SACW | 19 Sep 2004

[sacw]

South Asia Citizens Wire  |  19 September,  2004
via:  www.sacw.net
[Our E-mailers under the name South Asia Citizens 
Wire have now completed their sixth year of 
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=======
[1] Pakistan: Miracles, Wars, and Politics	  (Pervez Hoodbhoy)
[2] Helping women balance family life, jihad (Sudha Ramachandran)
[3] India: On a Muscle Flexing and Politicised 
Ganesha Chaturthi Festival   (Ranjit Hoskote)
+ Police to fold up Sena flag for Ganesh festival
[4] India: Muslim Personal Law board leading 
Muslims up the garden path of obscurantism
(Saba Naqvi Bhaumik)
[5] India: Mumbai riot victims still awaiting justice
[6] Book Review: "The In-Between World of Vikram 
Lall by MG Vassanji" (Helon Habila)
[7] India: Certificate Course On Human Rights, 
Criminal Law & Communalism and law (Bombay, 
October - December 2004)

--------------
[1]
ZNet  | September 16, 2004
MIRACLES, WARS, AND POLITICS
by Pervez Hoodbhoy
On the morning of the first Gulf War (1991), 
having just heard the news of the US attack on 
Baghdad, I walked into my office in the physics 
department in a state of numbness and depression. 
Mass death and devastation would surely follow. I 
was dismayed, but not surprised, to discover my 
PhD student, a militant activist of the 
Jamaat-i-Islami's student wing in Islamabad, in a 
state of euphoria. Islam's victory, he said, is 
inevitable because God is on our side and the 
Americans cannot survive without alcohol and 
women. He reasoned that neither would be 
available in Iraq, and happily concluded that the 
Americans were doomed. Then he reverentially 
closed his eyes and thrice repeated "Inshallah" 
(if Allah so wills). Two weeks later, after the 
rout of Saddam's army and 70,000 dead Iraqis, I 
reminded him of his predictions. He stumbled an 
explanation but soon gave up. Years later, soon 
after earning a reasonably good doctorate in 
quantum field theory and elementary particles, he 
quit academia and put his considerable physics 
skills to use in a very different direction. 
Today he heads a department that deals with 
missile guidance systems in a defense 
organization that makes nuclear weapons and 
precision missiles.

Belief in miracles, and that ones' prayers can 
persuade divine intervention in matters of the 
physical world, is an integral part of most 
cultures and beliefs. In Pakistan today - where 
the bulk of the population has been through the 
Islamized education initiated by General 
Zia-ul-Haq in the 1980's - supernatural 
intervention is widely held responsible for 
natural calamities and diseases, car accidents 
and plane crashes, acquiring or losing personal 
wealth, success or failure in examinations, or 
determining matters of love and matrimony. In 
Pakistan no aircraft - whether of Pakistan 
International Airlines or a private carrier 
registered in Pakistan - can take off until 
appropriate prayers are recited. Wars certainly 
cannot be won without Allah's help, but He has 
also been given the task of winning cricket 
matches for Pakistan.

The last mentioned is serious business, lest 
anyone think otherwise. And it makes the 
Almighty's job a particularly difficult one 
whenever there are Muslims playing on the other 
sides' team. Hafizur Rahman, an astute observer 
of Pakistani cricket, recalls that when the 
Pakistan team won a test match in South Africa 
some years ago, to the amazement of the 
spectators, all team members prostrated 
themselves on the cricket ground to thank Allah. 
But this was a minor event compared to the 
national frenzy induced by the World Cup in 
Australia; the erstwhile prime minister, Benazir 
Bhutto, called upon the entire nation to pray for 
a final win. Even the clergy, who normally 
condemn cricket as frivolous entertainment, 
joined in the hysteria. When Pakistan lost the 
match, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, who became prime 
minister in 2004, had an interesting explanation. 
In his view, "the PTV (Pakistan Television) song 
that boasted that we would win, did not contain 
the word Inshallah. That is why we lost."

Drought may not be as important a matter as 
cricket, but last week the government of Pakistan 
issued a warning - the rivers are running dry, 
water reservoirs are nearing the danger mark, and 
hydro-electricity production may soon be 
discontinued. Even as I type this paragraph on a 
Friday afternoon, millions of the faithful in 
mosques across Pakistan are obeying the 
government's call for 'namaz-i-istisqa' (prayers 
for rain). Next year - instead of building dams, 
lining canals, embarking on water conservancy 
strategies, or doing something to control 
Pakistan's exploding population - the government 
will presumably put the pressure on God again by 
summoning the masses.

Will It Rain If You Pray?
The history of myths and miracles in 
pre-Reformation Christianity, of their growth in 
earlier phases, and their decline under 
Renaissance thinking, is an extremely interesting 
and relevant subject for those who wish to 
understand the state of science and society in 
Muslim countries today. The fundamental question 
then was, and remains today, the following: does 
God suspend the laws of physics in response to 
the actions of human beings (in which case 
miracles can happen)? Or has God turned over the 
day-to-day matters of running the universe to the 
laws of physics that he put into place at the 
beginning (in this case miracles cannot happen)?

Following the lead of European Renaissance 
thinkers, Muslim reformers of the 19th century, 
particularly Syed Ahmad Khan, argued that 
miracles - as commonly understood - cannot and do 
not happen. As a religious scholar who wrote a 
tafseer (interpretation) of the Qur'an, Syed 
Ahmad Khan insisted that the miracles mentioned 
in the Qur'an must be understood in broad 
allegorical terms rather than literally. 
Following the Mutazillite tradition of early 
Islam he, together with various 19th century Arab 
modernists, insisted on an interpretation of the 
Qur'an that was in conformity with the observed 
truths of science, thereby doing away with such 
commonly held beliefs as the Noah's Great Flood 
and Adam's descent from heaven. It was a risky 
proposition that brought them closer to modern 
scientific thought, on the one hand, and severe 
condemnation from the orthodox of those times. 
But those 19th century battles appear to be 
forgotten today. Looking at these old writings, 
one wonders how those Muslim thinkers dared to 
engage so boldly in such controversial matters. 
But they did, and today we dare not. This is an 
indication of the profound philosophical and 
intellectual regression of the Muslim world over 
the last two centuries.

My discussion in a recent seminar in Lahore of 
the history of miracles, cause-and-effect in 
ancient Islam (there was greater acceptance then 
than today!), and description of rainfall as a 
physical process that cannot be influenced by 
prayer, drew an angry reaction from a professor 
at an elite university. Subsequently, an email 
was circulated to the entire student body and 
beyond, an excerpt of which is reproduced below:

The fact that rainfall sometimes is caused in 
response to prayers is a matter of human 
experience. Although I cannot narrate an incident 
directly, I know [this] from the observations of 
people who would not exaggerate�. . The problem 
is that Dr Hoodbhoy has narrowed down his mind to 
be influenced by only those facts that could be 
explained by the cause-and-effect relationship. 
That's a classic example of academic prejudice�. 
Our world is not running on the principle of a 
causal relationship. It is running the way it is 
being run by its Master. Man has discovered that, 
generally speaking, the physical phenomena of our 
world follow the principle of cause-and-effect. 
However, that may not always happen, because the 
One who is running it has never committed Himself 
to stick to that principle.

I responded with the following points:
� Prof. X admits that he has never personally 
witnessed rain fall in consequence to prayers, 
but confidently states that this is 'a matter of 
human experience' because he thinks some others 
have seen unusual things happen. Well, there are 
people who are willing to swear on oath that they 
have seen Elvis's ghost. Others claim that they 
have seen UFOs, horned beasts, apparitions, the 
dead arise, etc. Without disputing that some of 
these people might be sincere and honest, I must 
emphasise that science cannot agree to this 
methodology. There is no limit to the power of 
people's imagination. Unless these mysterious 
events are recorded on camera, we cannot accept 
them as factual occurrences.

� Rain is a physical process (evaporation, cloud 
formation, nucleation, condensation). It is 
complicated, because the atmospheric motion of 
gases needs many variables for a proper 
description. However, it obeys exactly the same 
physical laws as deduced by looking at gases in a 
cylinder, falling bodies, and so forth. 
Personally I would be most interested to know 
whether prayers can also cause the reversal of 
much simpler kinds of physical processes. For 
example, can a stone be made to fall upward 
instead of downward? Or can heat be made to flow 
from a cold body to a hot body by appropriate 
spiritual prompting? If prayers can cause rain to 
fall from a blue sky, then all physics and all 
science deserves to be trashed.

� I am afraid that the track record for Prof. X's 
point of view on rain is not very good. Saudi 
Arabia remains a desert in spite of its evident 
holiness, and the poor peasants of Sind have a 
terrible time with drought in spite of their 
simplicity and piety. Geography, not earnestness 
of prayer, appears to be the determining factor.

� Confidence in the cause-and-effect relationship 
is indeed the very foundation of science and, as 
a scientist, I fully stand by it. Press the 
letter 'T' on your keyboard and the same letter 
appears on the screen; step on the accelerator 
and your car accelerates; jump out of a window 
and you get hurt; put your hand on a stove and 
you get burnt. Those who doubt cause-and-effect 
do so at great personal peril.

