But despite the gloom that surrounds Muslims today, they should at least debate the state UCC, for the simple reason that it might have some positives to offer. It is along expected lines that conservative organizations like the Jamiat Ulama e Hind would reject the UCC by calling it anti-Sharia and against the religious beliefs of Muslims. But the silence amongst the liberal and progressive Muslims on the issue is baffling, to say the least. Their silence only lends credibility to the right-wing claim that all Muslims think alike when it comes to religious issues; thereby erasing the boundary between orthodoxy and dissent within the community.

This is not to suggest the UCC in its current form is beyond criticism. Indeed, its most draconian provision is the directive to register live-in relationships which directly negates the right to privacy. As others have pointed out, this provision might lead to harassment of young couples by the police. However, this is a concern for all religious communities, especially the young people. In this article, I want to focus only on those aspects which will impact the Muslim community.

Among the provisions of the UCC that will directly impact Muslims are property rights, inheritance, divorce, child marriage, polygamy and halala. Let us see how changes in these practices will specifically affect Muslims.

Property rights: The UCC gives equal rights to men and women in the parental as well as ancestral property. As per the Sharia, women are only entitled to half the share of men.

Inheritance: Muslim spouses, sons and daughters are now equal inheritors of the deceased parents’ property. As per the Sharia law, a Muslim could only bequeath one-third of the property to whom he or she wished. According to the UCC, there is no limit and the parents are free to give property to children by executing a Will.

Divorce: As per the Sharia, only husbands have the right to divorce. The most that women can do is to ask for Khula which can be denied by the husband. The UCC empowers women to initiate divorce proceedings by accessing the courts, a right which has been available to women of other religious communities since decades.

Child marriage, polygamy and halala: The UCC has completely done away with these antediluvian practices. The Sharia, on the other hand, provided religious justification for all these practices. It argued that child marriage is Islamic as it is legitimated by the practice of the prophet himself. Clearly, their view run contrary to the recently enacted POCSO Act, which makes sex with a girl below 18 years of age as statutory rape. The UCC has made 18 and 21 as the minimum of age of marriage for girls and boys, respectively, thereby making child marriage illegal. This is not the place to get into statistical arguments over which community has the most child marriages. The fact is that child marriages exist within the Muslim community too and that has detrimental effects on the physiology and psychology of the child.

Similarly, polygamy and halala have been outlawed by the Uttarakhand UCC. Though it is known that Hindus have more polygamous unions as compared to Muslims, let us not forget that such unions have debilitating effects on Muslim women. Its eradication, therefore, should be welcomed first and foremost by women themselves. The UCC does away with the evil practice of nikah halala where a women must first marry another man and consummate the marriage, before she can return to the first husband. That such a degrading practice has been outlawed should be welcomed by all Muslims.

Timur Kuran, the historian of Muslim decline, through the story of Auqaf (sng. Waqf), tells us how this institution, instead of helping Muslims, became a millstone around their neck. The larger thesis of his work, The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East, is that without a modern law, a progress and development are not possible. Clearly, the UCC promulgated in the state of Uttarakhand gives us an opportunity to at least debate the points which can become transformative for Muslim society. Its wholesale rejection is certainly unwarranted.

Any civilized society will find it hard to defend that it legally discriminates against women. The provisions of unequal property rights, no right of divorce, exploitative practice of halala, have made Muslims into the ‘other’, whose codes are different from the rest. This hampers integration but more importantly it robs half the Muslim population of human dignity and freedom.

Certainly, the law has come in a BJP-ruled state whose report card against Muslims leaves much to be desired. But then as Pratinav Anil shows in his book, Another India, the same can be said about other political parties. So, Muslims have to choose what benefits them, irrespective of the political dispensation in question.

If the Muslims are so averse to the BJP promulgating UCC, what has stopped them from reforming their personal laws. The conservatives have long argued that it cannot be reformed since the Sharia derives from the Quran and the Hadith. This is a bogus argument as all jurisprudential matters derive from human faculty rather than being sent by God. If Muslim jurists interpreted the Islamic code hundreds of years ago in a particular way, there is nothing wrong in re-interpreting them now. After all, such codes have periodically been revised in Muslim majority countries. The only countries which still operate on the medieval Sharia is perhaps India and Afghanistan. And that says a lot about Indian Muslims who despite living in a democracy since decades have not imbibed its spirit. They only seem to be reminded of the democracy and Constitution when their orthodoxy is threatened.

Some analysts have point out that by leaving the tribal communities outside its purview, the UCC is specifically designed to target the Muslim community. But there are reasons to keep tribes outside the UCC. Their remoteness makes sure that their customs and traditions do not impinge upon either the rural or the urban society. Moreover, as Ramchandra Guha points out in his seminal essay, Adivasis, Naxalites and Indian Democracy, tribal communities generally treat their women much better than the caste Hindu or caste Muslim society. Moreover, these analysts forget that tribe is a religion neutral category which means that even Muslim tribes are exempt from the provisions of the UCC. The problem that gets overlooked is that UCC is especially relevant in situations of deep gender discrimination. As the above discussion lays bare, the Muslim society legally discriminates against women and, hence, the need for UCC.

One can certainly argue that such measures should not be imposed but should be an outcome of organic growth. The Left has made this argument since decades but it has no idea of the internal authority structure within the Muslim community. If reform was to happen in India, it would have happened long ago, when loads of Muslim countries were reforming their personal laws. The very fact that the conservative leadership always takes any talk of reform as an attack on religious freedom means that they have no interest in reforming the personal law. Indeed, most of them believe that it is perfect and it is this theological puritanism that inhibits them from seeing how much the society around them has changed. Thus, the only way to reform Muslim personal law seems to be an imposition, which is what the UCC is doing.

Arshad Alam is a Delhi based independent researcher and writer.

The post Why Muslims Should Debate the UCC appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Without doubt, this is a historic moment. No society can truly call itself inclusive and modern if it denies women their rightful share. It cannot be denied that Indian women have been victims of historical injustice. For centuries, they were denied access to education, confined to domestic roles and treated as mere chattel. In the first Lok Sabha their representation was a mere 4.5% which has now increased to 15%. But clearly this is not enough and women as a group require the extra push that the quota system will give them. This principle has been accepted by each and every political force in the country. But the manner in which the bill was formulated leaves much to be desired.

While the bill rightly reserves seats for SC/ST women, there is no such provision for OBC women. It must be put on record that the OBCs comprise more than half of the total population of the country. Why is that Bahujan women were not given adequate representation in this bill? It is understandable that Muslim women similarly do not find any mention in the bill as the Constitution does not recognize any religious quota. But there is no such bar on making provisions for OBCs and indeed Parliament made special provision for them during the VP Singh government.

