Ramblings on Batla House Fake Encounter Judgement

July 28, 2013, 7:02 am

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By Syed Ali Mujtaba

The judgement on the controversial Batla House encounter in New Delhi in 2008 raises some fundamental questions. The judge has convicted one person who is claimed to have fled from the L-18 flat in Batla House area. If the hon'ble judge had visited the building he could have found that the building has only one exit which was manned by police and there was no possibility to escape by jumping. In such case the accused either had to be caught or had to be shot. The escape theory put up by the police does not hold any ground.

The judge should have taken the cops and may have asked them to escape before believing them. Unfortunately, it did not happen, and the judgement was based on what was told by the police. It’s really a travesty of justice.

The second point in this case that requires consideration is that the input to do the Batla House encounter came from the same infamous IB special director Ravider Kumar who has provided the fake inputs that were used for 17 fake encounters in Gujarat and that are now being probed.

If the judge could have considered probing the source of the encounter and had related them to the on-going probe the judgement may have been different.

Interestingly Mr Chidambram who was the home minister at that time has found the encounter as genuine. He says that he has gone through the sequence of events and has probed into the matter and those killed were terrorists and the one who “fled” their accomplice.

The popular theory is that those believed to be the terrorists were actually students who had come for admission in Jamia College. It was wrong information on which police swooped on them and killed them in clod blooded manner. They had no weapons to retaliate and it was fabricated by the police after the encounter. The police officer killed in the encounter may have been due to cross firing by the police weapons or he may have been shot by his colleague to settle some old rivalry.

In the aftermath of the Batla house judgement, I am reminded of the words of the death convict Dhananjoy Chatterjee who was hanged on August 14, 2004 at Alipore Jail in Calcutta for rape and murder of the 14-year-old, while working as security guard in that building. While being taken to the gallows Dhananjoy told the hangman that he has not committed the crime. This was the biggest travesty of justice in recent times.

The most recent one was hanging of Afzal Guru that’s still fresh in our memories. Afzal in an interview had said that he has not committed the crime and the entire charges against him are fabricated. He was a fruit seller who was picked up from Srinagar for hatching conspiracy to attack Indian parliament. He was convicted to death but his hanging was differed for some reasons. The Congress in order to save its skin from the BJP’s attack to punish the perpetrators of Parliament attackers finally decided to execute Afzal Guru.

It’s a very sad commentary on the developments in India and the only way a common man can express his feeling is to take recourse to some poetic lines and in this case it could be very aptly summed up as ; banna ke bhes faqiron kab, tamasha e alhe kram dekte hain….

[Syed Ali Mujtabais a Journalist based in Chennai. He can be contacted at syedalimujtaba@yahoo.com]

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Modi remarks: Dr. Sen has spoken like a true statesman

July 28, 2013, 7:10 am

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By Mike Ghouse

It was exciting to read a part of the interview of Dr. Sen about 10:30 PM tonight, Friday the 26th of July 2013. The rest of the interview will be published by Times of India on Sunday.

Most people appreciate when some one speaks out against the atrocities of the majorities, powerful dictators, monarchs and bullies. The politically motivated Hindu, Muslim and Christian men and women in particular appreciate it, if it favors them.

My Hindus friends have rejoiced every time I have routinely stood up for them, but won't appreciate if a Hindu Dr. Amartya Sen does the same.

Let me assure you this, the good people outnumber all others 95:5, eventually some one or the other from the majority, be it in India, America, Bolivia or South Africa, and even from Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Christians and Buddhist speaks up for the rights of the deprived, disadvantaged, women, minorities and the weak. God of all creation makes sure his creation has boundaries and has enough peace makers to prevent the world from total annihilation. Bhagvad Gita is clear, "Whenever there is adharma, God will bring about some one to restore Dharma" and Quran beefs it up, "To every tribe, every community and every nation God sends his peace makers to keep peace."

Indeed the work of all religious masters and great statesmen was to build cohesive societies, where no one has to live in apprehension or fear of the other. India is going through big controversy now about the kind of leadership it wants. Nobel Laureate Dr. Amratya Sen is under attack. Narendra Modi is the contentious Chief Minister (Like Governor) of Gujarat in India.

Dr. Sen has spoken like a true statesman, an India that belongs to all Indians, I found the expressions of a similar language in my writings. Indeed whether it was Zarthustra, Moses, Krishna, Buddha and the others - the message was same - how to live without fear of the other.

The more people speak up, the better the world would be. So, please do your part.

This morning I defended Dr. Sen’s action with a few friends (appended below) and now, when I read the partial interview, it caused me to go searching on my blog of the similar thoughts I have struggled with.

Dr. Amartya Sen with Mike Ghouse

I have consistently advocated that the peace is the responsibility of the majority; indeed, the civility of a nation is determined by how it treats its women, children, disadvantage, the weak and the minorities. It is in the interest of the nation, particularly the responsible men and women from the political, civic or religious majorities to speak up. It is in everyone's interest for every one to walk well together and not limp.Two of the statements, I wrote resonate with Dr. Amartya Sen’s words

On March 15, 2013, a press release was sent and was published in Bangladeshi News papers and at www.WorldMuslimCongress.com, this was also a part of my speech at Bangladesh Human rights organization in Dallas.

“The success of a nation depends when her citizens feel secure; in this case, it is the duty of the state to ensure the safety of Hindus, Buddhist, Shia, Ahmadiyya, Christian and other minorities.

It is also the obligation of the Bangladeshi majority to continue to speak up against the brutal treatment of fellow Bangladeshis who are Hindu. Indeed, the safety of a community is the responsibility of the majority.”

The Daily Times of Pakistan published my piece on Imran Khan, and I wrote, “Humanity in general and Muslims in particular are guided to stand up for justice. Only the civility of majority can change things. Minorities do not have a voice in Pakistan and they live on with apprehensions. The Hindu parents worry when their daughter will be abducted and forced to convert or when the Ahmadiyya girl student will be kicked out of school or their graves are desecrated, Shias ordered out of the bus and shot point blank and Christians will be framed with blasphemy charges. Societies are judged by how they treat their minorities, women and children. Good Pakistanis are letting bad things happen in their names.”

A note came from a friend, “What irked me was his (Dr. Sen) comment on Modi not doing enough for the minorities.” And, “Sen does not address those issue but more interested in bad mouthing Modi on minority issues because it is a very popular and sophisticated issue.”

My response was, “I must add that collectively different Indians have to speak on different topics - including far and against to bring different angles to the fore - Dr. Sen has picked one that he probably feels has not been given enough attention. Each one of us has to focus on many strands of democracy.”

Glad to see a positive response about democracy from my friend later.

If there were to be an apology, the apology is owed to the families of people who were burnt alive in the train, families of the people who were raped, families of children who were burnt alive on every street corner, family of the MP who was tortured to death, and all the families who were uprooted for improper management of the law and order in the state. And that apology must come from the Chief Minister Narendra Modi.

[Mike Ghouseis a frequent guest at the TV, radio and print media offering pluralistic solutions on issues of the day. He is associated with IndianMuslimObserver.com as Foreign Editor. He can be contacted at MikeGhouse@aol.com]

Is it feasible for Indian Muslims to have a separate political identity?

July 28, 2013, 7:15 am

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By Kaleem Kawaja

Recently, Asad Owaisi and Majlis Ittihad Muslimeen (MIM) gave a call to Indian Muslims to develop their separate political identity. Let us examine if this is feasible. Indeed Asad Owaisi and MIM seem to be trying the same strategy as the erstwhile Muslim League did in the Pakistan movement in the 1940s.

We know that in 1947 when the rulers were British (not Hindus) this policy ran into very rough weather. At that time Muslims were one-third of India and had definite population majorities in the West and East (what became Pakistan) and the British were keen to leave India in the aftermath of WWII. Also Muslims' strength in the economy and military was very substantial.

Still, with the threat of sectarian civil war, which if it happened, Muslims could hurt Hindus some, the land that Pakistan received was, "a moth eaten Pakistan". Both Punjab and Bengal that should have gone entirely to Pakistan, using the British criteria for partition based on population majority, did not. Both states were partitioned and India was given about a quarter of the land from both states. Kashmir that should have gone to Pakistan using the same criteria, was simply denied to Pakistan in violation of the criteria.

So today with Muslims spread thinly in the country and only a few pockets of concentration, where is the feasibility of Muslims forming a religion based political identity? Such identity is immidiately perceived as separatist. In socio-economic and educational terms Muslims are at the very bottom of Indian society. Even the erstwhile Dalits are moving ahead of them.

And remember that today BJP and its influence in Hindu society (including in Congress party and other secular parties) is loud and clear and is there to stay. Scratch the surface and it comes out. If Indian Muslims build a religion based political identity that will give instantaneous prominence to BJP's Hindu Rashtra claim, with a lot of Congress Hindus embracing it quickly. In that environment it will not take much for the constitution of India to be revised to drop the creed of secularism. And the game will be over before half time. BJP had already attempted this during their sojourn as the government at the Center, ten years ago.

In contrast the two significant Muslim controlled paries (AIUDF and IUML) have downplayed Muslim political identity per se and have instead embraced all minorities and depressed segments of society including Dalits, and are able to gain some justice and opportunities for Muslims in the name of the hallowed secular constitution of India. IUML despite its name is distinctly non-religious.

There are a significant number of Muslims in India who support the Owaisi/MIM type unrealistic thinking. In my opinion these are remnants of the etstwhile Muslim League supporters in North India and Razakar supporters in Andhra Pradesh, who could not migrate to Pakistan in 1947. But the Muslim League flame and dream is still there in their consciousness and comes to surface from time to time.

But today the facts of India are very different. Babri Mosque was demolished 20 years ago with much oppression of the Muslims; have we gotten any justice? Gujarat genocide of Muslims occurred 10 years ago; have we gotten any justice? The horrendous Bombay communal riots happened 20 years ago; have we received any justice? Batla House false encounter and oppression of many Muslim youth from Azamgarh occurred five years ago and is continuing; have we received any justice? Sachar Committee report on gross Muslim deprivations was released six years ago; have we received any justice? All we have received in 65 years is a few bread crumbs thrown at us and we have been told to keep quiet.

Ignoring the facts of the many deep weaknesses of the Muslim community in India in terms of the thinly spread population demographics, economy, education, armed services etc, a some Muslims fantacise that Muslim India can show its muscle to Hindu India. Or that Indian Muslims can separate their community's image from a composite Indian image into a separate Muslim supremacist image. This is a dangerous and damaging fantasy for 150 million Muslims of India who live surrounded by 750 million Hindus.

That is what we saw in Akbar Owaisi's inflammatory speech in Nirmal, Andhra Pradesh in 2012. That is what we saw in the manmoth Muslim rally in Azad Maidan, Mumbai laced with vilence for Rohingya Muslims in 2012. That is what we see often in rallies in Kashmir. It is time for the Indian Muslims to be realistic about the situation in the country, form alliances with the many secular Hindus and use our vote power in tactical voting, and there is a possibility that we can receive justice and with hard work improve our socio-economic situation and live in dignity.

[Kaleem Kawajais a community activist based at Washington DC. He can be contacted at kaleemkawaja@gmail.com]

The Fiqh of Sadaqat al-Fitr

August 1, 2013, 9:58 pm

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By Mufti Faraz ibn Adam

The great Hanafi faqih (jurist) Imam Ibn al-Humam mentions: “Sadaqat al-Fitr is compulsory upon every free Muslim.” (Sharh Fath al-Qadir, 2:285)

The Evidence

All the scholars base their opinion on the following ahadith:

‘Abd Allah Ibn ‘Umar (Allah be pleased with him) narrates, “The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) enjoined the payment of onesa’ of dates or one sa’ of barley as Zakat al-Fitr on every Muslim slave or free, male or female, young or old, and he ordered that it be paid before the people went out to offer the ‘Id prayer.” (Sahih al-Bukhari, 1:409)

‘Abd Allah Ibn ‘Abbas (Allah be pleased with him) narrates, “The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) declared the payment of Sadaqat al-Fitr as obligatory; it purifies the fasting person from any indecent act or speech, and is a source of feeding the poor. If one pays Sadaqat al-Fitr before the salah (i.e. the ‘Id prayer), it is considered an accepted charity, if he pays it after the salah, it is considered an ordinary charity.” (Sunan Abu Dawud, p. 263)

There are many similar narrations establishing the same ruling.

The Pre-Requisites of Sadaqat al-Fitr Being Compulsory

Islam: According to the four schools of thought (madhahib), being a Muslim is a pre-requisite. (Sharh Fath al-Qadir, 2:286)

Free (not being enslaved): All the scholars agree that a slave will not be obliged to dispense of Sadaqat al-Fitr. (Ibid.)

Possessing the quantum (nisab) for Sadaqat al-Fitr: This condition is deduced from the hadith: “Sadaqat isn’t compulsory except for he who is well-off.” (Musnad Ahmad, 10:7)

What is meant by quantum (nisab) is: that threshold of wealth one must have for Sadaqat al-Fitr to be compulsory. If somebody possesses less than that amount, he will not be obliged to pay Sadaqat al-Fitr.

The Hanafi madhhab is solitary in specifying a set quantum. According to the Maliki, Shafi’i and Hanbali madhahib, one who possesses surplus provisions for the night and day of ‘Id for himself and his dependants, will be obliged to discharge Sadaqat al-Fitr. (Mawahib al-Jalil, 3:257;Mughni al-Muhtaj, 1:594; al-Mughni, 4:301)

The specifying of a quantum is based upon the fact that in many places, Sadaqat al-Fitr has been termed as Zakat al-Fitr. For example, the narration of ‘Abd Allah Ibn ‘Umar in Sahih al-Bukhari has the wording Zakat al-Fitr. Also, the report of Abu Sa’id al-Khudri in Sahih Muslimbears the same terminology. Hence, by way of analogy and the alluded meaning (isharah an-nass), we can conclude that Sadaqat al-Fitr enjoys the same threshold and quantum as that of Zakat.

In principle, there are three types of quanta (nisab) in the Hanafi madhhab, each quantum results in different rulings.

That which obligates Zakat: to possess assets of a productive nature equivalent to the value of 612.36 g of silver.

In this quantum, it is a requirement that the wealth one possesses has the capacity to grow and develop (numuw). Zakat is only compulsory in that asset which is of a productive nature; the asset has the capacity to increase. For example, in the animals which are regarded as zakatable, namely camels, cows and sheep, they grow and increase in reality by reproduction. These assets in reality are of a productive nature, it is witnessed by the eye. Hence, Zakat is obligatory on them. Another form of assets being of a productive nature is innately (hukman); in such assets, the actual asset doesn’t multiply or increase, but it inherently possesses the characteristic of being productive; they have the potential to result in a profitable return. Thus, gold and silver fall under this category, likewise cash.

The second type of quantum is to possess any asset beyond ones necessities equivalent to the value of 612.36 g of silver. One who has this will be liable for the following rulings:

• Sadaqat al-Fitr becomes compulsory
• The receiving of Zakat is impermissible
• Animal sacrifice (udhiyyah) becomes compulsory
• The financial maintenance of one’s family becomes obligatory

For this quantum, it isn’t necessary to possess wealth which is of a productive nature, nor is it necessary to be trading in a commodity. Likewise it isn’t a condition to possess these commodities for a full lunar year, unlike the first quantum. Whoever possesses this quantum will not be obliged to discharge Zakat, however, he will have to dispense of Sadaqat al-Fitr.

The final quantum is to be in possession of one day’s provision. According to some, it is to possess 50 dirhams (153.09 g of silver). This quantum results in:

• The impermissiblity of begging
• The permissibility of receiving Zakat

In addition, the possessor of this quantum will not be obliged to pay Sadaqat al-Fitr, nor will he have to perform animal sacrifice in the days of Hajj. (Ashraf al-Hidayah, 3:161)

In short, according to the Hanafi madhhab, for Sadaqat al-Fitr to be obligatory, one must possess any asset surplus of one’s basic needs which are equivalent to the value of 612.36 g of silver.

Who Has to Pay

According to the four schools of fiqh, one will have to pay Sadaqat al-Fitr on behalf of himself and his minor dependants when the above conditions are met.

Imam al-Haskafi mentions that a Muslim who meets all the above criteria is required to pay Sadaqat al-Fitr for himself and on behalf of his minor children who do not possess the required quantum. The same ruling applies for those suffering from dementia. (al-Durr al-Mukhtar, p.140)

If one’s children who haven’t reached the age of puberty possess the quantum, it will be permissible for their guardian to dispense of Sadaqat al-Fitr from their wealth. (Fatawa al-Hindiyyah, 1:211)

A husband will not be responsible to pay Sadaqat al-Fitr on behalf of his wife, nor his mature children. The reason being is that Sadaqat al-Fitr is compulsory on behalf of those whom you have complete guardianship (wilayah) and complete financial maintenance. So as the man has complete guardianship over his minor children and he is totally responsible for all their maintenance, he will be obliged to pay Sadaqat al-Fitr on their behalf. However, a man doesn’t have complete guardianship over his wife nor is he responsible for every form of maintenance. As for guardianship and custody, a husband only has custody over his wife in terms of marriage related rights. Likewise, a husband is duty bound to financially maintain his wife in relation to the usual expenditure, clothing, food and shelter. A husband will not be required to pay for anything beyond that.

Similarly, a man doesn’t hold complete guardianship over his mature children; they are regarded as adults. Plus, the father isn’t obliged to maintain these children financially. Thus, the two elements inducing the obligation of Sadaqat al-Fitr are deficient, so Sadaqat al-Fitr will not be compulsory on the husband on behalf of his wife, nor the father on behalf of his children.

Having said this, it will be permissible for a husband to discharge of Sadaqat al-Fitr on behalf of his wife. Equally a father can pay on behalf of his mature children. (Sharh Fath al-Qadir, 2:289-290)

A woman who has the quantum will be obliged to pay the Sadaqat al-Fitr herself, irrespective whether she is married or not. (Imdad al-Fatawa, 2:110)

Mature children who are in possession of the quantum will also be responsible to pay Sadaqat al-Fitr for themselves.

A point worthy of mentioning here is that a male isn’t responsible to pay Sadaqat al-Fitr on behalf of his parents, minor siblings or his relatives. However, if he did dispense of Sadaqat al-Fitr on their behalf, it will be permissible. (al-Fiqh al-Islami wa Adillatuhu, 2:903)

In conclusion, every male and female is responsible to give Sadaqat al-Fitr when they are eligible to do so.

What to Give

Islam is way of life which can be practised in all eras and all locations. Many injunctions are based on simple and common articles. For example, the calendar is based on the sighting of the moon, salah is centred on the positioning of the sun, fasting is founded on dawn and dusk, the sentence of an adulterer is executed by stoning. Likewise, the valuation of many monetary advancements within the Islamic code of law, revolve around simple grain and cereal widely available in the markets.

Abu Sa’id al-Khudri (Allah be pleased with him) said, “We would give Zakat al-Fitr on behalf of every minor and adult, the free and enslaved in the era of the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace) one sa’ of foodstuff or one sa’ of cheese or one sa’ of barley or one sa’of dates or one sa’ of raisins. (Sahih Muslim, 2:106)

‘Abd Allah Ibn ‘Umar (Allah be pleased with him) reports that the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace) instructed us to give Sadaqat al-Fitr of one sa’ of dates or one sa’of barley. ‘Abd Allah Ibn ‘Umar mentions that the Sahabah later gave two mud (½ sa’) of wheat in place of dates and barley. (Sahih al-Bukhari, 1:411)

Shaykh Bashar Bakri Arrabi in his annotation of the great Hanafi work al-Lubab states one sa’equates to 3.2 kg. This is supported by various other texts and commentaries. Thus, ½ sa’ is equivalent to 1.632 kg. (al-Lubab fi ‘l-Sharh al-Kitab, p.169)

Based on the aforementioned ahadith, Imam al-Kasani mentions one should give:

• 1 sa’ of barley or
• 1 sa’ of dates or
• ½ sa’ of wheat or
• 1 sa’ raisins
(Bada’i al-Sana’i, 2:540)

Imam Ibn al-Humam has mentioned that for everything besides wheat one should give 1 sa’and for wheat he should give ½ sa’. He endorsed that this view is shared by Mu’awiyah, Ta’us, Sa’id Ibn Musayyab, Ibn Zubayr, Sa’id Ibn Jubayr and many other prominent individuals. (Sharh Fath al-Qadir, 2:228)

It is permissible to give the value of the above in cash, instead of the actual grain. However, according to Imam Muhammad al-Shaybani, only the value of wheat should be considered (not the value of barley or dates). (Radd al-Muhtar, 3:322)

By virtue of the inferred meaning (dalalah an-nass), the scholars have pointed out that the goal of Sadaqat al-Fitr is to enrich the poor and suffice their need. This enriching and sufficing is easily done with cash and other commodities. Thus, it will be permissible to give anything which has a value to it. Again, one will give whatever values to 1.6 kg of wheat. (al-Fiqh al-Islami wa Adillatuhu, 2:909-910; Bada’i al-Sana’i, 2:543)

So, it is permissible to give the authentically narrated items in their respected quantities or to give the value of 1.6 kg of wheat.

When calculating the price of wheat, one will consider the price and value of the area they dwell in.

Ibn Nujaym al-Misri states “Commodities will be evaluated in the city or areas there are in.” (al-Bahr al-Ra’iq, 2:400)

The Time of Dispensing Sadaqat al-Fitr

The dispensing of Sadaqat al-Fitr becomes compulsory upon an individual with the break of dawn on the day of ‘Id [al-Fitr, the 1st of Shawwal]. (Bada’i al-Sana’i, 2:544)

It is recommended to pay the Sadaqat al-Fitr before attending the place where ‘Id salah will be performed. (Sharh Fath al-Qadir, 2:305)

It is permissible to pay Sadaqat al-Fitr prior to the day of ‘Id. ‘Abd Allah Ibn ‘Umar said, “People used to give Sadaqat al-Fitr a day or two before the ‘Id. (Sahih al-Bukhari, 1:411)

In today’s climate, it is better and preferable to pay the Sadaqat al-Fitr many days in advance. The whole idea of Sadaqat al-Fitr is to benefit and suffice the poor on the day of ‘Id. Discharging of it prior to the ‘Id salah in the masjid or musallah, as it is common practice in the west, defeats the purpose and objective of Sadaqat al-Fitr. Hence, once should ideally pay the Sadaqah in adequate time so it can reach those who are worthy of it in due time. (Kitab al-Fatawa, 3:362)

If somebody failed to pay Sadaqat al-Fitr prior to the ‘Id salah, it will be permissible to discharge of it afterwards. Although to delay it is discouraged and disliked. (Nur al-Idah, p.162)

The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said: “If one pays Sadaqat al-Fitr before thesalah, it is considered an accepted charity, if he pays it after the salah, it is considered an ordinary charity.” (Sunan Abu Dawud, p. 263)

There is dispute amongst the classical scholars with regards to exactly how many days in advance can Sadaqat al-Fitr be paid. The preferred view is that it will be permissible to pay even before the onset of Ramadan. However, to discharge of it in the month of Ramadan is the most preferred course of action, as all the scholars agree to this. (Kitab al-Fatawa, 3:363)

The Recipients of Sadaqat al-Fitr

The scholars are unanimous that the recipients of Sadaqat al-Fitr are identical to that of Zakat. This is based on the following verse:

“Zakat expenditures are only for the poor and for the needy and for those employed to collect [Zakat] and for bringing hearts together [for Islam] and for freeing captives [or slaves] and for those in debt and for the cause of Allah and for the [stranded] traveller – an obligation [imposed] by Allah. And Allah is Knowing and Wise.” (Surat al-Tawbah v. 60)

The verse contains eight types of people:

Poor (fuqara’): They are those people who do not own in excess of their personal needs any type of wealth that is equal to the value of nisab (612.36 g of silver).

Needy (masakin): According to some scholars, they are those whose economic status is worse than the poor (fuqara’). The difference is a technical difference, but the principle is that neither of them possess in excess of their personal needs any type of wealth that is equal to the value of nisab.

Zakat collectors (‘amilin alayha): This refers to those individuals commissioned by the head of the Islamic government to collect Zakat. This isn’t applicable today.

Those whose hearts are being reconciled (mu’allafah al-qulub): This was an avenue to dispense your Zakat in during the early days of Islam. The Zakat money would be given to three types of people:

• Those disbelievers from whom it was perceived that by giving this donation, they would embrace Islam.
• To the leaders of the disbelievers in order to save the believers from their evil.
• To those who have just accepted Islam. This payment would be made to elevate their spirits.

According to the Hanafi scholars, this avenue is now abrogated. (Sharh Fath al-Qadir, 2:265)

Emancipating slaves (fi ‘l-riqab): Zakat money can be used to purchase a slave from his master in order to set him free. Again, this is inapplicable.

Debtors (al-gharimin): This is regarding a person who despite having assets at his disposal, he is overwhelmed with debt and the debt exceeds the value of his assets.

Those in the cause of Allah (fi sabil Allah): According to the majority of scholars, this refers to and is restricted to only those people who are engaged in Jihad (military struggle).

Travellers (ibn al-sabil): This refers to those travellers who are in a desperate situation and have no access to their personal money. Money nowadays can be wired across the globe in a matter of minutes, hence, one who has the ability to receive his money, will not be allowed to take Zakat or Sadaqat al-Fitr.

Currently, only the poor, needy, debtor, the Mujahidin and the travellers are eligible to receiving Zakat and Sadaqat al-Fitr.

(Courtesy: IlmGate.org)

A Jew and a Muslim?

August 1, 2013, 10:08 pm

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L.A.-based NewGround wants to show we can all get along

By Jonah Lowenfeld

Most Jews and Muslims rarely talk — really talk — to one another. This is as true in the United States as elsewhere, a stark reality despite our nation’s vast diversity and the ability of so many different peoples to coexist. It is true also in Los Angeles, a city of strong ethnic identities, long drives and even longer cultural memories.

Indeed, even here, the few encounters among Muslims and Jews often feel like head-on collisions: Protests and counter-protests — many triggered by events in and around Israel — are usually the most visible interactions, but they’re hardly the only instances of tension.

Some recent examples: In June 2012, Pamela Geller, a New York-based Jewish blogger and co-founder of Stop the Islamization of America, an organization classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, was barred at the last minute from speaking inside the headquarters of The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles — but not before local Muslim groups reportedly threatened to protest outside the Wilshire Boulevard building.

In 2010, 11 Muslim students repeatedly heckled and interrupted Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren while he was speaking at UC Irvine, until the students were finally removed from the room. They were arrested, cited for disturbing a public event, and, the following year, 10 were convicted in a jury trial and sentenced to perform community service.

Also in 2010, young supporters of Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, who attended a fundraiser at the Shangri La Hotel in Santa Monica, sued the hotel owner for violating their civil rights and allegedly saying, “I don’t want ... any Jews in my pool.” In 2012 a jury awarded damages to the FIDF plaintiffs in a lawsuit over the incident.

In 2006, leaders of the city’s most prominent Jewish organizations opposed giving a Los Angeles County humanitarian award to Dr. Maher Hathout, who is among the local Muslim community’s most respected leaders, on grounds that he had once maligned Israel as a “racist, apartheid state.”

And each spring, the debate over what constitutes free speech at California universities is reignited on every campus that holds a so-called “Israel Apartheid Week” or considers a resolution to boycott companies doing business in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Although students are the ones speaking out on campuses — on both sides — often they are being coached and encouraged by much larger Jewish and Muslim organizations.

Within the Jewish community, even the simple act of acknowledging the shared humanity of Muslims and Jews can be perilous. In 2012, when the conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip escalated into battle, Rabbi Sharon Brous, spiritual leader of IKAR, expressed sympathy for both Israelis and Palestinians in a message to her congregants and was immediately, fiercely and publicly attacked for doing so by Rabbi Daniel Gordis of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. Gordis argued that when Israel is at war, Jews should express support only for the Jewish state. Hardliners in the Muslim community similarly silence moderate voices on their side, as well.

And yet, as in Israel, Jews and Muslims in Southern California often live, if not side by side, then just down the road from one another. So it is not surprising that those few who attempt to cross the chasm separating these faiths and peoples often find that Muslims and Jews share not just the same neighborhoods, but many of the same values.

Enter NewGround, an L.A. group that has made its mission to bridge the gap. For the past five years, this emerging organization has been housed at the epicenter of the city — in Los Angeles City Hall — where it has been creating encounters among young Muslims and Jews. Its tactic is to prioritize conversation over solutions, active listening over public statements, allowing for honest exchange instead of superficial agreement.

NewGround already has forged deep relationships within its ever-expanding, carefully nurtured community of Muslims and Jews. And while differing views may continue to persist, NewGround’s training allows participants to acknowledge the conflict taking place half a world away without letting it limit all discussions here.

“NewGround was founded precisely to overcome the tendency for international conflict to disrupt relationships locally,” Rabbi Sarah Bassin, the group’s executive director, said. “We treat conflict as an inherent part of this relationship, as it is part of all relationships.”

Each year, NewGround trains a group of fellows from the Jewish and Muslim communities who spend months together before beginning to talk about hot-button topics like Zionism or the movement known as BDS, which seeks to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel. Those topics are raised during the second of two weekend retreats, toward the end of the 10-month program, by which time the fellows have learned crucial new communication skills and covered the (not entirely safe) subject of religion. The delay can, at least initially, be frustrating for those who came to the program specifically to talk to their counterparts about Israel.

“I didn’t trust the process; I thought it was a waste of time,” Eliana Kaya, a fellow from NewGround’s third cohort in 2010, said in an interview. She is now executive coordinator at reGeneration, a nonprofit that supports the progressive Waldorf method of education for Israelis and Palestinians. “I would go up [to the leaders] at the end of every session and say, ‘Yala, when are we going to get to the real stuff?’ ”

Shukry Cattan, a member of the most recent fellowship class, also wondered about the program’s structure. “There was all this buildup, and, for me, I kept thinking, ‘OK, what is this? Why are we waiting to the end?’ ” said Cattan, who is of Palestinian descent. “I thought the conversation was going to happen sooner.”

But Kaya, a practicing Jew, and Cattan, the son of a Christian mother and a Muslim father, both came to see the value of having relationships with the other members of their cohort in place before beginning such a difficult conversation.

