Bismillah News 
India: Incest is a way of life in Hindu Haryana
- “In North India, the father-in-law almost had the right to physical relations with a daughter-in-law, and in most cases the female was not in a position to resist much.
- The very young husband also had no say in the matter.
- Widows would routinely be married to a brother of the dead husband. Sharing of the wife by brothers was also not uncommon, ” says Ravinder Kaur, a professor at IIT-Delhi.
- What adds to this problem in Haryana is its skewed sex ratio caused by rampant female foeticide.
- “Its effects are now being felt on intimate relationships within and without the family.
- The shortage of marriageable women can have many unintended consequences, especially when only one out of four men find a bride (as in the case of Haryana) in their own community,
- Incest is a traditional practice and not a new reality.Bramha is supposed to have married his daughter (or perhaps granddaughter)
- Chilling tales of incest and abuse have been pouring in from all over the state.
- Inquiries reveal that physical relationship with a husband’s brother is not considered ‘unusual. ‘ “Such relations are not objected to. They are considered a family’s ‘internal affair’
It was a national debate on a news channel. Tempers were running high, so were the decibels. The subject was explosive – Haryana’s khaps and their diktats. In the midst of this charged atmosphere, a voice rose above the rest, silencing them all. Seema, a law graduate and resident of Karora village, made an allegation that changed the course of the debate. Her brother had been executed for marrying a woman from the same gotra, but that was not what Seema wanted to talk about on the primetime show. It was another shameful reality of Haryana villages she wanted to expose – incest.
“Khaps should look into their homes before passing fatwas on lovers and crying hoarse about honour. Incest is rampant in the state and virtually every home is affected. Where is the honour anyway ?” she screamed.
Early this week, the state was shocked when a pregnant girl was strangled by her parents and her body dumped on the outskirts of Bahadurgarh in Jhajjar district. Her crime: she was reportedly having an affair with her brother-in-law and her vengeful elder sister had complained to their parents.
In another embarrassing case earlier this year, a farmer in his early 50s developed a sexual relation with his 30-year-old daughter-in-law in a village in Kaithal district. Their liaison continued for almost a year. The matter even reached the village panchayat, which ordered separation of the two unlikely partners so that the woman could go back to her husband.
And only last month, Sonepat was jolted by the gruesome murder of two minor girls, just 12 and 14. They were killed and their bodies flung in a canal by their uncles and grandmother after their “affair” with a cousin was exposed. The police said the kin of the victims were enraged when they allegedly caught the minors getting intimate with their cousin. In Yamunanagar, a girl complained to the police that her father-in-law had raped her just a few months after her marriage.
These are not isolated incidents: incest is reportedly a real part of life in rural Haryana. “It’s a menace nobody wants to talk about. Even the elders are setting a bad example, ” says D R Chaudhary, member of the Haryana Administrative Reforms Commission. The elders, predictably, blame this perversion on the growing sway of the west over the state’s youth.
When Kurukshetra-based Ramesh Kumar’s daughter married a close relative, he blamed it on urban influence. Now he is fighting a legal battle to have the marriage declared null and void, terming it a contravention of the provisions of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955. The mothers of the newly-wed couple were apparently related, being granddaughters of the same person.
The incidence of incest may be higher in rural areas. “Social mores in villages are different. People here are very conservative and there is no scope for interaction between men and women and boys and girls outside their homes. So, they often end up having relationships with members of their accessible, extended family, ” says Balbir Singh, a social activist in Fatehabad district.
Experts believe that such relationships have survived behind closed doors for many years. But given the modern means of communication and the proliferation of the media, the skeletons are now tumbling out of family cupboards.
The youth, interestingly, believe that incest is a traditional practice and not a new reality. “Yeh to hame virasat mein mili hai (incest is a part of our tradition), ” says Naresh Kumar, a villager in Rohera in Kaithal district. Sociologists, in turn, say that the ethnic history of the region is full of such instances.
“In the pre-Independence era, in some parts of north India, the father-in-law almost had the right to physical relations with a daughter-in-law, and in most cases the female was not in a position to resist much. The very young husband also had no say in the matter. Widows would routinely be married to a brother of the dead husband. Sharing of the wife by brothers was also not uncommon, ” says Ravinder Kaur, a professor at IIT-Delhi.
What adds to this problem in Haryana is its skewed sex ratio caused by rampant female foeticide. “Its effects are now being felt on intimate relationships within and without the family. The shortage of marriageable women can have many unintended consequences, especially when only one out of four men find a bride (as in the case of Haryana) in their own community, ” adds Kaur.
Kumar’s 35-year-old nephew, Roshan, is yet to get any offers for marriage. “We are at a loss, wondering what to do, ” says Kumar. A growing army of bachelors has become a problem in the state, leading to more illicit relations.
