Jahane Rumi In search of the unsearchable: O, my soul! where would you find your house?

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.

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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.

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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.

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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]

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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

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27Sep/088

The dilemma of an educated [Indian] Muslim youth

Saif Khalid, 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.

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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.

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17Aug/083

Sir Salman Rushdie’s fatwa against freedom of expression

BY SHAJAHAN MADAMPAT

SIR Salman Rushdie, that beloved symbol of freedom of expression, has now turned Khomeini, so to speak, exposing, in an ironic twist of tale, the hypocrisy and double standards that marked the entire liberal case for unqualified and unrestrained freedom of representation.

The man, in whose defence the world's intelligentsia mounted an intellectual blitzkrieg against the alleged medievalism of the Muslim masses, has threatened to sue the publishers of a book about him by a former police officer, Ron Evans. In his forthcoming book, On Her Majesty's Service: My Incredible Life in the World's Most Dangerous Close Protection Squad, Evans dares to paint a rather unflattering portrait of the writer, whose unflattering ways stirred up controversies ever since he began to write. Rushdie alleges that the book "destroys his character" and "presents wholly made up incidents as facts."

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25Jun/089

A modern Ottoman – the Turk Gulen wins the intellectuals’ poll

The Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen, winner of the intellectuals poll undertaken by Prospect, has been hailed as "the modern face of the Sufi Ottoman tradition." The magazine further states that he is "at home with globalisation and PR, and fascinated by science", Gulen also influences Turkish politics through his association with the ruling AK party in Turkey.

The results of the Prospect/FP 2008 global intellectuals poll can be found here

Read this article by Ehsan Masood on Gulen, his worldview and contributions:

Is it possible to be a true religious believer and at the same time enjoy good relations with people of other faiths or none? Moreover, can you remain open to new ideas and new ways of thinking?
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17Jun/082

A ‘counter-view’ of suicide-bombing

Pak Tea House published a book review of Asad's book on suicide bombings. In continuation of that series we are posting Khaled Ahmed's review of the same book. Those interested may wish to check these links on suicide bombings series: narratives of terror; a liberal reaction here; and a psychological analysis here (Raza Rumi)

A ‘counter-view’ of suicide-bombing by Khaled Ahmed

Filed under: All My Posts, Islam, Islamophobia, Politics, books, fundamentalism Continue reading
30May/080

Islam, law and finance: the elusive divine

Fred Halliday begins his argument in the captioned article published by Open Democracy with these lines:

In many European countries in particular (the Netherlands, France, Denmark and Germany, as well as Britain) "Islam"-related issues connected to the veil, medical hygiene, or religious imagery become the trigger for entrenching opinion, drawing battle-lines and fomenting indignation. If the pattern is to be broken and a more constructive form of public discourse conducted, it can only be done by informed reason, including historical and linguistic clarification.

And makes some pertinent points especially for the :

A common confusion is made between sharia and fiqh (Islamic juridsprudence) - the corpus of law which has arisen over centuries and which forms the basis for law in many Muslim countries, and is obliged like any modern legal system to pronounce on all matters, from the personal to the commercial. This is not divinely sanctioned. Indeed the only parts of Islam that have such sanction are classified as deen (religion).

Fiqh, therefore, is a system of conventional law, without divine sanction, and allowing of many interpretations. Beyond the fact that the Sunni world has four main schools of fiqh - Maleki, Shafei, Hanbali, Hanafi - each reflecting developments in medieval Islamic society and politics, the Shi'a have their own, distinct, system. Where the confusion has arisen - and where both Islamic fundamentalists and well-meaning but ill-informed western observers like the Canterbury archbishop have contributed to the problem - is in pretending that there is one single legal text (sharia) and that this supposedly univocal code carries divine authority. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Full article can be accessed here

Filed under: All My Posts, Islam, Islamophobia, Religion, World Writers No Comments
21Apr/085

Pakistan Suicide Bombings: The narratives of terror

An overwhelming majority of Pakistan's population finds itself hostage to narratives of terror that are either alien to its ethos or are constructed by its home-grown theologians and opinion-makers. This is not to say that the issue of suicide bombings is easy to define and understand. They are essentially complex and located in decades of Pakistan's evolution into a society that is difficult yet again to label: Islamic in name, struggling to be democratic and a republic it is not, well, not yet.

