Pity the nation that can't defend liberty

Congress's no-limit, interest-free, Minority Card

(It's the world's best credit card, issued by Vote Bank of India!)

Nothing could be more telling about the tarnished and tattered state of our secular republic than the Darul Uloom Deoband vice-chancellor, Maulana Abul Qasim, describing Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot petitioning the Union government to stop Salman Rushdie from visiting India as "a victory for democracy".

According to Maulana Qasim, "democracy is alive in India" because Gehlot has painted a grim picture of how mobs will run riot and law and order shall collapse if Rushdie were to attend the Jaipur Literary Festival; hence, he should be barred from entering the country of his origin.

Deoband’s chief maulana wants Rushdie’s entry ‘prohibited forever’ as demanded ‘by so many people.’ That’s balderdash. The ‘so many people’ he refers to are mullahs and those who are prone to running riot over bogus grievances and spurious issues. The vast majority of Indians, irrespective of faith, is not in the least bothered and would, if asked, wholeheartedly support the idea of Rushdie visiting this country whenever he wishes.

Not so the Congress. It can’t resist the temptation of seizing an opportunity to indulge in crass Muslim vote-bank politics when it senses one. In fact, there’s reason to believe that the Congress has a hand in manufacturing this mullah-led demand and the threat of violence to keep Rushdie away from India. It’s of a piece with the party’s electoral strategy in Uttar Pradesh premised on the cynical belief that pandering to the belligerence of mullahs and their ilk will fetch the party a rich harvest of Muslim votes.

First we had senior Congress leader and law minister Salman Khurshid brazenly promising that his party will increase the minority quota, which is euphemism for Muslim reservation, from 4.5% to 9%. That pledge fetched the Election Commission’s ire but the message has not been lost. Then we had Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh seeking to reopen the bogus debate over the Batla House encounter of 2008, blaming the prime minister and the home minister for not ordering a judicial inquiry as demanded by the malcontent of Azamgarh who are either SIMI or IM supporters if not closet activists.

Simultaneously, the mullahs of Deoband suddenly remembered Salman Rushdie — all these years they were not offended by his many visits to India, including his attending the Jaipur Literary Festival in 2007, but have discovered merit in blocking it now as Uttar Pradesh prepares to go to polls. Not surprisingly, the refrain was taken up by fanatics in Rajasthan where the Congress is in power. We haven’t heard a whimper from anywhere else in the country.

For the Congress, the minority card is the most powerful credit card in the world. It has no upper limit; it does not bounce; and it comes interest-free. Little wonder that the party has been using this card for the past six decades, encashing votes by pretending to be the sole protector of Muslim sentiments and sensitivities.

Sadly, there’s little realisation that, in the process, India’s Muslims have been further ghettoised, left to wallow in imagined slight and all-consuming denial. It should be of no comfort to the community that threats of violence generate fear, not respect; nor should it mistake the Congress’s cynical politics of appeasement as the route to social development and economic progress of Muslims.

The reality, tragically, is to the contrary. And so we have mullahs threatening violence and the Congress capitulating to their demands in pursuit of its policy of limitless appeasement. Rajiv Gandhi’s government banned The Satanic Verses even before Ayatollah Khomeini issued his infamous fatwa. The Shah Bano judgment was subverted by abusing the Congress’s parliamentary majority. In more recent times, Denmark’s prime minister was asked to call off his scheduled visit to India lest it upset Muslim sensitivities allegedly inflamed over cartoons nobody had seen in this country. And Shimon Peres was ‘discouraged’ from attending the annual HT Summit lest the presence of Israel’s President on India’s soil upset Muslims.

Salman Rushdie may yet visit India and make an appearance at the Jaipur Literary Festival. But that’s really inconsequential. What is of consequence is the amazing audacity of mullahs who now want to have a say on who gets to visit India and who doesn’t, who should live here and who shouldn’t, and the astounding willingness of the Congress to comply to their outrageously vile demands. That way lies the path to disaster.

This is no longer about Salman Rushdie or his Satanic Verses. It’s about what remains of our secular republic.

[Column in DNA, January 20, 2012.]

Biblioclasm now equated with iconoclasm

When books are burned in the end people will be burned too -- Heinrich Heine.



Nazis burning books at Bebelplatz, Berlin, April 1933

Every visit to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem has been a revelation for me. The sprawling Holocaust memorial, perched between two hills, brings alive like no book or film can the soul-searing horrors of what the Nazis did to the Jews. But it’s impossible to absorb it all in one go; the vile deeds were far too many. On each visit I have discovered something that I missed the last time I walked through, with leaden feet, the zig-zag maze of the Holocaust relived.