Yet, there seems little the government and social organisations can do about this. Haryana has not seen any strong social movement in recent years and there are very few NGOs working on such issues. While a Haryana court was quick (it took three years) to deliver the death penalty to five khap members accused in the sensational murder of Manoj and Babli in March this year, it took a Bhiwani court around five years to give its verdict in a shocking case of incest that surfaced almost a decade ago.
In a letter to Bhiwani senior superintendent of police, an 18-year-old girl spoke of how her father and cousin exploited her sexually for seven months. “My father used to rape me. Not only this, my uncle and his son too sexually assaulted me, ” stated the girl.
“My mother was usually sent to sleep in another house and I was made to sleep with my father. My mother was not aware of all this. When I told my boyfriend and he objected, my father and cousin beat him up and also got a false case registered against him. When I threatened to go to the police, I was locked up, ” she wrote in the letter.
It was only after the girl said she would tell her mother that she was released from her confinement. The girl then ran away with her boyfriend and a case of abduction was slapped on the boy. Nobody knows where the couple is today.
Chilling tales of incest and abuse have been pouring in from all over the state. Inquiries reveal that physical relationship with a husband’s brother is not considered ‘unusual. ‘ “Such relations are not objected to. They are considered a family’s ‘internal affair’, ” says Prem Singh, a farmer-leader from Kaithal.
In a study conducted by the UNICEF in 2001 to gauge the context of abortions involving 83 adolescent girls in the age group of 10 to 19 years in Rohtak district, it was found that incest was a common cause. “It was responsible for pregnancies in 16 per cent of the cases. We have even had cases of girls getting pregnant through their kin, including fathers and brothers, ” says Sonia Trikha, who’s associated with the UNICEF. Many feel the situation has worsened in the last decade.
Leaders of gotra-based khap panchayats blame the law for protecting those who are guilty of incest. “A scheduled caste girl had run away with a boy from her family. Later, they married and even got police protection, ” says Badan Singh, leader of the Kalayat khap. Another prominent leader, Om Parkash Dhankar, president of the Dhankhar khap, complains about new social trends: “Illicit relationships are on the rise. Even a Supreme Court ruling spoke of permitting live-in relationship without marriage. “
But Seema blames the khaps for shifting the focus from the real problems. “The problem, ” she says, “is not of love marriages, or marriages within gotras and villages, but incest. Marrying out of choice is not a crime, incest is. Khap leaders should be addressing the problem of incest and check this evil instead of hounding people who are in love. “
INCEST IN MYTHOLOGY
If you thought Greek tragedies such as Odeipus Rex were embarrassing in their details of incest, our own epics and mythological texts are no less. They, in fact, abound with instances where men and women have conjugated with close kin. For instance, in the Mahabharata, Arjuna was married to Subhadra, the daughter of his aunt Rohini. Then there is the union of Yama with his twin sister Yami;Manu, son of Vivasvat, and his sister Sraddha;Prajapati and his daughter Ushas;Pushan and his sister Surya;Sukra and his three sisters;Satrajita and his 10 sisters;Nahusha and his sister Viraja. Purukutsa’s queen Narmada after her husband’s death obtained a son through her own brother
WHY IN RURAL HARYANA?
Skewed sex ratio; 860 girls for 1,000 boys
Very conservative society;girls and women are allowed to speak openly with only close relatives
A large number of girls and women don’t work outside their homes
Social resistance to love marriages
Read more: Incest: Haryana’s shameful social heritage – India – The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Incest-Haryanas-shameful-social-heritage/articleshow/6451268.cms#ixzz0xwkfmjYJ
Incest, the practice of marrying one’s sister was very much prevailed in ancient India.
Incest was common among several tribes of pre-Aryan India and is still found in various parts of the country. Thus, the marriage customs of the panchama baiga of central India permit the union of grandparents and grandchild, while the Ernadan male of Malabar takes his eldest daughter as his second wife.
The Hindu levirate system, known as Noyoga, was a sort of incest, practiced for the sake of raising offsprings, though it appears to have been extended beyond legitimate bounds. As examples of incestuous marriages in Hindu mythology may be cited the union of Yama and Yami; Manu son of Vivasvat and his sister Sraddha; Prajapati and his daughter Ushas; Pushan and his sister Surya; Sukra and his THREE sisters; Suka and Pivari; Satrajita and his TEN sisters; Nahusha and his sister Viraja. Purukutsa’s queen Narmada after her husbands death, obtained a son through her own brother. Draupada may have married his own sister to obtain Dhrishtadymuna and Draupadi. Kaisalya wife of Dasaratha was probably also his sister; and more than one authority has suggested that Rama and Sita were actually brother and sister.
Dr Sarkar thinks that the Rig-Veda furnishes rishi sanction (method) for the incestuous ties between a man and his sister, or even mother. The vedic rite called GOSAVA involved union with ones own mother, sister or female relative through which one secured entry into heaven. The Jaiminiya Brahmana relates that king Janaka of Videha, when he understood its (i.e. rituals) nature, refused to undertake the rite, but a Sibi king did perform it, acting out all the requirements.
Certain episodes in the Epics point to an established dynastic custom among the Pandavas and Kauravas of sons succeeding to the seraglios of their father on his death, and it was apparently in keeping with ancient usage for princes to consort with all the father’s wides except their own mothers. Upadhya after citing several instances of incestuous practices among the ancient Indian people justly concludes, `In face of these numerous data, it futile to hold that incest is un-Vedic’. Whatever reasons the early Aryans had for despising the natives, they could not despise them on the score of their incestuousness.
The promiscuity that permeated the later extremist Tantrik cults demanded incestuous relations with one’s sister, daughter, and mother, in antinomian rites that were believed to be especially pleasing to the goddess.
Due to the strict restrictions and regulations one feature arose that
is apparently more common in Hindu society than in any other part of
the world:
Incest. References to this practice abound. Often the girls were
unwilling, but were then forced by their brothers/fathers.
References abound even in the Rg Veda, showing that the perversion of
brother-sister incest was introduced by the ancient Hindus:
Pushan is the lover of his sister [ Rg Ved VI.55.4 ] [ Apte 11 ]
Agni is the lover of his own sister [ Rg Ved X.3.3 ] [ Apte 11 ]
Ashvins are referred to as the sons of Savitar and Ushas who are
brother and sister [ Apte 11 ]
The Ashvisns married Surya and Savitri who is their sister [ RV
I.116.19 ]
Agni is the son of his father and his sister [ Rg Ved.I.91.7 ]
Yama wards off his sister Yami, saying marriage between brother and
sister is forbidden [ R.V.X.10 ] [ Apte 11 ]
Father-daughter incest occurs in the famous story of Prajapati (later
identified with Brahma, in tunr incorporated as an incarnation of
Vishnu) and his daughter [ RV III.31.1-2 ].
Moreover, this was punished.
Prajapati is thought to have done something wrong, and Prajapati was
pierced by Agni as a punishment [ Sat.Br. XIII.9 ] [ Apte 63 ].
It is evident that the strict laws on male-female relations led to the
repression of normal practices and the rise of various perversions like
brother-sister incest, father-daughter incest etc. Even to this day
incest of varying degrees (cross-cousin, father-daughter, mother-son,
brother-sister, etc.) is extremely common amongst the Hindus. No other
race on earth has ever recorded such a prevalence of this practice.
Just as sodomy has its home in Persia, Lesbianism in ancient Lesbos, so
incest has its home amongst the Hindus.
Moin Ansari
Short URL: http://www.daily.pk/?p=20918
Book examines Muslim portrayal in Bollywood
http://www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.regcon&contentID=2010060374211
Saudi Gazette report
According to the authors, this “Islamicate” culture influences the language, poetry, music, ideas, and even the characteristic emotional responses elicited by Bollywood films in general. However, their thesis in this book is that three genre forms of “The Muslim Historical”, “The Muslim Courtesan Film” and “The Muslim Social” are prevalent amongst Bollywood films. They argue that it is through these three genres, and their critical reworking by New Wave filmmakers, that social and historical significance is attributed to Muslim culture for Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
The authors are both academics: Ira Bhaskar is Associate Professor of Cinema Studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; Richard Allen is Professor and Chair of Cinema Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University.
Excerpts from the book provided exclusively to Saudi Gazette take a deeper look at the portrayal of Muslims in Bollywood cinema.
‘Islamicate’ cultures
and idioms
Following Marshall Hodgson and Mukul Kesavan, we use the term ‘Islamicate’ to refer not directly to the Islamic religion per se, “but to the social and cultural complex historically associated with Islam and the Muslims, both among Muslims themselves and even when found among non-Muslims”.
From its very inception Bombay cinema, via the influence of Parsi theater, has been informed by Islamic culture and the Urdu language, the Persian love stories of Laila–Majnun and Shirin– Farhad, poetic forms such as the ghazal and the masnavi, and song traditions such as nazms, ghazals and qawwalis.
Islamicate idioms and their distinctive genre forms and inflections emerged during the second decade of Indian Silent cinema (in the 1920s) though little of its early manifestations survives.
By the early 1920s, Muslim Historicals like Nurjehan (1923), Razia Begum (1924) and Shahjahan (1924), had begun to appear, and the pre-Sound period continued to see the emergence of others like Mumtaz Mahal (1926), Siraj-ud-Daula (1927), Shiraz (1928), Adale Jahangir (1930) and Chandbibi (1931).
Orientalism
While the Muslim Historical was a central vehicle for the articulation of Islamicate cultures in Bombay cinema in the Silent period, there were other film cycles that circulated a repertoire of images and stories that emerged from and helped to express these cultures. These were forms that had wide provenance, and can be seen as the entertainment cinema that formed the popular cinematic culture of the time.
