On September 5,
Sunday Mid Day published an article by
Aakar Patel, Editor,
Mid-Day which in MSD's view
reinforces prejudice against Muslims.
We reproduce below a rejoinder by Javed Anand that was published
on September 12, along with the original piece by Aakar Patel
'Muslims face prejudiced generalisations'
By:
Javed Anand
September 12, 2004
Muslims
today are easy meat. Say what you will and all shall be
believed, for the world has now come to believe the worst about
Muslims. Aakar Patel's piece, 'Where Indian Muslims have gone
wrong' in Sunday Mid Day (September 5), sadly, is part of this
problematic paradigm.
To state that Muslim majority societies across the globe have
yet to come to terms with modernity and are badly in need of
social reform and democratic change is to state the
unquestionable truth.
But to proceed from there with a series of sweeping
generalisations and mere assertions dressed up as self-evident
truths is to, wittingly or unwittingly, feed into rampant
anti-Muslim prejudice whether in the Indian or the global
context.
Anyone who knows anything about the Middle East knows that the
absence of democracy in that part of the world and the birth of
terrorism in more recent years has more to do with Uncle Sam
than Islam.
Any number of well-documented and scholarly writings can be
cited to show how in its concern with ensuring uninterrupted
flow of cheap oil and to contain the ‘Evil Empire’ (former
USSR), the world’s most powerful democracy connived for decades
in the dislodging pro-democracy forces in the Middle East.
To cite just one example here, in 1953, the US and the UK
conspired to topple Mossadegh, the democratically elected
nationalist leader of Iran, to install a monarch in his place.
In more recent decades, it paid megabucks and provided military
hardware to nurture and arm jehadis of all descriptions — Osama
bin Laden is part of that sordid tale.
Now that the chickens have come home to roost, Islam and Muslims
are left holding the smokin’ gun, while the American
establishment has suddenly metamorphosed into the great Crusader
(for democracy and against global terrorism).
Closer home, ‘Muslim silence’ over the dastardly attack on Sajid
Rashid, editor, Hindi Mahanagar is seen as sufficient proof of
the community’s incorrigible belief system.
What pray, shall we conclude when Nikhil Wagle, editor of the
Marathi Mahanagar, is attacked as viciously by Shiv Sena goons
within days of the targeting of Sajid and The Times of India did
not deem it necessary to publish even a one para report?
Why doesn’t ‘Hindu silence’ over the attack on Wagle now, or the
ravaging of the Bhandarkar Institute in Pune recently, or the
devastation of the Singhania Hospital in Thane not so long ago
lead us to similar conclusions on the nature of the ‘Hindu
psyche’?
Patel virtually equates Muslims with Urdu and Urdu with the Urdu
Times. In Muslim circles, however, the daily and its
editor/proprietor, Saeed Ahmed are notorious for their brand of
highly irresponsible and inflammatory journalism.
An example is its editorial in the January 22, 1994 edition,
celebrating the terrible earthquake that ravaged Osmanabad and
Latur districts thus: “Praise be to Allah Almighty who has
reduced to dust those who committed sacrilege on the sacred soil
of the Babri Masjid”.
That the Urdu Times has since early July been running a
malicious campaign, instigating hatred and violence against
Muslims for Secular Democracy (MSD) in general and two of its
office-bearers in particular — Javed Akhtar (president) and
Sajid Rashid (vice-president) — is a fact.
A full month before the attack, MSD had led a delegation to the
police commissioner, A N Roy and stated in writing that we will
hold the Urdu Times solely responsible should any MSD member
come to any bodily harm.
Since the attack, MSD is convinced and so is the Mumbai police
that Urdu Times has masterminded the attack on Sajid. Why blame
all Muslims for the malicious daily’s misdeeds and in completely
unwarranted and unfair fashion, proclaim: “Muslims are
completely incapable of reform!” Internationally, the truth is
that in the field of family laws, there have been wide-ranging
reforms in an overwhelming number of Muslim majority countries,
including many that proclaim themselves as Islamic states.
In India, since its inception in October 1993, MSD’s
office-bearers have been invited to address large gatherings of
Muslims, men and women in major cities of north India. The
venues have included the Islamic Centre in Delhi, Aligarh Muslim
University and in the heart of Muslim mohallas in Allahabad,
Lucknow, Kanpur.
In each of these cities, MSD’s spokespersons have repeatedly
harped on issues like fundamental rights, freedom of expression,
rule of law, non-discrimination, gender justice (including the
need to reform Muslim Personal Law). And in each of these
cities, the reception to these ideas was beyond our
expectations.
In Maharashtra, Hasan Kamal (vice-president, MSD) has virtually
been running a campaign for reform through his very popular
weekly column in the Inquilab, the Urdu daily that is way ahead
of the Urdu Times in circulation.
More than anyone else, MSD is outraged by the attack on Sajid
and will pursue its ‘nab the culprits and punish the guilty’
demand with all vigour. Meanwhile, please note that we not only
live to tell our tale. We are right now busy finalising MSD’s
tour programme in response to invitations from different parts
of the country.
For these reasons and more, we have no quarrel with anyone who
points to the long journey ahead and welcome healthy criticism.