If we take the viewpoint of liberals, it is our war as much as a war of others. If we were to hear the west, it is about countering terror and preserving world peace; and if we listen to Pakistan's right it is someone else's battle fought on our land 'the land of the pure' lest we forget.

Where does this leave the confused, battered citizen who now has to strive for personal security among other daily struggles of existence? There are no clear answers and if one were to probe further, the questions are as murky as their geneses.

One thing is clear though: to identify the recurrent suicide bombings in the name of theological, tribal and imperial grievances is at best a half-truth. The genie is far more complex than a response to the reductionist narrative of âwar against terror and such other imperial phraseology. At the core of this phenomena, if one were to be rather blunt, lies an exclusive, bigoted ideology of a few men of holy intentions orchestrating a script written by others.

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12Apr/081

NATO Genocide in Afghanistan?

I hold no brief for the Taliban. They have enraged the world and brought much shame to Muslims and dare I say the great religion Islam as well. In fact, I detest their version of Islamic codes that they want to impose on the world through coercion.

However, the NATO battle against Taliban is not only barbaric in equal intesnity but it also dehumanizes them.

Mr Ali Khan of Washburn University School of Law sent his piece that is eloquent, and extremely well argued. Ali Khan says that in the name of the "war of terror," NATO forces are "committing genocide in Afghanistan by systematically hunting down and destroying" the Taliban, in violation of the terms of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide...

These sentences are chilling:

Politicians, the armed forces, the media, and even the general public associate in the West the Taliban with irrational fanatics, intolerant fundamentalists, brutal assassins, beheaders of women, bearded extremists, and terrorists. This luminescent negativity paves the way for aggression, military operations, and genocide. Promoting the predatory doctrine of collective self-defense, killing the Taliban is celebrated as a legal virtue.."

THe West should remember that this will not solve the issue of terrorism or militancy - whatever one may want to name it - in fact such wars cause more pain, create more martyrs and legends and motivate people to resist - theyhave nothing to lose in the first place. And, the history of Afghanistan spells out some clear lessons for the current imperial powers.

Read his full article below.

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29Mar/083

Fascist Wilders should be ignored

"..calling it a film is to abuse both the English language and the legacy of cinema"

Yesterday, a friend sent an internet link to Mr Wilders' crappy excuse of a "film". It was so silly, distastefully offensive that I felt pity at Wilders' utter lack of talent and skill. By according more attention than the idiotic film, the Muslims will only make him more popular and a rallying point for Islamophobia disguised as freedom of expression. Wilders has to be ignored and all peaceful protest against Islamophobia should continue.

As always, my dear friend Ali Eteraz is on top of things - by way of his intelligence and wit evident from this excellent article.

What I'm really wondering: is Wilders' protesting against Islam or the monopoly extremists already have over grainy, low-budget, YouTube videos? .......

The rest of the film is a mixture of conflating the most painful and heart-wrenching images from terror-strikes with extremist imams, in an effort to turn the entirety of Islam into a demonic edifice. This is neither new, nor interesting. It is a facile trick for facile minds....

Filed under: All My Posts, Cinema, Islam, Islamophobia Continue reading
22Mar/084

The Irreverent Hero Islam Forgot

Tehelka magazine has this story on how magic and adventure render the Hamzanama the most popular oral epic of the Islamic world.

WILLIAM DALRYMPLE tracks its mad energy in its first-ever compilation in English

IN JUNE 2002, as Pentagon strategists were making their plans for the invasion of Iraq, a short distance away down Washington’s National Mall, the Freer- Sackler Galleries at the Smithsonian were showing one of the most interesting exhibitions of Islamic art seen in the US for years. Ironically, the show was made up of illustrations of a story largely set in the very Iraqi cities which were shortly to find themselves as targets for the Pentagon’s munitions.

Filed under: All My Posts, History, Islam, Islamophobia, books Continue reading
18Mar/083

Turkey in radical revision of Islamist texts

Turkey is working on a revolutionary new interpretation of the Prophet Mohammed’s reputed sayings, known as the Hadith.

The project is aimed at allowing millions of Muslims to re-evaluate their religious obligations in the light of modern ways of living.

