Articles

I did not realize that I have already completed one year after demitting office on 25 July 2007. This one year has been an extremely eventful one me having visited over 12 states in India and nine countries.

It is pertinent to note here that I have not been able to accept more than 10 per cent of the total invitations received.

Do you think there is a Muslim family law act in India that covers all familial issues and that is applicable on all Muslims living in any part of the country, be it Gujarat, Goa or Jammu & Kashmir? If you think so, you are, sorry to say, absolutely wrong.

Muslims settled down in Shillong in 17th century though, they are at best still struggling to make their presence felt. With migration of Muslims from Hindi heartland including Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, the position of local Muslims have got strengthened a little in Shillong that is dominated by Christians.

Jammu and Kashmir has been one of the regions of the country mired in different types of troubles all through. To add to the painful situation, the issue of land allotment to Amarnath shrine and later reversal of this decision has worsened the harmony, which is eluding the region.

“Islamic system of banking can surely be a boon for our country as it is for the whole mankind”, said H. Abdul Raqeeb, National Convener of the Islamic Banking Committee and member of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind’s (JIH) Central Advisory Council. He was addressing media persons in Jaipur.

Democracy is supposed to be the best form of governance but experience both of western and eastern countries show a wide gap between theory and practice. Nothing that pertains to human beings can approximate, let alone be equal to ideals. Philosophers also say real is not ideal and ideal is not real. Democracy is no exception. Democracy is an ideal but its practice within a given society makes it operation extremely complex.

Jamaat-e-Ulama-e-Hind. I fear you may be thinking that I am going to talk about Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind (JUH), the oldest Muslim organization in India. Sorry, read it again. It is a newborn, hardly two-month old organization appeared in the backdrop of the leadership dispute in JUH. Maybe to exploit the situation, or in its own imagination to capture the space to be vacated by JUH.

Soon after taking over his assignment as the Governor of J&K state NN Vohra, made first overture to ease the situation in the valley by offering to surrender the land the state government allotted to the Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board of which he is the ex-officio head. It immediately caused a backlash in Jammu region when the BJP and other Hindu organizations called for a Bandh and led protest marches.

The nuclear deal and other questions of foreign policy should be opposed or defended on their own merits. Sadly, both the government and its opponents have played fast and loose with the ‘Muslim’ card, to the detriment of the community’s larger interest.

The Amarnath shrine is claimed to be some thousand years old and forms an important part of Hindu pilgrimages. The Hindu legend has it that Shiva recounted to Parvati the secret of creation in a cave in Amarnath, situated at an altitude of 12,760 ft, about 141 km from Srinagar and 44 km from the town of Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir.

The nuclear deal controversy seems to have brought out some of the worst aspects of Indian politics. As much is evident from the cynical manner in which several parties are trying to communalise the issue by suggesting, without a shred of factual evidence, that Muslims will be antagonised by the pact with the US.

The bold decision of the Congress government led by Ghulam Nabi Azad in Srinagar must be commended. By revoking the land order to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB) that was illegal at the first place, Azad has not only shown great courage and decision making skills to deal with a crisis that was spiralling out of control, a la 1990, but also taken both the People's Democratic Party (PDP) and the fledgling separatist movement of the Hurriyat Conference off the guard, who were using the land issue to manipulate public mind.

“You people always do such things (bomb blasts),” said a senior officer of Rajasthan Police to Dr Amanullah Jamali, a Unani Medical Officer posted at a government health centre in the village of Bagri Nagar in Sojat Tehsil of Pali district.

In a revealing statement, the Union Home Minister of state Prakash Jaisawal admitted to media that there has not been any progress in the investigation of terror blasts in the country including that of the recent Jaipur bombings.

What are they preparing for? Against whom? For whose security? And who are the people who are doing these preparations? A channel reported that in Indore, Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) members openly fired guns in the air. There were multiple rounds fired. I am sure people of the area would not have become happy to hear the sounds of gunfire. They must have been scared. Who is being scared? And who are these preparations against?

BJP is preparing to assume reigns of power again at the Centre. It has assumed as if it will come to power and Mr. L.KAdvani will be the Prime Minister of India. The success in the southern state of Karnataka has tremendously boosted its morale. Though BJP knows it cannot come to power of its own, it is preparing for striking alliances both in north as well as in south. In south it may try to woo TDP again.

Having faced racial prejudice at one time or another, many Indians across the globe have expressed support for Barack Obama as the Democratic candidate for US president.

Although Hillary Clinton would have been the first woman in this office, which too would have been pathbreaking, Obama as the first possible non-Caucasian US president seems more popular with Indian origin people in the US and in other countries.

On the night of June 10, American air strikes took place on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in Mohmand agency. It killed 27 people, of which 11 belonged to the Frontier Constabulary. While both sides agree that the air strike took place, there are different versions about the nature of the incident and the circumstances surrounding it.

Jaipur, as usual, is fading away from the headlines of the national media, as it always does till another terror strike jerks our collective psyche with gory images, wrecked vehicles and charred human limbs. Like in earlier instances, in the case of Jaipur also, claims and denials about the failures of the state and central agencies, issues like lack of information gathering at the base, unhindered exchange of information amongst agencies and, most crucial, the analyses of data collected came to fore in the aftermath.

Tehran : The stalemate surrounding Iran's nuclear issue seems to remain hard to break up although an updated package of incentives offered by six major world powers -- Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States was handed over to Iranian officials by EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana on Saturday.

Baghdad : Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's harsh words on "deadlock" over Iraq-U.S. pact talks may not prevent Baghdad and Washington from hammering out a long-term relationship pact, analysts said Saturday.

Maliki could have made the pointed remarks under growing pressure at home and abroad, added the analysts.

Trawling through the net, I came across pictures of Sir Allen Stanford getting out of a black chopper bearing his name and on to the Nursery Ground at Lord's. And then there was that amazing still of $20 million in $50 bills in plastic crate, which had been wheeled out after the Texan billionaire's announcements of his promises to boost English and West Indies cricket.

Since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has convinced itself of its excellent prospects in the next general election, it is not surprising that its two top leaders have spelt out their visions for the future. The enterprise would have been enlightening but for the fact that their prescriptions cancel out each other.

The Bangladesh caretaker government is not giving up. This time it's a month-long nationwide drive against crime that has been launched. Beginning from May 30, over 12,000 have been arrested in the first week. The numbers will only multiply over the next few weeks.

The recently concluded three-day international conference on interfaith dialogue organised by the Muslim World League at Makkah marks a major step towards promoting bridges of dialogue and understanding between Muslims and people of other faiths. This comes at a time of mounting Islamophobia the world over, when negative stereotyping of Muslims and their faith has become deeply ingrained in large sections of the international media and also in policy-making circles in many countries.

One of my many major grouses with the 'mainstream' Indian media (and this applies to the dominant Western media as well) is the despicable way in which it treats Pakistan. It is as if bad news about Pakistan is always good news for the media. It is also if there is nothing at all good in that country to write about or that anything good about it is not 'newsworthy'.

It is a tragedy of the post-911 world that the field of Islamic concepts and terminologies have also fallen a victim to misunderstanding, misinterpretation, and plain hysteria. Fuelling these fears among the masses are not only rabid Islamophobes but also those who claim to be nothing of that sort but whose actions speak otherwise. Canadian TV host and commentator Tarek Fatah belongs to the latter category. He has a history of mindless criticism of things as mundane as the aversion to music to more significant ones as the introduction of Sharia-based laws in Ontario.

Going by the positive reviews that 'AAMIR' has elicited in the secular press, my friend Kishore Jagtap and myself decided to see the movie, for the reason that it dealt with the modern scourge of terrorism.

It is often asked why Indian Muslims did not go through renaissance? By implication it is suggested Islam prevents any such possibility. I think it is quite simplistic assumption. Religion by itself neither obstructs nor helps the process of renaissance. To understand possibility of renaissance or otherwise one has to understand the complex processes at work in the society.

I was in Tenkasi town for a few hours as a part of field visit, a part of 7 days workshop on "Peace and Conflict Resolution" organized jointly by Institute for Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution, Mumbai and Society for Community Organisations Trust (SOCO Trust), Madurai. Madurai was amongst the three areas that were selected for field visit. The participants of the Workshop were divided in three groups and they went to three different areas.