Posted by Admin on January 28th, 2012 — Posted in Uncategorized
To travel internationally, one requires a passport from the country of citizenship. Even children need a passport. Be it an airline or a cruise line, the same rule applies provided you are leaving the country. This same rule is applicable for those travelling on land. However, if you are caught unaware, there are expedited pass ports for children as well as adults.
Timetable
A passport takes four to six weeks from the time the application is submitted to receipt of same. If the international trip is urgent, the US Department of State also offers expedited services. These services will shorten the duration of processing and delivery to two weeks.
Expedited Service
The cost implication of the expedited passport is higher than that of the normal passport. The difference will depend on how urgent the passport is required. Non-governmental agencies also offer this service to the populace. They reduce the processing time to a range of 12 days to 24 hours. If the passport is not needed urgently, the cost implication might be reduced.
Government Licensing
Online and offline expediting services are available. Both providers need to get a license from the government in order to operate. This license should be the yardstick used to make a decision. For those that opt for an online agency, provide a valid email address along with other data that you present. This will be used to convey essential information to you. The offline service providers will require a contact phone number.
Payment
There are varieties of payment options. These are also subject to the agency you select. Online agencies provide the following options; PayPal, bank wire, e-check and credit card. The offline agencies accept credit/debit cards, money order, bank deposits and checks. You can then select the most appropriate option that suits you best.
Additional Charages
Asides from the government approved cost for a passport, the agency also charges for their service. Their charges might also come along with other services besides obtaining a passport. This occurs primarily when the agency is also laden with your traveling arrangements.
Parental Involvement
The parents or guardian of a child is actively involved in the entire process. The present laws of the United State stipulate for both parents be available when the application for the passport is submitted. In the absence of parents, guardians are allowed. The role of the parent/guardian also includes paying the required fees. All agencies offering this service are bound by this law.
Book or Card
When applying for infant American passport, you need to specify the nature of passport you want. There is the passport book and the passport card. With the passport book, a minor gets to travel by any means of transportation to any part of the world. The passport card is valid only for land and sea travels. This limits the travel destination to Canada, Mexico, Caribbean and Bermuda. The fees applicable to each of the passports also vary.
Posted by Admin on January 28th, 2012 — Posted in Muslim Beliefs
Tags: Arab, Davos, don’t, fear, Invest, Islamist, Leaders, Spring
(A general view shows the Swiss mountain resort of Davos December 28, 2011. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann)
Leaders of the Arab Spring sought to assure the world’s elite in Davos that the rise of political Islam is not a threat to democracy, and pleaded for help creating jobs and satisfying the hunger of their people for a better life. Politicians, activists and entrepreneurs from countries that have cast off dictators and held free elections in the last 12 months were prized guests at the World Economic Forum, where they asked for patience, understanding and investment.
The new prime ministers of Tunisia and Morocco, both chosen from Islamic parties, dismissed Western worries about a surge of political Islam across North Africa and sought to dispel the notion that the promise of last year’s protests had faded.
“I do not believe the new regimes should be called political Islamist regimes. We must be careful with our terminology… For the first time in the Arab world, we have free and honest elections that led to democratic regimes,” Tunisian Prime Minister Hammadi Jebali told a Davos panel.
Twelve months ago, stunned Davos delegates watched live television images of crowds surging into Cairo’s Tahrir Square in a political earthquake few had anticipated. Arab officials and civil society activists urged Western executives and commentators not to demonize the Islamic movements that have gone from prison to parliament and the corridors of power in a year of stunning transformation.
“I would like to ask the businessmen in the room. Have you suffered from the victory of the Islamists? You supported the dictatorships in the past,” Moroccan Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane said.
“Today we can guarantee your interests more than they did in the past.”
Read the full story by Warren Strobel and Paul Taylor here.
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FaithWorld
Posted by Admin on January 27th, 2012 — Posted in Muslim News
Tags: Contribution, India, MUSIC, Muslim, Patriotic
As we celebrate our 63rd Republic Day, let’s take a look at some Muslim contribution to patriotic songs in India over the years. The list is not exhaustive and considers only the more popular…
Indian Muslims
Posted by Admin on January 26th, 2012 — Posted in Mosque At Ground Zero
Tags: 2012, Jihad’, Producers, Reply, Third, Times, York
BROKEN LINKS HAVE BEEN REPAIRED
| ‘The Third Jihad’ Producers Reply to New York Times ArticlesDocumentary recently pulled from NYPD counterterrorism training;Times articles filled with innuendo and inaccuracies |
January 25, 2012 WATCH THE FILM FREE (Please scroll down) and for more background on the NY Times Holy War on “The Third Jihad”, go to Pamela Geller .
The New York Times has sharply criticized the New York Police Department for using the critically-acclaimed documentary The Third Jihad: Radical Islam’s Vision for America in counterterrorism training.
The New York Times has published two news articles (http://tinyurl.com/nyt-ttj1,http://tinyurl.com/nyt-ttj2), as well as an editorial entitled “Hateful Film” (http://tinyurl.com/nyt-ttj3) in the past 48 hours.
In response, film producer Raphael Shore has issued the following statement:
“We regret that the film has been taken out of the counterterrorism training program of the NYPD. The New York Times stories are proof positive that the Clarion Fund’s high-quality and impactful documentaries touch very sensitive nerves.
Those that have blasted the film are attempting to stifle an important debate about the internal state of the Muslim community in America, and whether politicized Islam and indoctrination pose tangible security threats.
We hope that individuals will acknowledge the inaccuracies presented by the New York Times, and the effects that organizations like CAIR have on the fine line between political correctness and honest debate.
