Tag Archives: Ziya Us Salam

Recycling myths: an excerpt from Ziya Us Salam’s Being Muslim in Hindu India

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NEW DELHI:

By equating Akbar and Aurangzeb, proponents of Hindutva show they prefer to settle present-day disputes with the weapon of history, real or imagined.

Muslims gather for prayer during Eid Mubarak in Delhi. | Photo Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto

Those who believe in the Hindutva agenda cannot find a distinction between the diverse Muslim Indian leaders of the past. It is in this light that persuasive attempts have been made to link Akbar and Aurangzeb, the two Mughal emperors who should be seen at the opposite ends of the spectrum of religiosity and pluralism. An excerpt from the forthcoming book, Being Muslim in Hindu India.

Vintage illustration of the military in 16th Century India. | Photo Credit: Getty Images

For the votaries of Hindutva, all Muslim Indian rulers of medieval India are the same. Be it the rulers of the Delhi Sultanate, the Deccani sultans or the Mughals, their names are incidental, even superfluous. They were all Muslim kings! It does not matter that no Muslim king governed by the principles of Islam and most of their decisions were taken based on political needs. Their alliances and conflicts were all entered for personal aggrandizement. No king waged a jihad, a crusade. The fight was not to uphold the supremacy of any faith, but to expand fiefdom, kingdom or empire. To the rabble-rousing Hindutva brigade, it matters not that there were Muslim commanders of Hindu armies, and Hindu governors in charge of the so-called Muslim armies.

For instance, Raja Jai Singh led Aurangzeb’s armies against Shivaji, just as Raja Man Singh had led the Mughal forces against Rana Pratap in the time of Akbar. At the same time, Hakim Khan Sur led Rana Pratap’s forces against the Mughals! Violence was a regular feature of premodern Indian kingship, and there were no religious divisions when it came to violence. All kings, all dynasties, were violent — right from the Nandas and Mauryas to the Sultanate and Mughals, everyone. From Kalinga to Panipat, the story was the same.

However, these facts are for the discerning. For the Hindutva proponent with a clear agenda of ‘we’ and ‘they’, the important basis for distinction is the name of a Muslim king. It is under this light that persuasive attempts have been made to link up Aurangzeb and Akbar, the two Mughal emperors hitherto seen at opposite ends of the spectrum of religiosity and pluralism.

The former has historically been projected as a bigot, the man who charged jizya, demolished temples and withheld state patronage to arts and culture. The latter has been hailed for the breadth of his vision, his ability to forge matrimonial alliances with the Rajputs — taking their princesses in marriage while they remained practising Hindus — initiating a dialogue with priests and practitioners of all faiths, even collecting the best principles of various religious denominations to come up with Deen-e-ilahi, a new faith that sought to appeal to the broader instincts of the educated.

Mughal emperor Akbar | Photo Credit: Wiki Commons

The faith died with Akbar, but the fact remains that Deen-e-ilahi and the underlying principle of Sulh-i-Kul were probably among the earliest attempts at finding a solution to inter-faith differences. ‘Akbar supervised translations of Singhasan Battisi, Atharva Veda, Mahabharata, Harivamsa and other scriptures into Persian,’ says historian Shireen Moosvi, professor at Aligarh Muslim University, adding that Sulh-i-Kul was the result of genuine considerations to suit the needs of a multi-religious country like India. Much before the Indian Constitution made secularism the touchstone of democracy, Akbar had practised it.

Aurangzeb | Photo Credit: Wiki Commons

Now, the difference between Aurangzeb and Akbar, clear as night from day, is being gradually blurred. No, despite serious attempts by historians, the polity is not looking at Aurangzeb afresh; in the mind of the common man, he continues to be a destroyer of temples, one guilty of regicide, patricide, fratricide and what have you. In February 2023, the name of Aurangabad, the city where he is buried in a simple tomb, was changed to Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar, after Chhatrapati Shivaji’s son, who was executed by Aurangzeb in 1689.

