Indian Muslim News - OPINION


Posted by Indian Muslim Observer | 30 November 2009 | Posted in Opinion
Posted by Indian Muslim Observer | | Posted in Terrorism
Posted by Indian Muslim Observer | | Posted in Madrasa
Posted by Indian Muslim Observer | 25 November 2009 | Posted in Issues
Posted by Indian Muslim Observer | 24 November 2009 | Posted in Madrasa
Posted by Indian Muslim Observer | | Posted in Issues, Opinion
Islam encourages study of Sciences
By Arif Mohammad Khan
Does Islam provide for classification of knowledge into religious and secular, favouring the study of religious sciences and discouraging the pursuit of non-religious subjects like social and natural sciences?
It can be argued that after the emergence of the Ashari movement in the 10th century, and the subsequent obliteration of the Rationalist School [Motazila], the classification became increasingly entrenched and since then the academia of the Muslim educational institutions [madrasas] has remained confined to the study of traditional religious books.
Justice Amir Ali, in his book Spirit of Islam has stated that Asharis “by their denunciation of science and philosophy, by their exhortation that besides theology and law no other knowledge was worth acquiring, they did more to stop the progress of Muslims than most other Muslim scholiasts. And up to this day their example is held forth as a reason for ignorance and stagnation”. This assertion is borne out by the impressive list of scientists, philosophers, mathematicians and historians of the pre-Ashari period. Many Western philosophers have paid glowing tributes to these men of letters and gratefully acknowledged their contribution to European Renaissance. Undoubtedly, the academic environment of the preceding centuries was totally different. The teachings of Islam and the prophetic exhortations had created an unquenchable thirst for knowledge of subjects hitherto unknown. Islam made no distinction between religious and natural sciences. On the contrary, it made a distinction between knowledge and ignorance when it asserted, “Are they equal, those who know and those who do not know?” [39.9].
The Islamic concept of knowledge was holistic and Muslims pursued both the religious and natural sciences with equal zeal and vigour. Apart from prescribing the “pursuit of knowledge as obligatory on the part of every Muslim” the Prophet exhorted to “seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave”. He further said to “seek knowledge even though it be in China”. It is significant to note that for an Arab of seventh century China was the most remote part of the world and it was not identified as a destination to seek knowledge of religion. In another important narration the Prophet declared that “an hour’s reflection is better than worshipping God for seventy years”.
The Quran itself has more than 500 verses exhorting believers to reflect and contemplate about the creation of God. The Quran uses the same word — ayat — both for its own sentences and for each and every created being. In several verses worship and contemplation are mentioned in the same verse. At one place it says, “In the creation of the heavens and the earth, and in the alternation of night and day, there are indeed signs for men of understanding. Those who celebrate the praises of Allah standing sitting and lying down on their sides and contemplate the [wonders of] creation in the heavens and the earth [and say] ‘Our Lord! You have not created this without purpose’” [3.190-191]. At another place the Quran calls to apply mind to subjects like zoology, geology and physics. It says: “Do they not look at the Camels how they are made? And at the Sky how it is raised high? And at the Mountains how they are fixed firm? And at the Earth how it is spread out?” [88.17-20]. The study of aeronautics is equally stressed: “Do they not observe the birds above them spreading their wings and folding them in?” [67.19]
The Islamic concept of education found best expression in the words of Maula Ali who said, “In matters of education take care not to make your children like you. Do not superimpose your thoughts on their minds. Help them equip themselves to meet the challenges of their age which will be different from the times in which you are living”
[Arif Mohammed Khan is a former Union Cabinet Minister]
(Courtesy: Covert)
Posted by Indian Muslim Observer | | Posted in Women
Muslim women are still not taken seriously: Farida Khanam
By Yoginder Sikand
Farida Khanam is Associate Professor at the Department of Islamic Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. Daughter of the well-known Islamic scholar, Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, she has translated more than sixty of her father’s books into English, besides being the author of several books on Islam. In this interview with Yoginder Sikand for TwoCircles.net, she reflects on issues related to Islam, Muslim women and patriarchy.