But sweeping generalisations only reinforce prejudice against
Muslims and that’s not fair.
(Javed Anand is general secretary Muslims for Secular
Democracy and co-editor, Communalism Combat).
http://ww1.mid-day.com/news/city/2004/september/91708.htm
Where Indian Muslims have gone wrong
By: Aakar Patel
September 5, 2004
An event occurred two weeks ago that should
upset all of us. Sajid Rashid, the
editor of Mahanagar’s Hindi edition was stabbed in his Mahim
office after an Urdu newspaper accused him of blasphemy.
The paper, Urdu Times, wrote that Sajid
Rashid had insulted the prophet Muhammad by printing a headline
that actually referred to Muhammad bin Tughlaq.
The punishment for blasphemy in Islam is
death (over 200 people have been sentenced in Pakistan alone in
the last two decades) and the article inspired someone to
deliver this to Sajid.
Not only was the paper unrepentant, it
justified the attack and republished (and once again
misinterpreted) the Mahangar headlines further provoking hatred.
It did so because it was confident that its
readership would approve.
Here lies the problem of Muslims in India.
Other than a very small secularised minority,
the community is not equipped to handle modernity and concepts
such as free speech, secularism and the rights of individuals.
Indeed, it is deeply uncomfortable with them.
A recent poll revealed that just under 90 per
cent of Mumbai’s Muslims, presumably the most progressive in the
country, rejected a secular civil code preferring instead
Shariah law, favouring polygamy, triple talaq and Islam’s
unequal inheritance laws which allow women half as much property
as they allow men.
The views of most younger and educated
Muslims and of women were also the same, in almost the same
proportion.
Thus they were silent over the criminal
attack on Sajid because it avenged the highest possible crime —
that of apostasy.
Muslims are incapable of social reform
because they do not view change from Islamic practice as reform
but as heresy.
In Turkey, the only secular Muslim nation,
reform has come over 80 years at the point of the army’s gun and
forced onto a generally unwilling population that prefers
Islamist parties.
This incapability has been understood by many
who tried to reform Indian Muslims. Sir Syed Ahmed in the 19th
century urged Muslims to take up western education, Allama Iqbal
in 1929 delivered his lectures on reconstructing the ossified
Islamic thought from within and Jinnah spoke of a secular
democracy in his new Pakistan.
All three were either ignored or
misunderstood.
Dr Rafiq Zakaria has made a bold attempt to
pull Muslims into the 21st century with his new book “Indian
Muslims: Where have they gone wrong?”
The book is a collection of his articles
dating back to the ’40s and a testament to the consistency of
his views. He was shaken and disturbed deeply by Partition,
which he opposed and which he believes is the primary reason for
the wretched state Muslims find themselves in.
He writes that the partition of India was
actually the partition of Muslims, dividing them into three
groups having no contact with one another and leaving the
largest, in India, at the mercy of Hindus.
Today, unrepresented in politics, lagging
behind in economics, massacred in Gujarat and increasingly
retreating from the state, the Muslims in India are in a
dreadful situation.
Zakaria feels that change must come to the
community urgently.
Viewing
America
Events
in the world however are taking Muslims further away from the
mainstream in India.
Muslims are furious with America for its war
on terror. Stories about Iraq, Palestine and Chechnya dominate
every Urdu newspaper’s front page daily, even in Mumbai.
Urdu newspapers struggle to take a balanced
view of the war in Kashmir. For instance, they refer to groups
active against India as “jangaz” — militants — instead of
“mujahideen” — as they are inclined to do for Muslim warriors
everywhere else in the world.
They do not appreciate that George W Bush
shut down Pakistan’s jehad in Kashmir and without the war on
terror the violence against India would be at a much higher
level.
India and Pakistan are indebted to Bush for
twisting the arms of the Pakistan army into reversing a policy
that was harming both countries, but Muslims insist on seeing
the war in civilisational terms even if it benefits them.
John Kerry is much less enthusiastic about
deploying American troops to Muslim countries and in the event
of his taking power, it is certain that US interest in Pakistan
will reduce, which in turn will result in a ratcheting up of the
Kashmir jehad.
Indians should also hope that Bush stays in
power because John Kerry has a strong support base in trade
unions and has threatened to make outsourcing of work to India
difficult for American companies.
Bush on the other hand supports outsourcing,
believing it makes US companies profitable and the economy
healthier. Indians should thus be rooting for Bush.
However, such pragmatic thought is not
possible in our emotionally charged society and both the
left-liberal section and the Muslims in general profess hatred
for America’s policies and hope Bush loses.
This year, in Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and
Delhi alone, a quarter of a million jobs will come directly from
America. These will go mainly to middle class Hindu youth who
speak English and whose cultural aspirations are to a large
extent conditioned by America.
This increasingly large group will also
favour deepening Indian ties to the US.
There will be a small number of Muslim youth
who will get these jobs, but the illiteracy of the community and
the bias against Muslims will ensure that this proportion is far
lower than it should be.
Companies placing advertisements for
recruitment with English newspapers regularly insist that these
are not published in Urdu papers.