Repeated attempts are being made to nibble at Akbar’s greatness, letting us know through an incident here, a rechristening attempt there, that Akbar was not so great after all. That the Rajputs were better, that Akbar was a Mughal and hence incapable of being our hero. The attempt is not only to rewrite history, but also to deprive contemporary Muslims of their heroes, in whose actions they could take pride, and icons they could quote in conversations as their contribution to the nation. The stray barbs about the Taj Mahal or the Ajmer Fort are actually not isolated or spontaneous utterings of a loose cannon, but a deliberate ploy to take the sheen off the accomplishments of the Mughals — and by extension, modern-day Muslims—who are now held accountable for all the battles and bloodshed of the past.

Muslims sit inside a mosque in Bombay, in 1993, following the outbreak of violence in the Babri Masjid demolition incident. | Photo Credit: Getty Images

In the grammar of Hindutva votaries, you see, every Muslim king was a Mughal, and every Indian Muslim of modern India is responsible for the failures and sins of the Mughals…. The derogatory ‘Babur ki Aulad’, a term often heard since the Babri Masjid–Ramjanmabhoomi dispute, stemmed not just from a political mindset, but a much deeper and divisive ideology. It is this ideology that refuses to take a dispassionate look at our past. It prefers rather to settle present-day disputes with the weapon of history, real or imagined…. In their world of binaries, you are either with them or against them. The recycling of Hindutva mythologies is merely an attempt to fuel modern-day bigotry. Nuanced study, not sweeping generalisations, is the need of the hour.

Being Muslim in Hindu India; Ziya Us Salam, HarperCollins, ₹599.

Excerpted with permission from HarperCollins.

ziya.salam@thehindu.co.in

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Books>Review / by Ziya Us Salam / November 17th, 2023

Inside The Tablighi Jamaat: A Book Review

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INDIA:

As Tablighis came under the scanner of the government post lockdown in India for allegedly ‘ spreading the coronavirus intentionally’, journalist and noted author, Ziya Us Salam pens down a topical book on the history and evolution of this Jamaat. The book is being published by Harper Collins India.

Cover Page of The Book : Inside The Tablighi Jamaat 

A book such as Inside the Tablighi Jamaat is an important intervention to understand the historical continuity of a contemporary phenomenon, more so in the context the controversy involving the movement and its headquarters popularly known as Markaz. Tablighi Jamaat has been in existence for almost one hundred years but it preferred a life of quietude till such time it was made the focus of sustained media attention in the month of April for its congregation in the context of the pandemic.

Many would have preferred to remain quiet on the issue but Ziya us Salam chose to dig out material from the history and place them and the movement in the contemporary context. Devoting twenty four chapters and 260 pages to unravel the layers of the existence of the movement must be viewed with as much seriousness as the book deserves. The scholarly community as well as an interested reader would find mist evaporating from the body and the movement that were initiated about a hundred years ago.

The clarion call of the movement has been to invite the Muslims to become better Muslims and follow the prescribed rituals of Islam. But in the course of doing so it moved in the direction of revivalism in personal life of a member of Jamaati and then spreading out to those who would come under its influence through personal contacts in the course of conducting Chilla whether for three days or forty days or a year. The very fact that the Jamaatis would invite their contacts to live a life of piety as modeled during the times of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions.

For the purpose of helping a new entrant to the charmed circle of the Jamaatis, a book consisting of several volumes known as Fazail-i-Amal was compiled, generally believed to have been done in good faith preaching lessons from the Islamic scholarship and traditions. Among the jamaatis the book evokes tremendous respect and acceptability. As a matter of matter of fact in their circle the book attracts much greater attention than any other book. It is believed that for a Jamaati there is no word beyond Fazail-i-Amal. But the author is not quite impressed as his scholarly scrutiny of the movement takes him to argue, “In other words, Fazail-i-Amal introduces a lot that is biddah (a practice not approved in Islam) based on hearsay. The stories and anecdotes might seem attractive to a layman, but they do not always pass the crucible with scholars of Islam.” (p.102)

An overwhelming emphasis on the good conduct and personal piety does not create conditions of bringing about social reforms within the community of believers. For instance it has opened the door of the Jamaat on women without laying emphasis on social reforms leading to an ideological and cultural climate of gender equality. The Tablighi Jamaat has been shying away from the question of women performing namaz in masjids. The author has highlighted instances where tablighi controlled masjids have been openly hostile to the idea of men and women performing namaz simultaneously. Precedents from the instructions by Hazrat Umar are invoked while a reference to Surah Tauba talking about men and women going for prayers in a masjid is ignored.