Q: Almost all well-known Indian Muslim scholars who write on Islamic issues, including on matters related to Islam and women, are men. As one of the very few Indian Muslim women who write on Islamic issues, how do you account for this?
A: You have a valid point here. Very few Muslim women writers have received the attention they deserve. Most of them write fiction. Among them there are hardly any of note who write on Islamic issues, including on matters related to Islam and women. One reason for this is, quite simply, that Muslim women writers do not receive proper encouragement and appreciation from their men, their families and from the wider society. Generally speaking, women continue to be looked upon as commodities, not as life partners of equal worth and capacity. They are still seen, and defined by, what are expected to be their domestic roles, as wives and mothers, and as having no public role. There is still this deep-rooted belief that education for women is simply a means to get a ‘good’, wealthy husband. In fact, many Muslim women continue to be conditioned to believe that being subjugated by their husbands is their fate, that faithfully serving their husbands, no matter how they are treated, is their path to salvation. Given all this, how can you expect our women to be intellectually productive?
Muslim women and their intellectual abilities and development are still not taken seriously. The situation is particularly pathetic in north India, where Muslim elite culture continues to remain steeped in medieval, backward-looking, feudal traditions. In my view, this has to do with culture rather than with Islam per se. The dominant interpretations and understandings of Islam here have been heavily moulded by the deep-rooted patriarchal, feudal culture and mind-set. This has also to do with the heavy influence of traditional, patriarchal Hindu culture on most Indian Muslims. But, while patriarchy has been forcefully challenged by educated Hindu women, Muslim women, on the whole, remain much more backward because, compared to the Hindus, the Muslims in India lag considerably behind in terms of modern education.
Q: You, too, come from a feudal family. How is it, then, that you were able to overcome that barrier?
A: In this my mother had a special role to play. In traditional Muslim families, mothers begin to prepare dowries for their daughters when they are young—a reflection of the belief that marriage is a woman’s ultimate destiny in this world. But, my mother did not do that. She, as well as my father, insisted I should continue my studies. My parents were a constant source of support in my education.
Q: What is your educational background?
A: I did my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Delhi University, and then did a PhD, which I completed in 1990, in Islamic Studies from the Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, where I have been teaching since 1994. For my thesis, I worked on a critique of the theological vision and politics of Maulana Syed Abul Ala Maududi, the founder of the Jamaat-e Islami. My thesis was recently published as a book.
Q: Maulana Maududi’s views on women have influenced Islamist thinking in the sub-continent. How do you look at his approach to gender relations?
A: Maulana Maududi remained trapped within a patriarchal mind-set. For instance, he insisted on women wearing the burqa and the naqab, the face-veil. Interestingly, neither his own daughter nor his daughter in law followed his advice in this regard!
Women are generally more tender, spiritual, sincere and dedicated, and so they can, and should, play a central role in social movements and efforts for social welfare. But the traditional scholars continue to oppose this, even though at the time of the Prophet, women, including the Prophet’s wives and those of his companions, played important social roles and were very active in imparting religious education to Muslim children. At the same time, however, Islam does not allow for permissiveness and uncontrolled intermingling between men and women.
Q: Besides yourself, there are hardly any women teachers in the few Departments of Islamic Studies that exist in universities across India. How has your being a woman affected your experience of working in the Department of Islamic Studies at the Jamia Millia Islamia?
A: In the beginning I did feel somewhat alienated, being the only female member; but gradually, by dint of hard work and the spirit of adjustment, I surmounted the hurdles. God has been very gracious to me. He was always by my side.
Q: A fairly sizeable proportion of students in your Department are girls. In addition, in recent years a number of girls’ madrasas have been established in different parts of India. Do you think this rise in the number of trained Muslim women Islamic scholars might lead to the articulation and popularization of more gender-sensitive interpretations of Islam?