Since the majority of Muslims are OBCs, such women could have found a place within the OBC quota. Of late, the prime minister himself has on many occasions reminded the nation that Pasmandaas (Muslim OBCs) have been the victims of discrimination by upper caste Muslims and that there is a need to ameliorate their situation. More specifically, he and his party have reminded the nation of the “plight of Muslim women” and have sought to liberate them from the tyranny of Muslim men by doing away with “evil practices like triple talaq”. But despite such pious pronouncements, if the OBCs and Muslims within them do not find a mention in the proposed women’s quota, then one can only conclude that the government was just been bluffing all along.

Decades have passed since the debate started over women’s reservation. Over these 25 years, Indian feminism has evolved from being largely an urban upper caste caucus to becoming more inclusive by accommodating the views of Dalit and Bahujan women. Any understanding of women’s empowerment today is incomplete without acknowledging the intersectionality of caste and gender. The position and situation of all women is not the same; Dalit and OBC women are still more vulnerable as compared to upper caste women. While the latter can employ different kinds of social and cultural capital to scale the ladder, the same cannot be said about many women from Bahujan backgrounds. The OBC Muslim women are the most vulnerable, battling discrimination within the community as well as the scourge of anti-Muslim phobia outside. In denying such women their due share within the women’s quota, the government is not playing just.

For this reason alone, the bill should have been opposed by all feminist organizations of the country. Diversity and inclusion are laudable principles. After all, women’s organization have been demanding such a bill in the very name of inclusion. How can they now stay silent when Bahujan women have been excluded from the provisions of women’s quota? If they do not oppose it, then it becomes amply clear that Indian feminists only pay lip service to the principle of intersectionality. Supporting women’s reservation in its current form will only mean that they have no sensitivity when it comes to the political aspirations of Bahujan women.

Bahujan parties have always demanded the inclusion of OBC and Muslim women sub-quota. But since most of them have limited the principle of social justice to their respective families, they do not wield the same clout that they used to in their heydays. Moreover, as representatives of dominant castes within the OBCs, they have alienated the lower OBCs with their continued arrogance. The result is that today it is the BJP-led government which commands the loyalty of a large numbers of OBC votes. In fact, it will not be an exaggeration to say that the present government has been largely voted to power because of the support of OBCs. The women’s reservation issue, therefore, also puts the government in a tricky situation as it excludes its largest social base. Its success in the next elections will depend on how it mollifies this section of loyal voters.

No one is opposed to women’s reservation. In fact, they should be provided 50% reservation, in accordance with their population. But one is certainly opposed to the present format which excludes the majority of women of this country from its ambit. Not including Bahujan women is nothing but plain injustice. If this omission is not corrected, then it will only mean that the move is designed to give reservation to upper caste Hindus. Only this time, it is being done in the name of women!

The writer is a Delhi-based columnist.

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Stop saluting us, treat us as equals, TN MP Kanimozhi Karunanidhi’s impassioned speech on the Women’s Reservation Bill

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But let us get back to the clothing in question. The abaya is a lose fitting garment which is worn over any dress, the intention being to cover the contours of the body completely. When men put on such a long dress, it is normally called a thobe; the word abaya being restricted to women’s clothing only. It must be stated that while very few Muslim men in France wear the thobe, there is an increasing trend amongst Muslim women wearing the abaya. The French authorities intend to ban it starting 4^th September when schools reopen. This is not the first time the French have moved against apparel which they view as religious.

In 2004, France passed a law which banned any display of religious symbolism within its schools. The ban was not just restricted to the Muslim veil but also to the Jewish kippa and the Christian cross. However, the narrative spun around it was that it was specifically designed to stop the expression of Muslim religious symbols. The narrative got credence because it is actually true that amongst those insisting on wearing such religious symbols, the majority were Muslims.

The 2004 law, though, did not name the abaya. When the concern was raised by school principals, the government gave them discretion to do as they deemed fit. However, in the absence of a clear law, many schools were reluctant to take a firm stand on the issue. This concern now seems to be fulfilled by the new law banning the abaya. Schools were becoming wary about the display of abayas since many years. In a report published in 2022, school principals had argued that abayas were the new means through which religious symbolism was entering the schools. They had also argued that this was being done by a determined minority to create space for their religion in the public sphere, something that should be an anathema to French secularism.

While the French right has welcomed this move by the government, the left is divided on the issue. This is a win-win for the present centrist government as it has signaled a shift to the right but has also made sure that the left is in a disarray. Muslim organizations have predictably opposed the move citing it as another instance of putting curbs on religious expression. Some Muslims and those on the left have argued that the abaya is not a religious but rather a cultural garment, with Muslims from specific regions donning it. However, this does not sound convincing as the vast majority of those who are insisting on wearing the abaya happen to be Muslims.

What the narrative also does not tell us is that the law will only be restricted to state schools. In other words, students are free to wear what they like in private schools. Also, it must be underlined that except in state institutions, Muslims (and other religious groups) are free to wear what they like, including the veil and abaya. The government has reiterated that these restrictions will apply only in state schools.

Why are Muslims insistent on wearing the abaya and other forms of religious signifiers? Why is it that other religious communities are not so particular about this observance? The simple answer to this is that there is marked absence of secularization in Muslim societies and cultures. And one is not talking about countries in which Muslims are in a majority. Even in countries of Europe where Muslims are in a minority and within a secular state, they tend to put a premium on sacralizing the public sphere. The more complex answer might come from answering the question who benefits from such an assertion of religiosity. The veil and the now the abaya seem to be the symbols of political Islam. Scholars who have worked on the issue point out how they became potent symbols of Islamism, first in the context of countries like Egypt and later due to migration in Europe. Behind this simple garment is a very organized attempt, not just to assert political Islam, but also to gradually dismantle the principles on which the secular state is premised.

The Muslim response is also hypocritical. Every nation has its foundational myth; it can be secular or religious but these myths provide nations with a feeling of belonging. Islamists respect the foundational myths of their countries but have no regard for them when they talk of non-Muslim countries. Just take the example of the recent attempt at perestroika which is being undertaken by the Saudi government. The country now is experimenting with music, dance, cinema and other cultural markers associated with the west. The Islamist is up in arms because he thinks that such cultural imports destroy the foundational myths, the principles on which the kingdom was founded. But when it comes to France or any other European country, this observation is suspended as if these countries had no principles to start with. If the principle of the secularism is one of the foundational myths of France, what gives Muslims the right to tinker with it? For the Islamist, Europe is a barren land with naked women and no principles. It is waiting to be conquered by Muslims, as promised by God.

Consider again, the football world cup hosted by Qatar. Some fans raised the issue of non-availability of beer and wanted Qatar to make special provision for it. But Muslims sided with the government of Qatar arguing that the country was well within its rights to formulate and implement its own rule. But the same Muslims are now having a problem when France is wanting its Muslim citizens to abide by the rules it is making.

The Muslim teenagers who are wearing the abaya in France as a mark of resistance to the state are not to be blamed. After all, teens anywhere in the world are non-conformists. But behind this teenage irrational rage, there is also the scepter of Islamism with very different ideas of how society should be organized. In the past and in the present, Muslims themselves have been the biggest victims of societal re-organization by the Islamists. More then anyone else, they should be vigilant against the march of Islamism.

Arshad Alam is an independent researcher.   

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The killing was designed to tell Muslims that they should live on the mercy of the majority Hindus. No visible markers of Muslimness would be tolerated. It is not without reason that the terrorist targeted only those sporting a beard. A new condition has been attached now to let Muslims to live in this country: that they should invisibilise their religious markers. In a country where the highest offices are infused with religious symbols, one community is being terrorized into giving up its religious markers. Visibly religious Muslims are supposed to give up their beards, their Kurta-Pajama-Topi, their prayers at a public place. I am not even asking the question why? But am very sure that this very rational hatred is not going to stop even after the community gives up its visible religious markers. Next you can be asked to give up your language and finally your very name.

One is not at all surprised that Chetan Singh did this heinous act despite being a uniformed constable of the Indian Railways. Yes, the protector did turn into a killer but this is not the first time that this has happened, not will it be the last. The role of the police has been all too partisan when it comes to ‘riots’; we have seen it in the various anti-Muslim pogroms during the 1980s and more recently during the anti-CAA protests. When it comes to Muslims, there is little difference between the predominantly Hindu mob and the officers of the state. And one is not just talking about lower- level functionaries but this rot goes to the very top.

What is surprising though is the manner in which various stakeholders have responded. The railways, following the Hindu right eco-system first said that Chetan Singh was suffering from mental illness and then hurriedly withdrew the statement. It is entirely possible that the killer was suffering from mental issues; but the manner in which he targeted his victims, pacing the length of the train to identify Muslims and then kill them only tells us that there was some method to his madness. Mental health and social health are closely related. The more important question that we should be asking is this: what made this young man hate Muslims so much? What were the societal reasons due to which he absolutely believed that Muslims were the enemy? If the society all around is so sick with anti-Muslim hatred, it is only logical to argue that people like Chetan Singh are the symptoms but not the cause of that sickness.

The fact that he killed his own superior should not distract us from the fact that his primary and intentional victims were Muslims, whom he hunted down in different bogies. It is entirely possible that he killed his superior, Tikaram Meena, as the latter might have objected to his plan of killing Muslims. Therefore, we should not mistake this to be an act of a demented individual. Rather, it appears to be a premediated hate crime, very much like the killing of Kanhaiya Lal.

It is certainly not surprising to see the silence of our very educated railway minister who normally tweets very regularly. Nor is it surprising to see the radio silence of the dear leader. In fact, it is not even surprising anymore to see the silence of the opposition on the issue. When it comes to Muslims and their marginalization and wanton killing, every one hedges their bets before stating anything. After all, who wants to speak about the mleccha, an unwanted mass of people, whose very association is bound to repel hosts of others. When Muslims are being killed because of their religion, it is downright hypocritical to speak of love and brotherhood. Slogans like Muhabbat ki Dukan are utterly useless when Muslims are singled out and brutalized because of their religious identity. Not naming the evil, which in this case in Hindu majoritarianism, is tantamount to making it invisible. In this sense, the opposition is as complicit in the obliteration of Muslims as is the ruling dispensation.

But it is not just in politics alone that the reasons for such pathological hatred towards Muslims should be located. I do not believe that one person or a group of people from the top are responsible for what is happening to Muslims today. India is too complex a country; the assumption that a select group of people is making all this happen is too facile to say the least.

A large part of the blame should be borne by the Indian media, who are peddling non-stop hate against Muslims. Muslims and Islam have become the favourite topics for most of the channels where they are painted as the proverbial fifth columnists. One TV channel recently wanted to know if there was a “permanent solution” to the Muslim question. Hatred for Muslims is now mainstream on most of these channels and social media handles. Just like the media in Rwanda exhorted its audience kill the minorities, the Indian media has taken over a similar role. Some of them are not even fit to be called journalists; they are simply vile propagandists.

There is a bit of lamentation over the state of India media and most of these reflections come from seasoned journalists who were once star anchors themselves. Lest they forget, it is important to remind them that this nonsense started under their watch in the first place. Fake news, malicious videos targeting vulnerable individuals were all started when these so-called “real journalists” called the shots. During their heydays, the prime-time stories where those of ghosts and snakes! It doesn’t take much to descend from snakes to Muslims, both are dangerous and both have to dealt with. In fact, these so- called “real journalists” are the major culprit because it was under their watch that the dumbing down of television audiences started. An uneducated, non-critical, gullible people will consume whatever nonsense comes in its way, including Muslim hatred. Today, some of these old school journalists are aghast at what is happening. But let us be under no illusion that they are part of the problem.

In this never-ending season of viciousness and hatred, the Muslim is all alone. Hindu majoritarianism has dropped all pretence that as a “big brother”, it is going to protect Muslims. The very fine distinction between Hinduism and militant Hindu nationalism is very nearly effaced. Not because the distinction is not real but because, as Chetan Singh reminds us, Hindus are only going to watch as the rabid ochlocracy keeps killing us.

A regular contributor to NewAgeIslam.com, Arshad Alam is a writer and researcher on Islam and Muslims in South Asia.

Courtesy: New Age Islam

The post The Visceral Anti-Muslim Hatred of Chetan Singh is Just a Symptom, The Disease is More Widespread appeared first on SabrangIndia.

He once told me that if one does not have intellectual honesty, then there is no point in doing academics. I understood the full import of this comment very gradually. Over the years, I realized why he was not feted like other academic dons and why no government recognition was ever conferred on him. His intellectual honesty always meant that he was on the wrong side of the political establishment. Today, when I understand how leading academics tailor their research to be “politically correct” or remain loyal to a “network”, I understand Prof. Ahmad’s comment with more clarity. It is painful that a scholar of his stature was ignored not just by various governments but also by the academic establishment.

Prof. Ahmad’s oeuvre spans original writings on caste and religion in Indian Muslims, the specter of communalism, education, kinship systems, etc. It was through his writings that we understood the multiple identities which Indian Muslims inhabit. His edited volume on caste amongst Muslims is still the best resource for any researcher willing to interrogate the category. Towards the later phase of his life, he devoted special attention to the question of backward castes amongst Muslims. Today organized under the umbrella of Pasmanda movement, many consider him the most important reason why the talk of Muslim caste permeated the Indian academia and civil society. He not just wrote on the issue but also toured different parts of country to deliver lectures. He would invite empirical pieces on caste and collect them in an edited book in which he would write a long introduction laying thread bare the problem at stake. At times, some of the pieces would argue the exact opposite of what he was proposing in the introduction but like a true scholar, he would include the contrary view also. He argued that caste discrimination existed with the Indian Muslim society and that there was no point denying it. This certainly did not go down well the Muslim establishment whose politics, academically or otherwise, depended on the denial of caste within their society.

I remember his interjections when the Sachar Committee Report was published in 2006. The Report showed that as a community, Muslims lagged far behind others in crucial indicators like education, representation, etc. The reception of the Report among Muslim intellectuals and those on the left was along predicted lines. Both made common ground in accusing state discrimination as the primary locus responsible for Muslim backwardness. It was only Prof. Ahmad who brought some nuance to the debate. He reminded the upper caste Muslim intellectuals how their forefathers had declared English education to be the work of the devil and hence had shunned modernity for nearly 150 years. He reminded them that Muslims were late starters in accessing modern education and that historic lag was bound to show as inequality between different communities. He reasoned that since there is a very small percentage of Muslims who can be called middle class, higher educational attainments will continue to be low.

To those on the left, he subtly pointed out that the indices for West Bengal (which was ruled by the CPM for the longest time) was far worse when compared to Gujarat (which had a BJP government). He reasoned that it was not the government or the state which was solely responsible for Muslim backwardness but rather matters internal to the community should also inquired into. But then discrimination and exclusion were the buzzwords of the time and no one paid any heed to what Imtiaz was arguing. I must also add that he was one of the few scholars who had actually read the Report; others were just fluffing.

Indian Islam was another area which retained his abiding interest. In his Ritual and Religion in India, he had stipulated that Indian Islam was simultaneously local and universal. The local elements could be seen in the practice of visitation to various dargahs, use of amulets and even rituals and practices in common with Hindus. At the same time, Indian Islam was also part of the universalism of the faith, seen in practices like Salat, Saum, Hajj, etc. This was not an idea which was original to Prof. Ahmad; such theorizations had an old history in the discipline of social anthropology. But his original formulation was that both these tendencies will continue to co-exist in what he called “Indian Islam”. In other words, he was arguing that the average Indian Muslim was perfectly happy to co-exist in two simultaneous and at times contradictory worldviews: those of the local Hindu cosmology and that of the great tradition of Islam. The historian of Islam in South Asia, Prof. Francis Robinson got into a detailed argument with him over the issue. Other scholars weighed in with the result that today no serious researcher of Islam in India can overlook the debate initiated by Prof. Ahmad.

Prof. Ahmad always encouraged difference and plurality of views. In that spirit, I must say that he was too much wedded to the idea of Nehruvian secularism and a linear view of modernization. Many a time, he assumed that modernization will take care of the orthodoxy within the Muslim community. Today, we know that things are far more complex: that Muslim orthodoxy is on the increase even as the educational levels of the community are going up. He also assumed that religious pluralism was inherent in the Indian ethos. While this might be true, placing too much emphasis on it makes us oblivious to the processes, internal to religious communities, which lead to the very subversion of that pluralism.

After he retired from the university, he was regularly seen on television adding nuance to otherwise drab debates. He weighed in on the majoritarian turn which the country was taking but was always optimistic that this was a passing phase. Sadly, his belief in the innate moderation of Indian normative psyche might not have too many takers. But the conviction with which he uttered those words could only come from a man deeply weeded to the idea of India.

Anyone writing the story of Indian Muslims post-Independence will have to engage with Prof. Ahmad’s ideas. And that’s a legacy that very few academicians leave behind.

A regular contributor to NewAgeIslam.com, Arshad Alam is a writer and researcher on Islam and Muslims in South Asia. 

Courtesy: New Age Islam

The post Professor Imtiaz Ahmad Valued Intellectual Honesty over Everything Else appeared first on SabrangIndia.

One hopes that before the introduction of the bill, the draft will be put up for a nationwide public debate so that all forums get a chance to place their objections and suggestions. But given the suddenness and stealth with which this government works, that remains a hope.

The country has been debating the issue of a UCC since it attained freedom. It is mentioned in the Directive Principles of the Constitution that the state shall endeavour to attain it. Also, there are various court judgments which have mentioned the need to look into the issue. The Shah Bano judgment of the Supreme Court also ended up with a plea that the legislature should find ways to formulate a Uniform Civil Code.

India is a huge country and the idea of a UCC might appear to militate against maintaining its diversity and pluralism. After all, marriage patterns, rules regarding choice of spouses, laws relating to property, etc. differ from region to region, often even within the same religious community. Will the UCC be levelling such diverse practices? This is practically impossible to do, again given the extraordinary cultural and religious diversity of the country.

But what a UCC can do is to take away some of the inequalities that exist within religious communities due to the application of personal laws which are in direct contravention of our constitutional morality.

Muslim Opposition To The UCC

The Muslim clergy has always been opposed to the idea of a UCC. Under their influence, Muslims have come to believe that the UCC is patently anti-Islamic and that it will lead to the loss of their religious identity. The clergy have argued that Article 25 of the Indian Constitution guarantees the freedom of religion and hence the state cannot make any law which is detrimental to it. However, they forget that the same Constitution says that Article 25 is “subject to public order, morality, health and other provisions”. The same Article has a further rider which states that “this article shall not affect any existing law and shall not prevent the state from making any law relating to social welfare and reform”. It becomes amply clear, therefore, that the state can indeed intervene in the personal laws of a community if it deems that the issue is one of social welfare and reform or even if it feels that the issue is one which involves public morality. The very same Article which gives all Indians the right to freedom of religion also throws open temples to “all classes and sections of Hindus”. Thus, religious communities cannot hide behind this Article and continue with practices which are discriminatory or regressive. The freedom to practice and propagate a religion does not automatically mean freedom to discriminate. The argument of the Muslim clergy that the state cannot intervene does not hold any ground.

By all measures, the draft of the UCC will be guided by various constitutional principles but non-discrimination on the basis of sex would perhaps be the major one. That men and women should be treated equally, that both of them should have equal rights is something that any modern society takes for granted. However, it is the Muslim personal law which has consistently refused to abide by this principle.

Four Contentious Issues

There would be four points on which the Muslim clergy have always opposed a UCC and they will certainly do so this time too as and when the draft comes out in the public domain.

The first of these relates to the issue of marriage and divorce. In Muslim law, while the proposal for marriage can be initiated by any of the sexes, the right of divorce rests solely on the man. In other words, a Muslim woman, in order to escape an abusive marriage, has no recourse but to request her husband to grant her a Khula, which he can refuse. While most religious laws have been antediluvian, they have been able to reform themselves but one can’t say the same about the Muslims. So, while a Hindu or a Christian woman in this country can approach the court and ask for the dissolution of her marriage, a Muslim woman cannot do the same.

The clergy will also be nervous about the fact that the UCC might make the system of triple Talaq obsolete. It is worth recalling that the present government has only outlawed the practice of “instant triple Talaq” through which husbands could divorce their wives in one sitting, and at times over a phone call or email. Some Muslim groups like the Shia and the Ahle Hadis anyway never approved of this practice. But the large majority of Sunni husbands are even today free to divorce their wives in three sittings which is the Islamic way. It is expected that the UCC will outlaw this method of divorce and like all husbands, Sunni Muslim husbands would also be obliged to seek such a decree from a court of law. Moreover, like in other religious communities, Muslim husbands would also be made liable to provide maintenance to a divorced wife.

There is also the most inhumane problem of halala of Muslim women. If a Muslim man divorces his wife but then regrets his actions and wants to be in matrimony with her again, it is not easy for him. The ex-wife will have to marry another man who will then divorce her in order that the first husband marries her again. This must be a real ordeal for women but it is something which exists in Muslim societies across the world. There are “dealers” (many of them Mullahs) who marry such women for a night and ask money for their “service”. Why should women (and men) go through such an ordeal when it is a simple question of two consenting adults willing to stay together by contracting their marriage again? The UCC may (and should) outlaw such practices in any community whose sole purpose is to demean women for no fault of hers.

The second issue will be that of succession and inheritance. It is widely documented that the extant Muslim law in principle discriminates against women. Daughters do not get equal share in the familial property as compared to sons. It is for this reason that conscientious Muslim parents have been registering their marriages under the Special Marriage Act, so that they can bequeath their property to their children fairly. Almost all religious communities have now resolved this problem and legally both sons and daughters can inherit equally. But the Muslim law on succession and inheritance has remained unchanged since 1937. If the state intervenes and ensures this reform through the UCC, it will be a big win for all Muslim women, especially those who are at the forefront of a struggle to change such outmoded personal laws.

The third contentious issue will be that of guardianship. In case of the death of the father, the guardianship of a minor Muslim passes on to the grandfather but not the mother. As if the Islamic law assumes that women are unable to handle anything and that they lack worldly sense, it has deprived even a mother of executing decisions on behalf of her children. This is patently absurd in today’s times when even Muslims predominantly live in nuclear families. This needs to change and the UCC, which is likely to address this question, will be doing nothing but to restore the dignity to Muslim mothers.

The fourth issue likely to rile the Mullahs will be the standardization of adoption. All religious communities can legally adopt, pass on their property to the adopted heir, with the exception of Muslims. For Muslim couples who want to adopt, this has always been a major problem. Thankfully, they can now adopt under the Juvenile Justice Act 2015, but many such parents still do not know about such a provision. Moreover, high courts in recent years have pronounced varied judgments to the effect that prospective Muslim couples have been hesitant to adopt. If all other religious communities can have the right of adoption, there is no reason why Muslim couples should be denied the same. The Mullahs have often cited the example of the Prophet himself, who married his daughter-in-law, the wife of his adopted son. Hence, they decree that there is a fundamental difference between a “natural” and an “adopted” son or daughter. But then, should such standards be applicable to Muslims today? The community and the clergy need to ask this question of themselves.

To recap, most religious communities have already reformed their personal laws and more or less there is gender parity in them. The Hindu law, in particular, is hardly Hindu in terms of theology or orientation. Similarly, Christianity never conceived of divorces as marriages were made in heaven but today, they are able to do so. There is nothing extraordinary about the Muslim religion; like all other religions, it has to change with the times. To think otherwise is to live in a fool’s paradise.

In case a UCC draft is floated, it should not appear that it is only the Muslim community which is opposing it. This will be used by those who want to paint a regressive picture of Islam and Muslims. Unfortunately, going by the tone and tenor of the Mullahs, who speak of opposing the UCC even without context, it appears that those trying to malign the community will eventually win.

It is, therefore, only pragmatic that Muslims should not irrationally reject the UCC draft. Rather, they should study it carefully and dispassionately, and see how changes in law can benefit their society immensely.

A regular contributor to NewAgeIslam.com, Arshad Alam is a writer and researcher on Islam and Muslims in South Asia.

Courtesy: New Age Islam

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We have all heard about “love jihad”, a sinister narrative designed by the Hindu Right which argues that Muslim men are on a mission to convert Hindu girls by various means. The allegation is that Muslim men pose as Hindus initially and once they get married to Hindu girls, they pressurize them to convert to Islam.

This story of using love as a tool of conversion was initially told by some churches in Kerala but it gained considerable traction in North India. Various state governments enacted stricter laws to “safeguard” Hindu women from falling into the trap of Muslim men. All such advertised cases though turned out to be completely false. Hindu women came on camera to state that they had married and converted out of their own will; that there was no luring or force involved in the process.

It does not help that the Muslim religion insists on conversion if one of the spouses is from any religion other than that of Ahl-e-Kitab, People of The Book. Normally, the Hindu religion too should be included in the list of Ahl-e-Kitab, but Muslim clerics’ sense of superiority over other religions keeps them from following the Holy Quran. They include only Christianity and Judaism in this list, although Quran said there are no people on earth who were not sent prophets and no prophets who were not given revelations. It’s these revelations that constitute Books when they are collected. There is no debate about the necessity of insisting on this practice of converting to Islam any spouse other than from Ahl-e-Kitab within the Muslim community even after so many centuries.

Through the social media, we have been made aware that now there is a “reverse love-jihad” going on in our country. Called the “Bhagwa/Saffron love-trap”, the basic parameters of its definition is a carbon copy of “love-jihad”. It refers to Hindu boys posing as Muslims in order to lure Muslim girls and ultimately convert them to Hinduism. Over some years, this fear of loosing girls to the “other side” is gaining traction. We have seen that love jihad was a bogey, designed to defame the Muslim community. But what is the veracity of “Bhagwa love trap?” It appears that even in this case, there is hardly any reliable data to ascertain the claims that the Muslim side is making.

It is true that certain Hindu organizations from time to time have been speaking in public about “claiming” Muslim girls as if these girls are not human but property. From the portals of various Dharam Sansads, we have heard things about Muslim girls which should put any democracy to shame. At the same time, they also instill a certain fear within the Muslim community regarding their future in this country. Added to this is the huge reluctance on the part of the ruling establishment to prosecute those who are indulging in such vicious propaganda with the express intention of de-humanizing the Muslim community. We have seen this depravity and loss of a moral compass when some Hindu youth decided to “auction” Muslim girls online. Despite claims of belonging to the lofty ideals of Sanatan tradition, it is clear that for some of these Hindu organizations, the model of emulation has remained the Islamic State, who were selling and buying female slaves in Syria.

Such Hindu right-wing rhetoric of converting Muslim girls might have some willing executioners but is it true that there is grand conspiracy behind this? The Muslim social media is rife with such allegations, blaming the other side (read Hindus) for planning to divest their Muslim sisters of their revealed religion. However, after watching many such posts, one does not get to know the source of this information. Neither is there any way to verify the claim that “thousands of Muslim girls have already been converted” by organized gangs of Hindus. All such videos refer to some of the speeches that have been made by “our religious leaders.” Therefore, in all probability, the source of such information are the speeches of various Ulama. 

One such video is that of Sajjad Nomani, the spokesman of the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board and an influential religious scholar. In this video, he makes certain startling claims, but doesn’t care to tell us what is his source of information. Some of the claims that he makes are:

–        Eight lakh Muslim women have become apostates after marrying Hindu men

–        RSS has created and trained a large team of Hindu men and women for this purpose

–        To achieve this end, Hindu men are put into training where they learn to speak refined Urdu and even say Inshallah and Mashallah

–        Each “successful” Hindu man is given 2.5 lakhs and is helped in getting a job, etc.

–        This is a big conspiracy against Muslims and Islam and billions of dollars are being pumped from abroad and within the country for this purpose.

However, to repeat, Nomani does not cite a single source to back his claim. Perhaps he thinks that there is no need of doing so. After all, his followers have been lapping up the allegations made in the video and presenting it as sacred truth. It appears that the source of all such feeds flooding the Muslim social media is the video of Sajjad Nomani itself. One is certainly not saying that everything that Sajjad Nomani is saying is bogus. However, not citing any source for his claims amounts to fear mongering. At a time when Muslims are already in a beleaguered state, instilling more fear and insecurity in them is a recipe for social strife. 

But let us suppose that all such claims are true. Then what should be the Muslim response to it? The best response which any enlightened community would take is to better educate their girls so that they have the capacity to make informed decisions about their partners. However, it is unfortunate that the Muslim community’s response if that of increased policing of girls, which borders on plain harassment. There are videos proclaiming schools and colleges as sites where Hindu men are meeting Muslim girls and Muslim parents are told to keep a watch on their daughters. They are being told not to give them mobile phones as it the major source of this fitna. And they are being told to send their daughters to Muslim only schools so that they do not meet boys and girls from another religion.

Groups of Muslims boys have already assumed the responsibility of rescuing their “sisters.” This has taken the form of naked vigilantism as being reported from some parts of the country. A video from Madhya Pradesh tells the harrowing tale of a Muslim girl and a Hindu boy who were out together. A group of young Muslim men surround them and question the girl’s ‘purpose’ of hanging out with a non-Muslim boy. The girl, tries to take issue with the mob but is quickly silenced by ferocious male voices. They tell her that she is besmirching the name of Islam. The boy, shaking and shivering, is slapped and abused. In the last couple of weeks such videos of Muslim vigilantism have worryingly surfaced from Aurangabad, Patna and Meerut.

In the name of stopping “Bhagwa love trap”, the action of such Muslim groups is nothing but the desire to police women’s movement with the ultimate objective of domesticating her. We already saw this third-rate masculinity at work during the so-called love jihad campaign where Hindu girls were similarly policed and harassed by Hindu men. Thankfully, there were a number of Hindu women who spoke openly against this intimidation. But when it comes to Muslims, the number of girls in arena of higher education is already miniscule and hence we might not see the kind of resistance which we saw within the Hindu society. The singular effect of this rabid vigilantism will only result in the further exclusion and marginalization of Muslim women.

Muslims need to realize that such vigilantism might even become counterproductive. Young men can brag about the fact that they stopped their ‘sisters’ from meeting men from other religions, but Muslim girls will certainly construe this as one more effort to block their progress. Finding a dead end, some of them would naturally start to detest this religion and start to look for an exit. These apostates will not be created because of a sinister design by the Hindus but simply because of the hooliganism perpetrated by their “brothers in Islam.”

A regular contributor to NewAgeIslam.com, Arshad Alam is a writer and researcher on Islam and Muslims in South Asia.

First Published on newageislam.com

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Hamline University in Minnesota, USA, recently fired a professor for showing a painting of Muhammad during his lecture. The course was about global art history wherein the professor had included a section on Islamic art. It was within this module that he showed a particular painting of the prophet Muhammad. To his credit, he had already asked Muslim students that if they found it offensive or hurtful, they had the option of leaving the class. But as it so happened, the Muslim Students Association (MSA) accused the professor of Islamophobia because he included that particular painting. It should be pointed out that the MSA, which has many offshoots, is known for its fondness of Islamism. Some studies have argued that the group is infested with the ideas of Hassan al- Banna and Abu ala al-Maududi, both ideological wellsprings of Islamism.    

The university, in a very hurried decision, without even giving a chance to the professor to explain himself, relieved him from the job. According to the university, it did so because, ‘it was decided that it was best that this faculty member was no longer part of the Hamline community’. The University, explaining the decision to all employees further said, ‘respect for the observant Muslim students in that classroom should have superseded academic freedom’. Coming from a university, this is really worrying and points to a larger issue about engaging with Islamic sentiments without giving up the core values of freedom that define academic life.        

But first let us see the painting in question. The painting depicts Muhammad receiving the first revelation of the Quran brought by Angel Gibreel. This moment has been celebrated all over the Muslim world as Laylat ul Qadr (The Night of Power) and is generally ritualized as a night of prayer and gratitude. Far from being Islamophobic, the painting announces and extols the prophecy of Muhammad and Quranic revelation. Moreover, the original painting was part of the illustrated book written by the famous 14th century scholar, Rashid al Din Hamdani. It is important to recall that Rashid al Din was a historian, illustrator, calligrapher and a high-ranking administrator of the Ilkhanate/Mongol empire. Thus far from being Islamophobic, the painting witnesses the call to prophecy of Muhammad and was commissioned by a practicing Muslim himself. It is rather intriguing, how the mere showing of this painting by a professor constitutes any kind of Islamophobia.

Had the university done its homework before taking a decision, it would have known that the said painting has been increasingly used in history of art classes throughout the western world. Partly because of the aesthetics of the art work and partly in an effort to decolonize art; the academic world has been using this particular painting for long now.

Moreover, the university has completely missed the nuanced debate within the Muslim world regarding visual depictions of Muhammad. The art historian Christiane Gruber informs us that visual representations of Muhammad had been commonplace till recently, particularly in places of Shiite influences. One finds depictions of Muhammad with the face veiled throughout the Muslim world. The Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals commissioned such paintings and included them in texts. This was a time of ascendancy of Sufism and the paintings depicted the “luminous” character of the prophet or his many attributes. But it was not the case that the face of Muhammad was veiled in all paintings or hidden by a luminous light. In fact, naturalist and abstract depictions of the prophet went hand in hand and with the coming of print in the 19-20th centuries, there was a veritable explosion in the production and consumption of such images. Gruber tells us that especially in Iran, pictorial greetings with Muhammad images were commonly found in the market place.

These mass-produced images were mostly made and consumed by Muslims themselves. It is ironic therefore that Hamline University considered the particular image as being hurtful to Muslims. Even outside Iran, there is historical evidence that such images were used (though discreetly) by Muslims as aid to remembrance and meditation. In trying to exclude these pictures from the domain of Muslim aesthetics, the Hamline University seems to have sided with the neo-conservatives and Islamists within Muslims who argue that such depictions have always been forbidden in Islam. Throughout Muslim history and even today, there has never been a singular way of experiencing Islam. Consequently, one cannot say that Sunni way is better than the Shia simply because the latter uses pictures. In siding with one interpretation of Islam, Hamline University seems to be oblivious to such debates within the Islamic world. And this is not surprising in the least if the University authorizes a sectarian organization like the MSA to become the sole representative of Muslims. In the name of being inclusive, the University is in fact empowering a version of Islam which is inherently exclusivist.   

Universities are expected to create spaces for dialogue, dissent and pluralism. It might be possible that some Muslim students would have objected to the inclusion of a particular painting depicting Muhammad. But the answer to that shouldn’t be a knee jerk reaction like firing the professor; the better way for the University was to engage with such students. It is entirely possible that given the current state of the Muslim world, these Muslim students would themselves be unaware of their own iconic history. The University should have also asked the logical question as how a professor can teach a course of the history of art without using the visual medium as an aid to pedagogy.

But then if a university itself privileges religious sensitivities over academic freedom, then there is nothing much left to argue. If this ill-informed attitude continues, then the decay of the university system seems imminent.

Arshad Alam is a New Delhi-based independent researcher.

The post Should Respect for ‘an Islam’ Supersede Academic Freedom? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Ever since the tiny gulf country, Qatar, won the rights to organize the football world cup, there has been a barrage of criticism, mostly emanating from Europeans. The criticism levelled at Qatar relate to its human rights abuses, its non-recognition of alternative sexual identities, the sexual segregation, etc. Some of this criticism seems valid, but some are the products of deep-seated anxiety with the Islamic faith. Certainly, Qatar is an Islamic country, and as such the religion informs much of its law related to life style, etc. But unlike other countries in the region, Qatar has quite a presence of women in the public sphere, with some of them occupying high offices.

It is also true that the country did not follow the laid down procedures of international labour laws; there were reports that it did not even compensate these workers properly. But the only people who should be complaining about this are the countries from which such workers were sourced: Nepal, India, Bangladesh, etc. There are reports that nearly 650 workers, mostly from these countries, died during the construction spree witnessed during the last decade. Europeans should be the last people to raise these issues, certainly not after incinerating millions in Iraq and other parts of the world. It would be much better if they just concentrated on their own appalling record of human devastation across the globe.

Qatar, and other countries in the region, are faced with an existential dilemma. And that has to do with the future holds for them after the oil has run out. It is for this reason that Saudi Arabia and the UAE are diversifying their economies, making them less dependent on oil revenues. The UAE has nearly transformed itself into a financial hub of the region; the Saudis are emulating them and are trying to open the economy. But the economy just does not operate in a vacuum; it needs an ideological infrastructure to flourish and thrive. Changes in economic policies are often accompanied by changes in social and religious mores. The organization of Halloween by the Saudis was designed to test whether the country is getting ready for such changes and one shouldn’t be surprised if they organize more such ‘un-Islamic’ events.

There were many reasons for Qatar bidding for the world cup and eventually winning it, but the economy was perhaps the foremost reason. Again, the country wanted to diversify and move away from its dependence on oil. But also, they were interested in it for geopolitical reasons. By becoming the center of footballing world, they have shown to the big brothers like Saudi Arabia that their blockade didn’t really work. Today, the whole of middle east is in Qatar, enjoying the world cup and perhaps ruing the day when they decided to financially encircle this tiny country. But then again, can a diverse economy remain immune to changes in cultural and the religious sphere? Qatar had a chance to show the world that their Islam was one which could adapt and change. But that opportunity is perhaps lost.

First by inviting a person like Zakir Naik to be an important guest (and reportedly to preach Islam to people assembled there), Qatar is unfortunately telling the world that it still believes in the supremacy of Islam to all other religions. After all, why call a man who made Islamic supremacism his creed, and has consistently argued that except Islam, all other religions are false. This preacher is wanted in India and in UK, primarily because he has inspired Muslims (though only a few) to take up terrorism in defence of their faith. By extending invitation to such a person, Qatar is basically endorsing the Islamist position of Zakir Naik. Moreover, Qatar should not forget that it was one of the first countries to censure India over the ‘hate speech’ of Nupur Sharma, the ex-BJP spokeswoman, when she had spoken uncharitable words about the prophet. Qatar then had preached India about the values of religious tolerance and pluralism. How should we then understand this invitation to Zakir Naik whose very presence is insulting to other religious traditions, including Hinduism. So, is Qatar telling the world that values of religious pluralism, etc. are to be respected only when Islam is at the receiving end?

Second, the decision to ban alcohol (primarily beer) by Qatari authorities has similarly generated much debate. Many Muslims have supported the decision by arguing that as a sovereign country, Qatar has the authority to follow its traditions; in this case keeping beer away from stadiums. However, these same Muslims have a huge issue when a country like France enforces its own secular tradition of banning burqas and head scarfs. Many would call his hypocrisy but again the point perhaps is something else. Muslims are basically arguing that while they should be free to enforce their own tradition, non-Muslim cultures do not have that choice. Again, this underlying supremacy of Islam needs to be questioned, but Qatar seems to have strengthened that notion through its action.

The football world cup is a global event and fans from very different cultural and religious traditions take part in it. Not making space for their point of view will only remind them about the insularity of Islam and Muslims. And there is historic precedence within the Muslim culture to make space for other traditions. Muslims in the Ottoman empire always made exceptions for Christians and their consumption of alcohol. The Ottomans always argued that the ban on drinking was only for Muslims; the Christian tradition allows for its consumption and hence we should not stop it. Why is it that this historical precedence was not invoked by Qatari authorities to make this mega event more inclusive and accepting of other ways of life? The less it is said about its Qatar’s treatment of LGBTQ+ rights, the better it will be. It is sad that hosts of football lovers who come from such communities decided against travelling to Qatar because of its strict laws against gays and lesbians.  

The opening show was equally a chance to showcase the variety of ways cultures and traditions that have built the country. Qataris are a minority in their own country, so it is the guest workers who have very nearly transformed the country into one of the richest in the world. Like most of the Arab world, they do not get citizenship status. The least they could have done was to pay respect and homage to these workers who come from very different religions and cultures.

The opening ceremony started with the passage of the Quran which celebrates plurality but alas, its deeper message was completely lost on the organizers.

——

Arshad Alam is a New Delhi based independent researcher.

This article was first published on https://www.newageislam.com

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A short video by Salman Nadwi is enough to tell you what is wrong with the self-proclaimed Indian Ulama. The video has been made in the backdrop of Jahangirpuri clashes in Delhi which saw stone-pelting by Muslims after Hindus attempted to hoist a flag atop a mosque during the Ram Navami procession. Salman Nadwi analyses why this happened, how this is a lesson for Muslims to change their ‘deviant ways’, and how the provocateurs were not really the followers of Sanatan Dharma.

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In the video, Nadwi makes a distinction between Sanatan Dharm and Hinduism, arguing that the former has always believed in monotheism (Allah/Ishwar ek hai). Hinduism, he says, was a pejorative designation given to Indians by the Persians. He may be correct that one of the usages of the word Hindu at that time was extremely negative, but should he be saying this at all in today’s religiously polarized context? What does he want to achieve by reminding the Hindus that they are still carrying the name given by Muslims? If today, a vast number of people want to call themselves as Hindus, then what is his problem? Why this urge to foist his own nomenclature on a billion who want to be known by that name. What it tells us about Nadwi is that he is still dwelling in the past, when the likes of his had the power to confer names and designations on people.

Nadwi instead would like to use the word Sanatan Dharm to describe Hindus. But then he has a peculiar understanding of Sanatanis as well and it is not surprising why he prefers that word. His argument is that Sanatan Dharm is promotes monotheism rather than polytheism as is the popular Hindu practice. Thus, his preference for the word Sanatan derives from the fact that like Islam, the other faith also promotes monotheism. This tells us what is fundamentally wrong about Muslim religious leadership and their understanding of inter-religious co-existence.

But more fundamentally, who told Nadwi that Sanatan Dharm is only about monotheism? There are strands within this religion which can be linked to monotheism, but there are other strands, equally valid, who don’t call themselves as monotheists. The whole Bhakti tradition imagined a personalized God, near to the self, with or without the image or the idol. Within the Hindu philosophy, they are manifestations of different attributes of the Almighty, the Creator. Not just this, Hinduism also has space for atheistic doctrines like Buddhism, early Jainism and even the Ajivikas, where there is no concept of God or becomes irrelevant within their larger philosophies. Such spaces of internal pluralism are simply absent in Islam and would probably attract the charges of blasphemy. Nadwi’s Islam can only relate to that strand of Hindu religiosity which imagines God as one. His Islam can only get into a conversation with a religious worldview which shares its assumption about the creator, not with those who are coming from a different philosophical location. And that perhaps is the biggest challenge which Islam, in a diverse society like India, hasn’t been able to solve.      

Ultimately all mythologies are arbitrary. If Islam can live by the myth that its Prophet split the moon into two, why can’t it believe in mythologies of Ganesha and Krishna? Nadwi’s problem, and of many Muslims like him, is that only their arbitrariness should be valid and all others should be declared as false. Why should there be just one way of expressing religiosity? What is the problem if one is believing in many headed Gods or no God at all? And is there any guarantee that when the whole world become monotheist, problems between communities will cease to exist. There is a lot of common ground between Islam and Christianity but they have fought long and bitter battles simply over whose version of monotheism is the correct one. Nadwi will do well to study the history of monotheistic religions in order to understand that it is hardly a recipe for peace.     

Nadwi doesn’t stop there. He argues that those who indulged in arson and looting in places like Khargone and Delhi should be called hooligans who have come from the jungle and do not know how to behave in civilized spaces like cities. Since Muslims are predominantly urban, it does not escape attention that he is trying to say that Muslims were the first to create cities and civilized spaces in this country. This is not the place to get into argument about urbanization in medieval India but the haughtiness underlying the assertion that Muslims brought civilization in this country needs to be called out. Such a demeaning understanding of the country’s Hindu civilizational heritage does not augur well for pluralism.

Nadwi also gets into the causes of why Muslims are at the receiving end today. He starts by saying that the subcontinent was ‘given’ to Muslims to bring the light of monotheism. But given by whom? What he means is that India was gifted to the Muslims by God to make the Hindus realize the falsity of their religion. This is not just hubris but also shows the contempt in which Hinduism is held at by the likes of Nadwi. In a similar vein, he also argues that till the time Muslims do not openly preach Tauheed (oneness of God) to others, they will remain a damned community in the eyes of Allah. What really does he mean? Instead of exchange of religious ideas, Nadwi would very much like Muslims to invite each and every Hindu to the fold of Islam. This attitude of ‘my way or the highway’ is one of the many reasons why Islam appears alien and uncompromising, not just to Hindus but now also to many Muslims.

Nadwi laments that Muslims couldn’t hold the light properly as they indulged in grave worship (Yahan Sajda, Wahan Sajda). Here Nadwi, true to his revivalist leanings, is accusing the majority of Indian Muslim population who are Barelwis of being too close to Hindus because they visit and pray at the shrines. In other words, Muslims indulged in shirk (associating partners to God) and hence God decided to punish them. Apparently, one of the ways that God is adopting to punish Muslims these days is by unleashing Hindu mobs on their meagre properties and homes, and even their mosques. It is clear that Nadwi has no empathy for any Muslim loss of life or property since he has declared them Mushrik anyway. And yet the irony is that lakhs of Muslims will continue to follow him.

But what should worry Indian Muslims most is that despite so many centuries of living together with Hindus, we haven’t been able to evolve a theology of religious pluralism. Nadwi is just a crass expression of this failure. 

—–

A regular contributor to NewAgeIslam.com, Arshad Alam is a writer and researcher on Islam and Muslims in South Asia.   

Article was first published on https://www.newageislam.com

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