COMMUNITY ROUND UP

Muslim scholars from Gujarat addressed an anti-terrorism conference here recently, to spread the message that no terrorist activities were encouraged or taught in madrasas. Hundreds of people from the Muslim as well as other communities attended the conference, organised by Majles-e-Tahafuze Madaris Gujarat, at the Rang Upwan Hall in Chowk Bazaar.

In his address, Swami Agnivesh said: “My teacher taught me that Islam is a religion of love and not terrorism. Islam does not teach us to fight and spread terror. It is a peaceful religion, but now its followers are being identified as terrorists. The entire community should not be blamed if a few of its people are involved in terrorist activities.”

Majles-e-Tahafuze Madaris Gujarat president, Mufti Ahmed Dehalvi said: “The US and the United Kingdom had sent a wrong message to the world that Muslims are terrorists. The media of these two countries have played an important role in damaging the image of Muslims.” Dehalvi added that there are three types of terrorism — mob terrorism, bomb terrorism and state terrorism. “I believe, state terrorism is the most dangerous. Bomb terrorism takes place at public places, while in state terrorism, people are killed on the basis of their religion,” he said. (Reported by A. H. Lakhani)

The University of Madras has conferred a doctorate on Prof. Ahmed Maraiker for his thesis on the Tamil Islamic monthly Samarasam. The thesis had been submitted by Maraiker, who teaches Tamil at New College here last year. Prof Maraiker had described Samarasam as a path-breaking journal which has transformed Islamic journalism in Tamil language from its conventional ritualistic mode into a forceful spokesman of ethical values in public and private lives. The panel for Maraiker’s doctorate was headed by Prof. Moses Michael Faraday, head of the department of Tamil, University of Madras.

Started in 1980, Samarasam has been consistently hitting news stands for the last 28 years with interesting reviews, commentaries and literary pieces. Last year, Tamil litterateur Sujatha listed Samarasam among the best Tamil journals in the annual rating published by the noted mass circulated Tamil weekly Ananda Vikatan. Besides Tamil Nadu, Samarasam reaches readers in countries such as Malaysia, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Vietnam, and the Gulf. Besides editor M. A. Raqeeb, the editorial team comprises Sirajul Hasan, Syed Sultan & Azeez Lutfullah. It has nurtured a bevy of women writers.

If you thought that women trafficked out of Bangladesh and bordering district of West Bengal find their way to the sex trade, then think again. Many among such girls from the eastern part of the sub-continent are now being sold off as brides in the western district of Kutch in Gujarat. It has been merely ten months since Mumtaz has been married off to Salim Mongal, a shepherd in Bhadreshwar village. The 16 year old girl from Bankura district of West Bengal is already seven months pregnant and trying to cope with the new culture and language. Like Mumtaz, Masura, Samina Ruksana and many other Bengali girls like her from the Indo-Bangla border areas are now finding their way here as brides. “Our father was too poor to arrange for our marriage back home,’’ said Ruksana Adam, who claims to be from Bankura district of West Bengal. “ It was at that point, a man called Zafar from our area met our father and got me married here,’’ Ruksana added. Married for four years, this woman in her early 20s now has a daughter. Her sister Afsana, who is in her early 20s too found her way to Kutch a couple of years ago and has a son.

Many girls are being brought in here as well as in the Banni region, said Meena Rajgore from the Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan. “While they claim to hail from Kolkata, many of them are from Bangladesh too,’’ she added. “In many communities here there is a tradition of early engagement, the ones who do not find a bride early are often forced to stay without a wife till very late. Mostly such people procure wives from Kolkata or Bangladesh,’’ she said. Nirav Patni from the District Rural Development Agency in Bhuj too confirmed the practice of getting brides from West Bengal and other areas along the Indo- Bangala border areas. We paid about Rs. 40,000 for getting our sister in law, Madina, said Ishaq Juma Kumbhar, a villager from Bhadreshwar. Kutch police superintendent Harekrishna Patel said, with gender disparity very high in Kutch, many communities buy their wives from outside. “We know many Bengali girls are being brought in here, but as yet we have no official information on girls from Bangladesh being brought in. But there is no official complaint registered in such cases also, which makes it difficult for us to initiate action,” he added.