“When it actually did happen, I understood the process,” Cattan said. “Having built that relationship with people and having seen each other — not even as Jews and Muslims — but people who have lives and stories to share, hearing people’s perspectives and each other’s very difficult experiences with the conflict — you couldn’t just walk away and dismiss that person’s story because you knew that person.”

Already, more than 100 Jewish and Muslim professionals, most in their 20s and 30s, have graduated from NewGround’s yearlong, intensive and innovative fellowship program, which teaches communication skills, builds friendships and gives members of each faith a window into the beliefs, practices and politics of the other. For its efforts, NewGround has received accolades and awards from the Jewish, Muslim and interfaith communities, and groups in other American cities have begun attempts to adapt the NewGround model for their own Muslim and Jewish communities.

As the Muslim holy month of Ramadan nears its Aug. 7 close, the world is closely watching the first meetings between Palestinian and Israeli peace negotiators in more than two years. Yet regardless of what happens on the international stage, there’s also hope in what’s happening on the ground here in Los Angeles, where NewGround is building a foundation for open, ongoing communication between adversaries.

The members of NewGround’s 2013 young professionals fellowship cohort pose for a picture after receiving their certificates of recognition and appreciation from the City of Los Angeles Human Relations Commission. Photo by http://cbacarellaphoto.com/

There are precedents, to be sure. In the 1990s, leaders of L.A.’s Muslim and Jewish communities met regularly under an umbrella known as the Muslim-Jewish Dialogue. Since 2006, a group of progressive Jewish, Muslim and Christian faith leaders have convened under the aegis of the Abrahamic Faiths Peacemaking Initiative, for meetings and events.

NewGround is itself the outgrowth of a partnership formed in the post-9/11 early 2000s between two L.A.-based nonprofits, the Progressive Jewish Alliance (PJA) and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), whose leaders first hoped to convene other Jewish and Muslim leaders, but had little success. Rather than turn away in failure, they turned to younger Jews and Muslims — tomorrow’s leaders.

“The idea was, younger people want to come together,” recalled Brie Loskota, managing director of the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California. Loskota worked as an outside consultant for the founding partners from around 2004-05; neither Jewish nor Muslim, she collaborated with two other women, one Jewish and one Muslim, to research existing programs of Muslim-Jewish engagement — a small and still-developing field — to figure out what worked.

A nationwide survey helped inform the basic structure for NewGround, Loskota said. As a veteran of inter-group dialogue in Los Angeles, she also helped link the group with the city’s Human Relations Commission.

“Young people want to understand who this other community is, they want to figure out how to have productive relationships, and they want to do something to help make Los Angeles better,” Loskota said. “And they also want to talk about Israel/Palestine. They don’t want to shy away from it, and they don’t want to pretend that it isn’t an issue.”

Nevertheless, NewGround’s launch in 2007 — at City Hall — was met with a great deal of skepticism. A cover story in this newspaper about the program in January of that year included reactions to the joint venture from Jewish leaders; most were negative, with one denouncing MPAC as “radical haters of Israel.”

Even NewGround’s supporters weren’t initially entirely sold on its viability.

“Really? You’re going to find Muslims and Jews who are going to commit to meet with each other twice a month over 10 months?” Malka Fenyvesi, a consultant with a master’s degree in conflict analysis and resolution, recalled hearing at the time. She was hired in 2006 as the Jewish half of a facilitating team that would guide NewGround fellows’ discussions. “Who’s going to do that?”

Fenyvesi moved from Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles for the job, while her counterpart, Aziza Hasan, a Muslim who had spent part of her childhood in Jordan, moved here from Kansas to be a co-facilitator. Hasan also remembers the initial skepticism.

“At other people’s events, or even at our launch event, we were definitely among people who believe in NewGround or interfaith dialogue,” Hasan said this spring during a conversation at the NewGround offices on the 21st floor of City Hall. Yet even among supporters, she said, “There were plenty of people who looked me straight in the face and said, ‘You’re naïve, you know. Just give it up. Go find a real job.’ ”

But the project got national attention even from its early days. In 2009, for example, radio host Krista Tippett featured NewGround on her nationally broadcast American Public Media show.

From Left: NewGround Executive Director Rabbi Sarah Bassin and Program Director Aziza Hasan at Los Angeles City Hall.

Then, in late 2010 and early 2011, with PJA in the process of merging with the national group Jewish Funds for Justice, NewGround’s supporters decided to spin off from MPAC and PJA; by July 2011, NewGround’s board of trustees had made it fully independent and brought in Bassin, newly ordained by the Reform Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR), as executive director.

NewGround’s most recent cohort of young professionals graduated last month and included 24 Jews and Muslims who spent nearly a year learning about one another’s religions; they visited both synagogues and mosques, and they learned how to talk to one another. They are the fifth such group, all facilitated by Hasan and Fenyvesi.

NewGround’s process is very deliberate, and it’s only about two-thirds of the way into the program, after the fellows have become skillful and sensitive “intentional listeners,” that Fenyvesi and Hasan allow the conversation to turn to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Johanna Solomon, a doctoral candidate in Political Science at UC Irvine, has spent the past two years studying the impact of NewGround’s fellowship. What NewGround does, Solomon says, is improve the fellows’ impressions of self-efficacy — their ability to speak effectively about the subject — in statistically significant ways. “To me, the real benefit of NewGround, as well as other types of programs like this,” she said, “is that it empowers the moderates.

“The fellows really feel like they know enough and have enough skills to go out and have difficult conversations about what’s going on,” Solomon said.

NewGround also has become more than just a fellowship program, now producing public events, such as a Jewish-Muslim storytelling event each fall and an annual Jewish-Muslim iftar — a break-fast ceremonial meal during Ramadan.

Alumni fellows are also advancing the group’s mission with their own projects. Two run a two-day exchange including seventh- and eighth-graders from Sinai Temple’s Sinai Akiba Academy in Westwood and New Horizons, an Islamic school in Pasadena. Another NewGround alum has launched a joint text study group to examine Quranic and Hebrew biblical texts, and six alumni from the most recent fellowship have created a reading group for Muslims and Jews. More is in the works.

As she leads NewGround, Bassin has built her network, as well. She is one of just eight fellows receiving support from the Joshua Venture Group, a nonprofit that helps Jewish social entrepreneurs develop skills to grow their organizations; she is also a member of the ROI Community, a network founded by philanthropist Lynn Schusterman to support Jewish activists.

And NewGround has also won accolades beyond the Jewish world. In May, Bassin and Hasan — who earlier this year took on the additional role of director of programs for NewGround — traveled together to Qatar as invited presenters at the 10th Doha Conference for Interfaith Dialogue. Also this year, NewGround set up a program for Jewish and Muslim high school students, MAJIC (Muslims and Jews Inspiring Change) that adapts the fellowship’s curriculum for younger participants. The program was named faith-based organization of the year by California Gov. Jerry Brown.

Maintaining dialogue between Muslims and Jews can take a lot of effort. Sometimes it works for a while, and then falls apart, as did Abraham’s Vision, a program that brought together high-school-age Jews and Muslims in the San Francisco Bay Area and greater New York City. Abraham’s Vision also brought together college students from both faiths from all over the United States with Israeli and Palestinian students. Yet, it recently shut down after 10 years.

“Conflict transformation work is exhausting, and not enough people in the communities with whom we worked supported it,” Aaron Hahn Tapper, one of the group’s co-executive directors, wrote in an e-mail. Tapper is also a Jewish Studies professor at University of San Francisco.

But there is hope — the desire to create dialogue appears to be on the upswing in recent years, and the venues for such interfaith dialogue are increasing in number.

In 2012, 250 Jewish and Muslim organizations participated in the fifth annual Weekend of Twinning organized by the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding (FFEU); still more are expected to engage with that program this November, when the theme is: Standing Up for the Other.

“It’s about Muslims speaking out against anti-Semitism, it’s about Muslims speaking out against Holocaust denial, and it’s about Jews speaking out against Islamophobia,” Rabbi Marc Schneier, FFEU’s founder and president, said. “It’s not about conversation. It’s not about talk.”

These days, without the imprint of MPAC (which some Jews see as too critical of Israel) and PJA (which some Jews see as too progressive), NewGround can be judged entirely on its own. And by focusing on creating local relationships among participants — before broaching the subject of the Middle East — NewGround fellows is hoping to become more resilient than participants in earlier efforts.

For NewGround Fellows, the most significant unit of measurement is not the principle but the personal story.

On a Friday night in May, Kadin Henningsen, a member of NewGround’s most recent fellowship class, led services at Beth Chayim Chadashim in West Los Angeles. During the service, he told stories he had heard from two other fellows over the course of the fellowship.

Deborah Tehrani, a self-described traditional Sephardic Jew, was right outside the Frank Sinatra cafeteria at Hebrew University in 2002 when a hidden bomb exploded, killing nine people.

“Eleven years later,” Henningsen told his fellow congregants, “she still asks: ‘Why would anyone want to kill me? They don’t even know me.’ ”

Henningsen also retold a story Cattan had related during the second NewGround retreat. Cattan’s mother was born and raised in Jerusalem. His mother’s family fled to Jordan in 1948, and, in 2010, Cattan returned to the place where her family’s house was.

While Cattan was there, an Israeli police officer approached and asked why. Cattan explained he was looking for his mother’s house.

“The officer said, ‘Can’t you see it’s gone?’ ” Henningsen told the congregants. “‘Go away; you don’t belong here.’ ”

For Henningsen, the two stories shared the same theme: In Israel and the territories it occupies, two distinct peoples lay claim to a single land, each telling the other — in more and less violent ways — that they do not belong.

However, Tehrani, who works at HUC-JIR and said she is “very passionate about Israel,” said her motivation for sharing the story of her brush with Palestinian terrorism was to counter claims made by another fellow, a Palestinian Muslim.

“He said something to the effect of, ‘I think I have the most at stake here out of anyone else in this room,’ ” Tehrani recalled. “I said, just, ‘No, no you don’t.’”

Tehrani shared her story with reluctance, she said. “I didn’t want someone to be sympathetic just because I went through something so violent.” Like many of the fellows, Tehrani said she was struggling with the question of whether, as American Jews and Muslims, they have the right to talk about the issue at all.

But Tehrani ultimately concluded that she had as much right as her Palestinian co-participant to engage in the conversation.

“Everybody’s allowed a perspective,” she said. “Everybody can share their feelings. The conflict has no boundaries.”

To be sure, to discuss the Palestinian-Israeli conflict — sensitively, intelligently — is one thing; to achieve peace is another.

Nobody can say whether NewGround or any program like it ultimately can impact the situation in the Middle East — now or ever — any more than they can predict whether current attempts at peace talks can yield results. In the 20 years since the signing of the Oslo accords, nobody has gone broke betting against Israelis’ and Palestinians’ ability to come to a peaceful settlement.

Phillip L. Hammack, an associate professor of psychology at UC Santa Cruz, has written about the short- and long-term impacts of U.S.-based peace education programs working with Israeli, Palestinian and other youth, like Seeds of Peace in Maine and Hands of Peace in suburban Chicago.

“These types of programs do show considerable effectiveness in the short term at getting individuals to challenge the stereotypes and prejudices they hold about the other,” Hammack wrote in an e-mail. “They humanize members of the rival group. However, studies (including my own) that have followed people over time show that the effects do not hold as long as the larger political reality remains unchanged.”

Still, in the weeks after the final meeting of his NewGround fellowship cohort, Cattan, who works at the UCLA Labor Center, said he believes that what Jewish- and Muslim-Americans say matters in the Middle East.

“It makes a difference,” Cattan said. “I think our voices here in the U.S. are heard very loudly in the Middle East — on both ends. Whether you are a Jewish-American or a Palestinian-American, what you say here resonates there. And it’s important to know what Jewish Americans think and feel and believe about the region.”

Further, as Bassin points out, part of what NewGround brings to Los Angeles has nothing to do with what happens in the land she now calls Israel/Palestine.

“Because the focus is local, alumni experience real progress when they help Muslim and Jewish institutions build new partnerships,” she said. “That does not have to be interrupted when there’s fighting in the Middle East.”

(Courtesy: JewishJournal.com)

SAUDI ARABIA: Lessons learned from our neighbours

August 1, 2013, 10:16 pm

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In an era where Saudi youth are travelling the world and are being exposed to new things, the appeal of pedantry ideas is rapidly losing ground

By Tariq A. Al Maeena

As we watch events unfold in neighbouring Egypt, we have become aware of one thing. The politicisation of Islam in everyday government does not necessarily represent the will of all the people. The marriage of religion and politics under the current climate in societies where minorities exist can often lead to turbulent relationships.

Not long after the first Gulf war, a western journalist asked me which direction I thought we in Saudi Arabia would be moving. My answer was quick and short. I told him that going with the prevalent culture and mindset at the time, I felt that we in the kingdom had one foot pushing firmly on the gas pedal, and the other jamming the brake pedal with equal force. “But that’s not going to get you anywhere fast!” he countered.

And for more than a decade or so since that conversation, I believed that my answer of so many years ago had held up credibly in view of the events that had followed. The Gulf war spawned a new breed of rejectionists who became bolder and more vocal in spreading their brand of extremist values and beliefs upon Saudi society. Many Saudis still recollect the harsh and often insipid atmosphere of the 90’s where anything out of the ordinary was instantly targeted as the work of mischief or the ‘white devil’, where innovation and imagination were stifled as being idle and fruitless pastimes, and where one’s interpretation of faith almost had to do a complete makeover time and time again?

There were sermons on anything and everything, and from just about any quarter deeming themselves learned in theology. And they attacked just about every phase of our day to day living. There were objections from different sectors to satellite television, to mobile phones, to the internet, to the presence of women in the business community, to the way we chose to dress or the activities we chose to fritter our time on.

Misusing religion

Even what we read or listened to came under their scrutiny. Whether we chose to teach our children English, or afford our daughters physical education was not a matter of choice. It was fought bitterly and opposed. All in the name of religion! There were also so many mixed signals from the business community and the public sector that often rendered us into a state of delusional schizophrenia. And during that period, to many it was agony in existence.

There were many who used their positions of influence and authority to manipulate their perception of a healthy society through their own narrow-minded views. The ruling by a cleric judge in granting a divorce to a lady whose husband chose to introduce satellite television in their home was but one example of such intolerance and injustice. The persistent and personal attacks on a Shura member in that decade from hard-line theologians and their supporters were another. All he wanted to do was to table the issue of driving for women in front of the Shura Council.

Today, the message from the government is loud and clear. We cannot afford to be held hostage to archaic ideas if we are to forge ourselves into a success as a nation. All of us be we men or women have a responsibility towards making this a better place. That is by no means something that contradicts the spirit of Islam.

Resistance to change

And while the government has indeed established rules and laws to help move this process forward, there still exists resistance from some quarters against this nation moving forward. Be they individuals or groups, these people are alarmed at the incremental progress that we have come to witness in the last few years.

As we look around us, it has dawned on many Saudis that those intolerant ideas have led us to noticeably lag among the regional GCC countries. One cannot help but admire the amazing transformation in the UAE, from a barren desert just a short while back to a mixture of world class cities in less than a decade. All this was happening while we in Saudi Arabia were bogged down debating whether to allow women to drive!

