21.6.08

Ulema Strikes Back


On 31st May 2008, at Delhi'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. 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 fivestar 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. 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. 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 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.

No comments: