By Abdul Basith MA, TwoCircles.net,
Kozhikode: Eminent intellectuals, human rights activists from different faiths and community leaders have expressed deep concern at the rise in arrest of innocent Muslim youths on terror charges – many of them fabricated ones.
At a meeting of Students Islamic Organisation [SIO] over framing of Muslim students by Bangalore Police, the eminent citizens conveyed a strong message against the State attempt to alienate them from professional, science and technological fields by framing them as terrorists.
Gro Vasu addressing the SIO meet in Kozhikode
Karnataka leader of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, Maulana Wahiduddin Khan while addressing the meet organised at Town Hall, Kozhikode said that it is high time the Muslims especially in Kerala come up with a multi-dimensional defence against the state tactics by taking many a secular unbiased minds with them. The defence should be as such to demand more transparency from the part of the Police over the recent arrest of Muslim students and professionals, as until now they weren’t able to provide any convincing explanation despite continuous demand from the part of civil rights groups like Association for Protection of Civil Rights [APCR]. His speech in Urdu was translated to Malayalam by Rafeeq Rahman.
Leftist intellectual and Writer KEN Kunjahammed opined that though it is necessary to fight terrorism, but it is also necessary to fight atrocities from the state. He said the term ‘Justice’ and ‘Right’ can’t any way be interchangeably used for ‘pity’ ‘need’ or ‘sympathy’ because they don’t exactly carry out the purpose of the latter. He instanced the case of International Water Body [A body formed by corporate powers to protect their interests on distribution of water] deciding on their later meet to call it the common man’s ‘need for water’ than terming it his ‘right for water’. He says it is this decision which exactly has forced us to buy water instead of getting it free as his birth right. Same way he says, it should be for ‘justice’ that we should stand tall instead of being ‘Sympathetic’ or feeling ‘Pity’ towards the framed youths of Bangalore.
Referring to the recent arrest of Muslims in Bangalore, KEN cited a story where a character was found weeping in the dense forest, with his wife and kids being preyed upon by a leopard. A passer-by asked him to get back home soon, so that he won’t be the next prey for the leopard, his reply was ‘I won’t go back because we have a “Government” back home’.
KEN while referring to the recent incident of a Village Officer in Kochi, Kerala attesting the community certificate of a Muslim Youth as ‘not belonging to any Muslim extremist groups’ called it an attempt to create castes within the Muslim community namely soft, moderate, extremist, practising and non- practising Muslims; in order to threaten them and discourage their religious identities. He said the source for this indeed has been Gujarat, which through Karnataka has now started finding its way to Kerala.
P Ruksana, state president of Girls Islamic Organisation [GIO] accused the Govt and Police of having vested interests like the Muslim community should stay poor, uneducated and deprived of opportunities in the professional job sector. “The state is fabricating cases against Muslim students using laptops, mobiles, facebook and if this is a crime they could well arrest all among us. When Muslim students were uneducated the accusation was like they are worth for nothing and now it has been like the very action of Muslims going to schools is sedition” she said.
She quoted JIH Kerala Ameer T Arif Ali to say that, “the defence against state framing should not be in any way physical, because this would enable the state and its machinery to frame charges to keep them behind bars and torture them all throughout their life”.
Human Right Activist Gro Vasu, the first public figure in Kerala along with Mukundan C Menon to take a stand against the arrest of Abdul Nasar Madani opined that it won’t be the right idea to still trace the reasons behind ‘Framing of Muslim Youths’ on Islamic terrorism.
He said it is high time Muslims should come out of these types of assessments or mindsets because they are not blamed as propagators of terror based on their actions. Instead it is because there are age old agendas to portray them as terrorists on baseless grounds in order to alienate them from the country and to tarnish their image because the vested interests fears Muslims aligning with the Dalits and other oppressed class of the nation.
The framing of Muslims and Dalits as terrorists are thus part of a century long agenda of Sanghparivar and their counterparts in Israel, which they are successfully carrying out through their influence in the Govt, media and the state machinery. Our state too seems following the Israel theory of blaming Palestinian children as armed terrorists while they pelt stones at their tanks as part of self defence.
“So if Muslims keep pointing at factions within themselves to provide explanations before the public to clear their hands of the so called terror accusations, the trend of framing Muslims youths as terrorists will continue for ever. ‘Abdul Nasar Madani’s’ will keep happening in our society, we will continue organising defence meets like this and the state will keep carrying out their agendas against Muslims and Dalits”, warned the respected Trade Unionist in Kerala.
General Secretary of Welfare Party of India Kerala Chapter, K Ambujaskshan acclaimed SIO for organising the defence meet as he said, there should be further resistance based on this defence meet to challenge the persistent trend that ‘jails in India are exclusively meant for Muslims and Dalits’.
The other dignitaries who spoke on the occasion were VT Abdullah Koya Thangal, Khalid Moosa Nadvi and KPM Haris.