� Prof. X is correct in saying that many 
different people (not just Muslims alone) believe 
they can influence physical events through 
persuading a divine authority. Indeed, in the 
specific context of rain-making, we have several 
examples. Red Indians had their very elaborate 
dances to please the Rain God; people of the 
African bush tribes beat drums and chant; and 
orthodox Hindus plead with Ram through 
spectacular 'yagas' with hundreds of thousands of 
the faithful. Their methods seem a little odd to 
me, but I wonder if Prof. X wishes to accord them 
respect and legitimacy.

Why Science Does Matter
Specious theological beliefs, together with 
reliance on miracles and superstitions, have 
acted as a brake on social progress and often 
rendered peoples vulnerable to the depredations 
of science-based imperialism. Muslims have been 
the worst sufferers.

Suffocated by Western colonizers on the one hand, 
and the weight of tradition on the other, 19th 
century Muslim modernizers across the Muslim 
world sought new ways to revive their societies. 
Reconciling Islamic theology with science was an 
important challenge because, for these pioneering 
individuals, science was the key instrument for 
promoting rational thinking on political and 
social matters. Mohammed Abduh, Rashid Rida, 
Jamaluddin Afghani, Syed Ameer Ali, Syed Ahmad 
Khan, and other intellectuals, sought to deal 
with issues such as polygamy and purdah in Islam, 
the question of slavery, the permissibility of 
interest, etc. Their success - limited as it was 
- was important in eventually creating a large 
Muslim elite that broke with traditional norms 
and forms of social behaviour.

But today Islam is once again regressing into 
pre-scientific thinking and behaviour - thousands 
of websites on science and Islam promote the most 
egregious examples of scientific crackpotism. But 
Muslims are not alone. A similar regression is 
evident on a global scale with anti-scientific 
thinking neatly dovetailing with, and providing 
justification for, aggressive forms of social and 
political behaviour.

This primitivism is starkly evident in George 
Bush's America which promotes Creationism and 
Christian notions of the human foetus. According 
to the National Science Foundation's biennial 
report (April 2002) on the state of science 
understanding: 30% of adult Americans believe 
that UFOs are space vehicles from other 
civilizations; 60% believe in ESP; 40% think that 
astrology is scientific; 32% believe in lucky 
numbers; 70% accept magnetic therapy as 
scientific; and 88% accept alternative medicine. 
This vast base of ignorance allows for the rise 
of American neoconservatism and the blueprint for 
the New American Century; preparations for 
Armageddon; and for General Boykin in Somalia to 
say "my God is bigger than theirs".

In India, superstitious beliefs were actively 
cultivated by the BJP and its allies. These 
included the creation of astrology departments, 
promotion of "Vedic" mathematics and cosmology, 
and a revamping of the school curricula. Mass 
hysteria - promoted by orthodox Hindus - 
accompanied the sighting of the "Monkey Man", 
followed by Muhnochwa the "Face-Scratcher", and 
then the elephant-like Lord Ganesh's alleged 
drinking of milk. Charged with the notion of 
Hindu superiority, and of wild notions that Hindu 
deities had been born under certain mosques, 
Hindutva forces organized the razing of mosques 
and tombs, and massacred Muslims and Christians.

In Israel, orthodox Jews have been the pillars of 
a state that is built on the notion of religious 
exclusion. Israel's drive for total military 
superiority, and a strong tradition of Jewish 
secularism, have so far kept the orthodox at bay. 
But it is unclear whether this can persist 
indefinitely. For example, certain American 
cattle tycoons have for years been working with 
Israeli counterparts to try and breed a pure red 
heifer in Israel, which, by their interpretation 
of chapter 19 of the Book of Numbers, will signal 
the coming of the building of the Third Temple. 
If they were to succeed, it could intensify the 
already strong movement within Israel to rebuild 
the Temple, the event of which would ignite the 
Middle East, as any new Temple must be built on 
the Temple Mount current home of the Dome of The 
Rock, a Muslim holy site.

Zealots of all persuasions - Muslim, Hindu, 
Christian, and Jewish - welcome attacks on 
science and reason. Social constructivists, 
postmodernists, and even some feminists, have 
unwittingly given them yet more ammunition by 
inventing specious arguments. Improvement of the 
human condition demands a return to critical 
reasoning and scientific analysis, a rejection of 
cultural relativism, and willingness to accept 
still-evolving universal norms of ethics and 
human behaviour.

