Don’t mistake Dr. Zakir Naik’s out-of-date medievalism for ‘Modern Islam’, The War within Islam, NewAgeIslam

The War within Islam

Don’t mistake Dr. Zakir Naik’s out-of-date medievalism for ‘Modern Islam’

A conditional charity

By Javed Anand

Nov 19, 2009The MRO has now issued an ultimatum to the Muslims it had helped rehabilitate: Shariah-compliant beards are a must. No rubbing shoulders with fellow Muslims in the village mosque, namaaz only in the special (sectarian) mosque we have built. Banish TV sets from your homes, all music is prohibited. Follow the “Shariah rules” or out you go of the homes we built. For you.

It can’t be an easy choice for Detral’s Muslims who, dispossessed by Hindu extremists seven years earlier, now face a second dispossession: by co-believers this time. My salaams to those village folks who at great cost to themselves have chosen freedom over capitulation to mean despots masquerading as custodians of Islam! A Google search doesn’t tell us much about the MRO or its broader ideological affiliation. But it’s easy to see where they are coming from.

The Detral ignominy is no isolated incident. Last year, televangelist Dr Zakir Naik’s flush-with-petro-dollars Islamic Research Foundation (IRF) launched a scholarship scheme for Muslim students. That you might think is a good idea. But here again, conditions apply. Before all else, the aspiring candidates must pass the “Islam test”. Since IRF is the screening body, it is reasonable to assume that the would-be grantee must match-up to the sponsor’s brand of an intolerant Islam. So here is free tuition to future aspirants on IRF’s ‘model answers’ to frequently asked questions:

Is it OK for Indian Muslims to sing Vande Mataram?

Model answer: Forget Muslims, even Hindus must follow the Vedas and refrain from such sinful act. (Rigveda, page…, para…, mantra…; the IRF is pretty good at playing the memory game).

http://newageislam.com/don%E2%80%99t-mistake-dr.-zakir-naik%E2%80%99s-out-of-date-medievalism-for-%E2%80%98modern-islam%E2%80%99/the-war-within-islam/d/2115

Why do Muslim women have fewer rights in secular India than in numerous Muslim countries?, Islamic Sharia Laws, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic Sharia Laws

Why do Muslim women have fewer rights in secular India than in numerous Muslim countries?

Listen, Mister

Javed Anand

Aug 25, 2009

In case you didn’t know it already, scriptwriter, lyricist and poet Javed Akhtar can do many things with words: entertain, enthral, entrap. “If Muslims were to fear Allah even 10 per cent of the fear they have of fellow Muslims, it would make them better Muslims and more sensible human beings too,” I have heard him say in public gatherings of Muslims in Mumbai, Delhi, Lucknow, Kanpur, Allahabad, Hyderabad, Aligarh Muslim University. The spontaneous response to this apparently provocative statement everywhere is assenting nods, sheepish smiles, loud guffaws.

What Javed Akhtar keeps saying in public, a top drawer maulana from the Jamiat-ul-ulema-e-Hind told me in private last year. “The biggest hurdles before us,” he said, “are the Urdu press (read Muslim media) and Muslim leaders.” In the name of Islam anything goes. And he who dares utter the dissenting word had better beware!

But if Muslims are so terrified of fellow Muslims, what so frightens the Law Commission of India as to prefer public embarrassment to plainspeak? The commission’s 277th report, recently made public, observes that the “traditional understanding of Muslim law on bigamy is gravely faulty and conflicts with true Islamic law in letter and spirit”. Well said. But look where it goes from there. It proposes a new clause in Hindu family law to abort sham conversions purely for bigamy’s sake but, mindful of something called “religious sensibilities”, stays totally mum about what must necessarily be done with the country’s Muslim Personal Law.

http://newageislam.com/why-do-muslim-women-have-fewer-rights-in-secular-india-than-in-numerous-muslim-countries?/islamic-sharia-laws/d/1683

Muslim Press must introspect, give voice to Muslim revulsion against SIMI terrorism,

Islam,Terrorism and Jihad

Muslim Press must introspect, give voice to Muslim revulsion against SIMI terrorism

Truth Has Two Faces: SIMI’s radicalism is of deep concern for Indian Muslims

By Javed Anand

Co-editor, Communalism Combat

Saturday, 13 September 2008

But first things first: My huge compliments and a hundred salaams to Ajit Sahi and TEHELKA for holding a mirror before the mainstream media, offering yet another outstanding example of courageous journalism. Sahi’s detailed report, case-by-case, is a highly credible, damning account of the questionable conduct — shocking inefficiency, callousness or rank anti-Muslim prejudice? — of our intelligence agencies. Evidently, Judge Gita Mittal of the Delhi High Court who headed the special tribunal was of the same opinion. Why else would she slam the ban order in such transparent disgust?

The Supreme Court was quick to stay the ban on SIMI presumably on the basis of fresh evidence produced before it. What the apex court decides in due course remains to be seen. But for now, the investigating agencies must answer TEHELKA’s charge that scores of Muslims and their family members from across the country were subjected to midnight knocks, illegal detention, humiliating beatings, torture and jail: all on false charges and without a shred of evidence.

http://newageislam.com/muslim-press-must-introspect,-give-voice-to-muslim-revulsion-against-simi-terrorism/islam,terrorism-and-jihad/d/727

Suspect SIMI? Of course!, Radical Islamism and Jihad, NewAgeIslam.com

Suspect SIMI? Of course!

Indian Muslims must recognise the organisation for what it is: against secular democracy

By Javed Anand

Posted online: Saturday, August 16, 2008

What about yet another ex-SIMI-man, Kanpur’s Haji Mohammed Salees, horrified by what he saw and heard at SIMI’s “Ikhwan Conference” in his city in October 1999? Among the things that shocked Salees was reportedly the war cry of the seven-year-old Gulrez Siddiqui before an audience of over 20,000 people: “Islam ka ghazi, butshikan/ Mera sher, Osama bin Laden (The warrior of Islam, the destroyer of idols/ My lion, Osama bin Laden)”. Those who addressed the gathering, long-distance telephonically, were Hamas founder, Sheikh Yaseen, head of the Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, and the imam of the al Aqsa mosque, Israel/Palestine. “It was all a shock for us. We realised they are developing international links. We distanced ourselves,” Salees has said

Two years later, at a gathering of 25,000 Muslim youths in Mumbai, SIMI reiterated that the time has come for Indian Muslims to launch an armed jihad in India with the establishment of an Islamic caliphate as the ultimate aim.

Don’t believe any of them? What about SIMI’s own posters plastered in the by-lanes of Muslim mohallas across the country following the demolition of the Babri mosque, with an invocation: “Ya Ilahi, bhej de Mahmood koi (Oh Allah, send us a Mahmud)”. Who does not know that the reference was to Mahmud Ghaznavi whom fanatics revere as a “But Shikan (Destroyer of Idols)”

http://newageislam.com/suspect-simi?-of-course!/radical-islamism-and-jihad/d/568