Full article here

Filed under: All My Posts, Islam, Islamophobia, Religion, media 3 Comments
11Mar/089

Lahore blasts and the Jihad industry

My city Lahore was attacked yet again by the pusillanimous attackers pretending to be brave and honourable. There is no justification and no excuse for this modus operandi. And it should not be tolerated by the state and the people. Any excuse would legitimise this reign of terror..

I am posting this excellent piece by the wise Khalid Hasan (Daily Times) that makes some excellent points on the menace of Jihad and how unholy it is -

 Leaders of Salafi-jihadist organisations hypocritically preach about the benefits of martyrdom, but rarely, if ever, conduct suicide operations themselves, or send their loved ones on such missions. It is a fact that Al Qaeda and associated groups offer no vision for Muslims other than perennial jihad, hardly an appealing prospect

Jihad is now an industry among scholars, including those who masquerade as scholars but are actually in the service of more shadowy outfits, and those who believe that by blowing up people praying in mosques or families out shopping, they will not only serve God but win a point-to-point ticket to the pastures of heaven where seventy-two swooning virgins await their arrival.

Filed under: All My Posts, Globalization, Islam, Islamophobia, Journalism, On Pakistan, Religion, War, fundamentalism Continue reading
19Feb/085

Pakistanis have rejected extremism

The election results notwithstanding the irregularities and fears of rigging, are pretty straightforward. They undo the paradigm of ousting the two mainstream parties from the political arena; and instituting real democracy that is hostage to the bogey of Islamism and local feudal cliques through a non-party local governments.

These elections are also a slap on the face of the global corporate media (and their backers the global military machine) that had painted Pakistan as a breeding ground for Islamic extremism and dare I say terrorism.

The erstwhile sponsored face of Islamism - the Mutihada Majlis-i-Amal- has been routed in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP). The people of the NWFP have outrightly rejected this rentier class that uses Islamisation and extols Talibanisation for power and pelf. The secular and moderate parties have won the overwhelming majority of the vote.

When you allow the people of Pakistan to vote freely, they shun extremism.

Nothing could be more satisfying.

P.S. My friend Yasser Hamdani’s predictions are close to the emerging tally - King’s Party has lost more and Nawaz Sharif has gained more - but Yasser should take up forecasting now..!

Filed under: All My Posts, Islam, Islamophobia, Politics 5 Comments
28Jan/084

“Muslims in Germany” study- State-propagated racism under the guise of science

Muslims in Germany are completely alienated politically and also have to cope with a racist witch-hunt, which has increased continually ever since the September 11 terror attacks in New York and Washington. Muslims as a whole are routinely associated with the enforced wearing of headscarves, honour killings, arranged marriages and violent criminality.The ruling elite in the worlds of politics, the media and academia are systematically attempting to divert attention away from the social crisis and class tensions, instead expounding on a “war of cultures.” This could be seen in the article by historian Hans-Ulrich Wehler in the Die Zeit newsweekly about a “Turkish problem,” due to the fact that the “Muslim minority has proven itself incapable of assimilation.” Writer Botho Strauß warned in Der Spiegel of the “Islamification of the West” and implicitly called for a crusade and fight against Muslim minorities in Western countries.The study “Muslims in Germany” has now given new impetus to this demagogy. Even though the authors have subsequently called for a more differentiated view to be taken on the results of their study, they are nevertheless directly responsible for the fact that the study has provided new fuel to the likes of Koch and Schäuble. This Muslim-baiting has since been joined by the interior ministers of Lower Saxony, Uwe Schünemann (CDU), and of Bavaria, Joachim Herrmann (Christian Social Union), who demand that all Muslims living in Germany must sign a “declaration renouncing violence.”

Full article can be read here

Source

Filed under: All My Posts, Arts & Culture, Islam, Islamophobia, fundamentalism 4 Comments
21Jan/083

Indonesia’s green madrassas

Rather than harping on the divisive rhetoric of tribe, sect and political persuasion, we have a theological and teleological imperative to “green our society”

In a remote part of Central Java, Indonesia’s most populous island, there is a rather unusual form of environmentalism taking root. Shadowed by the great Merapi volcano and surrounded by fertile fields of rice and sugarcane, a small school is graduating environmentalists whose commitment to the earth is not based on Western conservation texts but rather predicated in values derived from Islam. The head of the school, Nasruddin Anshari, frequently uses the refrain “one earth, for all”, just as much as he does the usual Islamic invocation of Allah-u Akbar (God is Great).