They include legendary romances like Laila Majnu (1922 and 1927), Shirin Farhad (1926) and Anarkali (two in 1928); Arabian Nights fantasies like Alibaba and the Forty Thieves (1927), Hatim Tai (1929) and Kamer-el-Zaman (1931); fairy tales and folk legends like Gul-e-Bakavali (1924), Bulbul-e-Paristan (1926), Gul Sanovar (1928) and Bulbul-e-Shiraz (1931) and others, drawing from a variety of sources including folk tales, Persian and Arabic legends, and masnavis popular on the Parsi stage; films evoking an imagination of the larger Muslim world like Toorkey Hoor (1924), Hoor-e-Arab and Hoor-e-Baghdad (1928), Gulshan-i-Arab (1929), Hoor-e-Missar (1931); and fantasy and adventure films with kings, princes, princesses and slaves, drawing upon a generalized Orientalist imagination of the East, like Ghulami Zanjeer (1931) and the first Sound film, Ardeshir Irani’s Alam Ara (1931).
All these films drew upon and evoked a generalized Orientalist imaginary familiar to film-makers and audiences alike from the Urdu Parsi theater, from performance idioms like the mushaira and dastangoi, from the Orientalist narratives and motifs of international cinema, and from the popular visual and aural culture of illustrated books, pamphlets, monographs and poems within which these stories, imagery and affective forms circulated widely.
The cycles of Orientalist films described above thus disseminated a generalized Islamicate imaginary and provided a sense of a greater world beyond the everyday, charging the imagination with all the glamor and appeal of utopian landscapes that cinema can so easily embody and circulate.
Muslim Historicals
From the 1940s to the 60s, when there was a significant increase in the number of Muslim Historicals that were made, most of them focused on the Mughal period with Mughal Emperors such as Humayun (Humayun, 1945), Akbar (Shahenshah Akbar, 1943; Mughal-e-Azam,1960) Jahangir (Anarkali, 1953; Mughal-e-Azam, 1960; Noorjehan,1967 ) Shahjahan (Shahjahan, 1946; Taj Mahal, 1963) and even Bahadur Shah Zafar (Mirza Ghalib, 1954) as protagonists or important characters.
The Mughals had built an empire, consolidated fragmented political kingdoms into a nation, presided over a cultural and artistic efflorescence, and, especially with Akbar, also provided an example of religious tolerance with the affirmation of multiple and plural religious traditions. In the immediate pre-independence decade of the 1940s, in the context of the anti-colonial struggle and the intensely fractious communal situation in the country, the affirmation of the Mughals performed a dual ideological function, both equally critical.
The ‘great Mughals’ – Akbar, Jahangir and Shahjahan – became a symbolic location of ethical and moral values, military and political power, and justice, as well as of a high level of cultural, social and artistic development. The celebration of these achievements asserted the ability of colonized India for self-governance.
While this anti-colonial gesture was extremely significant, the Muslim Historicals were equally important in the way they affirmed the value of Muslim rule and culture against the majoritarian Hindu political mobilization of the time. After independence, this valuation of Muslim culture fed into the secular ideology of the Nehruvian polity, and became critically important, especially in the post-Partition period, to counter negative attitudes towards Muslims in the country.
Pukar (1939), a pre-independence masterpiece, eloquently argues the case of a merciful Mughal system of justice even at it issues from an absolutist state.
Muslim Social films
The third genre explored here is the Muslim Social, which emerged in the early 1940s and which is the only one of the three genres we are discussing that was thus named by the film industry. It was in Mehboob Khan’s Najma (1943), an early Muslim Social, that the genre crystallized into its canonical form, to be en- shrined later in the popular classic Chaudhvin ka Chand (1960).
The Muslim Social conventionally focuses on the feudal-aristocratic Muslim household at a moment when it faces the pressures of social change on conservative cultural values that are at once challenged and preserved. It addresses the importance of women’s rights especially protection against divorce, the need for empowerment and education of women, and the advocacy of professional as opposed to feudal lifestyles for men. In the post-Partition, post-independence context, the idiom of the Classic Muslim Social was dramatically out of sync with the realities of Muslim social life, and projected a certain ideal of that life to a Hindu majoritarian audience that may wish to deny those realities. In a film like Mere Mehboob (1963), even as neo- feudal values are called into question, the tehzeeb of nawabi culture is nostalgically preserved for the contemporary context.
The New Wave film-makers engage with the concerns of the Muslim Social but in a manner that is shorn of nostalgia for the past. The idiom of New Wave films is a realist one, in the sense that they eschew the entertainment values of mainstream Bombay cinema and are committed to exploring the everyday realities of contempo-rary Muslim life in post-Partition India, in which Mughal India or nawabi Lucknow appear as a phantasm in relationship to the grim realities of communalism, social discrimination and urban deprivation.
Yet the nobility of self and depth of culture that are manifest in the mainstream genres resonate still, not simply as part of the cultural memory against which the aspirations of the present are measured, but also in terms of the dignity and sense of purpose embedded in the lives of ordinary people even when faced with the most difficult of circumstances. Many New Wave films – for exam-ple, Garm Hawa (1973), Mammo (1994), Naseem (1995) – address the deracination and devastation wrought by the Partition upon Muslim social life, and others, like Salim Langde pe Mat Ro (1989), explore the urban milieu in which young working-class Muslim men struggle for meaning and livelihood in a socially and economically deprived environment.
*Usman goes home with a spring in his step*
Though he had asserted that IX-812 would be his last flight to Bajpe airport, he has changed his outlook in the past one week. "Accidents happen and can happen anywhere. I will take flights from Bajpe airport," he said half smiling. "The Almighty has given me a new lease of life, I’ll use it well as he intends," said Usman.
Usman, who works in the transport logistics company at Dubai, had come home for a two-week vacation. His travel plans have gone awry as he has lost his passport in the crash. "Air India officials will assist me in getting the passport. They said they will give me a letter to process my passport," he said.
Usman had suffered burns on his both hands and bruises on his chest, torso and legs. He has a deep cut on the back of his head, probably sustained by a tree stump while he was rolling down the slope after jumping out of the plane.
His family, wife Shahin Begum, sons Rasheed Minhas, Saud and Saif, are overjoyed on his return from the hospital.
Did he have any friends on the flight? No, says Usman but recalls that there were two boys along with their mother sitting behind him. "While boarding, I had allowed them to go before me as the lady had difficulty in walking. While sitting, one of the boys had turned to me and said with a smile: Thank you uncle," remembers Usman. He knows that they did not make it as there was only one woman who survived the crash.
"I am alive today because of the prayers and love of my parents, family, brothers and sisters, Usman says.
So what will be his life henceforth? "I was religious and close to the Almighty. Now, I’m closer to Almighty than ever before. I will not repeat the mistakes that I have done in the past. I want to do only good to the people," he said.
25 arrested in massive crackdown in Pakistan’s Punjab province
LAHORE: Law enforcement agencies launched a massive crackdown across Pakistan’s Punjab province today arresting 25 suspects after militants made a brazen bid to free one of their members, arrested for the Ahmadi mosque carnage, from a hospital here.
The clampdown in large parts of southern Punjab, considered to be a hotbed of Punjab unit of the Tehreek-e-Taliban, came after gunmen last night stormed the Jinnah hospital here where the victims of the May 28 mosque attack were being treated, killing at least five people.
Just days after carrying out the gruesome killing of at least 95 people in the two mosques in eastern part of the city, heavily armed gunmen drove into the hospital compound to free their accomplice, but were beaten by alert security persons.
"We have taken into custody some 25 suspects from Lahore and adjacent areas and they are being interrogated," police spokesman Niyab Haider told PTI.
Four militants disguised as policemen stormed the Jinnah Hospital at around midnight in a bid to free Moaz alias Amir Muavia, a terrorist who was captured in an injured condition during an attack on an Ahmedi mosque on Friday.
The militants fired indiscriminately, killing four policemen and a woman, before the attack was repulsed by security forces.
Police later shifted Moaz under tight security to the hospital within Kot Lakhpat prison.
Ninety-five people were killed and over 100 injured in last week’s audacious assault on two Ahmedi mosques.
Moaz and 10 Ahmedis were being treated in Jinnah Hospital at the time of the attack early this morning.
Haider said three accomplices of the terrorists involved in Friday’s attacks on the Ahmedi mosques had been arrested from Gujranwala district.
"It could have been an attempt to either silence or rescue Moaz," the police official said.
Meanwhile, Abdullah Mohammad, another terrorist arrested during Friday’s attacks, has been remanded by a court to police custody till June 18.
Deputy inspector general of police Naeem Brokha said Moaz and Abdullah Mohammad belonged to the southern part of Punjab.
Interior minister Rehman Malik has hinted for the first time that an operation may be launched in southern Punjab against the militant groups aligned closely with the Taliban.
The militants from the groups Jaish-e-Mohammad, Sipah-e-Sahaba, Lashkar-e-Jhanghvi and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen
have a close alliance with Pakistani Taliban and are active in
southern Punjab.
Authorities carried out night-long raids in Dera Ghazi Khan, Muzaffarghar, Jhang, Bahawalpur and Rahim Yar Khan districts.
Malik’s comments promptly brought him and the Pakistan People’s Party-led federal government into a confrontation
with the PML-N government in Punjab.
Punjab law minister Rana Sanaullah was quick to reject Malik’s assertions.