And so it is that on my last visit to Yad Vashem I stumbled upon, quite literally, a pile of books on the stone flagged floor of the memorial. The display marks an important milestone in the transmogrification of the Nazis into beasts: The burning of books that were considered 'Un-German' and the cleansing of libraries with fire.

That was in April 1933 and Hitler was yet to start implementing his 'final solution'. But that act was a precursor to what was to follow. Heinrich Heine, the celebrated German critic and poet, had written in early-19th century that "When books are burned in the end people will be burned too." His words proved to be eerily prophetic some 100 years later.

Last October, on a wind-swept grey afternoon, I stood at Bebelplatz in Berlin, in front of St Hedwig's Cathedral, trying to recreate in my mind the April evening in 1933 when students, enamoured of Hitler's demagoguery, had gathered there and made a bonfire of books after ransacking one of the largest libraries. The building still stands, magnificent yet melancholic, at the edge of the square. The spot where the bonfire blazed now has a plaque recording the shameful event.

Joseph Goebbels, spitting fire and brimstone, had egged on the vandals: "No to decadence and moral corruption! Yes to decency and morality in family and state! I consign to the flames the writings of Heinrich Mann, Ernst Glaser, Erich Kastner... The era of extreme Jewish intellectualism is now at an end. The breakthrough of the German revolution has again cleared the way on the German path..."

As we all know, that path led to history's most hideous mass murder. Even suckling infants were not spared. Heinrich Heine foresaw the crematoriums at Dachau and other concentration camps. We also know that that the path ultimately led to the destruction of the Nazis and all that was glorified by Goebbels. Not very far from Bebelplatz lies the bunker in which Hitler committed suicide.

To be fair, the Nazis weren't the first to seek to reduce to ashes, albeit in vain, ideas and opinions that militated against their ideology. Human history is replete with tales of books being burned by rulers, conquerors, dictators and men of faith in robes.

The Qing dynasty would routinely burn books; modern day rulers of China continue with the practice. The Bishop of Alexandria ordered monks to burn everything that remotely questioned doctrinaire faith; a mammoth library stands there now. Bakhtiyar Khalji sacked Nalanda and set fire to its library which is believed to have burned for three months; the ancient university will soon rise from the ruins that remain.

In more recent times, on January 14, 1989, copies of Salman Rushdie's novel, The Satanic Verses, were consigned to the flames at a protest in Bradford. That act of biblioclasm drew attention to a book that few had read till then, triggering a fatwa (issued by none less than Ayatollah Khomeini) demanding the author's head for which a reward of $1 million was offered. India notoriously became the first country to ban the book.

The abiding shame of that act still hangs heavy on us, partially redeemed by the NDA Government's decision to issue Rushdie a PIO card which allows him to visit the country of his origin without any let or hindrance. But shame is alien to those who live in the joyless world of fatwas and decrees; it means nothing to those who wear intolerance on their sleeves.

Hence the demand by Deobandi muftis that Rushdie shouldn't be allowed to enter India. Strangely, the demand continues to find a resonance among those who pose as 'liberals' and preach tolerance. In the land of Charvak, biblioclasm is now equated with iconoclasm.

Which takes me back to where I began: Yad Vashem. As name after name is read out of 1.5 million Jewish children killed in the Holocaust in the unlit Hall of Remembrance where a single flickering flame is reflected 1.5 million times, I once again ask myself: How could they do this?

Stepping out and walking down the Avenue of the Righteous Among the Nations, shaded by cypress trees, each honouring a non-Jew who, like Oscar Schindler, defied the Nazis, my spirits lift. All is not lost in this wondrous world of ours.

Books burned by Nazis, a display at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.

(MidDay, January 14, 2011.)

For women, eyes must be covered

The joyless world of Deobandi fatwas

Is it necessary for a woman’s eyes to be covered while in observance of purdah? Is it necessary for her hands to be covered while in observance of purdah? Is it necessary for her feet to be covered while in observance of purdah?

The best purdah for a woman is that the palms and no part of her body and adornments are exposed, ie, the whole body is covered from head to toe. If it is possible to see through the purdah, then the eyes also should be covered... (Fatwa: 1587/1330=L/1429)

Can women wear gents clothes? Is it permissible for women to wear jeans and T-shirts?

There are some Hadith that relate curse for such women who adopt the resemblance of men. Therefore, wearing clothes of men is not correct for women. (Fatwa: 771/730=B)

Can women use perfume or ittar because they get more sweating (pasina)? Can they use or Islam doesn’t give permission to use?