(Reported by A.H. Lakhani)

The Maharastra state recently set up a study group to identify the problems ailing the Muslims and also recommend their remedies.

Headed by Dr Mahmoodur Rahman, former vice-chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), the six-member committee will extensively tour the state, talk to various social groups and NGOs working among the Muslims in the state. The committee will submit its report by the end of December this year.

The first state in India to have set up such a group, the move is being held as the state’s “genuine’’ effort to uplift the Muslims who, as reinforced by the Sachar Committee’s findings, lag behind even the Dalits educationally, socially and economically.
“The Sachar report diagnosed the ailments. This study group will suggest the medicine,’’ said an upbeat Dr Rahman who is also chairman of the Bombay Mercantile Bank. Dr Rahman added that the aspirations of the Muslim masses would be taken into account while recording their statements and recommending  measures to ameliorate their situation.

The Indian Association of Islamic Economics will organise a workshop on Islamic Banking in August this year at Delhi. It will invite members of several economics and financial experts from Government and banking sectors. Dr. Hamid Hussain, chairman Dubai Islamic Bank will be a special invitee. It will engage activists from the field of Islamic investment companies and micro-finance bodies too. The delegates will also call upon the Prime Minister, Finance Minister and Reserve Bank officials. The Association will prepare a database of Islamic finance bodies, set up panels for lobbying in academic institutions and political sectors. The Association headed by Dr. Fazlur Rahman Faridi, has inducted the following persons among its members; Dr. Nejatullah Siddiqui from Aligarh, Dr. Ausaf Ahmed from Delhi, Dr. Rahmatullah from Mumbai, Dr. Shariq Nisar from Bangalore, Abdussalam from Kochi, Abdur Rasheed, Mumbra ((Maharashtra), Anwar Bhatki from Pune, Noorul Huq from Mumbai, Prof. P. Ibrahim from Thissur (Kerala), H. Abdur Raqeeb from Chennai, Mujtaba Farooq from Delhi, Ejaz Ahmed Aslam from Delhi and Dr. S. Q. R. Ilyas from Delhi. More information can be had from Mr. H. A. Raqeeb at abdraqeeb@gmail.com

A Government-Commissioned Study

A survey commissioned by the ministry of women and child development, to prepare a national plan of action for the advancement of Muslim women’s education found that the most common factors responsible for the high incidence of non-enrolment, alarmingly high drop-outs and low achievement among Muslim girls were poverty, lack of women teachers, absence of separate schools for girls, observance of purdah, opposition to secular education, early marriage, community resistance and conservative attitudes.

Of the total out-of-school Muslim children aged 6-13, 45% are girls. Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and Orissa have the most low-literacy districts. The southern states fare better, possibly because they have a large number of technical and professional institutions.
The study found that there was considerable opposition to co-education as parents felt it might lead to girls going astray. Only 12.5% of the people surveyed said they were not opposed to co-education. A majority of parents supported education for girls, but only till the age of puberty and in an  all-girls schools and under female teachers.

Finding husbands for highly-educated women is difficult. Co-education makes them go astray. Girls should be educated only till they attain puberty. And the ideal education for Muslim girls is religious, plus a modicum of general subjects to enable them to become good housewives.
These are some of the beliefs why Muslim women in India are educationally-backward, reveals a government-commissioned study.