We invite the general public to watch and judge the documentary for themselves. The Third Jihad is now being made available for free viewing online at http://www.thethirdjihad.com.”
According to the New York Times, nearly 1500 officers, “from lieutenants to detectives to patrol officers” reportedly were shown the film during a period of between three months and a year.
The story of the film’s usage by NYPD was first reported by the Village Voice a year earlier, and police stopped using the film when pressure was asserted by local Islamic organizations. Pressure continued until the New York Times propelled the year-old story to front-page news yesterday.
CAIR is taking credit for the “investigation” which led to the New York Times’ coverage, with a press release (http://tinyurl.com/nypd-cair) demanding that the NYPD install Muslim-sensitive materials in their training curriculum to offset what they consider to be an ‘Islamaphobic’ film.
Innuendo
What CAIR and the New York Times failed to clearly address, is that The Third Jihad is narrated by a devout Muslim, who has a significant record of serving the United States of America, as a medical officer in the US Navy and as an attending physician to the US Congress.
The beginning of the film states in bold letters that, “This is not a film about Islam. It is about the threat of radical Islam. Only a small percentage of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims are radical.”
The film’s message urges the Muslim community to look within itself to root out the indoctrination that affects a minority of Muslims.
The documentary is founded on credible evidence presented by the FBI of a “Manifesto” published by radicals calling for the implementation of extremist ideology-both violent and politicized-within the United States.
It is no surprise that CAIR does not like the content of the film. CAIR is singled out in the film for its direct ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, open support for Hamas, and links to terror financing.
CAIR was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2007 Holy Land Foundation trial, the largest ever terror-financing trial in US History.
As a result of these designations, the FBI has formally ceased all ties with CAIR-as should the NYPD and New York Times.
The NYPD is well aware of the threats that emanate from Islamic radicals.
In the preface to a landmark 2007 NYPD Intelligence Division Report entitled “Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat,” Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly writes, “New York City continues to be the one of the top targets of terrorists worldwide. Consequently, the NYPD places a priority on understanding what drives and defines the radicalization process.”
The Third Jihad takes an in-depth look at the process of radicalization and indoctrination taking place on American soil.
It is clear that senior members of the NYPD saw value in the film, as did employees of the Federal Homeland Security department, who first gave the DVD of the film to the NYPD.
Inaccuracies
The Third Jihad features exclusive interviews with some of the nation’s leading counterterrorism experts including former Director of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, former Director of Central Intelligence R. James Woolsey, former NYC Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, and NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly.
According to the New York Times, Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman said, “that filmmakers had lifted the [Kelly] clip from an old interview.”
This is the first of several inaccuracies to appear in the New York Times’ account.
The makers of The Third Jihad conducted a nearly 90-minute exclusive interview with Commissioner Kelly specifically for the film on March 19, 2007. Previously unreleased bonus clips of Kelly’s interview are currently available at http://www.thethirdjihad.com.
Responding to a letter by film producer Raphael Shore, Browne then corrected the record in the New York Times follow-up article. “I recommended in February 2007 that Commissioner Kelly be interviewed,” he said.
Browne recalled that the film’s interviewer, “asked to speak to the commissioner for a cable film on ‘foiled terrorist plots and the current threat matrix.’”
Several other inaccuracies appear in the article. For example, the New York Times notes that the film includes a doctored photo of the White House with an Islamic flag atop. But the photo is one of many pieces of documented footage from Islamist sources. Yet the New York Times implies that the filmmakers were the ones to manipulate the photo.
The New York Times also inaccurately quotes the film by stating: “‘This is the true agenda of Islam in America,’ a narrator intones.” But the actual quote from the film is: “This document shows the true agenda of much of Muslim leadership here in America.”
The article intentionally omits that this narrator is Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a devout Muslim.
The rest of the New York Times’ coverage focuses on character assassination. While CAIR and others label the film Islamophobic, it is ironic that the film’s detractors continuously point out that the film’s producer has ties to Jewish organizations. The article inaccurately claims that Raphael Shore simultaneously works for Aish HaTorah.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg questioned the judgment of that those who permitted the usage of the film. However, Bloomberg’s predecessor Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who is also interviewed in the film, has praised the documentary calling The Third Jihad, “a wake up call for America.”
CONTACT:
press@clarionfund.org
646-308-1230 x213
No Mosques At Ground Zero
Posted by Admin on January 26th, 2012 — Posted in Muslim Beliefs
Tags: infiltrating, public, religion, schools
On Sept. 1, 2011, the students of New Heights Middle School in Jefferson, South Carolina trooped into the gymnasium to hear the Christian rapper known as “B-SCHOC” tell them that Jesus alone could save them. They cheered as a pastor named Christian Chapman vied to win their souls for Christ. At the end of the show, they were asked to fill in a form indicating whether they had accepted Jesus as their savior. In a video posted on YouTube, B-SHOC exults that “324 kids at this school have made a decision for Jesus Christ.”
Wherever one chooses to draw the line between church and public school, there can’t be much doubt that the B-SHOC assembly at New Heights lay pretty far on the other side. Even the organizers of the assembly knew that. “Your principal went to me today, and I said, ‘How are you getting away with this?’” Pastor Chapman told a group of parents. “And he said, ‘I’m not … I want these kids to know that eternal life is real, and I don’t care what happens to me, they’re going to hear it today.”’
In fact, the school board voted to settle a suit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in which Jonathan Anderson, a parent whose son was harassed at the school for his non-belief, alleged that religion was all over the New Heights Middle School. School-sponsored prayers routinely opened and closed assemblies and performances. Religious messages made their way into lesson plans, and religious iconography decorated the walls. Students were punished for minor infractions by being told to write out sentences proclaiming their faith in God.
A number of these activities — such as the B-SHOC event — appear to be violations of the clause in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution intended to maintain separation between church and state. And the school board admits as much in its proposed settlement of the ACLU case. Yet an even greater number of religious activities in public schools have recently become legal as a result of novel interpretations of the Constitution handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court. Ironically, had the administration of New Heights been a little smarter, it could have achieved its apparent goal of using the school’s position of authority to spread the word of God among its captive students without running the risk of being sued. Thousands of other schools across the country do just that.
Four weeks after the B-SHOC assembly, for example, a large number of New Heights students gathered around the flagpole in front of the school one morning and prayed to Jesus for their classmates and their school. It was the annual “See You at the Pole” prayer event, and it happens at schools nationwide on the same day. On the understanding that the event is student-initiated and student-led, it is deemed to be constitutional. In recent years — at least when it comes to religion — the Supreme Court has made a firm distinction between school-sponsored speech, which is constrained by the Establishment Clause, and student speech, which is protected by the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.
Of course, within the appropriate context that a school setting demands, students should always be free to talk about religion at school. Children can and should have the right to pray in school, discuss their faith and even proselytize their classmates. Yet, as in many other schools, the loud calls for “religious liberty” and the “free speech” of students is often just a convoluted way for adults to use the authority of the school to promote their own religious views and practices among students. The prayers at “See You at the Pole” may be student-led, yet the event is organized and promoted on national and local levels by adults. At events I attended, pastors from nearby churches played a central role in urging their kids to participate and supplied them with sophisticated sound systems and other props. At New Heights, Principal Larry Stinson led the prayers around the pole, and he was joined by a number of parents, teachers and other adults.
The idea that “it’s all right as long as the kids do it” is now so pervasive among those who view the public schools as missionary fields that it has a technical name: “peer evangelism.” A leader of the Life Book Movement — a project of The Gideons International, which provides high school students with “teenage” evangelical Christian tracts that they are expected to deliver to other kids in the school — calls it “a God-given loophole.” In the two and a half years since the inception of this peer evangelism initiative, they have distributed nearly 2 million “Life Books.”
Perhaps the largest of the peer-to-peer groups is the Fellowship for Christian Athletes, which encourages students to organize prayers before, during and after school sporting events. The Chesterfield County school district has seven chapters — and they receive the enthusiastic support of Principal Stinson.
In the weeks after B-SHOC, New Heights also organized a number of programs for students and parents in what is now known as “character education” — teaching children about the harms of bullying and drug addiction, for example. The school invited a snake handler to enlighten the children in one assembly, and it organized an evening panel for parents. The snake charmer, it turns out, had a religious message to share with the students, as he spelled out in detail at an evening meeting to which he had invited them during the course of the assembly. The evening panel included no fewer than six pastors, and its chief aim was to instruct parents about how to keep their children faithful to their religion.
Recently I attended an “anti-bullying” lecture at a Tennessee public middle school as part of a state-mandated character education program. The lecturer, who is also a preacher, told us a moving story about how his teenage birth mother had chosen not to have an abortion and how he’d been raised by loving adopted parents. A takeaway lesson was that if a boy “bullies” a girl — meaning gets her pregnant — the right thing for the girl to do is have the baby and “not allow that bully to ruin her life.”
The use of “character education” as a cover for religious proselytizing to public school children is now so common that it, too, has a nickname: “pizza evangelism.” (It seems that the first missionaries to use the tactic tended to follow their character presentations with pizza parties.) Team Impact, Commandos! USA, the Power Team, Answering the Cries, Go to Tell Ministries, the Todd Becker Foundation, the Strength Team — these are just a few of the faith-based groups that enter public schools every year with presentations on drug addiction, drunk driving, and other important topics and aim to leave with a collection of young religious converts.
The proselytizing administration of New Heights could also draw on a range of perfectly legal after-school religious programs to get its message across. The leader in this category is Good News Clubs, sponsored by an organization called the Child Evangelism Fellowship. The clubs, which are now established in more than 3,500 public elementary schools nationwide, are intended to convert young children to a fundamentalist form of the Christian faith and equip them to “witness” to their peers. Many of the CEF activists I met are quite sure that many American Christians, including United Methodists, U.S. Episcopalians, liberal Congregationalists and Presbyterians, and Roman Catholics, will not be among the “saved.” The group is represented at its national conventions and in its legal representation by people who rail against the so-called Homosexual Agenda, support creationism, oppose reproductive freedom, and condemn interfaith marriage, referred to by one keynote speaker as “interracial marriage.”
The Good News Clubs meet after the bell rings and require parental permission. Therefore, says the U.S. Supreme Court, they cannot logically be perceived as having the endorsement of the school, and consequently they cannot be excluded from the school without violating the Clubs’ free speech rights. But children generally aren’t fooled by such fine threads of constitutional logic. If the activity is taking place in the school, they assume that this is what the school wants them to believe. The leaders of such programs aren’t fooled either. They openly refer to the public schools as “mission fields,” places for them to do the “harvest work” of “reaching unchurched children” with the message of the gospel. Apparently, it’s only the courts that are fooled.
The activities of Good News Clubs take place after the bell rings and require parental permission to attend, so their presence in public elementary schools is deemed legal by the U.S. Supreme Court. But children generally aren’t fooled by such fine distinctions. If the activity is taking place in the school, they assume that this is what the school wants them to believe. The leaders of such programs aren’t fooled either. They openly refer to the public schools as “mission fields,” places for them to do the “harvest work” of “reaching unchurched children” with the message of the gospel. Apparently, it’s only the courts that are fooled.
When the ACLU takes up a case involving religion in schools, it usually means that the situation is pretty extreme. It is tempting for people on all sides of the issue to place the blame on loose cannons like brazen administrators or militant atheists. And in fact, the principal at New Heights did appear to have a personal problem with the U.S. Constitution. But this case was like a freak storm that signals a deep shift in the global climate. The spectacle of the moment should not distract us from the underlying trend.
FaithWorld
Posted by Admin on January 25th, 2012 — Posted in Peaceful Muslims
Tags: American, marriage, Muslims, same, Should, Support
Before you shoot me, fellow American Muslims, let’s make one thing clear. No matter how the same sex debate turns out, nobody is going to be requiring you to deem same sex marriages as Islamically legitimate. Within the broad spectrum of religious discourse, some may urge you to do that (Irshad Manji), some may view such a notion as ridiculous, abhorrent or both (the vast majority of traditionalist clerics, as any liberal Muslim would concede), but I will not address any of that here. I am not a cleric, I make no religious argument. Instead, I maintain that you can be a traditionalist Muslim and support same sex marriage as being legal in America, even if Islamically unacceptable. In fact, I think you should do it.
How is it possible, if one is a traditionalist unwilling to recognize a homosexual relationship as licit or legitimate? Well, traditionalists do something like this already. They do a great deal of it, specifically in the area of marriage. The state explicitly recognizes particular forms of marital union that the shari’a, as understood traditionally, unequivocally condemns. Traditionalist approaches to Islam have always deemed the marriage of a Muslim woman to a non-Muslim man to be invalid. The matter is laid out no less clearly in the manuals of the classical jurists than the condemnation of homosexuality is. The marriage of the Muslim woman to the non-Muslim man is not a marriage and as such, the sex between them is illicit, a form of zina, and criminal, at least as criminal as homosexual acts would be in the classical manuals.
Yet it would be something akin to insanity to suggest that the United States criminalize the marriage of Muslim women to non Muslim men. I know the “shari’a creep” elements worry about this, but no American Muslim I know has ever gone about suggesting they want the state to render such marriages illegal irrespective of the wishes of that Muslim woman. Even if someone does suggest it (probably an idiot, we have them too), no state code that did such a thing would be close to constitutional, it violates equal protection of genders, free exercise, establishment, equal protection of individuals by religion, due process and right to marry–it’s hard in fact to think of something else that violates this many rights at once. Again, we know this, we’ve internalized this, we’re happy in the United States even if its rules might afford state recognition of marriages the religion doesn’t.
(Just so some Islamophobe does not get it in his head to copy the paragraph above to demonstrate the absolute incompatibility of Islam with American values, let me just point out the same conflict exists as between canon law and the state recognition of marriages of previously divorced couples. To the Catholic church, those are not marriages. Under American law, they are. No Catholic I know wants the law to strip recognition of these marriages, just like no Muslim does respecting interfaith marriages of Muslim women. And even if some Catholic did, it would violate a lot of constitutional provisions, as it would in the Muslim case vis a vis the marriages discussed above. And so forth. Which perhaps is why several decades ago it was the Catholics and not us who were supposedly “creeping” up on the US and threatening a takeover according to the xenophobes of their day. We’ll make it in eventually, and you’ll know it when a few decades from now when some American Muslim xenophobe starts complaining about some other religion or ethnic group creeping into America and threatening it. It’ll come, this I believe.)
Why do we accept such rules despite their condemnation? What justifies it, assuming that is that one finds the traditional approaches to shari’a the more valid? Simply stated, borrowing from the work of others (Andrew March, Mohammad Fadel, etc.), though extending it further to be clear, it is the aman, a form of a social contract. We are free here to practice our religion, to proclaim it, to spread it even if we want to, and in return the deal is the adherence to and upholding of enshrined constitutional principles respecting human liberty and equality, across all religions. So a woman may convert to Islam and marry a Muslim man, or she may convert from Islam and marry a non-Muslim man. For many of us, me included, these principles of individual liberty and religious equality, from free speech to free exercise to equal protection, too broad a subject to be broached here in detail, have been deeply internalized and we believe in them as core constitutive civic values, even seeking to export them. For others, they might be ethical obligation by way of accommodation, followed just like a believer follows the rules of a contract, an obligation to pay their iphone bill every month. You do it as an ethical matter, not because you like it, not because you’ll be sued if you don’t (then it would not be an ethical obligation, purely a legal one), but because you like the service, you agreed to this and you are a Muslim, and the Qur’an requires the believers to uphold their contracts. But either way, you live up to the deal as ethical obligation, as a deal.
So as Muslims what should we be afraid of? Not that the state is going to allow marriages that are unIslamic, we’ve signed on to that and it is an acceptable piece of the aman we’ve made. No, it’s the breaking of the aman we should fear, effectively a ripping up of the social contract. How does that happen? If the rules change and we are no longer free to practice our religion. Now one group of people would argue that happens with the rise of same sex marriage. Because once one allows same sex marriage, then it spreads, and then every religious institution has to recognize it, and if they don’t, then I don’t know, maybe the police come? They stand in the back with their radio speakers and their guns and drag the Imam off in handcuffs for refusing to marry a gay couple under the Qur’an and the tradition of the Apostle? Or something?