Women can use perfume provided they are not passing by non-mahram in this state. While going out of house using aromatic perfume is not lawful. One should avoid using such perfumes which contain alcohol. (Fatwa: 604/L=212/tl=1431)

Is it allowed for a Muslim woman to cut and colour her hair for her husband? Is it allowed for a Muslim woman to do such style as Western woman for her husband?

It is unlawful and haraam for a woman to cut the hair of her head (even) though for her husband. But, she can colour it with colours other than black. The dye should not be thick having layers which may prevent water to reach to the surface of the hair. Imitating the Western-styled women and adopting their resemblance in matters against sharia’h is unlawful. It is not lawful even for husband. (Fatwa: 1347/1347=M/1430)

I would like to know if it is permissible for a Muslimah to work as a translator for a tribunal.

It is not a good thing for women to do jobs in offices. They will have to face strange men (non-mahram) though in veil. She will have to talk and deal with others which is fitna (evil). A father is committed to provide maintenance to his daughter and a husband is asked to provide maintenance to his wife. So, there is no need for women to do jobs which always pose harm and mischief. (Fatwa: 691/636=D/1429)

Can Muslim women in India do Government or private jobs? Shall their salary be halaal or haraam?

It is unlawful for Muslim women to do job in Government or private institutions where men and women work together and women have to talk with men frankly and without veil. (Fatwa: 577/381/L=1431)

These are but a few fatwas issued by the learned muftis, the ulema, the scholars who teach young men with impressionable minds the real, true meaning of Islam and how it governs the daily lives of the faithful. And they have been issued by Darul Uloom, Deoband. More precisely, they have been issued by Darul Ifta, which according to this Islamic seminary at Deoband in Uttar Pradesh, the second largest in the world after Cairo’s Al Azhar, “is one of the most significant departments of Darul Uloom” to which “people from across the world pose questions on religious and social matters”.

We are further informed that “Darul Uloom has issued fatwas from its inception but when questions started coming in bulk and it was hard for the teachers to reply them in their part time, Darul Uloom set up this department (Darul Ifta) in 1892”. Darul Ifta has so far issued “more than seven lakh fatwas”. The department claims, and we have no reason to disbelieve the learned men (they have to be men as women are not deemed to be learned enough to decide on theological issues; they can merely ask and must abide by the response) that fatwas issued by Darul Uloom are held in “high esteem in and outside the country; besides the masses, the law courts in the country also honour them and consider them decisive”. In brief, they are not mere advisories but binding on Muslims. At least that’s what those issuing the fatwas believe, and would like us to believe.

It would be facetious to suggest and erroneous to presume that the more than seven lakh fatwas issued by Darul Uloom, Deoband, pertain only to how women should deport themselves and live their lives according to the tenets of Islam. From Islamic beliefs to world religions, from deviant sects and groups to innovations and customs, from the Quran to the Hadith and Sunnah, from purity to prayer, from death and funeral to business and industry, from international relations to penal code, and of course women’s issues, Darul Uloom, Deoband, has a firm view on almost every imaginable aspect of our lives, including whether it’s alright to use a razor to shave the most intimate parts of our body.

Seeking guidance from Darul Uloom, Deoband, a person asks: “Is it halaal to take a policy in LIC according to sharia’h in Islam?” The learned muftis answer: “LIC policy is unlawful due to being based on interest and gambling.” (Fatwa: 565/565/M=1431) Another person seeking enlightenment writes in: “At present I am working in a private limited company as an accountant. I want to know about bank jobs. Can a Muslim take a job in a bank or insurance company?” The scholars provide their considered reply: “The job of writing and calculating interest based work in conventional banks and insurance companies is not lawful for a Muslim.” (Fatwa: 466/466/M=1431) “Dear mufti sahab,” a person who wants further clarification writes, “Is it allowed in Islam to work as a life insurance agent?” Firm and unrelenting, mufti sahab sternly replies: “Life insurance contains interest as well as gambling and both these things are unlawful as per Quran and Hadith. Therefore, working as agent of life insurance is helping in sin, so it is prohibited by sharia’h.”(Fatwa: 762/571=L/1430)

Faced with a court order, a person seeks guidance: “I had a factory which was closed down because of sealing in Delhi. Now the court has ordered me to pay compensation (on which they have charged interest) to the non-Muslim labourers who worked there. Since my financial position is not very good, I would like to ask whether I can pay this amount from the bank interest that has accumulated in my bank account or out of zakaat?” To this profound query the muftis reply: “Interest amount of bank or zakaat cannot be given to non-Muslim labourers.” (Fatwa: 1178/1178=M/1430)

Such then are the views of Darul Uloom, Deoband, which are assiduously inculcated among those who study there. These views are then propagated at the tens of thousands of madarsas where Deobandi mullahs are employed to teach young children. It would be worthwhile to remember that the Government of secular India spends taxpayers’ money on funding these madarsas.

Proud to sing Vande Mataram

There is understandable disquiet over the resolution adopted by Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind during its 30th general session at Deoband from November 1-3. “The grand session of Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind while expressing concern over communal hatred and violence exploiting the issue of Vande Mataram, condemns the provocative activities in this connection,” the resolution says, “We can love and serve our country, but cannot elevate it to the status of Allah, the only one worshipped by Muslims… The fatwa of Darul Uloom (Deoband) is correct… This house demands that the issue of Vande Mataram not be deliberately raised for causing communal discord and threat to law and order.”

Not be deliberately raised? This is truly astounding. Without any provocation whatsoever, Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind adopts a resolution endorsing a fatwa against Vande Mataram issued by Darul Uloom, Deoband, and urging India’s Muslims not to sing the National Song lest it defile Islam. Yet it wants the resolution to be seen as a warning to those “causing communal discord and threat to law and order” — a not-so-thinly veiled reference to Hindus — by “deliberately” raising the “issue of Vande Mataram”.

The resolution apparently refers to a fatwa reportedly issued in 2006 by Darul Uloom, Deoband, instructing Muslims not to participate in the celebrations planned by the Ministry of Human Resource Development to mark the centenary of Congress adopting Vande Mataram as the National Song on September 7, 1906, as it would require the singing of Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay’s soul-stirring immortal lines. The mullahs of Deoband need not have worried. Whoever had given the idea to Mr Arjun Singh had got his date wrong. The planned celebrations turned into a fiasco after historians pointed out that the Congress never met in September 1906, so it could not have possibly adopted Vande Mataram as the National Song on that date.

On that occasion, too, Indians, including Muslims, were outraged by the Deobandi fatwa reported by media. But was there really a fatwa? On September 4, CNN-IBN reported that no such fatwa had been issued by Darul Uloom, Deoband. According to this news channel, the seminary wanted to “steer clear of the issue” and insisted that it had no “role to play” in the controversy. Darul Uloom, Deoband “categorically stated it had not issued any fatwa on Vande Mataram, nor had it directed Muslim children to skip classes on September 7”. After the mandatory finger-pointing at “communal forces”, Mohatamim Maulana Margoobur Rehman told CNN-IBN, “Darul Uloom is being unnecessarily dragged into the Vande Mataram controversy.”

The official website of Darul Uloom, Deoband, does not list the edict instructing Muslims not to sing Vande Mataram which has been cited by Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind. But the website of Darul Ifta, the fatwa division of Darul Uloom, Deoband, lists a fatwa (385/358-B/1430) dated April 7, 2009, which says Muslim children “should avoid hymning it (Vande Mataram)” as it is “against our creed of tauheed”. A classic example of taqiya? Was the April 7, 2009 fatwa meant to set the stage for the Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind’s November resolution? Why was it issued after Deoband vigorously distanced itself from the “Vande Mataram controversy”? And, what prompted Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind to revive the rancid debate over whether it’s haram for Muslims to sing Vande Mataram? Was the purpose to provoke a backlash and then claim victimhood?

In a sense, any discussion on the repudiation of Indian nationhood by Islamic fanatics who view India’s National Song not as a celebration of the concept of motherland as defined by our civilisational ethos but as Hindu idolatory is meaningless. There’s nothing startlingly new about the vitriolic denunciation of Vande Mataram by Maulana Mahmood Madani and his ilk who believe “bringing women into the mainstream will create social problems and issues including their security”, want India’s Muslims to “don their Islamic identity”, say salam instead of namaste and live in a joyless, dark world of ignorance where sharia’h will apply to girls as young as 10 years old.

We have heard similar denunciation of Vande Mataram with the explicit purpose of hurting the sensitivities of India’s majority Hindu community and rejecting India as a nation earlier too. And the attack has not been restricted to our National Song. Maulana Syed Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi (better known as Ali Mian) of Darul Uloom Nadwatul Ulama, the other famous Islamic seminary, was unrestrained by such considerations as Hindu sentiments.

“Cow-slaughter in India is a ‘great Islamic practice’, said Mujaddid Alaf Saani II. This was his farsightedness that he described cow-slaughter in India as a ‘great Islamic practice’. It may not be so in other places. But it is definitely a great Islamic act in India because the cow is worshipped in India,” Ali Mian said in an address to a congregation of Indian and Pakistani ulema in Jeddah on April 3, 1986. Ali Mian and his fellow ulema on the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board, which lacks legitimacy yet holds Muslims in thraldom, were to later issue a fatwa against the singing of Vande Mataram by Muslims.