In an era where our youth are growing fast and savvy, the appeal of such pedantry ideas is rapidly losing ground. They have seen the world, and they want to be a part of its growth. They are willing to work hard and toil for this nation. But they also want to be free from the shackles that curtail their effectivity. They have also come to understand from recent events how the marriage of religion and politics has become purely a game of power grabbing and nothing more.

The presence of extreme ideologies that tend to curb our imagination and snuff our spirit still exists within some individuals, who disdainfully hold up the banner of damnation against anything that does not conform to their values.

But they must gradually be made irrelevant, for else they do all of us a great harm. It is time to take the foot off the brakes, floor the gas pedal and move forward.

[Tariq A. Al Maeenais a Saudi socio-political commentator. He lives in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/@talmaeena.]

(Courtesy: Gulf News)

Remembering Prof. Obaid Siddiqi (1932-2013): A personal tribute from a Student

August 1, 2013, 10:21 pm

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Prof. Obaid Siddiqi was a Renaissance man and father of modern Indian biology.

By Sukant Khurana

It is very rare that individuals are institutions in themselves. Such individuals are genuine visionaries who start a wave, who create a school of thought and like a banyan tree keep extending inspiring branches through offshoots much beyond when they are gone. The late Obaid Siddiqi, who many rightly consider the father of modern Indian biology and the last of the giants of the South Asian science scene, was one such rare individual. While risking the shallow deification of the late protagonist of this article, I write this piece, hoping that a few people would understand that it is not the person but the vision that this is a personal tribute to and they would strive to pick up the torch where the last generation left it.

Obaid Siddiqi, who strove to transform the life sciences in South Asia recently died of a freak road accident. True to his dream of a peaceful, considerate, educated and scientific society, his family decided to not press charges on the young careless driver that hit him, as it would ruin his career and education.

My article is far from a perfect tribute to my first scientific mentor as it deals solely with my personal interactions with him in order to bring forth his ideas that continue to inspire me, instead of details of his tremendously long list of achievements or his interactions with hundreds of other very well accomplished students that continue to contribute to science and society world over. The greatest biologist that South Asian soil has sprung so far, Obaid Siddiqi, despised personal publicity and his motto was simply to just do your job quietly without worrying about the results. There again I am deviating from what Obaid would have liked. I hope to ruffle some feathers of a subcontinent that is indifferent to the true heroes of madre vatan but worships cinema stars, religious demagogues, politicians and sport icons. By madre vatan, instead of simply India, I speak in the same sense as Obaid did about the land, culture and people of the whole of Indian Subcontinent and not religiously and ethnically divided feudal leftover remnants. He was not nostalgic about some group in antiquity dominating the whole land but had a vision of the future - of people united by common cultural threads, yet celebrating their diversity, irrespective of past petty differences. Over one lunch, he quoted poet Kaifi Azmi (I am paraphrasing because of an imperfect recollection of a 12 year old conversation) that even though he was born in a slave British India and had to live through a divided subcontinent, he would love to die in a united, truly secular and a socialist one.

Obaid Siddiqi (January 7th, 1932-July 26th, 2013) was my first scientific mentor, who worked solely for the love of science, for whom lab was a temple, a prayer, a lifetime of commitment and not a business or a mere profession. His scientific career spanned from a study that led to the first ever fine mapping of a gene that eventually contributed to Guido Pontecorvo’s Nobel winning work, to an important finding on the nature of codons that eventually increased our understanding of protein synthesis, insights into bacterial gene exchange, to synaptic vesicle recycling mutant that now enables several neuroscientists a spatiotemporal control over neuronal activity, to the first exploration of the genetic basis of taste and smell. He founded the first biology unit at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, National Center for Biological Sciences, was the president of Indian academy of Sciences for several years, played an important role in various national and international institutions, including the international effort of The Third World Academy of Sciences to get the developing world on a global scientific map. The list is long so I will only talk of my personal interaction that started in the July of 2000 and continued till few days before his tragic death.

He belonged to a rare and now globally endangered breed of true passionate gentleman scientists. His contributions are many, but his most personally dear achievements are two: preparing successive generations of scientists from South Asia and in his personal capacity humbly fighting for progressive and enlightened values. He had a clear vision of an ideal scientist when I met him. Looking at his career it is clear that that the vision had evolved and had undergone several iterations as he had evaluated science and its role in the society, putting his and others’ conduct under the microscope. While the vision had evolved over time, the vigorous flame to transform the subcontinent remained ever constant. When Obaid could have the choice of setting up a lab in United States, at the height of his career in 1962 he decided to pack up and take the perilous journey of establishing molecular biology in India. His perspective on the role of scientist in Indian society evolved out of a lifetime of constant struggle involving both extrospection and introspection. His vision of a scientist was a creative and objective person who apart from his individual scientific success had a contract with the society from which he emanated. A scientist did not exist in contrast to or as a parasite on the society by merely practicing science for self-promotion. This wise perspective of his was by no means meant as any criticism of basic or applied science in simple black and white terms, but a very healthy questioning of what is sustainable, reverberating the immediate and future needs of the developing world. He asked how could rigorous science be used as a tool for social change.

One such way for him was to train the next generation of scientists, educating them in scientific method through real scientific experience. His idea was that even if most such trainees do not do science for living later on, they can take back this training to their everyday lives and thus act as catalyst for rational thought in society. He individually trained several short-term visitors of any age group, from teenagers to grey haired college readers. This was not a task handed down to graduate students. Only a handful of such trainees panned out, when one thinks in terms of the cost benefit analysis of the productivity of his lab. I once persisted in arguing with him over several days on this topic of loss of lab productivity due to inundation of short-term visitors. My point was that when the visitors learn to do experiments well enough they were ready to leave and Obaid was not getting anything out of them. He said it was neither about cost benefit analysis as other labs do nor about what he got out of it. He believed that if he could get a small number to become future scientists or even spread scientific thinking, that will be his small contribution to the society. I understood the message of training people selflessly but it took me several years to fully embrace it, when with the help of friends, breaking outside the university programs, I initiated something of the sort in Austin, Texas towards the end of my doctoral studies. Obaid did not hide his feelings when he found out that his lesson had rubbed on to one of his students.

In his last two decades of his life, his obsessions were two fundamental issues of behavioral neuroscience that have been completely sidetracked by the majority in the mad march for quick publications. He wondered what an appropriate measure of a behavioral response is, if one singular measure should be used at all. He understood that almost all neuroscience labs are throwing away most of the information by taking one single measure of a response at a fixed time. He also asked if one could really break out of strictly associative way of thinking about higher learning. He called sensory pre-exposure as Thorpean conditioning to respect few pioneering but rather inconclusive experiments done by William H. Thorpe of Cambridge in middle of the last century. From what Obaid contributed to it, it should truly be called Obaidian. He was just too humble to acknowledge his intellectual contributions and hence he deferred the contribution to others, although his ideas were significantly different, not just in details but in the overall concept. His perspective on familiarity without association with any explicit reward or punishment is a novel way of understanding many aspects of complex learning. I will write extensively (and I hope others to do the same) about those ideas later as they reflect a new way of thinking about learning and memory but I hope that in near future, I can find time to write about at least the essence of that unfinished big question and our common interest in South Asian transformation. I have been thinking something on the lines of “Metamorphosis of life and cultural psyche”, incorporating not only his vision but of few others along with mine on two seemingly superficially unrelated topics. Metamorphosis alludes to love of Hegel’s philosophy and the concept of transformation and also to the drastic change in life forms, especially invertebrates from the larval to the adult stage. I preferred metamorphosis to his truly South Asian analogy, where he used to say that fruit fly is like a “Brahmin”, having two lives and it remembers lessons from the first stage in the second stage too. The broader philosophical idea beyond neuroscience is to explore complete transformation without losing the lessons of the past in both individual and societal context, quite the opposite of destroying everything to build something new. This complete transformation was what Obaid was master of, taking what existed, howsoever crumbling and picking the best out of that to create something new and vibrant.

Unlike every other student in his lab, who worked either on the behavior and molecular biology of olfaction or what he had humbly called as Thorpean conditioning, when I stubbornly persisted, he let me explore associative conditioning. Decision to let me pursue that, I can only speculate would have been painful, as I understood the philosophical underpinnings of his thought but sought to do exactly the opposite. It takes a truly educated man in the Aristotelian sense to nurture two contradictory currents under the same roof and he did with strongest possible support. Over several years of interaction we were realizing that the two points of view might likely converge and are really not opposite ends of the spectrum. I speculate that there are likely going to be interesting differences at the cellular levels but there are going to be more similarities than differences at the neural network level. It is sad that Obaid will not be with us at the finish line of that idea but if it were not for him, we would not have even started exploring these questions, I surely would not have. I would be studying extremophile microorganisms.

He loved discussing science to the point that few hours before I was leaving his lab on my last day in Bangalore, the discussion was on experiments to address concerns about the possibility of elements of associativity in Thorpean conditioning. I reminded him that I was leaving, thinking that he had forgotten the date. He knew the date and time very well but said that experiments did not end with his lab and he was not concerned about the specifics of where I were to address these questions. He said wherever I go I must carry on with the science. He said “It is the question that counts”. It was always the questions, not the rat race of publications, grants, awards and prestige that mattered for Obaid. His message of “carry on” with the mission remains etched in my memory.

Despite his ideological differences with successive Indian governments where he stood for far more progressive egalitarian ideals than the regimes, very similar to his long-time friend and collaborator Seymour Benzer, his stature in the scientific world as unquestionably India’s most prominent biologist gave him the ear of the power-elites in Delhi. They could neither swallow him nor spit him out, so to speak. Finding few exceptional people who could sympathize with his mission of science, he created enough legroom to bring about change. Unlike everyone else in his position, who exploited such opportunities to create their own fiefdoms, Obaid tirelessly worked to build responsible democratically accountable structures of science and technology. His stature made him change the Indian science by setting new waves in motion although failing to completely overhaul it, given that for every honest man in India there are ten thousand opportunists and for every true scientist there are scores of bureaucrats. Understanding the need of a person with vision, Obaid used to frequently complain about Homi Bhabha’s untimely death. As Bhabha had both the intellectual authority and the ear of Nehru, according to Obaid, after Bhabha’s death the task was left midway, with no one there to pick the torch. In a very different style, without any fanfare at all and without such proximity to power as Bhabha, Obaid did carry forward the task in very significant way, something he never took the credit for.

When the moment called he did more than simply training students or setting science policy for the better of the society. He gave lectures in late 90s and early 2000 against how religious forces had brought in astronomy into official course work. Over last two years’ interactions he was concerned about how many central Universities had gone down the drain due to political interventions. He also complained about ills of research institutions suddenly expanding without retaining standards of quality. His social contract did not end just at higher scientific education alone either. Right from writing educational books for underprivileged mid-school kids in Hindi for free, to fighting several plagues of Indian bureaucracy, alongside running the most prestigious lab in South Asia, he somehow managed to retain the curiosity of a ten year old and humility of a graduate student just approaching his graduation exam. Being ever so judicious in his own spending, he bestowed many of his personal resources for the right causes, giving away books to students when he knew they were not going to be returned. I vividly remember his evening talk in a small Bangalore college at a horribly lit and annoyingly buggy room on the topic of human evolution. His eyes lit up when he was inspiring students to pursue science after undergraduate studies. This happened just a few days after a well-publicized talk attended by the who’s who of the Indian science at IISc. While both talks were par excellence, his enthusiasm was clearly many times more for the one in the small dingy room of that rather unknown college. Not just enthusiasm, we in the lab knew he had labored several times more for the undergraduate audience, toiling for months in advance to read up the current status of the field. How could he ever miss the opportunity of finding new recruits for science and for the transformation of South Asia?

Sukant Khurana

His interests ranged from classical music, history, visual arts, to several sports. Apart from hundreds of email exchanges over years on our common interest on olfaction and learning, my conversations with him on excavations of megalithic pottery in South India, population genetics of migration from South to South East Asia, people-to-people contact amongst citizens of different countries of South Asia, remain some of my cherished intellectual interactions. I have not met another renaissance man of his equal despite having worked amongst several big names of the science and art world. He was truly the last of the league of Meghnad Saha, Homi Bhabha, CV Raman from India, with none comparable in sight in the near future. What we are left with are now career politicians heading different institutions, universities, and science and biotechnology departments. He will be missed a lot. Although he is not with us anymore to provide new directions in science, fight for right policies and protest when needed but his vision and scientific inspirations live on through several students. In the end all I can say is through hundreds of young scientists you have trained and thousands you have inspired, dear OS, your scientific dreams and vision of a modern South Asia would “carry on”.

[Sukant Khurana, Ph.D., is a New York based neuroscientist and artist, currently working at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. He had the privilege to work on olfaction, learning and memory under the guidance of Prof. Obaid Siddiqi from 2000 to 2003. His works can be seen at www.brainnart.com. Follow him on twitter @brainnart. He can be contacted at sukantkhurana@gmail.com]

Terrorism in India: Is it a Muslim Monopoly?

August 1, 2013, 10:37 pm

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ByDr Javed Jamil

Recently, some of the statements made by Congress Muslims made headlines. These statements that apparently sought to link the creation of Muslim terrorist outfits to anti-Muslim riots were dismissed by Congress and widely criticized in media.

The trend in recent years has been that while the Hindutva lobbies and the media try to project all terrorist violence as Muslim, some Muslim leaders and mediamen behave as if a Muslim cannot be a terrorist at all. Both are extreme positions that need to be dismissed with the contempt they deserve. The truth is that while the majority of terrorism related violence in India in last 40 years has been non-Muslim, some terrorist attacks might have been perpetrated by Muslims. But If we count the deaths in terrorist attacks allegedly by Muslim outfits, these do no cross 1500. These include all the major attacks including the serial Mumbai attacks after Babri Masjid demolition and 26/11 attack in Mumbai.

The following is the list of famous attacks that have been attributed to Muslims:

Terrorist attacks in Mumbai include:

·  12 March 1993 - Series of 13 bombs go off, killing 257

·   6 December 2002 - Bomb goes off in a bus in Ghatkopar, killing 2

·   27 January 2003 - Bomb goes off on a bicycle in Vile Parle, killing 1

·  14 March 2003 - Bomb goes off in a train in Mulund, killing 10

·   28 July 2003 - Bomb goes off in a bus in Ghatkopar, killing 4

·   25 August 2003 - Two Bombs go off in cars near the Gateway of India and Zaveri Bazaar, killing 50

·  11 July 2006 - Series of seven bombs go off in trains, killing 209

·   26 November 2008 to 29 November 2008 - Coordinated series of attacks, killing at least 172.

·  13 July 2011 - Three coordinated bomb explosions at different locations, killing 26

Terrorist attacks elsewhere in Maharashtra

·  13 February 2010 - a bomb explosion at the German Bakery in Pune killed fourteen people, and injured at least 60 more

·  1 August 2012 - four bomb explosion at various locations on JM Road, Pune injured 1 person

29 October 2005 Delhi bombings

Three explosions went off in the Indian capital of New Delhi on 29 October 2005, which killed more than 60 people and injured at least 200 others. The high number of casualties made the bombings the deadliest attack in India in 2005. It was followed by 5 bomb blasts on 13 September 2008.