(The author is professor of physics at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad)

______

[2]
Asia Times - Sep 15, 2004
HELPING WOMEN BALANCE FAMILY LIFE, JIHAD
by Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - A new women's magazine, al-Khansa, 
has recently been launched on the Internet. In 
itself, this is an unremarkable event, but unlike 
other women's magazines, this one is likely to 
evoke immense interest among terrorism and 
counter-terrorism experts rather than the target 
readership themselves - Muslim women.
Al-Khansa is the first jihadi publication aimed 
exclusively at women. The magazine's first issue 
appeared in August and was hosted by several 
extremist Islamist websites. It says it is 
published by an organization called the Women's 
Information Bureau of al-Qaeda in the Arabian 
Peninsula and claims that Abdul Aziz al-Muqrin, 
the leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, 
who was killed by Saudi police in a shootout in 
June and Issa Saad Mohammed bin Oushan, who was 
killed the following month, are among its 
founders. Al-Muqrin and Oushan figured in Saudi 
Arabia's list of 26 most-wanted militants.
Al-Khansa is named after a female Arab poet who 
was a close associate of the Prophet Mohammed. In 
her writings, she eulogized her brother and urged 
her sons to participate in the jihad. Her sons 
subsequently died on the battlefield.
The choice of the name al-Khansa for the magazine 
is not without reason. The magazine aims to 
motivate women to participate in jihad by 
bringing up their children to be good jihadis and 
by being supportive of their husbands, brothers 
and sons who are fighters.
The editorial in al-Khansa's first issue says 
that "martyrdom for the sake of Allah" and 
gaining "the pleasure of Allah and His Paradise" 
should be the goal of women. It draws attention 
to the support that women extend to the jihadis. 
"We stand shoulder to shoulder with our men, 
supporting them, helping them, and backing them 
up. We educate their sons and we prepare 
ourselves. May Allah know of the honesty of our 
intentions and of our good deeds, and [may He] 
choose us and make us martyrs for His sake ..."
The magazine sees no contradiction between being 
a woman/mother and being a jihadi at the same 
time. The editorial says: "We will stand covered 
by our veils and wrapped in our robes, weapons in 
hand, our children in our laps, with the Koran 
and the Sunna of the Prophet of Allah directing 
and guiding us. The blood of our husbands and the 
body parts of our children are the sacrifice by 
means of which we draw closer to Allah, so that 
through us, Allah will cause the martyrdom for 
His sake to succeed."
In fact, al-Khansa exploits the woman's 
traditional role in family and society as mother 
and nurturer of her children to get them to play 
a larger role in the jihad. In an article titled 
"Obstacles in the Path of the Jihad Warrior 
Woman" a contributor calling herself Umm Badr 
writes: "The woman in the family is a mother, 
wife, sister and daughter. In society, she is an 
educator, propagator and preacher of Islam, and a 
female jihad warrior. Just as she defends her 
family from any possible aggression, she defends 
society from destructive thoughts and from 
ideological and moral deterioration, and she is 
the soldier who bears his pack and weapon on his 
back in preparation for the military offensive 
..."
This call to Muslim women to become jihad warrior 
women is not new. In early Muslim society, women 
fought alongside men in battle. The Prophet's 
wives had immense political power. Although 
Muslim women have by and large been kept away and 
stayed away from the actual jihadi battlefield in 
recent centuries, as they are expected to take 
care of the home and the family while the male 
relatives do the fighting, in recent years jihadi 
propaganda literature and radical Islamist 
websites have exhorted women to sacrifice for the 
jihadi cause.
Extremist Islamist websites are generous with 
advice on how women can and should participate in 
the jihad. There are many suggestions on how they 
should bring up children to be good jihadis and 
what books they should read to their children to 
make them devout Muslims and brave fighters. 
There is advice on how mothers, wives and sisters 
of jihadi fighters should be supportive of their 
husbands' decision to become a jihadi and how 
they should provide food, shelter and care for 
all jihadis. That women must sacrifice their sons 
and husbands is a recurrent theme of much jihadi 
literature. Stories draw heavily from the lives 
of jihadis in history and the way their women 
relatives willingly sacrificed their sons and 
husbands for the sake of the cause of jihad.
What sets apart the advice in al-Khansa is that 
the articles and editorials are presented as if 
women write them, although whether this is indeed 
the case is a debatable point. In the past, it 
has generally been men calling on women to 
support the jihadi cause.
In her article in al-Khansa, Umm Badr outlines 
some of the "obstacles" in the path of a women 