The author explains has argued that the tablighis rarely engage themselves in issues which social and political bearings. This benign neglect of contemporary issues such as Tripple Talaq or the issue of Babri Masjid judgement etc. is borne out of their understanding of the movement that it must not get involved in the worldly affairs. This reclusive approach has helps the movement to keep itself away from the gaze of public and the government of the day. However, the fact remains that values imbibed on social plane have bearings in personal life too as it become hard to maintain a distinction between the two. Seen in this perspective, life of an average tablighi is reflective of the larger values they inculcate in the course of their interactions within the organization.

However, such an approach has borne them fruits of a different kind. Their apolitical nature and tendencies to avoid getting involved in contentious issues have gained them access to far off land in the Western hemisphere. They have significant bases in countries such as the UK and USA in a significant way. They have managed to penetrate certain African nations such as South Africa and others without difficulty. However, South-east Asian nations such Indonesia and Malysia have proved to be fertile grounds for the expansion of the Tablighi work. But in the Central Asian countries a similar luck eluded the movement as many regimes suspected it for spreading too much religious mindedness and making masjids as centers of their activities.

While the author has subjected the tablighi movement to scrutiny in a number of ways especially as regards gender justice in spiritual spaces he emerges a trenchant critic of the movement as regards the leadership issues. He raises the issue of absence of democratic values within the oragnisation as no member of the organization has risen to the leadership position due to the stranglehold of the family since the time of Maulana Ilyas. There is a dedicated chapter, ‘All in the Family’ and has argued, “Right from the 1920s to 2020 not a single president has come from outside the family.” (p.138)

The most interesting aspect of the book is its journey into the past to explore historical dimensions of the Tablighi Jamaat and return to the contemporary to examine the continuity and digressions and adjustments. Attempts to locate its genesis take the readers to 1920s when the Shudhi movement under the aegis of the Arya smamaj, especially it’s leader Swami Shradhanand was launched. Culturally vulnerable groups were targeted. Much like the Ghar Wapsi campaigns in recent years.

The author has cleverly used his skills of navigating between the popular and academic language format, which makes the book immensely readable. While it is a book on Tablighi Jamaat, it quietly introduces myriad dimensions of the Islamic religious traditions to the readers.

 ( Views are personal) 

The Reviewer, Prof. Rizwan Qaiser teaches History at Jamia Millia Islamia. 

The Author , Ziya Us Salam writes for Frontline Magazine. 

source: http://www.outlookindia.com / Outlook / Home> Books / by Rizwan Qaiser / September 29th, 2020

Arif Mohammed Khan | His own man

Books (incl.Biographies - w.e.f.01 jan 2018 ), Community Involvement / Social Issues, Leaders, , , , , , , ,

Bulandshahr, UTTAR PRADESH:

The Kerala Governor is in the midst of a controversy after he launched an attack on the State government in a press conference 

What’s unfolding now in Kerala is merely the latest episode in Arif Mohammed Khan’s lifelong story of being his own man, whatever the stakes, whichever the stage. Often loathed, sometimes loved but hard to ignore, Mr. Khan was that way when he entered student politics in Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) in the early 1970s and rose to be the president of the students union. It wasn’t any different when he became an MLA in 1977, aged 26. Or a Minister of State during the Rajiv Gandhi Government. It is scarcely any different now when he is into his 70s and occupies the august, if increasingly controversial, office of the Governor of Kerala. He is his own man.

Another matter not everyone shares his view of what’s right. Least of all Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. There is little, if any, love lost between the two. There is a reason: Mr. Khan has been publicly critical of the appointment of Mr. Vijayan’s private secretary’s wife as an Associate professor in Kannur University, where Mr. Khan is the Chancellor. So upset was Mr. Khan that casting custom aside, he called a press conference at Raj Bhawan where he fumed against the elected LDF government.

Unsurprisingly, the LDF government can barely stand him today. It is unlikely to worry Mr. Khan a bit. He is known to express himself even at the risk of social opprobrium. His old friends in AMU and Jamia Millia Islamia, where the Bulandshahr-born young man sought education, remember him as a frank and fearless person who was reasonable and open to debate. He is said to have been a good host who loved his Mughlai food and served it with relish to his guests. Today, they are both surprised and a shade speechless at the ideological and political vicissitudes in Mr. Khan’s life.

Indeed, what is happening today in Kerala is not without precedence in Mr. Khan’s multi-layered career which has seen him making pit stops over the Bharatiya Kranti Dal (the predecessor of Rashtriya Lok Dal), the Congress, the Janata Dal, the Bahujan Samaj Party before finally finding a bit of an echo to his views in the BJP. His stint in Kerala, his vehement opposition to noted Marxist historian Irfan Habib and constant run-ins with the Kerala Chief Minister are all attributed to his saffron leaning. Never mind the fact that he has won elections, notably from Kanpur and Bahraich on the tickets of non-BJP parties and has lost elections, as in Kaiserganj, on the BJP ticket in 2004.

Clash with clerics

Back in the mid-1980s, a section of Muslim clerics had no love lost for him at the height of the Shah Bano controversy when he risked it all in opposing Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s move to virtually overturn the Supreme Court verdict on maintenance to divorced Muslim women.

Faced with calls for social boycott and possibility of political oblivion, Mr. Khan did not equivocate then. He is not likely do that now too.

Mr. Khan is a redoubtable scholar of Islam with a uniquely his own interpretation of religion. One could question his interpretation of scripture, not his facts. Equally, unlike many clerics, he is open to being corrected. Faizur Rehman, an independent Chennai-based Islamic scholar himself, at one time agreed with him on the Shah Bano case, but later made his disapproval known when Mr. Khan supported the criminalisation of triple talaq following the Shayara Bano verdict. “Our friendship was not affected by my criticism of his views on criminalisation of talaq,” Mr. Rehman recalls.

One may disagree with Mr. Khan but there is merit in listening to him, even if he himself could do with being a better listener. In the Shah Bano case, the Muslim clerics had agreed for the husbands to pay a substantial one time alimony to a divorced wife. They later retracted. If the maulanas had listened to him then, India’s political trajectory would have been very different.

As for Mr. Khan, he would do well to remember the letter of the rule book he quotes against the Kerala government expects a certain spirit, a certain decorum from the Governor too. It’s time to listen to Mr. Khan as much as for him to listen to voices of constitutional propriety.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> India / by Ziya Us Salam / September 25th, 2022

By the Book

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NEW DELHI :

FOR A FAIR CONTRACT At the discussion that followed the book release, the panellists (from left) journalist Marya Shakil, lawyer J.C. Batra, author Ziya Us Salam and Lt. Gen. (Retd.) Zameeruddin Shah) discussed women’s rights in Islam
FOR A FAIR CONTRACT At the discussion that followed the book release, the panellists (from left) journalist Marya Shakil, lawyer J.C. Batra, author Ziya Us Salam and Lt. Gen. (Retd.) Zameeruddin Shah) discussed women’s rights in Islam

Ziya Us Salam’s “Till Talaq Do Us Part” defogs the miasma around the issue of instant triple talaq

Triple talaq is a phrase that the citizens of India became acutely aware of post the events of 2017, when seven women petitioners moved the Supreme Court against their instant divorce brought about through the uttering of the words ‘talaq, talaq, talaq.’ The apex Court had, on August 22, ruled that instant triple talaq was a practice not sanctioned in the Quran, yet a fog of confusion and obfuscation surrounds the general discourse and public understanding of what exactly constitutes an Islamic divorce. In this context, Till Talaq Do Us Part (Penguin Random House) by senior journalist Ziya Us Salam is a book that acquires much significance as it tries to brush the dust away and bring clarity to the issue by reverting to the most authentic source for Islamic knowledge — the Quran.