2001 Attack on Indian parliament

Terrorists on 13 December 2001 attacked the Parliament of India, resulting in a 45-minute gun battle in which 9 policemen and parliament staff were killed. All five terrorists were also killed by the security forces and were identified as Pakistani nationals.

Uttar Pradesh

2005 Ayodhya attacks

Following the two-hour gunfight between Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorists based in Pakistan and Indian police, in which six terrorists were killed, opposition parties called for a nationwide strike with the country's leaders condemning the attack, believed to have been masterminded by Dawood Ibrahim.

2010 Varanasi blasts

On 7 December 2010, another blast occurred in Varanasi, that killed immediately a toddler, and set off a stampede in which 20 people, including four foreigners, were injured.  

2006 Varanasi blasts

A series of blasts occurred across the Hindu holy city of Varanasi on 7 March 2006. Fifteen people are reported to have been killed and as many as 101 others were injured.

Karnataka

2008 Bangalore serial blasts occurred on 25 July 2008 in Bangalore, India. A series of nine bombs exploded in which two people were killed and 20 injured. According to the Bangalore City Police, the blasts were caused by low-intensity crude bombs triggered by timers.

2010 Bangalore stadium bombing occurred on 17 April 2010 in M. Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bangalore, India. Two bombs exploded in a heavily packed Cricket stadium in which fifteen people were injured. A third bomb was found and diffused outside the stadium

Major Bombings

September 13, 2008: Serial blasts in Delhi killed at least 24 people and injured more than 100.

May 2008: Eight serial blasts rock Jaipur in a span of 12 minutes leaving 65 dead and over 150 injured.

August 2007: 30 dead, 60 hurt in Hyderabad 'terror' strike.

September 2006: 30 dead and 100 hurt in twin blasts at a mosque in Malegaon.

July 2006: Seven bombs on Mumbai's trains kill over 200 and injure 700 others.
October 2005: Three bombs placed in busy New Delhi markets a day before Diwali kill 62 people and injure hundreds.

August 2003: Two taxis packed with explosives blow up outside a Mumbai tourist attraction and a busy market, killing 52 and wounding more than 100.

September 24, 2002: Militants with guns and explosives attack the Akshardham Hindu temple in the western state of Gujarat, 31 killed, More than 80 injured.

March 1993: Mumbai serial bombings kill 257 people and injure more than 1,100.

As can be seen, the number of deaths in all these attacks does not cross 1500. Now let’s have a look at the other terrorist attacks in the country.

Deaths related to Naxalite violence

Period	Civilians	Security forces	Insurgents	Total per period
1989–2001	1,610	432	1,007	3,049[79]
2002	382	100	141	623[80]
2003	410	105	216	731[80]
2004	466	100	87	653[80]
2005	524	153	225	902[81]
2006	521	157	274	952[81]
2007	460	236	141	837[81]
2008	399	221	214[82]	834[83]
2009	586	317	217	1,120[84]
2010	713	285	171	1,169[85]
2011	275	128	199	602[86]
2012	144	104	116	364[87]
TOTAL	6,432	2,312	2,965	11,709

Based on the above displayed statistics, it can be determined that more than 11,700 people have been killed since the start of the insurgency in 1980, of which more than half died in the last ten years. The unofficial figures put the toll several times higher.

In the violence related to Sikhs, several hundreds have been killed by Sikh militants. In Hindu-Sikh riots following the assassination of Indira Gandhi, more than 10000 Sikhs died.

Then there are killings related to ULFA. According to a Wikipedia report, .” In the past two decades some 18,000 people have died in the clash between the rebels and the security forces.

So it can be seen that the violence involving Sikhs, Naxalites and ULFA has killed more than 40000 people in last 30 years.

Hindu violence is not confined to India. In Sri Lanka, more than 60000 people have died in Tamil related violence.

In Nepal, Maoist violence has also killed hundreds.

There are people who try to argue that Naxalites, Maoists and ULFA activists are not religion-inspired. But the truth remains that they are all Hindus according to demographic records. And violence is violence, whether related to communal sentiments or to any other cause. Violence in the name of religion cannot be described as more condemnable than that related to any other ideology. Violence has to be condemned in proportion to the casualties it causes. Moreover, the killers of Sikhs in Delhi riots and those of Muslims in various riots have been the hardcore believers in Hindu scriptures. This does not in any way mean that Hinduism or any other religion is responsible for such violence. This shows that mutual hatred often leads people to indulge in violent attacks against one another. The majority communities or powerful groups anywhere in the world routinely indulge in riots or the government forces act on their behalf. The weaker communities and groups resort to terrorism and other forms of hit and run strategies.

In my previous article on riots, I have already shown that the number of Muslims killed in riots in India is at least three times the number of Hindus killed.

Link of Terrorism with Riots

While it will be wrong to assume that the anti-Muslim riots and Babri Masjid demolition were the only factors responsible for the rise of some alleged Muslim terrorist organizations, it will be totally out of place as well to dismiss this factor altogether. Some analysts have argued that “terrorists” are the product of a certain mindset. They may be partially right. But it is also right that such a mindset needs fuel to prosper, and events like Babri Masjid demolition and Gujarat riots multiplied with a widespread feeling of discrimination provide sufficient fuel for that purpose to be achieved. While on one hand, terrorism, in fact violence of all hues and colours, whoever the culprits, whoever the victims, whatever the place, has to be condemned in no uncertain  terms, on the other hand, all the factors related to the rise of terrorism of any colour have to be addressed if it is to be controlled. The role of the precipitating factors, the media in fanning hatred, the politicians, community leaders and executives, the military and the police – all have to be analysed. On top of tem, all communities have to be socioeconomically empowered and all kinds of discrimination have to be eradicated. Only then we can hope of a lasting peace.

[Dr Javed Jamilis India based thinker and writer with over a dozen books including his latest, “Muslims Most Civilised, Yet Not Enough” and “Muslim Vision of Secular India: Destination & Road-map”. He can be contacted at doctorforu123@yahoo.com or 91-8130340339]

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GUEST EDITORIAL: Batla House Verdict a Slap on the Face of Patriotic Muslims

August 1, 2013, 10:42 pm

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By Kaleem Kawaja

The judgement of a New Delhi court convicting Mohammad Shahzad as a terrorist and branding him and his two friends who were killed in the police-staged false encounter, is one more travesty of injustice. The court judgement totally disregarded the evidence and the facts and instead pasted the pre-conceived police allegation that the few Muslim young men living in the alaprtment were planning a terrorist attack.

How could Shahzad have escaped from an apartment on the sixth floor of a building which had no exit other than the front door that was guarded by several heavily armed policemen? Was Shazad a bird who flew out of the apartment at such a height in the building that had no escape route? The false allegations of the police, prosecutor and their acceptance by the the judge boggles common sense.

By its bizarre judgement the said New Delhi court seem to confirm the slandering and stereotyping of the North Indian Muslim youth, especially the youth of Azamgarh. The U.P. police unable to solve a string of terrorist attacks in the last few years have found it convenient to paste the terrorist label on the Muslim youth from Azamgarh.

The harassing of Muslim youth from UP, Maharashtra and Hyderabad under the label of being sympathetic to terrorists is a flagrant violation of the fundamental rights of these patriotic citizens of the nation. Police brutality against Muslim youth has taken a much more viscous turn in the last five years. In fact today it is the number one issue in the democratic and secular Indian nation that many Indian human rights organizations are focusing on.

The Muslim citizens of the nation should launch a campaign against this awful and unjust harassment of the youth by the brutal police.
Citizens' lobbies should appeal against the New Delhi court judgement and fight all the way to the Supreme Court to get this judgement overturned and Shahzad freed from jail and the good name of Muslim youth reinstated.

[Kaleem Kawajais a community activist based at Washington DC. He can be contacted at kaleemkawaja@gmail.com]

'Hindu men being forced to embrace Islam in Pak'

August 13, 2013, 9:44 pm

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Attari: The news of forcible conversion of Hindu girls in Pakistan by fundamental Muslims are often heard, but now a Pak Hindu couple has alleged that even Hindu men are forced to embrace Islam.

"Hindu boys are threatened of dire consequences, Hindu businessmen are not allowed to conduct their business or open shops and are pressurized to embrace Islam," said Pakistani couple Anil Kumar and Poonam, who "migrated" to India on Tuesday leaving behind their business and family members on the mercy of fundamentalists. Carrying handful of their luggage, the couple started crying as they crossed the Radcliff Line on foot and reached India.

While talking to TOI, Anil Kumar said his wife had a heart problem on the basis of which, they managed to obtain a visa to India to undertake treatment at Indore. "We have had enough in Pakistan, we will not go back and live here all our life," said Anil. He said that Hindu shopkeepers were threatened to give hafta (weekly protection money) if they wanted to open their shops and were also pressurized to embrace Islam if they wanted to make their lives better. "I have a shop in Larkana in Sindh, the Muslim fundamentalists ask for hafta and when I refused, they threatened to eliminate my family," he said.

Poonam, whose brother-in-law was shot and brother kidnapped by Muslim fundamentalists, said: "Every Hindu in Pakistan is bearing atrocities, girls are kidnapped and forcibly converted but now, Hindu boys are being made to embrace Islam." She said her father had lost both his legs in a bomb blast. Anil said that he had left behind eight sisters, brother and mother, besides his shop in Pakistan. "I know they will be in trouble. While living in India, I would try to help my family get visas to travel to India," he said.

Meanwhile, resident of Daska in Pakistan Mohammad Sadiq said that killing of Indian soldiers on Line of Control was a horrible act which could have been avoided. He said that both nations should simplify the visa regime.

(Courtesy: The Times of India)

Pakistani Interfaith Rickshaws

August 13, 2013, 9:48 pm

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By Syed Ali Abbas Zaidi and Heena Bukhari

For their part, the drivers felt they were making a valuable contribution to history by volunteering their rickshaws.

They’re fun, they’re funky, they’re vibrant, and most importantly they have a serious mission of promoting peace. Come and take a ride on the Aman Sawari – The peace rickshaws!

An initiative set up by the Pakistan Youth Alliance (PYA), the Aman Sawari Campaign aims to sow the seeds a peaceful and tolerant culture through the use of art, which is both easily accessible and mobile, through the medium of auto-rickshaws.

The Aman Sawari Campaign, aims to revitalize an existing culture where rickshaws are used for advertisements and propaganda by decorating them with messages of peace and tolerance like “peace not pieces” and “respecting other religions brings respect for your religion.”

This is in contrast to the more recent messages of religious intolerance and hostility, which are becoming a permanent fixture on these vehicles throughout Pakistan.
These attitudes and the positive effects of projects like the Aman Sawari Campaign can re-instill a sense of hope in many people who are greatly in need.

Unity in Diversity

The first Aman Sawari Campaign was launched in Karachi in December 2012.

Karachi is arguably the most multicultural city in Pakistan, and therefore the concept of “unity in diversity” has often been a difficult task to achieve.

However, this campaign has shown that through creativity and the involvement of people from the grassroots, artistic expressions can manage to bring a sense of solidarity amongst the masses for a common cause of peaceful co-existence.

The PYA wanted the drivers and the passengers of the rickshaws to be a core part of this campaign. Over 200 school children from different ethnic backgrounds in Karachi were involved in designing and promoting the Aman Sawari Campaign, and many rickshaw drivers were enthusiastic and willing to have their rickshaws decorated to promote peace.

This was an effective way of engaging youth who were very excited and full of bright ideas on working together for a peaceful Pakistan.

For their part, the drivers felt they were making a valuable contribution to history by volunteering their rickshaws.

Furthermore, the drivers noticed an increase in their daily wages by approximately R.300 ($3.05) since having their rickshaws decorated. Drivers believe this was due to the good nature of the cause and the general appeal of a more friendly and colorful rickshaw.

Art as an Interfaith Means

The attitudes of the drivers and school children kick-started the campaign to create a culture of peace through art.

The successful involvement of both the rickshaw drivers and the school children highlights the attitudes of many members of society toward art, and the power art has in creating a tolerant and peaceful Pakistan.

These attitudes and the positive effects of projects like the Aman Sawari Campaign can re-instill a sense of hope in many people who are greatly in need.

PYA also believes that any promotion of art is a peaceful and important tool in changing a very damaged and negative image of Pakistan worldwide. The campaign also aims to bust myths about the country and its people. It wants to show the diversity and creativity of a nation that has had more unrest, internally and internationally, in the last decade than most other countries.

The Aman Sawari Campaign can show a global audience that there are initiatives being implemented to tackle the core problems of Pakistani society.

The PYA hopes that each ride on a peace rickshaw will contribute toward a society deeply rooted in concepts of peace, tolerance and unity.

This is how peace will travel in Pakistan, the Aman Sawari way.

(Courtesy: OnIslam.net)

The idiot’s guide to America’s role in the Middle East

August 13, 2013, 9:56 pm

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Looking beyond one-minute news feeds and studying the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a neutral perspective will reveal how the US failed as a peace broker

By Tariq A. Al Maeena

For one reason or the other, the Middle East draws the attention of the national media in many countries. In the US, Arabs have become used to a slanted version of actual events, one that invariably favours the Israelis. Israel is fawned upon as the lone democracy in the region, while the rest of us are often depicted as blood-thirsty, oil-rich potentates.

Based on some of the emails I receive from readers in the US, I am often amused by the depth of understanding some of these good people have on this part of the world. And I cannot really blame them. Their schools do not delve deeply into issues beyond their borders and when they do they cautiously skirt around the core of the simmering conflict. Their media, apart from being branded as slanted, is often provincial to say the least.

But in the age of the internet, some have made the effort to look beyond their borders and learn about the many facets of the Israeli-Palestinian question beyond the one-minute news feeds they had become so used to. They seek alternate sources to try and really understand. To them I say bravo, get rid of your domestic shackles and explore. The pursuit of knowledge is enlightening. And to the rest who prefer to remain in a dormant state for whatever reason, I will introduce a basic understanding of the Middle East in a language that hopefully they will understand.

To begin with, a freshman’s summary of the Middle East goes something like this. It is made up of many countries with different religions, customs and cultures. Think of the Middle East as you would the countries in South America. There is some commonality in languages and cultures; similar, but yet so different. Some of the hardcore Islamophobics would be surprised to learn that there are many religions that flourish in the region. Muslims, Christians, Jews, Copts and others reside here.

Among the countries in this region, there are some who are blessed with natural resources that produce healthy annual incomes, and then there are the less fortunate ones with not much to fall back on except perhaps to provide a labour pool for the affluent countries. With the exception of Israel, very few receive aid that US tax-payers have to front for.

Healthy relationship

A great number of inhabitants of this region have in the past held an admiration for the American way of life. They bore no envy or hate towards Americans. Witness the annual migration of people to the US from this part of the world in the past four or five decades. There was an earnest desire to learn and accept the good things America had to offer. Graduating from colleges and universities by the hundreds of thousands, most returned back to their countries to put to fruit their knowledge and experience.

Even in the days of the Cold War, most countries in the region allied themselves with America. And if America needed help in nearby regions such as when the Russians invaded Afghanistan, the more prosperous countries here were usually very compliant in sending aid and whatever else that was necessary.

If member states got out of line, they were sounded out long before America got on the international stage. Libya, Iraq and Iran were firmly reprimanded from way back in the 80’s by the Arab League for transgressions made against one of their members, but this hardly made headlines in the US media.

So what happened? How did the relationship become what it is today? To most people, it was the disappointment of witnessing the US government failing in its role as an honest peace broker in the region.

Beginning in 1948, then 1967 and through successive conflicts until the present, administration after administration in the White House failed to grasp the importance of the faith that people here had placed in them to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict with justice for both parties.

Offering a way out of the deadlock, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz offered a peace initiative to the Israelis over a decade ago. It categorically stated that all Arab countries would announce the end of the Arab-Israeli conflict and through peace treaties begin normal relations with Israel. In return, Israel would withdraw to borders seized by its forces prior to the 1967 war. The state of Palestine, with its capital in occupied east Jerusalem, would be officially established. This offer has remained ignored by the Israelis to date, as more and more illegal encroachment of Palestinian land continues.

Time and again, we witness Israel flaunting UN resolutions backed by the steady supply of sophisticated aircraft and armaments from the US government. We hear loud protests by the current US administration about weapons of mass destruction in Arab or Islamic countries, but nary a peep about Israeli violations in its development of nuclear weapons.

We hear calls for justice and democracy, and yet very little when it comes to the ethnic cleansing by the Israelis of a people in their own lands. And the list goes on and on. As a beacon of democracy, America’s foreign policy in this region has sadly been a failure. So if an average Joe back in Peoria, Illinois, does wonder, then perhaps education is the first step to truly understand what goes on within the psyche of the people of this region. And then take the step to demand that your administration go back to playing the role of the honest broker.

[Tariq A. Al Maeenais a Saudi socio-political commentator. He lives in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/@talmaeena]

(Courtesy: Gulf News)

What If Attlee Hadn’t Partitioned India?

August 13, 2013, 10:05 pm

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The biggest hypothetical question of the subcontinent

By Zareer Masani

“Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially.” Imagine those famous words spoken “at the stroke of the midnight hour”, not by Jawaharlal Nehru as leader of a partitioned Indian republic, but by Mohammed Ali Jinnah as premier of a confederation of the whole subcontinent. The new state is an independent dominion, like Canada and Australia, with the British monarch as king-emperor. It has a weak central government and strong, autonomous provinces like undivided Punjab and Bengal. Its constitution is based on the British government’s Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946 and accepted by both the predominantly Hindu Congress and the separatist Muslim League.

To persuade Jinnah, already dying of tuberculosis, to abandon his largely tac­tical demand for Pakistan, an independent state carved out of India’s Muslim-majority provinces, Mahatma Gandhi has given him the premiership of a coalition government at the centre. Nehru, whose arrogance and insistence on the top job had alienated Jinnah, has been slapped down in a realignment of the Congress leadership: Gandhi joining forces with anti-Nehru conservatives like Sardar Patel and Chakravarty Rajagopalachari (Rajaji). Nehru had been collaborating closely with Lord ‘Dickie’ Mountbatten, sent as viceroy by the new Labour government to “cut and run” as quickly as possible. But the Nehru-Mountbatten axis is seriously discredited by a scandal about Nehru’s affair with Lady Moun­tbatten, including insinuations that the bisexual ‘Dickie’ was a willing participant in a menage a trois.

Mountbatten is packed off home in disgrace, while his perspicacious predecessor, Lord Wavell, returns as viceroy, resuming negotiations for a more gradual transfer of power to a united subcontinent. This slowly results in a new national unity coalition between Jinnah and the Congress conservatives. With Jinnah as his Muslim prime min­ister, Rajaji, a Hindu Brahmin, in due course succeeds Wavell as the first Indian governor-general of the newly independent dominion.

Hindu-Muslim tension, ratcheted up by the Pakistan demand and the Con­gress opposition to it, now subsides. Jinnah’s main powerbase, the influential Muslim minority of India’s central Hindi belt, is delighted with the new power-sharing deal. For them, Pakistan was always a tactical rather than a practical demand, because it would uproot them from their homes in a partitioned India. The two largest Muslim-majority provinces of Bengal and Punjab are equally pleased, bec­ause they remain undivided with powerful, devolved governments of their own. A year later, Jinnah dies, and his successors as leaders of the Muslim League, lacking either his charisma or ambition, accept the role of second fiddle to the Congress. Gandhi’s gamble has paid off, and he lives happily on for another decade, instead of falling victim to a fanatical Hindu assassin.

Is this just a far-fetched, counterfactual scenario born of nostalgia and wishful thinking? Or could it have become a reality if the partnership of Clement Attlee, Lord Mountbatten and Nehru hadn’t rushed through a premature transfer of power to satisfy their own personal and ideological ambitions? The historical evidence suggests that there was no inevitability about Partition and that the key decisions were rather finely balanced.

It’s something of a myth that independence was won by direct action and that Partition was the inevitable price exacted by a colonial power determined to divide and rule. Effective independence was implicit in the constitutional reforms of the Raj in 1909 and 1919, well before Gandhi launched his civil disobedience movement. The Congress was knocking at an open door: the real point at issue was how to introduce parliamentary democracy in a subcontinent so diverse and largely illiterate.

The central problem with elected legislatures was to safeguard the interests of the Muslim minority, still rooted in its feudal past and fearful of domination by the more successful Hindu business and professional elites. The solution accepted by a reluctant Congress was to have separate electorates for additional, reserved Muslim seats. What had still to be resolved was how to guarantee Muslim representation in newly devolved governments in the provinces and eventually at the Centre.

Matters came to a head with the new 1935 constitution, under which provincial elections were held on a greatly expanded franchise. In the United Provinces, the largest province, the Congress and the Muslim League contested in alliance against the loyalist Taluqdars’ party; while the Congress swept the “general” seats, the League won most of the seats reserved for Muslims. The logical outcome was a Congress-League coalition government, but Nehru turned down the League’s coalition offer and the Congress formed a majoritarian government on its own, leaving the League in opposition. This was precisely the scenario that Muslims dreaded at the national level, if independence were to mean majority rule.

The United Provinces fiasco of 1937 was a turning point in the radicalisation of the Muslim League and its very moderate, secular-minded leader, Jinnah. It’s hard to imagine a more unlikely founder of a theocratic Islamic state than this whisky-drinking, pork-eating barrister, a ‘Bombay Khoja’ with his London education and his immaculate suits, his love marriage to a glamorous Parsi socialite, and his disregard for Islamic rules. Way back in 1916, when the Congress and the Muslim League agreed on an anti-British pact, Jinnah, as its chief architect, was hailed as “the ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity”.

What turned this patriotic, pro-Congress Muslim into the sectarian separatist of the 1940s? Two of his recent biographers, Ayesha Jalal, a Pakistani-American academician, and Jaswant Singh, a former foreign minister of India, have converged on the same answer: the arrogance and intransigence of Congress leaders—Nehru in particular—and the pro-Nehru bias of the last viceroy, Lord Mountbatten. “Partition was the last thing Jinnah wanted,” says Jalal, and she agrees with Jaswant Singh that his demand for it was essentially a bargaining ploy.

The vague 1940 Muslim League resolution adopting the goal of Pakistan left wide open whether it would be a single or multiple entity, a sovereign state or an autonomous state within a state. Jalal emphasises that Jinnah’s two-nation theory was not a territorial concept, but a demand for parity between Hindus and Muslims. Most Muslims, after all, were minorities in Hindu-majority provinces, while the Muslim-majority provinces depended heavily on the commercial and professional skills of prosperous Hindu minorities.

The Quit India movement of 1942 proved a spectacular own-goal for the Congress, because it landed most of its leaders and active cadres in jail for the rest of World War II, while Jinnah filled the political vacuum, dramatically expa­nding his power base across India’s diverse Muslim communities. At the end of the war, constitutional negotiations resumed under the viceroy, Field Marshal Lord Wavell, a remarkable soldier-statesman with long Indian experience. His objective was to transfer power to a united India and for Britain to stay long enough to broker a workable settlement. But for the new Labour government headed by Attlee, the priority was a rapid exit, winding up an expensive empire that had long ceased to pay for its keep. Attlee sent out the Cabinet Mission, which did its best to reconcile the Congress goal of a majoritarian, unitary state with the Muslim League demand for effective safeguards and full autonomy for Muslim-majority provinces. The outcome was an ingenious three-tier scheme in which sovereignty would be sha­red in a pyramid, with the provinces at its base, groups of provinces with either Hindu or Muslim majorities above them, and at the apex, an all-India centre for defence and foreign affairs.

This would have been a unique constitutional experiment, more akin to the present European Union than a nation-state, but well suited to India’s political diversity. Both, the Congress and the League, reluctantly accepted the plan, but then fell out over its interpretation.

“What the Cabinet Mission intended and the way we interpret what they inte­nded may not necessarily be the same,” Gandhi told the viceroy.

“This is lawyer’s talk,” said an exasperated Wavell. “Talk to me in plain English. I am a simple soldier. You confuse me with these legalistic arguments.”

To this, Nehru quipped, “We cannot help it if we are lawyers.”

The coup de grace for the Cabinet Mission Plan was delivered by Nehru in July 1946, when he publicly announced that a new constituent assembly, which would obviously have a large Hindu majority, would modify the Plan as it pleased. The Muslim League promptly seized on this to back out as well, reiterating its demand for a separate Pakistan and launching “direct action” to achieve it.

Two of Nehru’s closest colleagues have laid the blame for this breakdown squarely at his door. Maulana Azad called Nehru’s statement “one of those unfortunate events which changed the course of history”, lamenting the fact that “he is at times apt to be carried away by his feelings”. Sardar Patel, too, criticised Nehru for acting “with childlike innocence, which puts us all in great difficulties quite unexpectedly”.

Nehru himself maintained that he had acted out of the conviction that partition was preferable to a loose federation. He wanted to be master in his own house, free to implement his socialist policies through centralised economic planning; and the Muslim League, in control of large, autonomous provinces, would have been an unwelcome brake on all this. Most important of all was Nehru’s visceral hatred of Jinnah, recorded with brutal candour in his diaries: “Jinnah...offers an obvious example of an utter lack of the civilised mind. With all his cleverness and ability, he produces an impression on me of utter ignorance and lack of understanding.... Instinctively I think it is better to [have] Pakistan or almost anything, if only to keep Jinnah far away and not allow his muddled and arrogant head from interfering continually in India’s progress.”

Wavell, who was trying to bring both sides back to the negotiating table, lamented in his diary early in 1947: “There is no statesmanship or generosity in the Congress.” But Attlee decreed otherwise and summarily replaced Wavell with another, far more glamorous soldier-statesman. Earl Mountbatten of Burma came armed with the aura of his military victories, his royal lineage and his “progressive” politics. In what Churchill called “a premature, hurried scuttle”, Attlee announced that, regardless of a political settlement, Britain would quit India by June 1948.

Both Attlee’s deadline, and his choice of the man to implement it, proved disastrous. Mountbatten’s vanity was legendary. His chief concern on the eve of his departure for India was what he should wear on arrival. “They’re all a bit left wing, aren’t they?” he asked one India expert. “Hadn’t I better land in ordinary day clothes?” He was delighted to be told: “No, you are the last viceroy. You are a royal. You must wear your grandest uniform and all your decorations and be met in full panoply.”

Three months after his arrival, Mountbatten suddenly announced that he was bringing forward the British departure to August 15, 1947, and transferring power to two successor states carved out of Hindu and Muslim majority areas. “The date I chose came out of the blue,” he later boasted. “I chose it in reply to a question. I was determined to show I was master of the whole event.” He was even more cavalier at a public reception on the eve of Partition, saying that the best way to teach a youngster to cycle was to take him to the top of a hill, put him on the seat and push him down the hill—by the time he reached the bottom, he’d have learnt to cycle.

Rushing through Partition before the security forces were ready for it, Mountbatten made little attempt to explore the alternatives. In a meeting with the viceroy, Gandhi suggested that the existing interim government led by Nehru be dismissed and Jinnah invited to form a new one. “What would Mr Jinnah say to such a proposal?” Mountbatten asked in surprise. The reply was: “If you tell him I’m the author, he will reply, ‘Wily Gandhi!’” The viceroy made no attempt to follow up Gandhi’s wily offer, which might have changed the course of history by offering Jinnah an honourable retreat from Partition.

A major reason for Mountbatten’s failure to conciliate Jinnah was his all too obvious intimacy with Nehru. Widely rumoured at the time, and now confirmed by the memoirs of his daughter, Mountbatten facilitated a love affair between his beautiful, wealthy and very independent wife and his handsome Congress premier. “She and Jawahar Lal are so sweet together,” he wrote to his elder daughter. “They really dote on each other. Pammy (his younger daughter) and I are doing everything we can to be tactful and helpful.” While his daughter saw this as “a happy threesome”, the bazaar gossip was less charitable. There’s one account of a handful of love notes between Nehru and Edwina Mountbatten reaching Jinnah, who chivalrously returned them.

The most appropriate epitaph on the Raj was provided by the Punjabi official who declared: “You British believe in fair play. You have left India in the same condition of chaos as you found it.” As for Nehru, he first crowed about the mangled Muslim state that emerged from the cutting up of Punjab and Ben­gal, saying, “The truncated Pakistan that remains will hardly be a gift worth having.” But a year later, he said, “Perhaps we acted wrongly.... The consequences of that partition have been so terrible that one is inclined to think that anything else would have been preferable.... Ultimately, I have no doubt that India and Pakistan will come close together...some kind of federal link.... There is no other way to peace. The alternative is...war.” Even as he spoke, the two new states were already at war over Kashmir.

For Jinnah, to get even a moth-eaten Pakistan was, as a leading imperial historian put it, “an amazing triumph, the outcome not of some ineluctable historic logic, but of the determination of a single individual”. It is sobering to consider what might have happened if Mountbatten, instead of bringing forward the date, had delayed it. Jinnah, already in the final stages of tuberculosis, died 13 months after partition.

The state he left behind was born to fail, and most Congress leaders expected that this malformed offspring would soon return, tail between its legs, to Mother India. It had virtually no industry, with the markets for its agricultural produce left behind in India; although it produced three-quarters of the world’s jute, the processing plants were all in India. The predominantly Hindu entrepreneurial classes had fled with their capital and expertise. The ruling elite of the Muslim League were mostly refugees from India and soon at odds with the predominantly Punjabi population they governed. The Bengali Muslims of East Pakistan had little in common with the western half, a thousand miles away.

Little wonder that Pakistan fell prey to a series of corrupt and repressive military and civilian regimes and that its eastern wing, after another bloody war and an estimated 3 million casualties, broke away in 1971 to become Bangladesh. After the Soviet invasion of neighbouring Afghanistan in 1979, Pakistan became the base for militant Islamists fighting the Russians, which further weakened its civil society and radicalised a younger generation that had already been incensed by India’s occupation of Muslim Kashmir.

The counterfactual story would have been far more positive. Granted, a united Indian federation, based on the Cabinet Mission Plan, would have had its share of friction and tensions; but, over time, the glue of shared power might have held the Congress and the Muslim League together, at least on issues of external security. India, without Nehru’s pro-Soviet brand of non-alignment, would probably have allied with the West and, like the Raj, would have seen Afghanistan as a vital buffer state from which the Russians must be excluded. Under Indian protection, Afghanistan would have remained a benevolent, westernising monarchy with little scope for the Taliban.