A: I really don’t know. To be honest, most students in our Department, both boys and girls, are graduates of madrasas or of traditional Muslim schools, because of which they have few alternatives other than to study Islamic Studies, History, Political Science, Arabic and Urdu, etc. Frankly, the intellectual output of these students is far from encouraging. The situation in the traditional girls’ madrasas is hardly better. In most of these madrasas, girls are reared on the same outdated syllabus and are not taught to be critical, innovative or to think for themselves. They insist that women cover-up completely and even teach their students that a woman’s voice is aurah or something to be concealed, thus effectively silencing and invisiblising them.
Q: The All-India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), which projects itself as the principal body of the Indian Muslims, has been critiqued for its defense of patriarchy and certain laws that, while militating against gender-justice, have also been condemned as ‘un-Islamic’, most notably the practice of triple talaq in one sitting. What do you feel about the Board and its claims of speaking for the Indian Muslims, including Indian Muslim women?
A: It is not true that the Board represents the Muslims of India. The vast majority of Indian Muslims do not even know who its members are! Muslims in India are so diverse, divided on the basis of fiqh, school of thought, ethnicity and language, that it is impossible for a single body to represent the entire Indian Muslim community.
Most of the leaders of the AIMPLB have received education in traditional seminaries. They have little understanding and appreciation of modern realities. They keep fighting among themselves on sectarian lines over minor details and even non-issues. In the madrasas they learn little or nothing at all about the modern world. How can one expect such people to represent the entire Muslim community?
Q: How do you think modern educated Indian Muslim women respond, or react to, the traditional ulama, many of who continue to uphold a deeply patriarchal understanding of Islam? How does this affect the way such women relate to Islam itself?
A: It is an undeniable fact that a number of educated Muslim women do, indeed, feel distanced from Islam because of the conservative and patriarchal understandings and interpretations of Islam by traditional religious scholars. There is no doubt about that. Unfortunately, a large section of them do not want any change as far as gender relations are concerned. They are also unable to interpret and convey Islam in a modern, contemporary idiom, which also alienates many educated people, including Muslims themselves. They continue to talk simply in terms of halal and haram, do’s and don’t’s, while today’s educated youth are looking for reason-based arguments, which the traditional scholars are unable to supply. Traditional Islamic scholars focus simply on the duties of women, not their rights, and so, obviously, educated women feel completely alienated. No wonder then, that some Muslim women go to the other extreme and advocate radical forms of feminism.
[Yoginder Sikand works with the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Social Policy at the National Law School, Bangalore. He can be contacted at ysikand@yahoo.com. Farida Khanam can be contacted on fkhan1001@yahoo.co.in or info@cpsglobal.org.]
Posted by Indian Muslim Observer | 11 November 2009 | Posted in Issues, Shia
By Yoginder Sikand
Lucknow-based Maulana Mirza Mohammad Athar is President of All India Shia Personal Law Board (AISPLB). Born in 1936, he is the son of late Maulana Mirza Mohammad Tahir, a noted Shia Muslim scholar. He received a traditional Islamic education at the Sultan ul-Madaris in Lucknow, and then got a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Persian from Lucknow University. He served as Head of the Department of Persian, and, later as Principal, at the Shia Degree College, Lucknow. Yoginder Sikand met him at the recently-held third annual convention of the AISPLB in New Delhi and interviewed him about the AISPLB and its activities.
Q: The recently-held convention of the AISPLB hardly dealt with personal law issues at all, while the name of your organization suggests that Shia personal law should be its principal concern. Instead, the focus of the convention was on stressing a separate Shia identity, demands for reservation or representation of Shias in government services and legislative bodies and so on. This seems odd, doesn’t it?
A: Actually, our Board’s mandate is not limited only to personal law issues. It also deals with the social, educational, economic and political issues of the Shias of India. We are of the view that the 50 million Indian Shias have been heavily under-represented in all spheres of life, including even in Muslim organizations. We are a marginalized minority within another marginalized minority. Since at present Shia personal law is not a problem and faces no challenges, our convention focused mainly on other community-related issues. One such issue is that of lack of political representation of the Shias. There are hardly any Shias in the Lok Sabha, the Rajya Sabha and the state assemblies, because of which our voice does not receive any attention at all. The same is true for Shia representation in government services.