Issuing fatwas against Vande Mataram can be traced to Congress’s willing capitulation in the face of opposition by those who place faith over nation. In 1923, the Congress met at Kakinada and Maulana Mohamed Ali was brought to the venue in a procession led by a raucous band. As was the practice, the session was scheduled to begin with a rendition of Vande Mataram by Pandit Vishnu Digambar Paluskar. When Pandit Paluskar rose to sing what had by then become the anthem of India’s freedom movement, Maulana Mohamed Ali protested, saying music was a “taboo in Islam” and, therefore, singing Vande Mataram would “hurt” his religious sensitiveness. Pandit Paluskar retorted that the Congress session was an open gathering and not a religious congregation; and since Maulana Mohamed Ali had not found the band that led his procession as “taboo in Islam”, he could not object to the singing of Vande Mataram. He then went on to sing Bankim’s composition which Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi associated with “the purest national spirit”.

It is this national spirit which bothers those among us who are loath to see their identity linked to the identity of India. At the far end we have the likes of Maulana Mahmood Madani with their separatist agenda, but that does not mean every Muslim is persuaded by the Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind’s bunkum. My respect for Mr Shahid Siddiqui has gone up by leaps and bounds for thumbing his nose at the mullahs and declaring that he not only sings Vande Mataram but sings it with pride. Mr Siddiqui is not in a minority of one — there are many Muslims who will lend their voice to him because they are proud to be Indian.

Deoband fatwa Website goes offline

Kanchan Gupta / Note / May 13, 2009.

In my post of Tuesday, April 07, 2009, headlined 'Taliban in India: They are already here!', I had reproduced some of the fatwas listed at Darul Uloom Deoband's fatwa Website, wwww.darulifta-deoband.org, designed and maintained by a Muslim living in the US -- or so the site claimed. The Darul Ifta Deoband site was hyperlinked to Darul Uloom Deoband's official Website www.darululoom-deoband.com. Madarsas which are inspired by Darul Uloom Deoband, and are known as 'Deobandi madarsas', are the most prolific breeders of Taliban in Pakistan.
I have just received an e-mail alerting me that the Darul Ifta Deoband Website cannot be accessed. I tried to access it, but the browser kept on returning a 'not found' message.
It is possible that the site has been shut down for routine maintenance. But it is also possible that Darul Uloom Deoband has decided not to place its fatwas in the public domain, lest others get to know of what it has to say about women's 'place' in society, the 'duties' of a good Muslim, the 'importance' of covering a woman in a burqa before letting her step out, if at all, of her home, and other such theological issues of great importance.
Just in case the latter is true, I have decided to paste below a statement from the main Darul Uloom Deoband Website, before it 'disappears', denying that the great centre of Islamic learning ever issued a fatwa against cow slaughter. It may be recalled that 'secular' media and their patrons in India's political establishment had gone to town claiming that Darul Uloom Deoband had issued a fatwa against cow slaughter. Here goes the Darul Uloom Deoband statement:

News (Darul Uloom - Deoband)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Darul Uloom Denies the Fatwa About Cow Slaughter Published in Newspapers


Darul Uloom Deoband: 26/04/1429 H

Mufti Habibur Rahman Sahib, the head of Darul-Ifta Darul Uloom Deoband, has refused explicitly the so-called fatwa published in newspapers explaining that he had issued no such kind of Fatwa which pronounced slaughtering cow, selling and eating its meat as haram.
The Mufti Sahib declared the news published in Dainik Jagran on 26 April 2008 as baseless and false.
Making it clear, he said that a person from Muzuffarnagar (UP) had asked over the phone weather the act of those slaughtering cow secretly and eating it was Islamically lawful or unlawful. He replied him over the phone saying: "In the light of the shari'ah, eating meat of cow is permissible but people of the States where cow slaughter is banned should avoid it as slaughtering cow and eating its meat stealthily is unsuitable and wrong."
He said that the mediapersons should have rightly understood the context of my reply but they instead misinterpreted it and blamed that slaughtering cow and selling its meat was haram. They overlooked the legal prohibition to which I referred.
Actually, it is the habit of the media persons not to present news in its original context but they add to it ifs and buts on their own. This mentality of them is reflected here as well. I request them to present the news in a right way and also mention the legal prohibitions according to which it is absolutely wrong to violate the law; slaughtering cow and selling its meat is legally unlawful.