Filed under: All My Posts, Environment, Islam, Islamophobia Continue reading
17Dec/074

A paranoid, abhorrent obsession

It was a pleasure to have read Pankaj Mishra in the Guardian:

Last week Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-Dutch polemicist, spoke to a gathering of what The Spectator called "Britain's biggest brains - politicians, editors, academics". She told them that they were "actually at war, not just with Islamism, but with Islam itself". Apparently, a good Muslim has no choice but to strive "to establish Sharia law". Martin Amis, too, has recently informed us that moderate Muslims, if they ever existed, have lost out to radicals in Islam's civil war. In any case, Islam is "totalist": "There is no individual; there is only the umma - the community of believers."

Never perhaps in history has so much nonsense been so confidently peddled about a population as large and diverse as this planet's billion-plus Muslims. Within the past decade an Islamic movement has led Indonesia towards democracy, while market reforms in Turkey have created a new and religious middle class that now challenges the power of a secular elite.

Each one of the national realities Muslims inhabit is prodigiously complex and ceaselessly evolving, shaped as much by geopolitics - imperial conquest, the cold war, the war on terror - as by internal conflicts of class, religion and ethnicity. Closely examined, Muslim societies briskly dissolve our complacent, parochial notions about religion, democracy, secularism and capitalism. They expose, too, the notion of a monolithic Islam pressing down uniformly on all believers everywhere as a crude caricature.

Read the full article here

Filed under: All My Posts, Islam, Islamophobia, Journalism, Religion, World Writers 4 Comments
14Dec/0711

Prophet’s letter on the protection of Egyptian Copts

I am grateful to Saadi to have forwarded me the this amazing ancient text.

********

The Letter of Prophet Muhammad

Below is the English translation of the extra-ordinary letter by Prophet Muhammad as a Charter of Privileges to Christians monks of St. Catherine Monastery at Mt. Sinai. It consists of several clauses covering all aspects of human rights including such topics as the protection of Christians, freedom of worship and movement, freedom to appoint their own judges and to own and maintain their property, exemption from military service, and the right to protection in war. It bears the hallmark of Islam and Prophet's attitude about the right[s] of other religious practitioners.

Filed under: All My Posts, Egypt, History, Islam, Islamophobia, Middle East, Religion Continue reading
11Dec/074

Pakistan diaspora and the politics of the Hijab

The suggestion of violent disputes between a 16-year-old girl in Mississauga and her father over her desire to show her hair and live a "normal" lifestyle raises questions about tensions between parents and children in the Muslim community...But members of the community particularly young Muslim women  say the tension can exist both ways.

...research into the readership of her publication shows that the decision to wear the hijab, the traditional Muslim headscarf is almost always a choice the girl makes on her own.

Text from here

Complex, sordid and tragic. And, I wonder what would the head honcho of Al-Huda (these days based in Canada) has to say on the sad story of a  girl who died at 16? What is this obsession with the Hijab when you live in a non-Islamic country. There is no consensus on this within Islamic jurisprudence. As my friend Asma (who sent this story) said: "Is this more important than hayya - the inner modesty; and the ability to discern the right from the wrong?"

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7Dec/072

Christmas in Fallujah

This is a poignant song by Cass Dillon and Billy Joel - sometimes such glimmers of hope make one happy in a dark world.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNHF5p4bV_k]

Filed under: All My Posts, Islamophobia, Music, War, World Artists, human rights, media, video 2 Comments
7Dec/071

Hazrat Ali’s letter on governance and citizenship

The common stories about Islam or Muslims have to do with the chopping of arms and killing of infidels. We are told that Muslims had a great empire, after many conquests and subjugation of the 'infidels'. And what have we learned in the textbooks: Ali (AS) was a brave general with a legendary sword? Have we heard this:

Do not close your eyes from glaring malpractice of officers, miscarriage of justice and misuse of rights, because you will be held responsible for the wrong thus done to others. In the near future, your wrong practices and maladministration will be exposed, and you will be held responsible and punished for the wrong done to the helpless and oppressed people.