Released this past evening at the India International Centre by Lt. Gen. (Retd.) Zamiruddin Shah, the book defines nine types of divorce interpreted from Quranic verses.

Among them some of the most important ones are Khula, the inalienable right of the woman to instantly divorce her husband on the grounds of his inability to take care of her needs or even simply her dislike for him; Talaq e Ehsan where the man pronounces divorce once but the woman lives with him for the next three months, after which he can divorce her or they can reconcile; Talaq e Hasan where the man pronounces divorce three times in three months, but only in the interim periods of menstrual cycles; Mubarat which takes place through mutual consent, Faskh or judicial divorce; Talaq e Tafweez which is incorporated into the Nikahnama wherein the husband vests the rights of divorce in his wife.

Lack of information

“In the present scenario within the country, the right information on Islam was not reaching the masses,” says Salam. Which is why he decided to write this book that talks about numerous aspects of marriage including the model nikahnama that the AIMPLB spoke of circulating but never quite got down to the task. He also speaks of the importance of meher, the dower paid by the man to the woman at the time of marriage, and how it is entirely neglected among Muslims in India. The meher must be paid either in full to the woman at the time of nikah, or in part with the husband giving a written undertaking that he would pay the rest in future, he emphasises. “One of the most important things is to have one regular nikahnama for all Muslims — at the most two, one for Sunnis and the other for Shias — but ideally, just one.”

Understanding halala

The book also deals with the highly controversial issue of halala, which in truth has been contorted and disfigured heavily into an abhorrent act of female exploitation. Halala, explains Salam, actually gives a woman the right to choose.

If perchance a woman’s second husband either passes away or the second marriage too results in divorce, she has the right to go back and choose her first husband again. However, with the entirely invalid and un-Quranic practice of triple talaq, instant divorces are carried out in a fit of anger and when the man comes to his senses and wishes to reconcile with the woman, they are forced into a monstrous distortion of Halala. When triple talaq gets pushed out of the scene, the question of a one-night halala would not arise at all.

Several scholars state that triple talaq was made legal by Umar Ibn Khattab, the second Caliph in Islamic history. “The important fact which is overlooked, though, is that it was made legal upon the condition that the man giving triple talaq would be flogged,” he highlights. “So why do the maulanas forget to flog the men giving triple talaq?”

A very important point here is that instant triple talaq did not exist at the time of Prophet Mohammad at all, nor the time of the first Caliph. Equally pertinently, it was later made entirely invalid and illegal by Ali Ibn Abi Talib, the fourth Caliph of Islam.

Many Islamic countries have made the instant talaq illegal and it is non-existent among the Shia sect. In fact it is illegal in all other sects except the Hanafis, but as the author writes in his book, “there is no direct word from Imam Hanifa on triple talaq.”

But social structures are rigid and herd tendencies difficult to change, which is why the Supreme Court judgement against instant triple talaq cannot be enough, just as dowry and caste system still exist despite being grossly unconstitutional. In addition, the maulanas whom the masses look to for religious guidance are ill-equipped for the task, caught as they are between rote-recitation and following customs without an attempt at understanding. “Across the country, a vast number of Imams don’t even know (the meaning of) what they have read in namaz!” avers Salam. “They prevent women from coming to mosques but at the Kaaba in Mecca, women and men pray together, perform Hajj together. There is no restriction at all upon women praying in mosques.”

The important task, then, is for the community to be educated and made aware of their rights, for people to read translations of the Quran and develop a deeper understanding. One may pick any translation and exegesis among the many reputed ones, but the most important thing is to explore. In addition, the men must be made aware of the rights of women as much as the women themselves. As Salam says, “We have reduced the understanding of the Quran to the monopoly of some aalim. But the Quran came for all of humanity, not a select group of scholars.”

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Books> Authors / by Zehra Naqvi / May 03rd, 2018