Issued by:

Office of Mohtamim

Darul Uloom Deoband.

Fleeing Swatis describe horrific scenes

Tens of thousands of people are fleeing Swat Valley, escaping the horrors inflicted by the Taliban who have been enforcing 'true Islam' in areas taken over by them with the help of the gun and terror.

The joyless world, bleak and dark, created by these erstwhile students of Deobandi madarsas, is what is upheld as the cherished desire of those who believe in radical Islam's slogan, "Democracy is the problem. Islam is the solution!" Here is a report filed by AFP from Peshawar:

PESHAWAR: Shop owner Saeed Khan has already buried one child killed in fighting between the Taliban and government forces in northwest Pakistan. He cannot bear to lose another.
So the 50-year-old bundled his wife, son and daughter onto a bus in the Taliban-infested town of Mingora in the Swat valley and hurried to the city of Peshawar, hoping for a future free from further bloodshed.
‘I lost my son, who was a police officer in Swat, in a suicide attack in Mingora early this year. I buried him in front of my house,’ Khan told AFP, tears rolling down his cheeks.
‘I don’t want to dig graves for my daughter and son in Mingora. That is why I left the area... His death broke me. Tell me where should I go and from whom should I seek justice?’
Local officials say more than 40,000 men, women and children have packed up and fled Mingora since Tuesday, fearing that Pakistan’s military could unleash a fresh ground and air assault against Taliban fighters.
The bedraggled refugees, some leading goats and cattle through the streets, are seeking safety for their loved ones, as the Taliban claimed to control 90 per cent of the former ski resort and tourist getaway, once favoured by Westerners.
‘I am immediately leaving the city with my wife, mother and four kids,’ said taxi driver Ali Rehman, 46.
‘I don’t really know my destination and destiny. My family and I need protection.’
At the bus stop in Peshawar — the capital of the North West Frontier Province — exhausted and anxious people told stories of horror as they poured out of vehicles carrying old bags, blankets and bundles of clothes.
Zarina Begum, 40, pleaded for help as she staggered off a bus.
‘A mortar hit my house and as a result, I lost one of my eyes. Please take me to hospital, I want medical treatment,’ Zarina begged.
‘They (Taliban) killed my husband, they slit his throat after accusing him of spying... I escaped Swat because I don’t want my son to be killed under the same circumstances. I don’t want to receive his decapitated body.’
The government had hoped that a peace deal agree in February would placate hardliners trying to impose a repressive brand of Islam, but instead the deal appears to be in tatters.
Clashes have flared in recent days throughout Swat, where wealthy Pakistanis and foreigners used to enjoy the breathtaking mountain scenery from plush hilltop hideaways, or cruise down the ski slopes.
Now, gunfire rings out in Mingora, where armed Taliban patrol the streets.
‘I’m really scared of going to Swat. Whenever I see Taliban, they look like vampires,’ said 25-year-old shop keeper Salman Mujtaba, who lost family members in a suicide attack near Mingora.
‘I will never ever go back to Swat. It has lost its beauty.’

Taliban in India: They are already here!

Forget Swat, fear Taliban amid us
Kanchan Gupta

There is, we are told, disquiet among Muslims over Justice Markandey Katju’s comment, “We don’t want to have Taliban in the country”, while rejecting the petition filed by Mohammad Salim, a student of Nirmala Convent Higher Secondary School in Madhya Pradesh, for quashing the school’s regulation requiring students to be clean shaven. The student’s counsel, Mr BA Khan, a retired judge, argued that Article 25 of the Constitution guaranteed protection to Salim to pursue his religious practice of keeping a beard and the school regulation was violative of the right to freedom of religion. He said forcing the student to shave his beard was against “his religious conscience, belief and custom of his family”. Mr Khan, who made an elaborate case linking the student’s faith and his beard, does not sport one himself. This prompted Justice Katju to point out, “But you don’t sport a beard!”

While rejecting Mohammad Salim’s petition, and rightly so, the Supreme Court bench made two points. First, if Salim found the school’s rules abhorrent and unacceptable, he could join some other institution. “But you can’t ask the school to change the rules for you.” Second, “If there are rules, you have to obey. You can’t say that I will not wear a uniform I will (wear) only a burqa.” Justice Katju’s comment, “We don’t want to have Taliban in the country”, was presumably directed against those who wish to imitate the Taliban and their subversion of the secular state and destruction of civil society in the name of practising Islam and enforcing Islamic injunctions.