Sanaullah even claimed that the reports about an anti-militancy operation in Punjab were part of an "international conspiracy".
Responding to reports that the attack on the hospital could have been aimed at either eliminating or freeing Moaz, Malik said it was not in his "notice" that the suspect was being treated at Jinnah Hospital.
This obviously suggested that Malik would have asked the authorities to keep the whereabouts of the suspect secret.
Malik’s latest remarks were also tantamount to an expression of distrust in the ability and will of the Punjab government to tackle the fast growing militancy in Punjab.
It was also a sign that the Centre and Punjab were moving towards a showdown over the Punjabi Taliban.
"The PML-N’s Punjab government must stop living in denial and face the ugly fact that southern parts of the province are awash with militants of a very hard hue," well- known columnist Kamran Shafi said.
****
US cartoonist apologises over Facebook Muhammad row
Facebook Muhammad row cartoonist apologises
South African Muslim bid to ban cartoon fails
Pak blocks 800 URLs over Facebook cartoon row
Mumbai Muslims protest against Facebook
Mumbai, May 21:
Muslims in the city today protested against the social networking website ‘Facebook’ for hosting a competition by inviting users to draw a caricature of Prophet Mohammad.
In a protest meeting held at Minara Masjid at Bhendi Bazar and at Hindustani Masjid at Byculla in South Mumbai, various Muslim organisations demanded for a permanent ban on ‘Facebook’ and chanted slogans against the website operators.
The protest meeting at Minara Masjid, conducted by Raza Academy, demanded ban on Facebook and asked the government to take action against the organisers of the competition. Protesters blocked traffic at Bhendi Bazar.
Hindustani Masjid noted Islamic scholar Maulana Abdul Jabbar Kadri said, ”we cannot tolerate such things which hurt the sentiments of millons of Muslims across the world”.
The competition, called Draw Mohammed Day, was announced on April 20 and was scheduled to be held on May 20.
Protests have been organised in several parts of the city against the competition.
Facebook page tied to Pakistan ban now down
Protesters in Karachi, Pakistan, shout slogans during a Friday rally against published caricatures of the prophet Mohammed on Facebook. Protesters shouted "Death to Facebook" and "Death to America," and burned U.S. flags.
(Credit: AFP Photo/Asif Hassan)
A Facebook page that led Pakistan to temporarily block the social-networking site this week has been taken down.
The page promoted "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day," scheduled for Thursday following a U.S. cartoonist’s satirical suggestion that people draw images of the prophet to promote free speech. The page attracted tens of thousands of supporters.
But on Friday, the page no longer appeared on the site. Facebook said Friday it had not taken any action on the page, according to the Associated Press. It was likely removed by its creator, possibly because "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" is over, but the reason is unclear.
In addition, a blog spawned by the idea of "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" was on Friday virtually devoid of content, and had been renamed "nothing," after featuring several caricatures of Mohammed earlier in the week.
The Facebook closure happened Wednesday after an Islamic lawyers association in Lahore, Pakistan, argued that the contest essentially equaled blasphemy and won a court injunction against the social-networking site. In what could be a wider Internet crackdown, Pakistan also banned YouTube over "sacrilegious" content. Some Muslims consider images of Muhammad to be blasphemous.
Pakistan has said it would consider restoring Facebook and other sites featuring offending content if the content was removed. While the country’s telecommunications regulator said Thursday that the YouTube ban had been lifted following the removal of "blasphemous" footage, a YouTube spokeswoman said the video site is still being blocked there, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Published caricatures of Mohammed also led to protests in the streets of Pakistan this week. Pakistani protesters shouted "Death to Facebook" and "Death to America," and burned U.S. flags to venting growing anger over depictions of the prophet on the Internet that they view to be sacrilegious.
The idea for "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" went viral quickly after Seattle cartoonist Molly Norris posted a drawing last month depicting objects like a domino, a spool of thread, and a handbag, saying they were the "real likeness of Mohammed." The cartoon also included a fake group called Citizens Against Citizens Against Humor calling for an "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day."
Norris said she drew her cartoon as a show of support for the creators of Comedy Central’s "South Park," which earlier this year featured an episode depicting the prophet Muhammad in a bear suit.
That episode led a New York-based Web site called RevolutionMuslim.com to warn creators of the animated series that "what they are doing is stupid, and they will probably wind up like Theo van Gogh," a Dutch filmmaker who was murdured in 2004 after producing a film exploring violence against women in some Islamic societies.
Norris, who strongly distanced herself from the concept of "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day," did not create the Facebook page and actively opposed it. Instead, she joined a Facebook group called Against "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day - May 20." Its page still appeared live on the site Friday afternoon, with more than 43,000 members.
Leslie Katz, senior editor of CNET’s Crave, covers gadgets, games, and myriad other digital distractions. As a co-host of the recently retired CNET News Daily Podcast, she was sometimes known to channel Terry Gross and still uses her trained "podcast voice" to bully the speech recognition software on automated customer service lines. E-mail Leslie.