jihadi warrior. These include inadequate 
knowledge of religion, emotions like fear and 
poor military preparedness. The writer points to 
a "defective understanding of jihad, according to 
which only men are responsible for waging jihad, 
or jihad means only bearing arms and direct 
conflict [with the enemy]".
This is a flawed perception, the writer argues, 
as a Muslim woman wages jihad by funding the 
jihad, by waiting for her jihad warrior husband 
and when she educates her children "to that which 
Allah loves". "She wages jihad when she bears 
arms to defend her family ... She wages jihad 
when she shows patience and fortitude with her 
husband who is waging jihad for the sake of 
Allah. She wages jihad when she supports jihad 
and when she calls for jihad in word, deed, 
belief, and prayer."
"It is true that originally the commandment of 
jihad was incumbent upon men and not women," the 
article observes. "But when jihad becomes a 
personal obligation, then the woman is summoned 
like a man, and need ask permission neither from 
her husband nor from her guardian, because she is 
obligated and none need to ask permission in 
order to carry out a commandment that everyone 
must carry out ..."
In the past, a Muslim woman was seen as the 
responsibility of her male relatives. Militant 
organizations could not recruit women directly 
without transgressing familial and societal honor 
codes that require women to seek permission for 
every action they take outside the family home. 
To secretly recruit a woman as a suicide bomber 
or even as a courier of messages and weapons 
would be seen as an insult to the family's male 
honor. Increasingly, this seems to be changing, 
evident by the al-Khansa article saying the woman 
need not ask for permission to become a jihadi, 
as it is her duty to do so.
Some Islamic clerics have in recent years come 
out in support of women participating in military 
operations, even "martyrdom operations" (suicide 
attacks). Reacting to Palestinian women suicide 
bombers, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian 
who is the dean of Islamic Studies at the 
University of Qatar, ruled that "Women's 
participation in the martyrdom [suicide] 
operations carried out in Palestine given the 
status of the land as an occupied territory ... 
is one of the most praised acts of worship."
This "act is a form of martyrdom for the cause of 
Allah, and it entitles them [women] to the same 
reward earned by their male counterparts who also 
die in the cause of Allah," said al-Qaradawi. He 
pointed out that when the enemy attacks part of 
the Muslim territories, jihad becomes the duty of 
every individual, justifying women going out for 
jihad even without the permission of their male 
relatives.
The article in al-Khansa points out that poor 
military preparedness is the "main problem", not 
only of women but also of men. It calls on women 
to "at least know how to use a weapon in order to 
defend her honor", particularly in these times 
when the "enemy at the gate with his equipment, 
his ammunition, his army and his navy, his 
criminals, and his whores, has desecrated the 
honor of Muslim women everywhere."
"The female jihad warrior must be familiar with 
various types of weapons and ammunition, and with 
how to disassemble, clean, reassemble, use, and 
shoot a weapon." The article promises to "assist 
women in these matters" in upcoming issues of 
al-Khansa. It stresses the importance of physical 
fitness and to this end calls on women "not 
overindulge in eating and drinking", to fast 
regularly and exercise.
This increasing openness to allow women into the 
fight is not because of any new sensitivity to 
women's rights or any new awareness on issues of 
gender equality. Male fighters have only woken up 
to the fact that women engaged in military 
operations such as suicide bombings are less 
likely to be detected and that the survival of 
terror outfits depends on support from women.
On the one hand, nationalist and/or religious 
militant groups call on women to give birth to 
more sons to ensure a steady supply of fighters. 
Women in these societies are not allowed to use 
contraceptives or opt for abortion. This was the 
case in the early 1990s at the height of the 
militancy in Kashmir, when Islamist militant 
groups exhorted women to have more sons. 
Propaganda by fundamentalist groups like the 
Jamaat-e-Islami and the Banat-ul-Islam (its 
women's wing) would tell women that they were 
life givers and so they should not kill their 
unborn children. At the same time, these 
organizations would exhort women to sacrifice 
their sons for the sake of the cause.
Radical Islamist groups are of course not the 
only ones calling on women to sacrifice their 
children for the cause. Governments, too, expect 
women to cheerfully send off their sons and 
husbands to the battlefield "to die for the flag, 
protect territory and the country's national 
security" and to not grieve when they are killed. 
Only their effort to draw women into war is more 
subtle and sophisticated.