Without a hostile Pakistan on its borders, India would also have been far better able to check Communist China’s ambitions. The Raj had seen an independent Tibet as a necessary buffer against Chinese expansionism. “Rather than see a Chinese occupation of Tibet,” a British general had warned in 1946, “India should be prepared to occupy the plateau herself.” In 1959, a serious Indian ultimatum would probably have prevented China from occupying Tibet and ending its autonomy under the Dalai Lama. If so, India would have been spared military defeat in the disastrous 1962 Sino-Indian War, for which the Nehru government was so patently ill prepared.

A decentralised union of sovereign provinces would not have been any less efficient or productive than today’s India, with a weak, fragmented coalition at the centre, dominated by strong regional parties. Over time, the Hindu-Muslim religious divide would perhaps have faded, given the myriad ethnic, regional and linguistic identities that make up the Indian mosaic. The union would also have been cemented by rapid growth, as a dynamic private sector, unshackled by Nehru’s state socialism, outstripped the mini-tiger economies. Yes, a united subcontinent could have entered the 21st century as the world’s second largest economy, well ahead of China.

[Zareer Masaniis a historian and a biographer of Indira Gandhi and Lord Macaulay.]

(Courtesy: Outlook)

Growing interest? The state of Islamic banking in India

August 13, 2013, 10:10 pm

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For almost 20 years, Haris Koyisseri invested in his business only from his own earnings. The dry fish merchant in Kerala's Kozhikode never took any bank loan to expand his operations. Why? Bank loans are against the tenets of his faith - Islam - as they charge interest. Four years ago, however, he took on a Rs 10-lakh loan (16,000 USD) from Alternative Investments and Credits Ltd (AICL). The Kochi-based finance company adhered to the Koran's ban on interest and instead took a share in the profit or loss of a venture it funded. Business has grown 60 per cent since for Koyisseri. "I do not have to worry about repaying the money when business is lean," he says. "Whenever I need additional capital I will take it from a Shariah-compliant fund."

Koyisseri is one of scores of Muslims in the country who rely on Shariah-compliant products from companies such as AICL to meet their funding needs. The development is significant given that India has the world's third-largest Muslim population - after Indonesia and Pakistan - but does not allow Islamic banking. The trend is most visible in Kerala, where Muslims comprise a fourth of the population, but is also catching up in some other states such as Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.

Most Muslim-majority countries, including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan, as well as the US and the UK allow Islamic banking (see Simplifying Islamic Banking). In 2005, the Reserve Bank of India formed a panel to look into the issue. Three years later, a committee led by Raghuram Rajan - currently the top economic adviser in the finance ministry - recommended allowing interest-free banking products. But there has been no progress thus far. In May 2012, the RBI revoked AICL's licence as a non-banking finance company (NBFC) citing non-compliance with its rules on interest rates. AICL, which says it financed about 200 businesses with capital ranging from Rs 10 lakh to Rs 1 crore before the ban, challenged the cancellation in the Bombay High Court. The case is pending.

The cancellation, industry observers say, was a fallout of another case. AICL had been offering Shariah-compliant products for nearly a decade. But it came into the limelight only after Janata Party President Subramanian Swamy in 2009 moved the Kerala High Court against Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation's investment in Al Barakah Financial Services Ltd, an NBFC floated to offer Islamic finance products. Swamy argued that a state-run company's involvement in a firm set up on religious lines was against India's constitution. The court threw out the plea in 2011.

AICL, meanwhile, has found an alternative - it plans to launch a Shariah-compliant venture capital (VC) fund. This fund, says Chief Operations Officer Thanveer Mohiyudheen, does not violate any law as capital markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) permits pooling of capital from investors. A VC fund is Shariah-compliant as it makes equity investments and shares the profit or loss in a venture, he adds.

AICL is not the only one which is setting up a so-called Alternative Investment Fund registered with SEBI. Cheraman Financial Services Ltd, the new avatar of Al Barakah, has received SEBI approval for a fund to raise up to Rs 300 crore. Kozhikode-based Secura Investment has a real estate VC fund that complies with the Shariah. Industry observers say the RBI's tough stand against NBFCs such as AICL is the main reason why Shariah-compliant VC funds are gaining importance. M. Thomas Isaac, former finance minister of Kerala, says many financial firms in the state work even without the RBI's permission. The idea behind Cheraman and other registered funds is to work under a legal framework, he says.

More such funds are in the offing. "Seven to eight Shariah-compliant funds are in the formalisation stage," says Shariq Nisar, Director of research and operations at Mumbai-based Taqwaa Advisory and Shariah Investment Solutions. The firm provides Shariah advisory and investment services. C.H. Abdul Raheem, AICL's founder MD, says four to five SEBI-registered VC funds that comply with the Shariah will likely come up in Kerala in the next few years.

Observers say Bangalore-based Bearys Properties and Developments, Mumbai's Pragmatic Wealth Management, and Chennai-based ETA Group are among those looking to launch Islamic finance products. Taurus Asset Management and Multigain Shariah Investments are also planning to join hands for a VC fund. Bearys Chairman and MD Syed Mohamed Beary confirmed the company's plans to launch a Shariah-compliant real estate fund in the first quarter of 2014. The company is looking at a corpus of Rs 100 crore to begin with and will target wealthy investors, he said. Email queries sent to Pragmatic and ETA went unanswered till the time of going to press.

These funds also provide an opportunity to investors. Muslims are generally averse to investing in stock markets as they perceive it as gambling. Shariah bans investment in companies that make alcohol, tobacco, pork products, and weapons. To attract Muslim investors, both the National Stock Exchange and Bombay Stock Exchange have launched indexes which comprise Shariah-compliant stocks. But the response to these indexes has been muted, says H. Abdur Raqeeb, General Secretary at advocacy body Indian Centre for Islamic Finance. Shariah-compliant VC funds are filling this gap. Raqeeb says these funds, including realty funds, can potentially raise about $1 billion in India.

Masoud Abdul Rahiman, a Kochi-based software engineer with Cognizant, is one such investor who prefers Shariah-compliant products. He invested Rs 6 lakh over two years in Secura's first fund. His first investment installment of Rs 1.2 lakh earned him a return of Rs 1.96 lakh in 2012. "While returns are not guaranteed, I can at least consume the earnings," says Rahiman, who gives the interest income he earns from his bank deposits to charity. Doctors are also investing in these funds, as Kerala develops into a hotspot for medical tourism.

In Kerala, these funds are targeting investors from overseas as well. Cheraman, for instance, is backed by NRIs including P. Mohamed Ali, Vice Chairman of Oman's Galfar Engineering and Contracting Company, and C.K. Menon, Chairman and MD of Doha-based Behzad Group. A.P.M. Mohammed Hanish, MD at Cheraman, says the company plans to hold road shows to attract Kerala's diaspora and sovereign funds from the Gulf countries that want to invest in Shariah-compliant products.

Kerala has a large diaspora, mainly in West Asia. Muslims comprise up to two-thirds of this segment. These workers send a large amount of money back home. Data from the Kerala Migration Survey 2011 show remittances to the state rose 15 per cent to Rs 49,695 crore that year from Rs 43,288 crore in 2008. M.A. Majeed Zubair, Dean at Hyderabad's Institute of Islamic Banking and Finance, says India is an emerging market for capital from West Asia. India has an advantage over China, where language and cultural constraints as well as political reasons discourage investors from West Asia, he adds.

While several companies are looking to launch Shariah-compliant VC funds, some experts are wary. Kerala, they say, has seen several instances of financial companies duping investors. The latest case grabbing the headlines is that of Lee Capital, which reportedly duped investors of as much as Rs 100 crore (16 million USD).

A recent change in SEBI rules is prompting companies to tweak their strategies. SEBI has fixed minimum capital commitment by each investor in such funds at Rs 1 crore (160,000 USD). Some industry observers say small investors may pool capital and set up a limited liability partnership that will invest in a VC fund. In its first two funds, Secura routed investment from wealthy investors directly into real estate projects while accepting money from smaller investors. This is because the two sets of investors have different expectations from the VC fund. Managing Director M.A. Mehaboob says Secura will adhere to the SEBI rule in the future and rope in wealthy investors who put in Rs 1 crore in its funds. "We may also come up with multiple funds clubbing investors according to their appetite."

P.C. Anwar, MD at AICL, says the venture capital industry in India may find it difficult to find enough professional managers with experience in Islamic finance. Mahendra Swarup, President of the Indian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association, says Shariah-compliant funds look promising considering they can also attract funding from charitable institutions such as the Wakf Boards. But he adds a note of caution. "We will have to gauge what kind of returns they can generate in the long run."

(Courtesy: Albawaba)

Rahman Khan urges Rahul to bring Islamic banking on 2014 agenda

August 13, 2013, 10:18 pm

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By Subodh Ghildiyal

New Delhi: Making perhaps the strongest-ever pitch for the introduction of Islamic banking , minority affairs minister Rahman Khan has told the Congress leadership that Muslims were increasingly viewing Centre's continuing resistance to the introduction of Shariah-compliant banking as interference in the affairs of the community.

The minister said interest-free banking, better known as Islamic banking, would prove to be a boon by mobilizing vast capital from Muslims that can be used for welfare activities of the community while helping them to practice the religion as laid down by the tenets of Islam.

Khan's request to Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, as part of welfare proposals to woo Muslims, marks a renewed as well as , possibly the strongest bid to lift the bar on Islamic banking that has riled community principals for some time.

The RBI had earlier said that Islamic banking would require amendment to banking regulations since not charging or paying interest would violate present norms.

Khan argued that Islamic banking could be done within the constitutional framework, with government needed to set up a separate "regulatory authority" to bring the proposal to life.

Congress appears unlikely to accept the request but the lobbying is significant. Khan has called it part of future vision to renew the confidence of the key social group in the ruling party. He has flagged three steps - Islamic banking, mechanism to review terror cases against Muslim youth and making scholarships open-ended - as "new ideas" to woo Muslims.

Adding urgency to the proposals, Khan suggested they be executed before the 2014 elections.

Sources said Khan has submitted a detailed note to Rahul in which he suggested measures to step up the party's post-Sachar Muslim welfare agenda. The suggestions are his feedback from interaction with Muslim leaders, intellectuals and social activists, he said.

According to the minister, Islam prohibits receipt or payment of interest, a reason why many countries have initiated financial institutions based on Shariah principles. He said while India has the second largest Muslim population in the world and guarantees freedom of religion, the bar on Islamic banking curtails this freedom for Muslims.

"This (Islamic banking) will enable Muslims of India to invest their savings in accordance with their religious faith and the savings invested in such an institution will help in the economic development of the Muslim community in the country," the proposal said.

(Courtesy; The Times of India)

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Marriage registration to become mandatory

August 13, 2013, 10:20 pm

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New Delhi: The Rajya Sabha on Tuesday passed a bill to make registration of marriages, irrespective of religion, mandatory under the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969, which currently only regulates registration of births and deaths.

The amendment to the bill seeks to amend the Act to include the registration of marriages within its purview.

The Registration of Births and Deaths (Amendment) Bill, 2012, which was passed by voice vote, defines marriage to include marriage solemnized between a male and female belonging to any caste or religion. It also includes re-marriage.

Marriages already registered under the Anand Marriage Act, state laws or any other existing law are not required to be registered under the Bill.

Moving the amendment bill for consideration and passing, the law minister Kapil Sibal said the government will file a review petition in the Supreme Court against its earlier order in 2006 where it had sought to scrutinize the law after it was passed by Parliament.

"The Supreme Court had rendered this judgment in 2006 that the law once passed in Parliament must be placed before the court for scrutiny. We are not entirely happy with this direction...We will be filing a review petition. This part of judgment should be expunged," Sibal said.

Noting that there were enormous benefits of registering marriages, the minister said people should not be penalized for not doing the registration. There is "enough leeway" in the Act and state governments are free to make rules. The Bill is not quasi-judicial power for determining whether marriages are valid or invalid, he said in response to the debate on the bill.

The amendment bill will benefit women as the registration certificate would provide evidential value in matrimonial and maintenance cases and prevent unnecessary harassment meted out to them. It will also provide evidential value in matters of age of parties, custody of children and right of children born out of such marriages.

Muslim community leaders welcomed the move to register marriages, but with a rider. Zafarul-Islam Khan, president, All India Muslim Majlis-e Mushawarat (AIMMM) — an umbrella body of Muslim organizations — said, "This is a welcome move by the government."

However, the All India Muslim Personal Law Board working committee member S Q R Ilyas said registration of marriages should be optional and not compulsory due to social and legal reasons. "A large chunk of our population lives in rural areas where facilities for registration are hard to come by. Also, think about the poor. Unless the government ensures that marriage registration facilities are accessible to all, it should not be compulsory," he said.

Besides, Muslim marriages are solemnized by a qazi or imam. "The government should have a provision to recognize the qazi or the imam who issues the nikahnama," said Ilyas.

(Courtesy: The Times of India)

Masjid Is Far: Why banking on Hindu-Muslim polarisation is a folly

August 13, 2013, 10:29 pm

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Playing With Fire - How parties are increasingly pulling out the communal card

By Saba Naqvi

• Congressman Shakeel Ahmed tweets that ‘Indian Mujahideen’ had formed as a reaction to 1992’s Babri demolition, 2002 Gujarat riots. Cong communalising 2014 polls, says Arun Jaitley.
• Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh asks if there’s a link between Narendra Modi telling BJP men to teach Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar a lesson and blasts at temple in Gaya.
• Gujarat CM and BJP poll panel chief Narendra Modi makes “kutte ke bachche” faux pas vis-a-vis Muslim riots victims. Attacks Cong for hiding behind the “burqa of secul­arism”.
• BJP has vowed to make 2008 killing of VHP leader Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati in Kandhamal a poll issue in 2014. Saraswati’s killing led to riots, leaving 42 people dead.
• Union minister K. Rehman Khan wants quota for Muslims despite SC fiat; says Congress fearful of making decisions favouring Muslims due to fear of RSS propaganda of “minor­ity appe­asement”.
• Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan issues fresh notification to introduce Bhagwad Gita in madrasas. Goes back on it following uproar in state going to poll in 2013-end.
• Row over the Charminar in Hyderabad after a temple mysteriou­sly springs up next to the iconic structure. MIM leader Akbaruddin Owaisi arrested for hate speech caught on video.
• Punjab BJP says Congress playing communal card for raising issue of Sikh farmers invited to Gujarat to develop land for agriculture but now being asked to give up land to state.
• Maharashtra CM Prithviraj Chavan acknowledges that a section of the state’s police are ‘communal’ after video footage shows cops attacking Mus­lims, looting shops in Dhule.
• West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee accused of minority appeasement for introducing allowances for imams and muezzins, and including Muslims in the OBC category.
• ‘National outrage’ after Bahujan Samaj Party MP Shafique-ur-Rehman Barq walks out of Lok Sabha during the rendition of national song ‘Vande Mataram’.
• Congress accuses BJP of communalising anti-migrant violence in Assam, points out that there are Hindu illegal migrants as well. Minorities panel charged with ignoring Bodos who are Christian.