Q: Some critics argue that your Board is a ploy to divide Muslims. What do you have to say about this?
A: We certainly do not want to divide the Muslims. Those who claim that this is what we are doing do not give any space to the Shias in their own organisations.
I believe Shias and Sunnis (as well as all other Indians—Hindus and others)—must live peacefully together. They must have good social relations and close personal and social interaction. We are all for Muslim unity till this level. At the same time, we cannot deny that the Shias and Sunnis do have certain theological or doctrinal differences. It would be absolutely unrealistic, indeed impossible, to deny these differences or to seek to impose any artificial and unwanted homogenization, which will definitely not work.
Q: You claim that the Indian Shias number 50 million. That sounds an exaggeration to me.
A: Not at all. I believe that the Muslim population of India must be around 250 million, but the figure has possibly been considerably under-estimated in the census reports, perhaps due to political reasons and communal biases. Of these 250 million Indian Muslims, Shias would number around a fifth—or around 50 million. These include the different groups of Shias—mainly the Imami Shias, followers of the twelve Imams, as well as others such as Khojahs and Bohras.
Q: Do you see the AISPLB as a rival to the Sunni-dominated All-India Muslim Personal Law Board, which styles itself as a representative body of all the Muslims of India, and in which there are also some Shia representatives?
A: The AIMPLB certainly does not represent all the Indian Muslims. As far as I know, it was set up with the blessings of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who wanted to use it as a means to maintain her hold on her Muslim vote-bank. One of the leading members of the Board, Asad Madani, the head of the Deoband madrasa, was very close to Indira Gandhi. He was even a Congress Member of Parliament.
One reason why we decided to set up our own Shia Board was because the AIMPLB was heavily dominated by Wahhabis—Deobandis particularly—who are known for their visceral hatred of Shias. Qari Tayyeb, rector of the Deoband madrasa, served as the first President of the AIMPLB. Another Wahhabi, who was known for his anti-Shia views, who served as President of the AIMPLB was Ali Miyan Nadwi. However, it must be said that he also included a few Shia ulema as members of the Board.
All along we kept quiet, but, increasingly, some Shias grew restive about the lack of proper representation of Shias in the AIMLPB. Some years ago, the AIMPLB published a compendium of what it called Islamic personal laws, but; although the AIMPLB was meant to reflect all the schools of Muslim jurisprudence, the compendium was based on the views of the Hanafi Sunni school. Some of these Hanafi laws were plainly against women, and, incidentally, are quite in contrast to the prescriptions of the Shia Jafari school. The AIMPLB sought to present this compendium as reflecting the authoritative Islamic opinion, so, naturally, many Shias were upset. This dissatisfaction gathered further momentum because of the hue and cry about triple talaq on one sitting, which the Hanafis believe in but which the Shias oppose. According to Sunni law, a man can divorce his wife without any witnesses, but in our Shia law you need two witnesses for each time the word talaq is uttered, over a course of three iddat periods.
The AIMPLB continued to defend the patently anti-women practice of triple talaq in one sitting, presenting it as an ‘Islamic’ law, and the mass media gave this considerable publicity. Consequently, the general public began imagining that if Islam allowed such a practice it must be anti-women. We Shias do not support this practice at all, which we believe is un-Islamic, and so we wanted a forum from where we could stress that this practice had no sanction at all in our own school of Jafari Shia jurisprudence. In that way, others would know that the Shia position on this matter, as on several other issues, was quite different from that of other Muslims, and that, therefore, they should not confuse us with them.
Dissatisfaction with the AIMPLB mounted further after it began taking up issues that were strictly outside its purview, such as the Babri Masjid controversy, in which, I regret to say, it did not provide Muslims with proper leadership.