Protesters in Karachi, Pakistan, shout slogans during a Friday rally against published caricatures of the prophet Mohammed on Facebook. Protesters shouted "Death to Facebook" and "Death to America," and burned U.S. flags.
(Credit: AFP Photo/Asif Hassan)
A Facebook page that led Pakistan to temporarily block the social-networking site this week has been taken down.
The page promoted "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day," scheduled for Thursday following a U.S. cartoonist’s satirical suggestion that people draw images of the prophet to promote free speech. The page attracted tens of thousands of supporters.
But on Friday, the page no longer appeared on the site. Facebook said Friday it had not taken any action on the page, according to the Associated Press. It was likely removed by its creator, possibly because "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" is over, but the reason is unclear.
In addition, a blog spawned by the idea of "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" was on Friday virtually devoid of content, and had been renamed "nothing," after featuring several caricatures of Mohammed earlier in the week.
The Facebook closure happened Wednesday after an Islamic lawyers association in Lahore, Pakistan, argued that the contest essentially equaled blasphemy and won a court injunction against the social-networking site. In what could be a wider Internet crackdown, Pakistan also banned YouTube over "sacrilegious" content. Some Muslims consider images of Muhammad to be blasphemous.
Pakistan has said it would consider restoring Facebook and other sites featuring offending content if the content was removed. While the country’s telecommunications regulator said Thursday that the YouTube ban had been lifted following the removal of "blasphemous" footage, a YouTube spokeswoman said the video site is still being blocked there, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Published caricatures of Mohammed also led to protests in the streets of Pakistan this week. Pakistani protesters shouted "Death to Facebook" and "Death to America," and burned U.S. flags to venting growing anger over depictions of the prophet on the Internet that they view to be sacrilegious.
The idea for "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" went viral quickly after Seattle cartoonist Molly Norris posted a drawing last month depicting objects like a domino, a spool of thread, and a handbag, saying they were the "real likeness of Mohammed." The cartoon also included a fake group called Citizens Against Citizens Against Humor calling for an "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day."
Norris said she drew her cartoon as a show of support for the creators of Comedy Central’s "South Park," which earlier this year featured an episode depicting the prophet Muhammad in a bear suit.
That episode led a New York-based Web site called RevolutionMuslim.com to warn creators of the animated series that "what they are doing is stupid, and they will probably wind up like Theo van Gogh," a Dutch filmmaker who was murdured in 2004 after producing a film exploring violence against women in some Islamic societies.
Norris, who strongly distanced herself from the concept of "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day," did not create the Facebook page and actively opposed it. Instead, she joined a Facebook group called Against "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day - May 20." Its page still appeared live on the site Friday afternoon, with more than 43,000 members.
Leslie Katz, senior editor of CNET’s Crave, covers gadgets, games, and myriad other digital distractions. As a co-host of the recently retired CNET News Daily Podcast, she was sometimes known to channel Terry Gross and still uses her trained "podcast voice" to bully the speech recognition software on automated customer service lines. E-mail Leslie.Facebook Banned in Pakistan due to Everybody Draw Muhammad[PBUH] Day
A court in Pakistan has ordered the authorities temporarily to block the Facebook social networking site.
The order came when a petition was filed after the site held a competition featuring caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad[SAW].
The petition, filed by a lawyers’ group called the Islamic Lawyers’ Movement, said the contest was "blasphemous".
Facebook denied that it was "trying to slander the average Muslim", on its information page for the contest. "We simply want to show the extremists that threaten to harm people because of their Muhammad[SAW] depictions that we’re not afraid of them," the statement said. "They can’t take away our right to freedom of speech by trying to scare us into silence." Correspondents say that publications of similar cartoons in Danish newspapers in 2005 sparked angry protests in Muslim countries - five people were killed in Pakistan. Internet is free in Pakistan but the government monitors content by routing all traffic through a central exchange. Justice Ejaz Ahmed Chaudhry of the Lahore High Court ordered the department of communications to block the website until 31 May, and to submit a written reply to the petition by that date. An official told the court that parts of the website that were holding the competition had been blocked, reports the BBC Urdu service’s Abdul Haq in Lahore. But the petitioner said a partial blockade of a website was not possible and that the entire link had to be blocked. The lawyers’ group says Pakistan is an Islamic country and its laws do not allow activities that are "un-Islamic" or "blasphemous". The judge also directed Pakistan’s foreign ministry to raise the issue at international level. In the past, Pakistan has often blocked access to pornographic sites and sites with anti-Islamic content. It has deemed such material as offensive to the political and security establishment of the country, says the BBC’s M Ilyas Khan in Islamabad. In 2007, the government banned the YouTube site, allegedly to block material offensive to the government of Pervez Musharraf. The action led to widespread disruption of access to the site for several hours. The ban was later lifted.