Fahmida Riaz is Pakistan's premier female poet. She became a sensation in the early 1970s when her bold, feminist poetry created a stir in the convention ridden world of Urdu poetry. Riaz was expressive, sometimes explicit, and politically charged. She created a completely new genre in Urdu poetry with a post-modern sensibility. Later, she remained prominent with her defiance of General Zia's martial law, her exile to India and the continuous evolution of her fiction and poetry.

Since the late 1990s, Fahmida Riaz has discovered Jalaluddin Rumi, the 12th century Turkish poet and jurist, and now an international celebrity. Her recent publication “ Yeh Khana-e aab-o-gil" is a unique translation of Rumi's ghazals in the same rhyme and meter. Since her navigation of the Rumi universe, she has explored another dimension of her individual and cultural consciousness, where the influence of Islamic scholars and Sufis is paramount.

Last winter, she read a letter by Hazrat Ali bin Abi Talib (AS), the fourth Caliph and son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH), while browsing a translation of Nahaj ul Balagha (a collection of sermons, letters and sayings of the Caliph). Later, in an email, she related to her friends across the globe how angry she felt for not knowing about this letter all her life, and how the real jewels of Muslim history were concealed generation after generation.

At the time she was preparing for a Conference at Heidelberg, Germany. Lo and behold, she made a dramatic speech about Ali's (AS) letter at the international moot. Thereafter she showed the text of the letter to Dr Patricia Sharpe, a US-based writer who was impressed by it and immediately paraphrased and uploaded it to on her website under the title Good Governance Early Muslim Style.

Ali (AS) had written a comprehensive letter  articulating principles of public policy for the guidance of the newly appointed Governor to Egypt, Maalik al Ashtar. In this fascinating directive, Ali (AS) advises the new governor that his administration will succeed only if he governs with concern for justice, equity, probity and the prosperity of all. There is a timeless applicability of this famous letter. Selected passages from the text are reproduced below:

Religious tolerance: Amongst your subjects there are two kinds of people: those who have the same religion as you [and] are brothers to you, and those who have religions other than yours, [who] are human beings like you. Men of either category suffer from the same weaknesses and disabilities that human beings are inclined to; they commit sins, indulge in vices either intentionally or foolishly and unintentionally without realising the enormity of their deeds. Let your mercy and compassion come to their rescue and help in the same way and to the same extent that you expect Allah to show mercy and forgiveness to you .

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28Nov/070

Islam forbids terrorism

Excerpts from here:

•  Sentence of death is allowed only through the process of justice, but even then, forgiveness is better. “Nor take life – which Allah has made sacred – except for just cause…” (17:33).

Filed under: All My Posts, History, Islam, Islamophobia, Politics, Random musings, Religion Continue reading
26Nov/0710

Taslima Nasrin – the “outcast”..

Taslima Nasrin is now a "sensation" of another kind in India. She has attracted the attention of those segments of Indian media that love to sell anything that brings Islam and Muslims related controversies into the public domain.

Filed under: All My Posts, Arts & Culture, Bangladesh, History, India, Islam, Islamophobia, Poetry, Random musings, Religion, South Asian Literature, fundamentalism, human rights, media Continue reading
21Nov/0715

Of ignorance and knowledge – thinking of Professor Aghajari

 I am a child whose teacher is love.
surely my master won't let me grow
to be a fool*

Filed under: All My Posts, Blog Babble, Iran, Islam, Islamophobia, Middle East, On Pakistan, Religion, fundamentalism Continue reading
1Nov/079

Post-Islamism debates

Ali Eteraz on post-Islamism:

Filed under: All My Posts, Globalization, Islam, Islamophobia, Middle East, Politics, Religion, fundamentalism Continue reading
18Sep/072

Islamic Spain: History’s refrain

Alexander Kronemer writes: 

At its peak, it lit the Dark Ages with science and philosophy, poetry, art, and architecture. It was the period remembered as a golden age for European Jews. Breakthroughs in medicine, the introduction of the number zero, the lost philosophy of Aristotle, even the prototype for the guitar all came to Europe through Islamic Spain.

However, his conclusion has the right heart though not the best of analyses:

At its best, the history of Islamic Spain is a model for interfaith cooperation that inspires those who seek an easier relationship among the three Abrahamic faiths. At its worst, it's a warning of what can occur when political and religious leaders divide the world. It reminds us what really happens when civilizations clash.

Filed under: All My Posts, Arts & Culture, Islam, Islamophobia, Politics, Religion 2 Comments
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