This week we had a glimpse of what that means, thanks to a two-minute video shot with a cellphone in Pakistan’s Swat Valley and smuggled out by those who are alarmed by the prospect of the Taliban’s ruthless enforcement of “religious conscience, belief and custom”. The video showed a 17-year-old girl, a resident of Kabal, being held face down on the ground by men while a Taliban commander flogged her with a leather strap. The girl kept on pitifully begging for mercy and screaming in pain — “Leave me for the moment... you can beat me again later...” But this did not have the slightest impact on her tormentors: The flogging continued as a large group of men stood around, watching intently at this public display of Islamic fervour.

The girl was punished, the Taliban claimed, in accordance with shari’ah for stepping out of her house without being escorted by a male family member. But this may not be the real reason: Another account said she was falsely accused of violating shari’ah after she refused to marry a local Taliban commander.

The public flogging of the teenaged girl has revived memories of the Taliban executing Zarmeena, a mother of seven children, in Kabul’s sports stadium on November 17, 1999. In more recent times, two women were executed by the Taliban outside Ghazni city in central Afghanistan in July last year. In Swat, too, women have been punished in a similar manner. On November 26, 2008, Bakht Zeba, a former member of the Swat district council, was dragged out of her home by the Taliban and brutally assaulted before being shot dead. Her crime, according to shari’ah as laid down by the Taliban: She criticised the ban on girls attending school.

The global outrage over the public flogging of the teenaged girl is believed to have ‘shaken’ the so-called civilian Government of Pakistan into ordering an inquiry. Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, to whom many jihadis owes a huge debt of gratitude for interceding on their behalf and ordering their release from prison when Gen Pervez Musharraf was in power, has tauntingly dared Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari to arrest the barbarians of Swat and put them behind bars.

That, of course, is a tall order for an effete regime which shamelessly capitulated to the Taliban’s jihadi terror in Swat Valley and signed a ‘peace agreement’ with Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi, one of the many organisations that are collectively referred to as the ‘Pakistani Taliban’, on February 16. As part of that deal, mullahs have been allowed to impose shari’ah and set up Darul Qaza or qazi courts, replacing the Pakistani justice system, such as it is.

Ironically, the ‘peace agreement’ has been endorsed by the US in preparation of President Barack Hussein Obama opening negotiations with the ‘good Taliban’. Just how good the ‘good Taliban’ is has been shockingly exposed, though not for the first time, by the smuggled video of a teenaged girl being flogged. For those who may still nurse doubts, here’s some more visual evidence: The photograph published along with this article shows a young Taliban fighter with the hands of a man that were chopped off for an unstated crime. In the land of shari’ah, these would be considered no less than trophies to be proud of.

It is this Taliban and Talibani mindset that we should be scared of; both are already there in our midst. Mohammad Salim is not alone in wanting to emulate those who flaunt their “religious conscience, belief and custom” to the exclusion of a secular state’s enlightenment. What the Taliban are practising in Swat Valley and in the wastelands of Afghanistan is being preached by mullahs in India. And they are doing so openly. A casual reading of the fatwas listed on Darul Uloom Deoband’s Website, http://www.darulifta-deoband.org, will prove this point. Here are some randomly selected examples:

Fatwa 1587/1330=L/1429: “The best purdah for woman is that the palms and no part of her body and adornments is exposed, ie, the whole body is covered from head to toe. If it is possible to see through the purdah, then the eyes also should be covered...”

Fatwa 1141/1141=M/1429: Family planning is haram and unlawful in Islam. You should apprise your wife of the commandment of shari’ah...”

Fatwa 691/636=D/1429: It is not a good thing for women to do jobs in offices. They will have to face strange men (non-mahram) though in veil. She will have to talk and deal with each other which are the things of fitna (evils).”

Fatwa 1386/227=TL/1429: “It is unlawful for women to go out after applying perfume.”

From here to chopping off the thumbs of women who use nail varnish is a very small step.