As you can tell, I cannot imagine such a thing happening. But if it did, it would be a ripping up of the social contract, the one ensured by the constitution, and make a mockery of free exercise of religion. Few things are more violative of religious freedom to my mind than to compel a religious institution to perform a wedding it did not believe was valid under its religious tradition. Again, I don’t worry about this. If the US doesn’t do it for divorced Catholics now, it isn’t going to do it for same sex marriages.
So what am I afraid of, how do I see the contract ripping up? By the folks currently threatening to rip it up, the ones who talk of shari’a as if it was a contagion, by the ones who want to deny our right to build our own houses of worship, by the ones threatening to pass laws that say that two people who meet to practice shari’a (that’s prayer; prayer rules are part of shari’a) are engaged in an act of terrorism, by presidential contenders who won’t hire us (Herman Cain), or who equate us with Nazis (Newt Gingrich), and by supposedly small government conservatives who are focused in getting the government into our lives on the theory that we are not a religion but a cult (which so far as I can tell means to them a religion that they do not particularly like). They’re still a fringe, but they’re real people, they exist while the folks who supposedly will force mosques to hold same sex marriage ceremonies do not. I think we’ll overcome this as I said above, I think we’ll win this war, not because I believe in Islam (I do, let me be clear, I do, but believing in Islam doesn’t mean it has to be tolerated here, and now, it’s been extinguished in limited places at limited times before) but because I believe in America and its ideals and think history is on our side. But those who threaten us are real, and present, and a danger, and they are promising to rip up our social contract if they ever get a chance.
And not a one of them is gay. Because it isn’t only our social contract they’re looking to rip up, not only our freedoms they seek to infringe, not only us to whom they’d seek to deny equality.
So I say support same sex marriage and uphold the contract. Uphold it because you believe in it, or uphold it because you’ve signed on to it and it is your Islamic, ethical obligation to do so even if it recognizes behavior you find sinful and illicit. But either way, uphold it. Because there, and only there, will we ever find our place in this country.
HAH
Islamic Law In Our Times
Posted by Admin on January 25th, 2012 — Posted in Muslim News
Tags: Deoband, facts, fatwas, irresponsible, journalism, Rediff's, report, Wrong
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| Rediff article that links Deoband to Surya Namaskar fatwa |
It is perfectly understandable if a religious institution is criticised for issuing frivolous or controversial fatwas, just like a post written on this blog sometime back, but it is unfair if you criticise someone by attributing decrees which they didn’t issue at all.
One of the most popular sites, Rediff.com surprisingly posted an article that surprisingly has not just factual error but also wrongly accuses Deoband for fatwas which they didn’t at all issue. Strangely, even after it was brought to their notice, they didn’t bother to correct it.
There was no quote. Of course, no effort to get version and the institution was wrongly accused. I noticed the report as I had written a post ‘Fatwa Factory…’ sometime back on this blog. This recent Rediff article had similar headline.
The article blamed Deoband for issuing fatwa against Surya Namaskar. The seminary never issued any such fatwa. The particular religious ‘opinion’ was issued by Darul Ifta Bhopal. The Rediff report that doesn’t carry writer’s name goes ahead to say that, ‘seminary has issued fatwa against Surya Namaskar….’.
It then falsely mentions the diktat against Veena Malik. Again, this was the call of All India Muslim Tehwar Committee.
They had termed that she was now ‘biradari-baahar’ [to be ex-communicated, huh! who is listening and who is bothered?], a sort of call that khap panchayats issue. Of course, condemn-able but why accuse Deoband.
Cleverly, the article says ‘Majlis-e-Shoora’ but doesn’t tell reader that this ‘Majlis’ was that of Tehwar Committee, not Deoband.
By any journalistic or ethical standards, this is unusual. If Rahul Gandhi makes a statement, how can simply attribute it to Nitin Gadkari and then accuse the latter again and again through similar other misrepresentations? This is not just shoddy reporting, it is unethical and gives bad name to media.
The article further says that in defence the seminary says it’s opinion that is not binding. When the writer didn’t contact the seminary for version, they themselves wrote this line to support the article. Had they spoken to Ulema, they’d have been told that the above mentioned diktats were not issued by Deoband.
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| Rediff article that links the Veena Malik ‘diktat’ to Deoband |
Deoband has issued several controversial fatwas in the past. If Rediff reporters made a slight effort, they could have made a good case against Deoband but they sullied journalism through such a false story. It is such news reports that create impression among citizens that journalists are irresponsible guys.
In which other profession, you can make such blunders. In print media also, you can lose job for such errors. Of course, it’s easy to make changes on the internet. Still, even after being informed in comment section by readers and through other media, they haven’t bothered to cross-check the facts or rectify mistakes in the last two weeks.
Even the most careless person would make such errors. Journalists can’t generally get away with such factual inaccuracies. Then, how could the site that grabs millions of eye balls act with such carelessness? They could have either done groundwork to mention the really controversial fatwas of Deoband or simply written on the trend of fatwas issued from the seminaries [and such so-called moral guardians].
Why they got so irresponsible? Any answers Rediff.com?
[My article that was critical of such fatwas in the past. Read it here]
An Indian Muslim’s Blog: News, Views & Urdu Poetry Website
Posted by Admin on January 24th, 2012 — Posted in Muslim News
Tags: 'liberals', during, false, Fanatic, festival, flagbearers, Free, Indian, Jaipur, journalism, Literary, Muslims, restraint, speech
1. Firstly, not a single person among India’s nearly 200 million Muslims had issued any threat in case Salman Rushdie arrived here but a section of media portrayed it as if Muslims were hounding him and ready to teach him a lesson.
