanquishing, in a war of global and cosmic proportions, the forces of evil.
11Sep/086
Weird science – the perils of Muslim scholarship
I am posting Ziauddin Sardar's article published in the New Statesman (August 21,2008) that explores the 'nonesense"of some Muslim scholars who claim that everything from genetics to robotics and space travel is mentioned in the Quran.
Science has acquired a new meaning in certain Muslim circles. When classical Muslim scholars declared that "whosoever does not know astronomy or anatomy is deficient in the knowledge of God", they were emphasising the importance of the scientific spirit in Islam and encouraging the pursuit of empirical science. But today, to a significant section of Muslims, science includes the discovery of "scientific miracles" in the Quran.
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- published in DAWN (3)
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Posts Archive
Raza Rumi @ flickr
- Asim Butt's mural for T2F, Karachi
- T2F remembers Asim Butt
- Haris Gazdar at the memorial
- Asim's friends will always miss him
- George recites his poem
- Sabeen speaking about Asim Butt
- In attendance -
- The tribute to Asim Butt
- Asim's picture published by GT
- Another mural for The Second Floor-Asim Butt
Pak Tea House
- Lord Chief Justice Of Lahore High Court Is At It Again!
- An Article On Tahira Mazhar Ali
- Precautionary Blood Measures
- Be Part of the Change
- Samina Khawar Hayat: 200 kilos of Reason Why The Pakistani Reservation System Is Flawed
- Let Pakistan Make Its Own Progress
- Roving Report – Ayub Khan Era
- Total National Backlash Against Shahbaz Sharif
- Understanding Islamic Revival In Its Proper Context
- DANYAL MUEENUDDIN WINS
Development Industry
- Pakistan: 92 per cent of USAID projects go to US NGOs
- Learn from the UK. Open up data sources in South Asia
- Kiran Bir Sethi teaches kids to take charge
- State of research in Pakistan…
- Reforming Pakistan Civil Service
- Pakistan – Restructuring of PSEs
- Newinpk
- PAKISTAN: Reinventing microfinance
- Dissent as Democracy
- Pakistan 4th on regional list of adult illiterates
World music on NPR
- Solas: America's Wild Irish Rose
- The Thistle And Shamrock: Fiddle Styles
- Umm Kulthum: 'The Lady' Of Cairo
- Los Amigos Invisibles: A 'Commercial' Breakthrough
- The Thistle And Shamrock: Welsh Roots
- SXSW 2010 Preview
- Elis Regina: The Feeling Between The Notes
Tags
art
book
Delhi
Divine
Extremism
film
ghazal
God
History
India
Islam
Lahore
literature
Love
Mughal
Music
Muslim
Muslims
mystic
mystical
NWFP
painting
Pakistan
Partition
poem
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Poetry
Punjab
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Religion
Rumi
Shah
Sindh
South Asia
SouthAsia
state
sufi
Sufism
Taliban
terror
terrorism
translation
Urdu
violence
War
- West Bengal in turmoil – end of an era? - 2 emails
- Imam Hussain: The Beloved of the Beloved - 1 email
- Shah Ast Hussain - 1 email
- Holi has a Muslim History too - 1 email
- On Bhagat Singh, his vision and Jinnah’s support for his struggle - 1 email
- Voices of the oppressed – Dalit literature - 1 email
Pages
- “Man-Bitten” Ghalib: introducing himself
- “Seeds of peace on cricket field”
- ‘Author’s Plea’- Foreword of Aag ka Dariya by Qurutul-ain-Haider
- ‘O City of Lights’ by Khalid Hasan – A book review
- About Thumri
- Adieu Naguib Mahfouz
- adsense sample
- Amrita Pritam is no more 2/6
- Amrita Sher Gil’s Lahore
- An Essay on Nizamuddin by Marta Franceschini
- Basant Moods – Lahore and Beyond
- Beautiful Bird
- Bulleh Shah and Rumi 2/5
- Contact
- Dhaka by degrees
- Dhaka by Degrees – TFT
- Documents Archive
- “Iraq’s four-year looting frenzy, the allies have become the vandals”
- “step into the tavern of ruins..”
- A little more recogniton..
- A Little poem
- A recent Book on Faiz Ahmed Faiz
- Against Forgetting and No Poem is Mine
- Another accidental painting
- Fresh translations of Faiz
- Glimpses of nineteenth century Iran
- Go not without me
- Hope – A poem by Ayesha Salman
- How Art made the World
- How the British Raj took roots in India
- I finally moved here – “You lack a foot to travel?”
- Little Flute, Why So Proud?
- Master strokes
- Mother Goddess – Indus Valley
- Murree Ghosts – my recent painting
- Music Master
- My Journey (Mera Safar): Ali Sardar Jafri
- New paintings inspired by the golden Bengal
- New translations of Parveen Shakir
- No Tolerance for Richistans – Obscene Wealth is not victimless!
- Ominous shadows
- Pakistani media – an alternative view
- Qurratulain Hyder
- Sonargaon – A poem by HUR
- Story of a Painting – Mehrgarh, Indus and Ghalib
- Sufi Zikr – inspiration for a painting
- The rescued letter of Mahatama Gandhi
- Waves of anger and fear…
- Welcome Hatshepsut
- What is arrogance?
- Faiz translated by Vikram Seth
- Faiz translations (by Rehan)
- Femme Feryal
- Halaku, when you will come to Baghdad this time…
- I found Roses in Konya… 2/3
- I found Roses in Konya… 3/3
- I will meet you yet again – Amrita Pritam
- Ideology of intolerance
- Images from Data Saheb’s Shrine
- Images from Mahboob Ali
- Jal gaya tha ik roshniyon ka shaher
- Kafka Country – published in the Friday Times
- Kafka Country published in the Friday Times
- Links
- More of Bulleh Shah – keep swooning
- Mughal Princess Zebunnissa
- Muhammad’s Sword
- Muslim Bloggers from India
- On ‘The Great War for Civilisation’
- On Qurratulain Hyder –
- On Vidya Rao
- Open the Door
- Peace to Beirut with all my heart… 2/3
- Petal to Petal …..More of Parveen Shakir
- Qasmi – Urdu literature mourns a giant 2/4
- Qasmi, Literary Fueds and National Neglect
- Rare objects discovery points to ruins treasure
- Raza Rumi
- Revisiting Kabir – the Weaver, the Myth, the Master
- Sadequain 20 years later
- Shared visions: Khushwant Singh and Fahmida Riaz 2/2
- Standing Alone in Mecca (book review)
- Surveys show that Pakistanis (and Muslims) reject “terrorism”
- Teray Ishq Nachaya – Bulleh Shah – full text
- The Lost Jewel – Rediscovering Hazrat Ali’s Letter
- The roar of Rumi – 800 years on
- The Sultan of Hearts – Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya
- This world without Dr. Schimmel… 2/3
- Tum bilkul hum jaisey nikley
- Ustad Bismillah Khan is no more
- Web resources on Qurrutalain Hyder
- Why I love Pakistan? Top 5 reasons
- Darwin and the grand unity of life
- Khusrau: The shadow of power