This is compounded by the fact that Muslims
generally prefer small businesses to employment.
Former police chiefs Satish Sahney and O P
Bali tried to correct the bias of the police force by
encouraging Muslims to join. They failed because Muslims were
reluctant to take up the jobs.
Muslim
role models
There
are two outstanding Muslims in India whom the community should
emulate.
However, they are ignored. The careers and
success of Azim Premji (who says he is Indian first and
everything else including Bangalorean and Muslim later) and A P
J Abdul Kalam (who prefers Hindu spiritual literature and music)
would do any community proud.
Amongst Muslims they are not heroes because
they have de-Islamised themselves.
Even Dr Zakaria puts his elbow into the two,
writing on various occasions that they go out of their way not
be seen as Muslims. Even if it is true, why is it such a bad
thing?
Muslims have an awesome figure for emulation
in Allama Iqbal, scholar of Persian, writer of Urdu poetry,
translator of Sanskrit and expert at German and English. Iqbal
wrote of breaking out of Islam’s traditions by modernising
religious thought.
He noted that Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh)
had ossified over a thousand years and the practice of the faith
according to jurisprudence was being mistaken for the faith
itself. He offered tools for breaking out of this including
consensus (ijma) and striving (ijtihad).
The question Iqbal did not answer was: whose
consensus? The ulema’s or the elected representatives’?
Iqbal is lionised in Pakistan (where his
birthday spawns more newspaper supplements than Jinnah’s) and by
India’s Muslim elite.
He is loved not for his progressive views but
his parochial poems, especially Shikwa (Complaint) in which a
believer remonstrates with god for abandoning Muslims.
One of Urdu’s greatest poems and stirring to
hear even for non-Muslims, Shikwa celebrates the Muslim ideal of
the man-on-horseback who conquered the infidels for god and got
nothing in return.
Few have read Iqbal’s lectures on the
reconstruction of religious thought in Islam because they are so
impenetrable and intellectual. If they read him, Muslims would
be uncomfortable with his radical views.
Zakaria’s solutions
Dr Zakaria believes that Muslims must take the initiative in
mending relations with Hindus.
“They must develop more and more contacts on
a personal level with Hindus and remove their prejudices and
misinterpretations about Islam… to preserve the multi-religious
character of our country, Indian Muslims must participate in
Hindu festivals and invite Hindus to participate in Muslim
festivals.
They must generate such goodwill all around
that the differences between ‘us’ and ‘them’ disappear.”
Dr Zakaria recognises that secular Muslims
are “always apologetic about their stand” that the future lies
not in confronting Hindus but in reforms in accordance with the
times.
He notes that the Muslim fundamentalists, on
the other hand, “act boldly and aggressively.” Dr Zakaria does
not say it but this is because the fundamentalists find more
resonance in the community than the secularists, who are
rejected as preaching heresy.
Dr Zakaria also believes that till a
reconciliation happens with Pakistan, specifically a reunion of
the two countries but with sovereignty vested in both along the
EU model, this Hindu-Muslim problem will remain. In short, that
Partition is the problem and undoing it is the solution.
But is that wholly true?
Hindu distaste of Muslims is based only
partly on the fact of Partition. Largely, it is the bias
inherent in the Hindu faith that rejects those without caste.
Fifty-four years of a Constitution that
decapitates doctrinal Hinduism and instils a sense of
egalitarianism into it has not yet permeated among Hindus for
whom caste, though its practice is illegal, is still the
currency of identity.
While a joining of hands with Hindus socially
will ensure goodwill especially with the fanatics of RSS
persuasion in urban India, the average Hindu will remain distant
because his religion does not equip him for meaningful
interaction with the untouchable.
Islam
and modernity
Islam
cannot be ‘modernised’ as a way of life that is an alternative
to secular democracy.
The great Jamaat-e-Islami leader Maulana
Maudoodi invented this alternative at the same time as Arab
ideologues Hassan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb.
However states that have been raised on
Islamic constitutions have collapsed or floundered because Islam
is not equipped to manage a modern state socially or
economically or in terms of governance.
The only solution for Muslims wishing to
modernise is to dissociate faith from polity.
That means secular law and that means a
rejection of Shariah.
This will be impossible for Muslims to accept voluntarily except
at the point of a gun, as in Turkey, or through legislative
imposition, as in a secular democracy where the majority is not
inclined towards Shariah, as in India.
Muslims can forge ahead towards modernity
through reform that is imposed by the state, perhaps even
leaving behind Hindus.
Just as the agnostics Nehru and Ambedkar
dragged an unwilling, upper-caste Congress into reforming Hindu
law, so too must parliament reform, even by force, Muslim law.
Just as most Hindus do not appreciate the
meaning of the Indian constitution, which bans the practice of
doctrinal Hinduism, most Muslims will not appreciate, much less
understand, the need for reform that takes them away from their
interpretation of religion.
To them, it must be explained that the
legitimacy of their beloved Iqbal’s ijma is for the consensus of
the elected representative and not the scholar of god.
Indian Muslims: Where have they gone wrong by
Dr Rafiq Zakaria is published by Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan.
Priced at Rs 495, the 565-page will be released this week.