It was not us who first thought of setting up a separate personal law board. Rather, it was a section of the Barelvis, who are Sunni Hanafis, led by Maulana Tauqir Raza Khan, who decided to set up their own board as they rightly felt that the AIMPLB was heavily Deobandi-dominated. Like the Shias, they regard the Deobandis as Wahhabis. The Wahhabis treat the Barelvis, like the Shias, as virtual heretics.
It was only after that that some young Shia ulema from Lucknow contacted me and demanded that we, too, should have our own body. Thereafter, Shias from various parts of India began contacting me, insisting that we have our own organization to voice Shia demands and concerns. This body came into being in 2005, and I was nominated as its President. I suggested that we call it the All-India Shia Personal Law and Welfare Board, to stress that Shia community issues, in addition to personal law affairs, were its concern, but many others opposed this, and insisted we call it simply as the All-India Shia Personal Law Board. Perhaps this was because they wanted to stress their distinct identity, as separate from the AIMPLB, which was wrongly projecting itself as the representative of all the Muslims of India.
Q: What practical efforts has your Board undertaken to protect the rights of Shia women in accordance with Shia law?
A: I travel a lot, addressing Shia gatherings or majalis in different parts of India and abroad. During my travels people come to me to discuss their personal matters, particularly related to marriage and divorce. These interactions with people from a wide cross-section of Shia society made me realize that, very often, patriarchal culture and social influences, rather than religion as such, are responsible for much of the oppression that women are subjected to. Hence, to safeguards the rights of Shia women, in 2007 our Board came up with a model marriage-contract or nikahnamah, drafted by a seven-member committee of Shia ulema, which was approved of by Ayatollah Seistani, renowned the Iraq-based Shia scholar who commands a large following among the Indian Shias.
This nikahnamah specifically provides for numerous rights for wives. According to this nikahnamah, women have the right to delegated divorce or talaq-e tafwiz, and, if they use this right, they will not lose their mehr or dower. The spouses can also include in the nikahnamah any conditions that do not violate Quranic teachings. The nikahnamah specifies that in case of divorce the former husband has the duty to maintain his divorced wife even after the three-month iddat period has passed until she manages to secure a sustainable source of survival. The nikahnamah also provides for a system of arbitration before the divorce can be put into effect. Already, several marriages have been conducted using this nikahnamah.
Q: A major issue stressed by numerous speakers at the recently-held convention of your Board was the Shias’ opposition to terrorism, to terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and the Lashkar-e Tayyeba. Numerous speakers also repeatedly stressed the Shias’ loyalty to, and love for, India. Why this need to prove one’s patriotism?
A: We Shias love India and are patriotic Indians. When Imam Husain, the grandson of the Prophet, whom the Shias deeply revere, was at the battlefield in Karbala, he addressed the army of the tyrant Yazid saying that if they permitted him he wanted to leave for India. We are sons of this soil and are devoted to our country. However, as long as Hindu communal and fascist forces in India continue to claim that Muslims are anti-national we are forced to counter their poisonous propaganda by insisting that this is completely false. Sadly, Muslims in India will continue to feel forced to prove their patriotism till Hindu communalism remains.
As for the repeated denunciation at our convention of the terrorism of groups such as al-Qaeda, the Taliban, the Lashkar-e Tayyeba and so on, is concerned, it is our Islamic duty to speak out against them. We Shias believe that what they call ‘Islam’ is not Islam at all. Nor are their actions that of true Muslims. They are giving Islam a bad name. They are enemies of Islam. They are also viscerally opposed to Shias—they have been responsible for the deaths of thousands of Shias in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Those who were behind the terror attack on Bombay last year claimed to be Muslims, as did those who were responsible for so many other such attacks elsewhere. By denouncing their acts and their ideology we Shias want to stress that we are different, that we and our understanding of Islam, the Islam of the Prophet and the Imams, have nothing to do with such evil people. We want to tell the world that we Shias, who denounce terrorism as anti-Islamic, are Muslims, but are the opposite of those who claim to be Muslims but yet engage in such evil deeds, ironically in the name of Islam.
[Yoginder Sikand works with the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Social Policy at the National Law School, Bangalore. He can be contacted at ysikand@yahoo.com]