Sudha Ramachandran is an independent 
researcher/writer based in Bangalore, India. She 
has a doctoral degree from the School of 
International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru 
University in New Delhi. Her areas of interest 
include terrorism, conflict zones and gender and 
conflict. Formerly an assistant editor at Deccan 
Herald (Bangalore) she now teaches at the Asian 
College of Journalism, Chennai.


______

[3]
Magazine - The Hindu, September 12, 2004
FROM PEDESTAL TO PAVEMENT
Beginning as a domestic festivity, Ganesha 
Chaturthi has long since been raised to the 
status of a public festival. More troublingly, it 
has acquired political overtones. RANJIT HOSKOTE 
follows the `Remover of Obstacles' on his passage 
from a genial household deity to a hard-edged 
mass icon.
[ FULL TEXT AT 
http://www.hindu.com/mag/2004/09/12/stories/2004091200270100.htm 
]

[SEE ALSO  ]
Police to fold up Sena flag for Ganesh festival
Times of India September 17, 2004
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/853738.cms

______
[4]
Outlook Magazine | September 27, 2004
THE BOARD OF NO CONTROL
Be it birth control or the Shah Bano case, the 
AIMPLB is leading Muslims up the garden path of 
obscurantism
By Saba Naqvi Bhaumik

Stoke a controversy involving Indian Muslims and 
the usual suspects start emerging from the musty 
woodwork of the All India Muslim Personal Law 
Board (AIMPLB). These are 201 esteemed 
individuals who pose as the sole spokespersons of 
India's 138 million Muslims. They espouse views 
on issues that extend from the public domain to 
the privacy of the bedroom. What's more 
remarkable is the manner in which the Indian 
media hangs on to their every word, giving them 
an importance way beyond their actual influence 
on the community.
Increasingly, however, the average Muslim is 
asking: 'what right do board members have to 
speak for us?' Especially as they always 
embarrass the community.
Consider the convulsions over the census data 
released earlier this month. All hell broke loose 
when the AIMPLB vice-president, the erudite and 
moderate Shia cleric Maulana Kalbe Sadiq, said 
that the board would discuss steps to promote 
family planning, education. "Un-Islamic," yelled 
the obscurantists. They issued statements and 
posed before cameras. "Family planning would be a 
gross violation of the Sharia," said president of 
the board, Maulana Rabey Hasni Nadwi. Other 
bearded denizens clucked disapprovingly and spoke 
darkly of the consequences on the day of 
judgement when every believing Muslim comes 
face-to-face with his creator. Kalbe Sadiq, 
meanwhile, vanished. Some said he was in Iran, 
others claimed he had landed in London.
Yet the debate raged on. Some members of the 
board blamed the bjp for stoking the controversy 
in the first place by asking Muslims to adopt a 
two-child norm. Says Dr Manzoor Alam, AIMPLB 
member and chairman of the Institute of Objective 
Studies, "Some ulema have fallen into a bjp-rss 
trap." But could the Sangh parivar be held 
responsible for the remarkable views of Maulana 
Mohd Salim Qasimi of Darul Uloom, Deoband? The 
influential cleric told Outlook: "This is a 
European conspiracy. Muslims who use birth 
control follow a wrong path." What about Iran 
that has zero population growth? "We follow the 
Quran and Hadis, not Iran." While 'permanent' 
birth control methods like sterilisation, 
vasectomy and abortion were ruled out by all 
members of the board, the moderates took the view 
that 'temporary' methods were permissible.
Between the Sangh parivar demanding a curb on 
Muslim growth rates and the unobliging clerics, 
for the community it was a case of damned if we 
do, damned if we don't. Board member Kamal 
Farooqi admitted that "the episode has only 
benefited the advocates of Hindutva". Indeed, the 
consensus among most educated Muslims was that 
they had yet again been embarrassed by the 
utterances of the mullahs. Says Mushirul Hassan, 
vice-chancellor of Jamia Millia University: "The 
community has to address issues like population 
control in its own interest.

If the AIMPLB claims to be the sole 
representative of Indian Muslims, why does it not 
hold a referendum on such important issues? After 
all, we prize democracy in India and should have 
a democratic referendum."
A close look at the structure of the board makes 
this highly unlikely.The AIMPLB, founded in 1973, 
is a motley collection of clerics along with some 
professionals. Of the 201, as many as 101 are 
life members. The rest have a three-year term. 
The stated aims and objects (sic) of the board on 
its website is "to adopt suitable strategies for 
protection and continued applicability of Muslim 
Personal Law or the Sharia Application Act in 
India."

The high point of the board's achievement was to 
ensure that the Shah Bano judgement was 
overturned and the Muslim Women (Protection of 
Rights on Divorce) Act enacted in 1986. The board 
has also acquired a high profile in the Ayodhya 
dispute

although this has nothing to do with Muslim 
personal law. Historian Irfan Habib doesn't 
question the right of board members to air their 
opinion. But he adds a caveat: "We should keep in 
mind that Muslims don't follow the AIMPLB just as 
Hindus don't follow the VHP. Also remember, the 
board represents the more orthodox male opinion. 
It doesn't have a progressive viewpoint. The 
community, on the other hand, has to change with 
the times."
To an extent, the media is responsible for the 
high visibility given to board members. Mushirul 
Hassan says, "By highlighting the views of these 
clerics, the media gives them legitimacy." 
Writer-poet Javed Akhtar is equally harsh: "All 
that they have managed to do is damage the image 
of Indian Muslims. The media keeps reporting that 
the AIMPLB says so. I say, so what? The average 
Muslim is not governed by them. What the board 
says is a non-issue for me." The tragedy is that 
in the din of voices the real concerns of the 
Muslims is lost. First, a reminder that Muslim 
birth rates are coming down faster than that of 
Hindus. Moreover it's the poor, both Muslims and 
Hindus, who have more children. The census shows 
that in states with higher literacy, all 
communities, including Muslims, have fewer 
children.
Besides, all religions of the book, including 
Christianity, are opposed to 'intrusive' or 
'permanent' birth control methods. The Indian 
maulanas are no different from clerics elsewhere. 
There is nothing categorical in Islam against 
birth control. Legal expert and former chairman 
of the National Minorities Commission, Dr Tahir 
Mahmood, has written a book, Family Planning: The 
Muslim Viewpoint. Says he, "The mullahs will 
always be against anything they believe 
interferes with divine privilege. But there's no 
mandatory provision against family planning. At 
best we can say the Prophet was indifferent to 
the issue. The rest is a matter of 
interpretation." As for the AIMPLB, Dr Mahmood is 
dismissive: "They are a media creation."
The AIMPLB is also a tower of Babel whose members 
are incapable of taking a coherent stand on any 
issue. It is, after all, a collection of ulemas 
of different religious sects who often don't see 
eye-to-eye and don't even allow each other into 
their mosques. The Deobandi-Barelvi rivalry, for 
instance, is well known. The purpose for which 
the board was set up also defines its nature. 
Broadly, its members are incapable of saying 
anything that's less than fundamentalist.
For those Indian Muslims who choose to embrace 
modernity, the AIMPLB is an anachronism. What's 
worse is that by depicting the entire community 
as obscurantist, the board even harms the cause 
of the faithful whom it claims to serve.


______

[5]
Mid Day -  September 18, 2004
Mumbai riot victims still awaiting justice
  By: A Mid Day Correspondent
Victims of the 1992-93 Mumbai riots have 
questioned the reasoning behind bringing the 
Gujarat riots cases to the city when they are 
still awaiting justice from the city's communal 
riots.

Speaking at a press conference on Friday, three 
victims of the riots accused the state Government 
of hypocrisy for not trying to speed up court 
hearings in the Mumbai riot cases while taking 
credit for getting the Gujarat riot cases 
transferred to the city.

"Why is the government bringing Gujarat riot 
cases here when the victims of the 1992-92 riots 
in Mumbai have still not got justice after 11 
years?" asked Abdul Rehman, whose son died in the 
riots.

On the morning of January 11, 1993, 20-year old 
Abdul Mannan, a resident of Pratiksha Nagar, Sion 
was killed by three men near his house. After 
killing him, the killers burnt his body in the 
middle of the street.

The only eyewitness was his sister Gazala, 23, who had fled the killers.
When Rehman came back to fetch his son's body in 
the evening after the riots subsided, he found no 
trace of it. Rehman, now 68 years old, is still 
making the rounds of the courts to get justice.

Last year, he was told by the local police 
station that the case would come up for hearing 
in some time.

"That was the first time I heard that the case 
was in the court," says Rehman, who says that the 
delay in the case has traumatised him. "Why are 
the courts taking such a long time to hear the 
case when there is an eyewitness in the case?" 
asks Rehman, a former driver.

Haji Abdul Haq Ansari's garment unit in 
Narialwadi, Byculla was burnt by mobs on the 
evening of December 7, 1992. He says that when he 
visited the scene of destruction the next day, he 
and 14 of his workers were arrested for rioting.

"While the persons who destroyed my factory have 
got bail and are now free, I am still attending 
court to answer riot charges against me," he said.

Farooq Mapkar, who was injured in a police firing 
on January 10, 1993 at Hari Masjid, Wadala (six 
people died in that firing), said that he is 
still attending court hearings of a case of 
rioting that was filed against him after the 
firing.

"But the police officials who fired at 
worshippers inside the mosque though there was no 
provocation are now free," he said. He said that 
the victims expected justice after the present 
Congress-NCP government came into power.

"This government too has completed its term and 
justice has passed us by," he added.

Yusuf Muchalla, senior advocate who had appeared 
in the Justice Srikrishna Commission that had 
inquired into the riots said that both the 
earlier BJP-Sena alliance government and the 
current Congress-NCP administration had failed to 
provide justice to the victims.

"Civil society has not been able to address the 
cases of people who suffered during the riots," 
he said.


______

[6]  [Book Review]
The Guardian - September 18, 2004
MEMORIES OF MAU MAU
Helon Habila enjoys MG Vassanji's The In-Between 
World of Vikram Lall, a story about revolution 
and corruption in the making of Kenya

The In-Between World of Vikram Lall
by MG Vassanji
436pp, Canongate, �14.99
"The [white] settlers saw it as another South 
Africa ... except this would be better, more like 
Devonshire or Surrey, with the Africans their 
happy servants or junior partners. And the 
Indians ... almost as racist as the whites - and 
lazy." Welcome to Kenya, and MG Vassanji's The 
In-Between World of Vikram Lall. The novel is an 
account not only of Kenya's colonial past, but 
also its post-colonial and neo-colonial present; 
it is about the three races whose intersection in 
that place and at that time shaped the present 
reality.