 UPA chairperson and Congress president Sonia Gandhi has acknowledged that minorities particularly Muslims need greater access to professional education. Addressing the Eighth Convocation of the Jamia Hamdard here recently, Mrs. Gandhi said  the UPA government has recognised the need to put special focus on the traditionally disadvantaged sections of society and that is why it has vastly expanded scholarships for minorities, scheduled castes and tribes, OBCs and girls. She  said 370 new colleges will be opened in districts which are educationally backward, adding that these include most of the 90 districts that have a substantial concentration of minority population.  She expressed her happiness to be in Jamia Hamdard, where her late husband Rajiv Gandhi desired to be the “driver of Hakim Abdul Hamid”. She also said that Hamdard has come up as  a “symbol of private and government partnership and  will emerge as a  centre of excellence in coming years.” Sonia also gave away awards of degrees to Ph.D, post-graduates and graduates of different professional courses.

 The National Commission for Minorities (NCM) has  recommended to the government to give Scheduled Caste status to Dalit Muslims and Dalit Christians, and they must be given benefit of reservations. ‘There can be no doubt whatsoever that Dalit Muslims and Dalit Christians are socially known and treated as distinct groups within their own religious communities and are invariably regarded as ‘socially inferior’ communities by their co-religionists,’ the study report said.

Universally practised forms of discrimination and exclusion include social and cultural segregation, expressed in various forms of refusal to have any social interaction, endogamy, expressed through the universal prohibitions on Dalit, non-Dalit marriages and through severe social sanctions on both Dalits and non-Dalits, who break this taboo.  The report said there was enough evidence to justify the Scheduled Caste status for both the disadvantaged sections.
(Reported by Andalib Akhter)

The Union Public Service Commission has recommended 734 candidates for appointment to the central services following the Civil Services Main Examination held in October-November 2007 and Personality test held in March – May 2008. Of these, 22 or 3.1 per cent candidates are Muslims. Of the 734 candidates, 286 are from general category, 266 belong to OBC quota of 27 per cent, 128 are from SC communities and 54 from Scheduled Tribes. The number of vacancies reported for the IAS this year is 111, for IPS 103 and for the IFS 20 and for other Central Services 458. Following are the names of the Muslim candidates who are included in the recommended list: Mariam Farzhana Sadhiq, Rashid Munir Khan, Mohd. Zubair Ali Hashmi, Rizvi Sarah Afzal Ahmed, Shaikah Arif Husen, Tafseer Iqbal, Hamid Akhtar, Abdul Jabber, Rayees Mohammad Bhat, Abdul Hakeem M., Sadre Alam, Altaf Hussain, Leyaqat Ali Aaafaqui, Waseem Ur Rehman, Abu Imran, Md. Sadique Alam, Md.Parwej Alam, Shammas Hameed, Md Shadab Ahmed, Mushtaque Ahmed, Ilyas P. K.A., and Masoom Ali Sarwar are among those selected.

By clearing the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) examination 2007, Wasimur Rehman of Siddharth Nagar, Uttar Pradesh has broken the jinx that a madrasa student can only be an Imam of a mosque or a religious cleric. Rehman a student of Darul Uloom, Deoband has secured the 404th position this year in UPSC. He has become the first student from the Darul Uloom to clear the UPSC exam. Rahman said : “I dreamt of becoming a high-ranking officer to serve my country”. Rehman has three brothers, one is a taxi driver, another works at a shop, while the third is a student. When he graduated from Darul Uloom a few years ago, Rehman realised that the Islamic degree rendered him ineligible for his dream career, the civil services. So, he went back to his village and worked as Imam for a while. He was advised that a bachelor’s degree in Unani medicine from Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi could make him eligible for civil services. Rahman wrote the exam in Urdu medium, with History and Persian as his main subjects.

 The Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) has decided to recognise several Madrasas across the country. The move intends to provide better opportunities to Madrasa students to pursue higher and modern education as well. The effort will begin in Uttar Pradesh, which has nearly 2000 Madrasas recognised by the state Madrasa Education Board.  The students of accredited Madrasas will get direct admission in bachelor courses offered by AMU. Later, these students can also pursue master’s courses offered by the varsity. (Reported by Andalib Akhter)