The Pioneer | Wednesday, April 8, 2009 | Editorial Page Main Article

Islamofascism, not Islamophobia, is the problem

Our liberty and future are at stake
The resolution adopted by Muslim theologians representing the various schools of Islam at the All-India Anti-terrorism Conference organised by Darul Uloom, Deoband, ‘denouncing’ terrorism but condoning radical Islam’s ghastly excesses, apart from remaining silent on Islamist terrorism in India which continues to extract a terrible price, is of a piece with the Observatory Report on Islamophobia released by the Organisation of Islamic Conference at its recent meeting in Dakar, Senegal. Both documents seek to justify manufactured Muslim rage and lay the blame for the resultant death and destruction at the doors of everybody else but Muslims.
It is ironical that Darul Uloom, Deoband, should have taken it upon itself to preach to others the virtues of tolerance — Deobandis are known for neither tolerating others or their faith nor allowing Muslims the freedom to subscribe to modernism and its attendant values. Indeed, Deobandi madarsas at home and abroad, especially in Pakistan, are known to breed Islamofascists whose dark thoughts and darker deeds generate Islamophobia against which the OIC has demanded an international law. Of course, Islamofascism must remain unrestrained and Islamofascists must be allowed the right to practice their ideology of hate. To contest this would amount to Islamophobia, and Islamophobes, as we have now been told, have no right to exist. So, like the proverbial lamb, we should meekly surrender to our slaughter. The least we can do is believe the bogus declaration issued by mullahs who gathered at Darul Uloom, Deoband.
Here’s a confession: There was a time of innocence when I believed in the thesis that there is more than one Islam. There were those with whom you could swap ideas, share jokes and even the cup that cheers. A decade later, during which time I spent three years in Cairo and travelled more than once into the heart of Islam — well, almost, since non-Muslims are not allowed beyond Jeddah, the gateway to Mecca and Medina — I stand converted to the view that any talk of there being a moderate Islam or Islam as a religion of peace merely because of the salutation sa’laam is so much bunkum.
In any event, the ummah sees Islam as a religion that demands absolute submission, which is not really the same as a religion that is predicated on peace and equality. And although the Quran does not stress on compulsion, it does not overflow with kindness towards those who do not submit to god’s will either. The best they can hope for is to be protected by a treaty (dhimmah), which in this day and age would mean unlimited appeasement, and the privileges of the dhimmi are purchased by paying jiziya apart from humiliating conditions of subservience, for instance communal budgeting and a ‘Muslim first’ policy, as is being done in our country.
The manufactured rage over Pope Benedictine’s comments at a German university about how the Sword of Islam cleared the way for Islam’s march beyond Arabia — he was quoting from an obscure Byzantine text — revived memories of the late Aurobindo Ghosh (he spent his last years waging an intellectual battle against Islamofascism from his perch in Texas) and his painstaking research to prove that Islam and peace never co-existed; that the sword of Islam is as much a reality today as it was in the distant past. In a sense, he was right, as much as the Byzantine text the Pope quoted is correct in pitilessly stating a fact that we tend to overlook in our zeal to draw distinctions between moderate and fanatical Islam to cover up for the crimes of the latter more than anything else.
Indeed, India’s history records this fact in the most lurid colours. The mass slaughter of Hindu men and enslavement of Hindu women and children, the destruction of Hindu antiquities and temples (of which the best examples are Somnath, Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura), the brutal efforts to efface Hindu tradition and the rapacious means adopted to expand the frontiers of Islamic rule — Jadunath Sarkar and RC Majumdar have chronicled how Muslim invaders, and later those who sat on the masnad of Delhi, were relentlessly engaged in waging jihad against Hindus — are too well-known to require elaboration.
The bloodletting in Jammu & Kashmir, the ethnic cleansing of the Valley to lay the foundation of Nizam-e-Mustafa, the bombings in Mumbai and elsewhere, the persecution of Hindus in Bangladesh and Malaysia by preachers of fanatical Islam who have now come to dominate the centrestage of politics in those countries and the pathetic, craven approach of accommodation and concession adopted by the political class of India which was, and continues to be, reluctant to confront the truth, should fashion any honest critique of Islamism and highlight its fascist character. This is not about indulging in Islamophobia, which so agitates the OIC and its cheerleaders, but about coming to grips with the true dimensions of Islamofascism, which should be of over-riding concern for those who believe in freedom and cherish the values of modernism that collectively form the foundation of free and plural societies.
Yes, there will be strident criticism and staunch opposition to any attempt to expose Islamofascism for what it is. And the most strident criticism and the staunchest opposition will not come from the OIC and the mullahs of Darul Uloom, Deoband, but from those who wilfully ignore facts to foist fiction which encourages bigoted hate mongers to typecast those who are appalled by Islamofascism as Islamophobes. The protest will primarily come from two quarters:

• The Lib-Left intelligentsia, which continues to labour under the self-perpetuating myth that all of Islam is a religion of peace and only an insignificant, fringe minority is to be blamed for distorting the great faith that was born in the sterile sands of Arabia; and,
• The so-called moderate Muslims who till now have skilfully used doublespeak to position themselves as representatives of the ummah, more so in liberal democracies. Their status is now seriously threatened by those who have no hesitation in acknowledging the true nature of Islam both as a faith and a weapon of subjugation.

Those who believe in liberty and freedom of thought need not fear either. Being charged with Islamophobia is a small price to pay for securing our future.

April 30, 2008.