Vikram's family forms the conduit for the story's 
transmission. His grandfather and other 
indentured labourers were "recruited from an 
assortment of towns in northwest India and 
brought to an alien, beautiful, and wild country 
at the dawn of the twentieth century". He falls 
in love with the beautiful country and decides to 
make it his home. Migrants, migration and the 
xenophobia that often accompanies them are strong 
sub-themes in the book. The narrator ponders: 
"What makes a man leave the land of his birth, 
the home of his childhood memories ... ?" He 
makes this observation in a hide-out in Canada - 
unlike his grandfather, the "home of his 
childhood memories" is not India but Kenya; again 
unlike his grandfather he did not leave his home 
as an economic migrant, but as a fugitive, "one 
of Africa's most corrupt men".

Many books (Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Weep Not, Child 
comes to mind) have proved that any meaningful 
examination of Kenya's murky political present 
must take a step into the past, particularly to 
the emergency of 1952-60, also known as the Mau 
Mau uprising. Vassanji's narrator, Vikram Lall, 
describes that past as "a colonial world of 
repressive, undignified subjecthood". This is the 
world in which he grows up with his sister, 
Deepa, and their friends: the African, Njoroge, 
and the British, Bill and Ann. It is here that 
they discover love, a discovery that will haunt 
their later lives. It is here that Vikram gets 
his first political education one day when Bill, 
Ann and their parents are brutally murdered by 
the Mau Mau.

Vikram's father, Ashok, is one of those peculiar 
products of the colonial period - loyal to the 
Queen, a member of the Asian Home Guard troops 
used by the British to suppress the Africans. 
Vikram's mother, Sheila, is a racist Punjabi 
housewife who just can't understand why her only 
daughter would fall in love with Njoroge, "that 
Kikuyu".

Mwangi, the gentle gardener and Njoroge's 
grandfather, turns out to be the Mau Mau 
oath-giver and is killed by the British; Mahesh 
Uncle, Vikram's charming uncle, turns out to be a 
covert Mau Mau supporter and Marxist 
revolutionary and is later deported back to India 
by the new African leaders. Njoroge's idealism 
finally leads to his assassination. Only Vikram 
judges the fickle temper of the times correctly 
and wisely refuses to take sides: "It was not for 
me to change this world. Moral judgments, 
therefore, I shied away from ... I therefore 
prefer my place in the middle, watch events run 
their course. This is easy, being an Asian, it is 
my natural place."

The book is about survival, political and 
personal. Vikram becomes the middleman, the 
moneychanger, the fixer, to ensure his place and 
his family's in the new Kenya. The British, to 
ensure the survival of their legacy, installed 
the new leaders - men not necessarily of the best 
quality, but reliable because of their greed and 
contempt for the people - as buffers against the 
rising tide of Marxism/socialism that had overrun 
neighbouring Tanzania. Sometimes Vassanji's image 
of the corrupt African politician - lugging a 
suitcase full of cash - verges on clich�, but his 
use of real political figures is daring.

Vassanji deliberately blurs the line between 
victim and victimiser. The new African elite 
suddenly begin to act more and more like their 
British predecessors. The Mau Mau freedom 
fighters who gave up everything to fight the 
colonialists are now hounded on the streets and 
arrested for the flimsiest reasons. The same 
colonial policemen and their African 
collaborators who tortured the Mau Mau and other 
blacks during the emergency are still in office 
as security advisers for the new ruling class.

The In-Between World is a good example of how the 
post-colonial novel should be written, 
dispassionately, avoiding the easy pitfalls of 
nostalgia and essentialism. Vassanji writes with 
admirable restraint; the first part is the 
hardest to read - one often feels like giving the 
plot a kick to get it moving. But the slow pace 
is understandable if one considers that Vassanji, 
himself born in Kenya, is returning to the scenes 
of his childhood with all its memories. This is 
the work of a writer at the top of his form. My 
only regret is that some characters, like Njoroge 
and Mahesh Uncle, are under-utilised, their 
revolutionary possibilities not fully exploited - 
but of course this is not a book about 
revolutions. It is mostly about the futility of 
revolutions, and the triumph of reactionaries.

______

[7]
CERTIFICATE COURSE ON HUMAN RIGHTS, CRIMINAL LAW & COMMUNALISM AND LAW
Duration
3 months, Every Saturday 10am to 5am
Language of the Course
Marathi & Hindi
From
October to December 2004
(Starting from October - only for Bombay People)
Venue
India Centre for Human Rights & Law
CVOD Jain High School, 4th floor, 84 Samuel 
Street, Pala Galli, Dongri, Mumbai - 400 009.
Tel: 23439651/ 23436692

Fees for the course
The fees of the course will be Rs.1000/-.

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on 
matters of peace and democratisation in South 
Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit 
citizens wire service run since 1998 by South 
Asia Citizens Web: www.sacw.net/
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necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers.
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