Sharia Advisor to Islamic Bank,London Maulana Mohammad Barkatullah Abdul Qadir Qasmi meets Press in Hyderabad, a report.
The Financial Crisis: A Golden Opportunity for Islamic Banking http://www.asharqalawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=6&id=16065
14/03/2009
Riyadh, Asharq Al-Awsat-Before the international financial crisis, Islamic banking was marginalized and disregarded by international institutions. International institutions, such as the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision [BCBS] and the International Accounting Standards Board [IASB] that are concerned with financial regulation did not take into account the differences between Islamic banking, and traditional banking, in the setting of these regulations. In addition to this, many Western financial institutions considered the Islamic banking system to be simple and rudimentary, and not attuned to the [modern] times and new [financial] developments such as the innovative and complex financial tools that have dazzled the world. These financial apparatus are based upon mathematical equations and theories formulated by the fore-most mathematicians in the world, some of whom are Nobel laureates hired by large financial institutions to help boost their performance.
The Islamic banking system was looked upon as something that hindered the growth and development of the financial markets of the countries which adopted it. In addition to this, many Western countries viewed it as an ideological financial system based upon religious tenets rather than scientific fact, and therefore deriving its strength and popularity from the faith of those that believe in it, making it inconsistent with contemporary thinking that is based upon empirical knowledge and evidence, thus making it a threat to the principles of Secularism.
However the financial crisis has revealed to the world the invalidity in many of the assets and theories and mathematic equations upon which much of the modern financial system is based. Revealing also that these were the main factors behind the creation, spreading, and impact of the international financial crisis, the likes of which the world has not seen before. This financial crisis caused the collapse and bankruptcy of many firmly established financial institutions, and in the blink of an eye a dozen financial institutions that were internationally regarded as examples of professionalism such as "Lehman Brothers" and "Merrill Lynch" vanished. This crisis not only affected the financial institutions, for its effects expanded to burden many of the economic and industrial institutions as well, such as the pride of the American manufacturing industry "General Motors" which is well on its way to declaring bankruptcy, as well as "Toyota" which has declared losses for the first time in the company’s history.
As the financial crisis worsened observers began to notice the stability and resilience of Islamic financial institutions in the face of this, and no Islamic financial institute has yet to declare losses in the financial securities and bonds that were a major cause of the crisis. On the contrary, many Islamic institutions have announced an increase in profits, which resulted in many commending the principles upon which the Islamic banking system is based, and the Shariaa Islamic Laws that regulate it, calling for its introduction to rectify the global financial system. Perhaps the most recent and strongest of these calls was reported in the Bloomberg Agency’s report which revealed that the Vatican had stated that Western banks should carefully examine Islamic financial regulations in order to restore confidence amongst their clients at a time of international economic crisis.
This [global financial] crisis that has brought Islamic banking into the spotlight and presented it with a golden opportunity to introduce its fundamental methods and principles and present a practical [financial] model to the world. Islamic banking should capitalize on this opportunity and work quickly in order to expand, and gain a good position itself in the markets that were previously closed to it and which have now become open due to the financial crisis. Islamic banking must therefore seek to exploit the international recognition of its principles and regulatory system by gaining the recognition of international regulatory institutions with regards to its principles and uniqueness by enacting laws to institute [unified] regulatory body such as the BSBS and the IASB.
Unfortunately I am forced to say that Islamic financial institutions are not taking advantage of this opportunity, allowing it to pass by in the same way that they have passed up many opportunities in the past because they are unwilling to work together and set aside their excessive greed and narrow interests. And so today the Islamic banking industry has no single [unified] model that it can present to the world, as a standardized auditory and legislative criterion is yet to be instituted. There are juristic differences between the [various] Islamic Shariaa bodies which refuse to work together, and this has come close to negating the achievements made by Islamic banking. Many members of these Islamic Shariaa bodies refuse to endorse the idea of a Higher Legislative Authority which will help reduce the disputes arising as a result of having multiple authorities.
There have been endeavors by some of those within the industry to unify efforts with regards to the creation of professional institutions such as the General Council for Islamic Banks and Financial Institutions [CIBAFI], the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions [AAOIFI], and the Islamic Financial Service Board [IFSB]. However these institutions suffer from a lack of funds, as they depend entirely upon donations, in addition to a lack of moral support as many Islamic financial institutions do not recognize their decisions which ultimately undermines their effectiveness.
In spite of this, I still believe that the opportunity is still open to the Islamic financial industry to consolidate its efforts and place the general interest of the industry ahead of private interests in order to profit from the financial crisis, propagate its principles and gain recognition from international institutions. In addition to expanding and developing [its position] in the various markets available to it today, before the international financial crisis is solved, and attention on the Islamic financial system dwindles.