2. Just Deoband and one or two other groups had urged the government that he shouldn’t be allowed to enter India. This is a pure democratic right, a demand.
Forget fatwas, no organisation had issued any warning or hinted of violent protest. Even government didn’t say that it will stop him from coming here. A Muslim minister, Salman Khurshid, had gone ahead to say that it was Rushdie’s legal right and he was a PIO and couldn’t be stopped.
3. How much more responsible the community could be? But the blame is being put on Muslims and they are being termed as fundamentalists who are accused of harping over an issue even after decades.
Rushdie didn’t come claiming certain underworld threat. He later accepted that he had been misled. Now who misled him, it remains unclear. He blames government but doesn’t name any agency or person. Isn’t it his failure that he didn’t turn up. However, with the Congress-led UPA in power, the ‘appeasement’ theory has also been floated to defame Muslims.
4. After he didn’t come to Jaipur, self-styled flag-bearers of free speech began reading excerpts from the banned book as a mark of protest. Even after this provocative act, much to TV channels’ chagrin, no Muslim burnt any effigies or held any demonstration, which is also our democratic right. Just like free speech, these democratic rights should be protected as well.
5. If Jamat-e-Islami activist or any other worker said that he will oppose Rushdie, journalists with intellectual pretensions grill him asking ‘how you will oppose’. In his response that ‘it will peaceful opposition’, the interviewer goes ahead to ask, ‘have you read the book’, ‘why you oppose it’. Of course, when you call Verses ‘Satanic’, we feel hurt, and if we simply say, ‘we’re hurt’, you want to say, ‘why you are hurt?’.
6. It was not courageous on part of Amitava Kumar, Kunzru and others to read the SV passages. If the writers had courage they should have stayed back and [possibly risked arrest]. That would have added to their reputation perhaps but they ran away. At least on this count one can recall Taslima Nasreen, who was threatened and attacked but still had the courage to stay in India for long.
Still, a section of pseudo-intellectuals have gone to absurd lengths to argue for freedom of expression. They are fighting a battle, which Rushdie backed out of. The fact is that everyone thought Muslim would protest or make an issue out of it but that didn’t happen.
7. It suits their perception–either news channels or websites that publish false stories. They all were let down, so they joined the fake intellectual Jehad and tried to create an issue. There were regular reports for days that Rushdie had threat.
Who had issued the threat? Of course, there was none. Little opposition perhaps but that too not on street. And do you want to take away our democratic rights that we can’t even say that ‘we oppose him’, almost a Nazi vision of liberty.
The fact remains that majority of this country remains moderate in terms of inter-religious issues. We won’t support if they had ever tried to draw Husain’s paintings again to express their solidarity with the late painter. We don’t support reading the excerpts now. But we don’t even create a scene after you read them out. This is our country, if we feel hurt, we will express it. That’s all.
8. Sorry, I can’t be liberal enough as per your wishes or your standards. In a foreign country you may burn your flag but this is not how we perceive freedom in India. I can’t have gods [or deities] pictures on shoe soles or verses called as Satanic. I am not that sort of liberal.
As the ongoing issue over an Indian couple’s children taken away by authorities in Norway because they fed them with their hands, suggests, there are different sets of standards–[cultural] as well as free speech]–in India and Europe.
Some of our self-styled ‘intellectual’ writers who still have inferiority complex fail to appreciate our diversity and freedom and get a bit too obsequious and servile when it comes to foreigners. For them Rushdie too is almost a foreigner. Thus they turn apologetic about the vast masses being ‘poor’, ‘less liberal’ et al.
9. We can’t be Europe overnight. If you feel as an urbanised upper middle class Indian, you have the right to look contemptuously towards the rest, this is also bigotry. Amitava Kumar, did you utter a word when journalist David Barsamian was evicted from India?
Yes, just months back Barsamian was deported. Where were you Mr Kunzru when Husain’s house was attacked and his galleries ransacked. Ruchir Joshi, whom I hadn’t heard of this ‘author’ till recently, and who is now defending free speech in studios, wasn’t seen when James Laine‘s book was banned by BJP-led NDA government. Later the ban was revoked.
10. Mercifully, Muslims don’t have any Bajrang Dal, VHP, Shiv Sena or even Ram Sene to go to a venue with ‘lathis’. I am sure, if a Muslims had even gone and raised a slogan during the course of festival, he would have been termed as a terrorist.
The writers–Amitava Kumar, Hari Kunzru and two others–Jeet Thayil and Ruchir Joshi, who tried to suck up to Rushdie without any real threat to freedom of expression or censorship were simply playing to gallery at the fest. But it was no cause. Rushdie hadn’t arrived and they also didn’t dare to stay back.
11. Why these writers all these years never thought about a legal battle to get the ban on Satanic Verses upturned in India. They are liberals but the arm-chair liberals who would simply enjoy celebrity status just like film stars who can’t take to streets or fight for cause, and vanish if their is a slight chance that they might face discomforting situation.
12. Freedom of expression comes with enormous responsibility. In fact, every freedom. As a person tweeted, ‘You hurt a billion and you want freedom of expression but if any of those hurt by you air grievance, their freedom of expression is bigotry’.
Jaipur has over half-a-million Muslims. In the season of throwing shoes, none of them even held a demonstration or protest. Because the section that is pompous enough to consider themselves as liberal and the rest of Indians as ‘traditional’ or ‘non-progressives’, don’t know an iota about India or its culture.
The vast millions in India are not intellectual bigots like you. That’s why this multi-cultural nation has survived despite conflicts. Rushdie’s visit was a non-issue. As an Indian Muslim, I had no interest at all. But again it was turned into a ‘minority issue’.
