A song and a fatwa

Maulana Mehmood Madni, Rajya Sabha member and the driving force behind the more relevant faction of the Jamiatul-ulema-e-Hind (JUH), is my hero, part-time. Self-assured but unassuming, gracious, intelligent, a twinkle in the eyes suggestive of playfulness, nice face, nice beard, nice sound, nice smile. I liked him the very first time we met in mid-April last year.
Two months prior to that, in February 2008, a few of us had met at the residence of ad guru Alyque Padamsee: A maulana, a mufti, a woman professor of Islamic Studies and yours truly. We were there to talk about Islam and terrorism.
“I don’t get it. Every Muslim I meet tells me Islam is against terrorism, every non-Muslim I meet believes Islam teaches terrorism”, said Alyque. The maulana, the mufti and the professor cited verses from the Quran to show how Islam denounces any targeting of innocents.
“So it’s not a question of faith but a problem of communication and maybe that’s where I come in”, said Alyque with the air of someone who knew exactly how to fix the problem. “We need drama to catch the media’s eyeballs so we’ll give them that. What we need is a fatwa and a hundred maulanas, each holding a mike, to spell it out loud and clear. Then the media will listen!”
How to get a hundred maulanas? That was when we found our hero in Maulana Madni. “You are talking of a hundred, I’m thinking of a million Muslims”, he told me when I met him in Delhi in mid-April 2008. I nearly fell off my chair! Already on February 29, 2008, he had brought together thousands of maulanas at Darul Uloom, Deoband, for the same purpose. As part of his year-long campaign against terrorism in Islam’s name, he now planned to assemble a million Muslims at the Ramlila Ground in Delhi on May 31, 2008.
“Sau salaams to all of you, Maulana Sahib. But, with due respect, it was a mixed message that went out of Deoband”, I ventured tentatively. “There is this ad guru friend who says he has an idea or two on how to make your message really travel”. “Let’s meet in Mumbai then”, was Maulana Madni’s ready response.
“It has to be a fatwa, nothing less”, Alyque kept insisting. It was Maulana Madni who got an unequivocal, no nonsense fatwa out of Deoband. “How about an oath to make it more dramatic?” suggested Alyque. Yes, we can, came the response. At the Ramlila ground on May 31, 2008, over 3,00,000 maulanas, maulvis and madrasa students raised their hands and took an “Oath of Allegiance” to fight terrorism in India or wherever… whenever.
The self-absorbed media didn’t get it. Recall the Muslim state of denial until then, recall the familiar why-don’t-even-moderate-Muslims-speak-up grouse? Yet, when, in a clean break from the prevailing denial-ism, 3,00,000 teachers and students from madrasas — alleged dens of global jihad — spoke out in one voice, the national media failed to give it the rousing reception it well deserved. How else does one explain that international commentators, experts and scholars of “Islamic terrorism” are still unaware of a clerics-led anti-terrorism campaign without any parallel in the world?
Give it to Maulana Mehmood Madni. Not to be deterred by the myopic media, a trainload of maulanas travelled from Deoband to Hyderabad in November last year to reiterate their “Terrorists-are-enemies-of-Islam”, “Islam-means-peace” message. That the message was finally getting home was clear from what special invitee Sri Sri Ravi Shankar of Art of Living fame said at the Hyderabad rally: “An atmosphere has been created the world over linking terrorism with Islam. We have to join hands to remove this misconception”. Now, a week ago, it was yoga guru Baba Ramdev, in a beard-to-beard with the maulanas at Deoband.
For his unrelenting, unmatched campaign against terror, Maulana Madni and the Jamiat do deserve the grateful thanks of a nation plagued by the terror scourge in recent years. So, it’s a real good thing that on November 3, 2009, Union home minister P. Chidambaram, minister of state for communications Sachin Pilot and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Sitaram Yechury travelled to Deoband to do just that.
But many in the media still didn’t get it. For them, the “breaking news”, the panel discussions that evening and the next, was the Deoband fatwa declaring the singing of Vande Mataram as un-Islamic. Why was there no news flash, no panel discussion on “Ayatollah” Bal Thackeray’s adesh that followed directing his Sainiks to cut off the tongue of any Muslim who refuses to chant the national song? Forget the Deoband fatwa, my limited refusal to sing Vande Mataram is simple: It’s the Hindu Taliban’s patriotism test for Indian Muslims.

All good things, alas, must come to an end. And here sadly is the end of the good news from Deoband and the Jamiat: The Indian state need have no security concern from these quarters, but Indian Muslims, and Muslim women particularly, have much to worry about.
True, the bulk of the Deoband establishment had staunchly opposed Partition. Since Independence it has consistently opposed the idea of a separate Muslim political party. But, beyond that, all that the orthodox Deoband and the Jamiat have to offer is an obscurantist, insular, outdated Islam.
Have photographs at home, other than a passport? Burn them, NOW, for that’s a grave sin. Celebrating a birthday, New Year or Valentine’s Day is seriously un-Islamic. Visiting the dargah of a saint: Isn’t it part family outing, part faith rejuvenation, part social intermingling with people of other faiths. No way, that’s pure shirk! Teaching science and maths in the madrasas? Out of the question. A knowledge of the world and knowledge of Islam don’t go together.
What if you are a woman? First thing, remember, Allah has made men “rulers”, “sovereign” over women. The ideal Muslim woman is not heard or seen, except in a head-to-toe burqa. Higher education to become a doctor, engineer, lawyer, journalist, corporate executive, pilot, astronaut? Banish the thought. Co-education is haraam in Islam. Triple talaaq (instant divorce)? Yes, it’s a socially repugnant practice but what to do, its Sharia law. If a man rapes his daughter-in-law, she becomes haraam to her husband for he is now her son: that too is one interpretation in Islamic law.
See what I mean? For what it’s worth, here’s my advice to all Indians, Muslims particularly: join Deoband and the JUH for they are invaluable allies in the fight against terrorism; but challenge them too for they are a huge, big drag on the community and the country’s quest for a better tomorrow.

n Javed Anand is co-editor of Communalism Combat and general secretary, Muslims for Secular Democracy