It is often said that there are no new ideas; there are only new ways of making them felt and understood. It is certainly true of the most persistent and vexing issue of our times. The Hindu-Muslim faultline—marker of historical traumas, prejudices and contemporary hatred—all too often seems to determine our national identity, foreign policy and electoral strategy. A most warped thought process governs it, but that’s part of the dynamic that is modern India. Indeed, if there were not such a dark dimension to communal divisions, we could mock ourselves and ask: where have we landed 66 years after Partition and Independence? For many ordinary Indians, Pakistanis are the permanent enemies, once the blood brothers of India, now engaged in generations of a feud that some of them wage as a holy war. Pakistan is a nation headed in a direction that most sane people would describe as catastrophic. But the dominant media discourse in India rarely covers in any depth the events within that country but merely posits it as enemy nation, whose destiny is to torment us till kingdom come. On days when Indian soldiers are killed on the border, all the worst stereotypes are reinforced.

Sigmund Freud had written reams about the divided mind as constantly in conflict with itself and had understood this conflict as the primary cause of human anxiety and unhappiness. Is India, with its vast problems, divisions and injustices, a happy nation (as Bhutan apparently is)—especially with so much of our energy going in fighting real and imaginary battles with the enemy within and the one beyond the borders? Sixty-six years after the actual Partition of the subcontinent, our minds still remain partitioned. There is no Tagorean grandeur to the vision that prevails, nothing about tearing down “narrow domestic walls...” or taking us to a way of thinking “where the mind is without fear”.

Indeed, forget about Pakistan or the foreign “enemy hand”. The “enemy within” and the “Muslim liability” stereotype has actually been nourished and reinforced by the strategies of our political parties. The Congress across the country keeps making subtle shifts in its how-to-get-the-Muslim-vote strategy. Last year in Assam, Congress CM Tarun Gogoi played a Hindu card in the midst of terrible riots and a vast human tragedy. This year, in the context of Andhra Pradesh, the national party has calculated that its declining fortunes are more strategically served by a new state, and the fact that it will exercise greater control over the fortunes of Telangana where among other things the minority population will go up to 12.43 per cent, from 9.16 per cent in a united Andhra.

A more spectacularly desperate chase for the Muslim vote is currently on display in Uttar Pradesh by the Samajwadi Party (see accompanying story). It’s a naked pursuit, almost expressly stated, that can only be counter-productive for the community. For the stark truth that we must face up to this Independence Day is this: our secular ideals have been flattened out to nothing more than the arithmetic of keeping a community in a ghetto, fuelling their insecurity, then appearing as the protector and extracting their vote. The consequence of this approach has been a sort of simplistic justification of the crude politics of communalism.

That is precisely how the current campaign for the 85 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh—which would by itself count as one of the largest ‘countries’ in the world—is panning out. The Naren­dra Modi-led BJP is in the ascendant in urban pockets in the state. This is to some extent fuelled by the BJP still having a hold on the imagination of UP’s 21 per cent upper castes (if the party repackages itself as it appears to be doing). Besides, there is the creeping communalism in the atmospherics of the state that has witnessed as many as 34 clashes in the 16 months that Akhilesh Yadav has been in power. This heart of India, stretching from the fertile lands of Braj to the refinements of Awadh and the robust but harsh realities of Bundelkhand, has its particular history. The matrix of language, culture, music, politics of identity and symbology is perhaps most complex in Uttar Pradesh, both the heart of civilisation and the birthplace of divisions.

Layers of history divide here. The first Hindi-Urdu divide was wrought here much before the BJP or the Jana Sangh was even created. The late 19th century saw the emergence of the Arya Samaj as a powerful force, the cow protection movement and a campaign for the use of the Nagri script, all signs of a new Hindu consciousness. There were parallel developments among the Muslim community, certain Islamic revivalist movements and also the stark fact that it was the Muslim zamindars of this belt who spearheaded the movement for a separate state of Pakistan. Mohammed Ali Jinnah and his Muslim League would use political expediency and the appeal of Islam to demand a separate state for the Muslim people, the Land of the Pure, the first country actually to be carved on the basis of an Islamic identity. He would get what he called a “moth-eaten” Pakistan but that sort of thing exacts its price down the ages. Little wonder then that UP was the theatre of the Ram temple movement two decades ago. And in an attempt to play old strategies repackaged as new, the BJP has set its eye on this state as being the most likely area, outside Gujarat, for the Narendra Modi project to succeed.

It is in parts of the state where the Muslim community is present in the largest numbers that the party expects to make the biggest gains. Western UP, they say, is fertile ground where social divisions and exclusions are quite complete. A strategist for the party calls it a “mini-Pakistan”. Certainly this belt has some of the highest Muslim population figures in many districts: Saharanpur (31 per cent), Muzaffarnagar (29 per cent), Bijnor (39 per cent) Moradabad (38 per cent), Rampur (48 per cent), Meerut (26 per cent), Ghaziabad (22 per cent). What is significant about this part of UP is that contrary to popular perception, this is not necessarily a bastion of the SP whose traditional vote-bank is built on rock-solid Yadav foundations such as that found in the Etah, Etawah, Mainpuri belt where the Muslim population varies from 5-10 per cent. The BSP is actually a bigger force here and although the party is showing no overt desperation for the Muslim vote, it possibly expects to get a chunk on the grounds that it is best positioned to fight the BJP here.

In the eastern UP and Awadh belt, the BJP hopes to revive its strongholds that fell after its peak of 57 Lok Sabha seats from the state in the 1998 election. There are many cities here to conquer—Lucknow, Allahabad, Varanasi and the dramatic possibility of fielding Modi from an urban centre of this heartland region is very much on the cards. From all accounts, the Congress is likely to be a much reduced force in Uttar Pradesh this time, although it would like to see itself as the “secular” opposition to the BJP. Unfortunately, it just does not have the base on the ground and it is unlikely that it can orchestrate a positive “wave” around the personalities of the Gandhis as it did in 2009.

The other question people ask is to what extent would Mulayam Singh Yadav and the SP buck anti-incumbency to hang on to a section of the Muslim vote in the state? The party’s traditional modus operandi is to develop deep patronage networks and make sure that a section of the Muslim community prospers during its reign. That section is often the criminalised and lumpen among the Muslims as it is among the forward castes patronised by the SP. All of the SP’s recent actions are clearly designed to make sure the minorities do not drift, damn the consequences and the strengthening of the argument that minorities are somehow being appeased. Indeed, in the high stakes game that has already begun, a communally charged atmosphere suits both the SP and the BJP (and at times the duo can be described as part of an orchestrated tango movement, one could not survive without the other).

What one can say with some certainty is that in an atmosphere where everyone seems to be in pursuit of the Muslim vote, a fertile ground is created for the BJP’s brand of politics to appeal to a section. It is the partitioned mind that wonders why Muslims are apparently the only votebank being appeased. But there is actually something quite perverse about what has happened to that community in secular liberal India. For it’s not as if votebank politics has not benefited communities. The Dalits and backward castes truly gained in the post-Mandal world of Indian politics, particularly in the states of UP and Bihar. On every social indicator, however, Muslims continue to slip while political parties make bogus gestures and others demonise them as the problem people that stayed even after Partition.

(Courtesy: Outlook)

Islamic industry body consolidation?

August 17, 2013, 12:55 am

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By Rushdi Siddiqui

Hussein Al Qemzi, CEO of Noor Islamic Bank and Noor Investment group, recently made extremely important comments concerning the need for a definitive industry body to promote and regulate Islamic finance.

He said: “... it is a real concern that there is no authoritative global body to regulate and promote Islamic finance… Disagreement and different interpretations, over what is Shariah-compliant and what is not, continue to make it difficult to establish the necessary regulations for the industry to develop globally accepted products… Some people argue that standardisation is an unrealistic goal, given the fragmented nature of Islamic finance. I do not agree. There is a need for balanced, globally accepted, regulation that does not impede growth, or allow for abuse.”

Outside box thinking

Sometimes solutions require (way) outside the box thinking. For example, what if we take a chapter form the merger and acquisition arena and apply to Islamic finance industry bodies, hence, to achieve the ‘definitive, authoritative industry’ body requires consolidation.

The industry bodies include Accounting and Auditing Organisation of Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI), International Islamic Rating Agency (IIRA), International Islamic Financial Market (IIFM), and General Council for Islamic Banks & Financial Institutions (Cibafi).

Consolidation makes sense when and where there are cost savings synergies. It makes sense when there is an overlap of founding shareholders, when same scholars sit on boards of various bodies, when there are resource constraints resulting in operational challenges and hiring qualified human asset, and so on.

Finally, consolidation may make sense when the need of the hour is an industry body that sees the bigger picture and where it fits in as an important stakeholder in Islamic finance versus the present “silo” approach.

Founding stakeholders

If we look at the sampling of the founding shareholders of the above-mentioned industry bodies, there is an overlap with heavy weights of Islamic finance including Islamic Development Bank, Al Rajhi, Albaraka, and Kuwait Finance House.

The vision for Islamic finance at conception time these alphabet organisations were launched — 1991 (AAOIFI) to 2005 (IIRA) — to now has changed dramatically. The times have moved on and the bodies need to also stay relevant.

The IIFM website, meanwhile, states its mission as: “... the global standardisation body for the Islamic Capital & Money Market segment of the IFSI. Its primary focus lies in the standardisation of Islamic financial products, documentation and related processes.”

But, the question is wouldn’t it make more sense and be more efficient for IIFM to work under the umbrella of an industry-setting body that produces standards requiring standardisation?

Cibafi chairman in its message on its website states that Cibafi was established for two major roles — support and protect the industry. Support the industry through awareness and training, holding conferences, seminars and forums and providing the necessary information. Protect the industry so as to avoid, as much as possible, the obstacles and deviations in the course of the Islamic finance industry.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to bring Cibafi under the umbrella of an industry body that produces standards that are followed by training, seminars, and work-shops on them?

Finally, the most prominent Islamic finance industry body is the Bahrain-based AAOIFI.

Its website states: “AAOIFI is an Islamic international autonomous non-for-profit corporate body that prepares accounting, auditing, governance, ethics and Shariah standards for Islamic financial institutions and the industry. Professional qualification programmes (notably CIPA, the Shariah adviser and auditor “CSAA”, and the corporate compliance programme) are presented now by AAOIFI in its efforts to enhance the industry’s human resources base and governance structures.”

AAOIFI is best positioned to be the umbrella Islamic finance industry body in the Gulf Cooperation Council as its standards become standardised documents (IIFM) with process review (IIRA), and are promoted and protected with the understanding (Cibafi).

One window shopping

For example, consolidation results in one Islamic finance conference event with all the four bodies under one roof, and taking place in various Islamic finance hubs to educate, make aware and demystify.

The combination then results in a four-by-four Olympic relay race, where the baton is internally coordinated from each of the bodies.

Looking ahead, after AAOIFI “acquires and integrates”, there needs to be discussions for a merger of equals with Malaysia-based Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB), with a “one stop shop” for standards and prudential regulations.

The chairmen of these industry bodies need to put aside their egos for a bigger cause — to promote and protect Islamic finance under one industry body.

[Rushdi Siddiquiis co-founder and MD of Azka Capital, private equity advisory firm focused on halal industry initiatives. He is also an advisor to Thomson Reuters on Islamic finance and halal industry.]

(Courtesy: Khaleej Times)

Religions asking if test-tube burgers allow them to keep the faith

August 17, 2013, 1:03 am

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When the world's first test-tube beef burger was cooked and eaten this week, food critics all asked about its taste. For many Jews, Muslims and Hindus, the first question was whether their faith allowed them to try it. Religious websites were abuzz with questions and opinions this week after biologist Mark Post of Maastricht University presented his innovation to the media in London on Monday.

"Is the lab-created burger kosher?" the Hasidic Jewish movement Chabad Lubavitch asked on its website. Dietary laws exist in many religions, but came about so long ago that not even their prophets could have imagined a ready-to-fry beef patty grown in-vitro from the stem cells of a cow. If religious authorities interpret their ancient texts in a way that allows them to give this new food their blessing, now-banned kosher cheeseburgers and Hindu hamburgers, as well as an undisputed method of producing halal meat, could be possible.

Chabad's Rabbi Yehuda Shurpin wrote the Talmud tells of "miraculous meat" that fell from heaven or was conjured up by rabbis studying a mystic text. Since it was automatically kosher because it wasn't from a real animal, this could be a model for test-tube meat. But he said if the stem cells are real meat, they have to come from a cow slaughtered according to kosher law, which says the animal's throat must be slit while it is still conscious.

Expert rabbis need to study this more carefully "when the issue becomes more practical and petri-dish burgers become and affordable option," Shurpin concluded. The kosher ban on mixing meat and dairy products presents another hurdle for observant Jews considering a cheeseburger. Rabbi Menachem Genack of the Orthodox Union in New York told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that test-tube beef could be considered "parve" (neither meat nor dairy) under certain conditions and so kosher cheeseburgers could be allowed.

Islam's halal laws require ritual slaughter similar to kosher butchering, but with fewer restrictions. "There does not appear to be any objection to eating this type of cultured meat," the Islamic Institute of Orange County in California responded to a questioner on its website. Animal rights activists see the Muslim and Jewish slaughter methods as unnecessary cruelty and calls to ban this kind of butchering have grown in Europe in recent years as halal meat has become increasingly available in shops and restaurants.

Gulf News in Dubai quoted Abdul Qahir Qamar of the International Islamic Fiqh Academy in Jedda, Saudi Arabia, as saying in-vitro meat "will not be considered meat from live animals, but will be cultured meat." As long as the cells used are not from pigs, dogs or other animals banned under the halal laws, he said, the meat would be vegetative and "similar to yogurt and fermented pickles." Several Muslim websites left fresh questions about this new meat unanswered, probably because Muslims were more concerned this week with celebrating the end of the fasting month Ramadan.

The prospect of meatless beef has also prompted debate in India, where the Hindu majority shuns steaks and burgers because it considers the cow sacred. "We will not accept it being traded in a marketplace in any form or being used for a commercial purpose," Chandra Kaushik, president of the Hindu nationalist group Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha, told the India Real Time blog. Religious websites have been debating the test-tube meat issue for some time now, especially since news about biologist Post's project began circulating about four years ago.

Many Hindus and Sikhs are vegetarians, so several of them posted comments saying they probably wouldn't like the taste of artificial meat even if it was declared permissable. "Who wants to eat a carcass anyways, lab grown or not?" one reader asked on the Hindu Dharma Forums website.

(Courtesy: DNA)

Muhammad most popular name for London babies

August 17, 2013, 1:08 am

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Muhammad is the most popular name for baby boys in London for the first time, the Daily Mail reported on Tuesday.

Combined spellings of the Muslim prophet’s name have topped the list of names for newborn boys in England for the past three years, but now the single spelling Muhammad has ranked highest in the capital with 768 registered births last year, ahead of Daniel with 666.

The most popular name in England was Harry, with 6,893 boys being given the name. However, when the various spellings of Muhammad (18th nationally), Mohammed (25th) and Mohammad (58th) were combined, the name beat Harry with a total of 7,032 babies.

Since 1999, the number of babies called Muhammad, however spelled, has increased by more than half in the UK, the newspaper reported.

(Courtesy: Al Arabiya)