France is secular and liberal to an extent that a Sikh can’t wear turban and Muslims can’t wear their skullcap. In Britain, it’s different. Scandinavian countries have their owns standards. The laws are markedly different in America. India can’t be France or Norway.
See examples of Muslim’s indifference and apathy to the issue on one hand, and on the other hand dirty journalism practiced by sections that tried to link it to UP elections. The words like ‘appeasement’ and ‘vote bank politics’ were used, even when Muslims remained silent.
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| Fatwa or No Fatwa, Deoband will be blamed every time |
In India, even if a Hindu says ‘Ram’, Muslims would say Lord Rama or Ramachandra Ji as a mark of respect. Pick up any Urdu daily newspaper and you will find deities and religious heads of other faiths addressed respectfully. Similarly Hindus always use the term ‘Paigambar Mohammad’. This is our culture of mutual respect.
13. After false reporting on Deoband’s fatwa, Rediff again continued its unethical journalism. Read this interview with a Jamat-e-Islami leader.
They couldn’t get anything sensational from Saleem Engineer and hence began the interview with a introduction, ‘…is national secretary of the Jamaat-e-Islami….the organisation which is an offshoot of the…party whose objective is to establish Islamic rule in Pakistan and enforce Shariah’.
14. How shrewd and how subtle! Rediff is not alone. Many TV channels and their loud anchors did the same for TRP, as it made news. Newspapers gave similar headlines. On one hand, Muslims didn’t protest, uttered no irresponsible word. On the other hand, they are still being branded as ‘fanatics’ and ‘fundamentalists’.
15. I think I have made myself clear. I oppose MF Husain’s nude painting and also the attack on galleries featuring his paintings or his house. I oppose Rushdie’s offensive writings and also condemn if someone threatens him. Indian Muslims have shown remarkable restraint in dealing with this controversy.
Despite the TV channels, ‘intellectuals’ and ‘liberals’ trying their best to make an issue out of it, the community remained largely silent and avoided taking to streets. I am a moderate Indian and I refuse to be judged by your fake standards of liberty or freedom.
An Indian Muslim’s Blog: News, Views & Urdu Poetry Website
Posted by Admin on January 24th, 2012 — Posted in Peaceful Muslims
Tags: legal, marriage, Muslim, Realist, Revisiting, same
My previous post took on the question of same sex marriage using an approach I might describe as a form of intellectual defense/advocacy. Let me, however, don my beloved Legal Realist hat and look at this from a more detached, academic perspective.
I expect that while some American Muslims might well support the call for recognition of same sex marriage on the basis of the aman, others will not. I further suspect that the older the Muslims in question are, and the less rooted they are in the United States, the less likely they are to be in support. In some ways, this I suppose is obvious, in that tolerance of homosexuality is less likely to be found among those born elsewhere, or older, after all.
But of course this is a legal question, one deriving from an interpretation of religious doctrine, it’s not supposed to be a question of preference. I did not suggest that Muslims have to like homosexuality, or even find it permissible in Islam. I specifically said I wouldn’t address that, and Muslims can draw their own conclusions on this. I am suggesting that we already believe in a social contract wherein specifically marriages are permitted under American law and yet deemed void by the same shari’a sources you would turn to in order to find homosexuality deemed a great sin, and specifically the interfaith marriages of Muslim women. And we view that social contract as one we are ethically obligated to uphold. All last post.
Yet the difference in practice as between broad Muslim acceptance of interfaith marriages involving Muslim women as being legal by secular law (if not necessarily permissible under religious law, according to traditionalists) and same sex marriage is striking. One is broadly okay as legal under some other country’s secular law, the other deeply contested, despised by many and considered an affront to Islam. Thus, as illustration, I have an Iraqi friend who is quite pious and came to the U.S. specifically to attend the marriage of a Muslim woman to a non-Muslim man whom he regards as a friend. Ask him if he finds the marriage acceptable Islamically, I think he’d be forced to say no. Ask him if that means he won’t attend, he’ll shrug his shoulders and say something to the effect of not my daughter or family member, what business is it of mine? Yet he’d never attend a same sex wedding I am sure, the idea would be horrifying to him. Perhaps I am unfair, I never asked, I can say with confidence it would be horrifying to most Iraqis, including large numbers who would attend a marriage of a Muslim woman to a nonMuslim man.
In any event, even as to those who wouldn’t attend either, they don’t think it’s wrong to live in a nation that permits the marriage of Muslim women to non Muslim men. Yet by the very same sources to which they choose to turn, those marriages are void and those people engaging in it are committing the sin of fornication, which is certainly the very most you could say of a gay couple (and even then more by analogy than direct application). Again, the liberals can question the sources if they want to, that’s fine, but for these purposes I’m simply pointing out that if one takes the traditional sources seriously, they condemn sex out of marriage, and neither same sex marriages nor interfaith marriages involving Muslim women would be recognized as marriage. In fact, I think I could develop a pretty good argument under ultra conservative classical text on why a same sex marriage between two non Muslims shouldn’t concern Muslims living under an aman at all as it doesn’t involve the community, it involves outsiders in a non-Muslim state doing their own thing. Whereas the claim as concerns the interfaith marriage is a harder one to sustain.
So why the visceral reaction against one as being horribly un-Islamic, why the vitriol against same sex marriage in particular when other forms of zina are winked at or ignored? I don’t think it’s doctrinal or could be defended as such. Simply stated, it’s because homosexuality is viewed as particularly repulsive for reasons independent of doctrine. In the same way, I suppose, that some things I regard as sins (say, pork eating) make me sick while other things (say, heterosexual extramarital sex) which I of course abjure and regard as sinful do not repulse me. If I eat something and find out later it’s pork, I want to vomit. If I see an attractive woman on television, I don’t. Yet of course that’s not doctrinal, it’s not legal, it’s merely preference.
And that same preference, I submit, drives American Muslim opposition to same sex marriage where it exists. Nothing more, nothing less. Where Muslims are more exposed to homosexuals, they are less likely to regard gay marriage with such abhorrence and more willing to shrug their shoulders and point out that other US marriages are not Islamic either. Where they are less exposed and come from less tolerant environments, the reverse is true. Preference, ideological preference stripped of doctrinal significance of any kind, is all that drives this debate. The rest is just mask.
HAH
Islamic Law In Our Times
Posted by Admin on January 23rd, 2012 — Posted in Muslim News
Tags: away, Delhi's, egoist, falls, Khawar, Passes, poet, poetic, Shuja, silent, Urdu, voice
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| Shujaa’ Khawar |
Shuja Khawar, who was probably the most distinct poetic voice in Urdu to have come up from Delhi in the post-independence era, bid final adieu to his admirers and poetry lovers.
A master of Dehlvi Urdu idiom and the famed ‘Taksaali zabaan’, he hadn’t penned poetry for the last 16 years due to a paralytic stroke that had rendered him bed-ridden. Then, for many years, he couldn’t recognise his own writings, let alone compose poetry.
No wonder TV channels and newspapers seemed oblivious to the extent of loss for literary world. But in recent years, Shuja had recovered to an extent and was attending cultural events. People were expecting that he would be penning poetry once again.
Sadly, the silence turned eternal.
ek uskaa saraapa hai ki bas meN nahiiN aataa
kyaa haalat ho gayii, mere andaaz-e-bayaaN kii
It’s not pure emotion but Shujauddin Sajid was worthy of being called the poet laureate of Delhi. This is not an exaggeration. Nusrat Zaheer in his editorial page column wrote an obituary titled ‘Miyaan, Dilli Khamosh Ho gayi…’, the words spoken to him by Farooq Argali at the graveyard.
Truly, it’s a huge loss for the Dehli’s culture as well as poetry.
raat usne dasht-e-jaaN ko gulistaaN kar diya
hamne bhii har usuul ko qurbaan kar diyaa
But the reality was that Shuja never compromised on his principles:
thoRaa sa badal jaaye to bas taaj ho aur taKht
is dil ka magar kyaa kareN, sunta nahiiN kambaKht
I remember Shuja Khawar’s recital in poetic meets in mid-80s that were shown on Doordarshan. And then his name Shujauddin Sajid, the Deputy Commission of Police (DCP), Delhi appearing in news papers. In later years he had dropped ‘Khawar’ and called himself just ‘Shujaa’.
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| Shuja reciting his couplets in early years. |
Knowing his candidness and the temperament, people often wondered how he could work in police. Famed satirist late Sardar Dilip Singh had recounted a humorous piece as to how he wanted his friends to impress them with his friendship with a police officer.
Shuja quit the job in late 80s. Now we expected him to devote himself to literature. After all, here was a poet whose poetic calibre was acknowledged by literary giants and critics, like Firaq Gorakhpuri, Qurratul Ain Hyder & Zo Ansari, all least generous in their praise for others.
Apart from ghazals, he also wrote Nazms. Shuja was also known for use of ‘muhaavras’ in his couplets:
aab voh aai jo chehre par aduu ke baad-e-wasl
aur paani, voh jo merii aarzuoN par phiraa
The ‘Qalandar’ poet cared little about name or fame. It is not that he wasn’t aware of tricks of the trade. An immensely lovable person, Shuja remained firm on his beliefs and walked the path he chose in literature, without siding with any of the major groups.
haalat use dil kii na dikhaai, na bayaaN kii
Khair usne na kii baat, to hamne bhii kahaaN kii
hue mahruumiyoN ke jab ham aadii
to us zaalim ne chilman hi haTaa dii
Last year when I saw his photograph, I was stunned. He was a pale shadow of his past. It was due to his innate mental toughness he had managed to come a long way from the period when he couldn’t even understand his own words after the stroke.
poNhchaa huzur-e-shaah, har ek rang ka faqiir
poNhchaa nahiiN jo, thaa vahii ‘poNhchaa huaa’ faqiir
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| Shuja Khar (Third from right) |
After years of illness and solitude, he was once again getting back to the centre stage of Urdu poetry.
Urdu Academy had organised a grand programme in his honour, ‘Ek Shaam Shuja Khawar ke Naam’. Eminent litterateurs termed a poet who took forward the tradition of Mir Taqi Mir, Ghalib, Zauq, Yagana Changezi in Delhi.
Speakers recalled how words and phrases appeared in his command. In the jam packed Aiwan-e-Ghalib academy hall, Shuja’s admirers’ presence and enthusiasm proved that he had lived all these years in their hearts.
maut ki azaadiyaaN bhi aisii kuchh dilkash na thiiN
phir bhii hamne zindagii kii qaid ko kaaTa bohat
The cardiac arrest proved fatal. Dehli ka baanka shayar chala gaya. Who is there to carry the Dehlvi poet’s legacy? Despite the fact that I loved his poetry, I couldn’t post his works except one ghazal. Now I intend to put up his ghazals selected couplets soon at my poetry site Best Ghazals.
An Indian Muslim’s Blog: News, Views & Urdu Poetry Website
