The Ulema Strike Back-Will they succeed in making terrorists unacceptable to Muslim society?
By
Mohammed Wajihuddin, TNN
On May
31, a harsh sandstorm hit Delhi. Several trees crashed to the ground, and
evening traffic, caught off guard, remained clogged for hours. At the city's
Ram Lila ground, near Turkman Gate, braving the heat and dust was a crowd of
over 300,000. The swarm of skullcaps had congregated at the ground to hear a
string of speakers slam terrorism at the conclave organised by the Jamiat-ul
Ulema-I-Hind. It was biggest gathering of Muslims in the capital in recent
times. But it wasn't the only one.
Suddenly,
condemning the heinous acts of terrorists appears to be the in thing among
Muslim religious leaders. On February 25, the Islamic seminary Darul Uloom at
Deoband, held a massive rally where it denounced terrorism with the words:
"The religion of Islam has come to wipe out all kinds of terrorism and to
spread the message of global peace." The seminary followed this up with a
fatwa against terrorism at the May 31 Delhi conclave, which was welcomed as
historic and progressive-a change from the criticism the seminary has seen in
the past for its controversial, regressive fatwas. Apart from the Delhi rally,
the Jamiat has helmed rallies in Lucknow, Kolkata, Ahmedabad and Surat which
have also drawn crowds.
A day
after the Delhi conclave the Jama Masjid United Forum (JMUF) convened an
international seminar on terrorism at a five-star hotel in Delhi. Shutterbugs
went crazy when the Dalai Lama, a speaker at the seminar, hit the stone steps
of the Jama Masjid. The Tibetan spiritual leader flashed his famous childlike
smile and also threw in a few homilies about Islam's message of peace.
As the
'emissaries of Allah on earth', the ulema, cutting across sectarian divide and
ideological moorings, are perhaps the best envoys to denounce terrorism and
pronounce a message of peace on behalf of the Muslim community. But the
question increasingly being asked, is: Why now? "Terrorism is not a new
menace, after all. The ulema were not as united even after the demolition of
the Babri masjid in 1992 or the Gujarat pogrom ten years later," wrote
columnist Mohammed Muslim Ghazi in the Urdu daily Roznama Sahafat.
Mahmood
Madani, a Rajya Sabha MP and general secretary of the Jamiat ventures an
educated guess. "After 9/11 and the initial knee-jerk condemnation of
Islam, people grew curious about our religion and started reading up on
it," he says. (George Bush himself declared from the Islamic Centre in
Washington DC that terrorism was alien to the true spirit of Islam.) "The
ulema thought that the world, especially the western media, would understand
and stop demonising our religion. They didn't. The lie has been repeated a
thousand times, and Islam-bashers now believe that perhaps Islam does support
terrorism. We have to counter the lie."
Kamal
Farooqui, a Muslim Personal Law Board member, also has a theory on why the
clerics, hitherto mostly confined to preaching and leading prayers, are now
leading from the front. "The secularists have often accused the ulema of
not coming out openly against terrorism," he says. "Now there seems
to be a new awakening among them."
But
many don't buy this argument. Madani is caught in a bitter power struggle with
his own uncle, the venerable Deoband teacher Maulana Arshad Madani who, till
recently, headed the over-90-year-old Jamiat of nationalist ulema, an
organisation known for opposing the two-nation theory of the Muslim League in
pre-independence India. Now, claim detractors, the two camps, in an effort to
outdo the other, are using anti-terrorism rallies to prove their strength.
"Yeh
chacha-bhatije ki ladai hai jo dehshetgardi ke khilaf tehrik ban gayi hai (This
is a fight between uncle and his nephew which has been turned into a movement
against terrorism)," says Mufti Mukkaram, imam of the massive Fatehpuri
mosque near the crowded Chandni Chowk.
There
are many who even feel the rallies are going too far. Akhtarul Wasey, who
teaches Islamic Studies at Jamia Millia Islamia, calls them the community's
"ijtamaee zillat (collective insult)". "It was fine to an extent
initially, but too many conferences and rallies will make Muslims feel
guilty," says Wasey.
The
likes of Wasey may not approve of the maulvis' war against terrorism. But the
clerics, especially belonging to the Deoband school, are receiving acclaim even
from their arch-critics, the Sangh Parivar. BJP president Rajnath Singh
welcomed the anti-terror fatwa while Panchjanya, the RSS mouthpiece, lauded it
with some reservations. "The fact that we are making some of our known
enemies reconsider their views about Islam and Muslims should silence our
critics," explains Maulana Hameed Noamani, Jamiat's publicity in-charge.
Perennially
deprived of a good leadership, rallies are throwing up an army of able Muslim
leaders. The only Bukhari one had heard of, after the ailing imam Abdullah
Bukhari retired in the 1990s, was Ahmed Bukhari, the senior Bukhari's eldest
son. But after the JMUF's international conference on terrorism last month,
it's Bukhari's younger sibling, Yahya, who is hogging the limelight. His tiny
office at the Jama Masjid premises has been inundated with fan mail and he was
even interviewed for CNN IBN by Karan Thapar. Yahya has no problem if Muslims
cast their lot with the BJP. He says he will not use JMUF to promote his political
career.
Encouraged
by the response the international seminar on terrorism evoked, Yahya wants to
turn it into a movement. Is yet another anti-terrorism rally in the pipeline?
15 Jun
2008
mohammed.wajihuddin@timesgroup.com
URL: