"Bihar Government is not a competent authority to file an appeal in the case," a bench comprising Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan and Justices R M Lodha and B S Chauhan said.

The verdict was passed by allowing the appeal filed by Lalu Prasad and his wife and also by the CBI challenging the decision of the Patna High Court admitting the appeal filed by the Bihar Government against their acquittal by a special CBI court.

The state Government had filed the appeal after the CBI had not challenged the acquittal.

POLITICS OF HYDERABAD RIOTS

 Women reservation bill is actually anti minority bill – AIUDF

New Delhi , 7 March: All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) is completely against women reservation bill in its present form. The bill to be presented in the parliament tomorrow and by the anticipatory signals from ‘Brahmical’ political parties like Congress and BJP it appears that they had an hidden understanding to pass the bill this time. It is unfortunate that some political parties have issued whip to their members in favour of an ‘anti minorities bill’ which will surly reduce the already negligible minority representation to both lower and upper houses of parliament in to merely NO representation without fixing a quota for minority and Dalit women. AIUDF considers this bill in its present form a mockery with all minorities, Dalit and against the interest of Indian nationhood, and will strongly oppose it in both parliament and streets. 

Maulana Badruddin Ajmal, AIUDF president and the lone Lok Sabha member from the party who is also president of Assam state Jamiat Ulama-e Hind and a member of Shura (Executive Body) of famous Darul Uloom Deoband said that the women reservation bill in its existing form is simply unacceptable for the minorities especially Muslims. “The bill is actually an anti minority bill in guise of empowerment of women”, he said. It would be a historic blunder repeated once again by this nation if the bill went through to become a law, Maulana Ajmal argued. 

It is notable that following India ’s independence from colonial clutches and unfortunate partition a historic bill was passed in the constituent parliament of India . It was just after 12 days, on 28th August 1947 , a bill was passed to ensure political reservation for scheduled castes (SCs) and the Muslims. During a debate on ‘Report on Minority Rights’, SCs and Muslims were classified as ‘minorities’ and the Constituent Assembly passed the bill guaranteeing proportionate reservation for them in the legislative houses. 

The next day, some members smartly made an amendment to the bill stating that the SCs were part of the Hindu community and not minority. Maulana Syed Fazlul Hasan Hasrat Mohani (1875–1951), the eminent freedom fighter and a member of constituent assembly which drafted the Indian constitution, objected to the use of word ‘minority’ for ‘Muslims’ alone. He said "I refuse to accept Muslims to be a minority. Are we not calling a minority to refer only to Muslims”? Maulana was not allowed to speak further on the subject as the bill was already discussed and passed by the parliament. But unlike other members, he never signed the bill since he saw ‘hypocrisy’ towards Muslim ‘minority’ in it 

Two years later, the ‘Muslim’ word removed from the list of reservation beneficiaries. While the SCs, who were technically members of the majority ‘Hindu community’, are reaping the benefits of reservation till date and the Muslims are forced to live with just the tag of being a ‘minority’. The same hypocrisy and political mockery is on play once again by the Brahmical political class of this nation once again. 

If religion based reservation is unacceptable for the majority when it comes to political empowerment of minorities then how a gender based casa become rational? AIUDF demands reservation be offered to the weaker sections of the society to genuinely empower them and Muslims are the weakest community by all arguments and statistics therefore reservation bill for Muslim empowerment must follow first. Second, women reservation bill must ensure political representation of women from weaker classes – Muslim, Dalit and other minorities.     

If reservation can not go over 50 per cent of total as in the case of 5 per cent Muslim reservation in Andra Pradesh then how 33 per cent more can be ensured in India where it is already around 44-49 in almost all states? Majority of assembly and parliamentary constituencies where a Muslim could easily win from any party if they were general are presently under ST or SC reserved categories. Take the case of Karimganj in Assam where around 60 per cent voters are Muslim with only 20 per cent STs and SCs is a reserved seat since independent. Who knows the remaining Muslim majority voters seats will not be reserved for women only – making way for strong Hindu woman to defeat her weak counter part in the election while enjoying ‘women empowerment’. 

The present bill is nothing but to ensure maximum number of women from the present political houses in to the parliament. ‘Big’ leaders wishes to enjoy politics with their wives, daughters and female family members sitting side by side in the parliament where weaker class women will have no chance to come to raw of availing a ticket from any party. Why not all political parties reserved 33 percent tickets for women only during election and let ensure it in their party bylaws. AIUDF already offered around same percentage of party tickets to women in last two – assembly and parliament elections.

AIUDF invites all right thinking social and political individuals and groups to democratically oppose the present move of UPA government in the national interest. The women reservation bill in its present form is nothing but a game plan of a section of political elites to make a weak woman weaker and a strong one stronger.

Issued for immediate release in all electronic and print media by  

M. Burhanuddin Qasmi

Spokesperson

AIUDF, Maharashtra

Cell: 09820760545

*** 

Self help is the best way out: Dr. Ilyas  

National Conference at MANUU concludes 

Dr. S.M. Ilyas Former Director NAARM, Addressing the Valedictory Session on 3rd day of National Conference on “Exclusionary Perspectives for Muslims & Marginalized Groups” at MANUU. Prof. G. Nanchariah, Prof. B. K. Srivastava, Prof. S.A. Wahab, Prof. Abdul Mateen, Dr. Masood Ali Khan are also seen. (Photo by Syed Hameeduddin Nazeer)

Hyderabad:[25^th Feb. 2010 ] The glaring fact of Muslims backwardness & exclusion has lately been recognized by the government & the society. Sachar Comiittee findings have also substantiated the case. However, Muslims in India shall not wait for the government or any other agency to ameliorate their conditions. The initiative to come out from this vicious cirele, has to be taken by themselves only. Dr. S.M. Ilyas Former Director NAARM, expressed these views while addressing the valedictory session of a National Conference at MANUU. 3-Day conference on “Exclusionary Perspectives for Muslims & Marginalized Groups”, organized by the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion & Inclusive Policy, concluded yesterday. Dr. Ilyas while delivered the valedictory address said, politicians or the so called sympathisers will not do anything for Muslims. Self help is the best way out. Globalization & economic reforms, have openend up a lot of opportunities. It is for us to grab them with both the hands. Prof. S.A. Wahab I/c Registrar presided over the session. Prof. G. Nancharayya, Ex Vice-Chancellor Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University (Lucknow) was the Chief Guest. Dr. Ilyas singled out the low level of literacy as the most basic problem of the Muslim Community. If somebody creates problems than it’s his responsibility to provide the solution too. Despite all the difficulties, there is a silver lining at the end of the tunnel. Our future is bright. There is no better country then Indian to live in & there is no better way of Government than Democracy. Prof. B.K. Srivastava (N.Delhi) in his address said social exclusion is a modern & effective method to evaluate the problems of any particular community. Prof. Srivastava pointed out at on availability of reliable & credible research  data on the issues of Muslim backwardness & Exclusion.  Students from CSSEIP at MANUU could take up imperical study on the subject. He advised MANUU to translate teaching material of different subjects into Urdu. Prof. Nancharayya in his Address highlighted the plight of dalits & other weaker sections. Muslims & marginalized communities shall be made strong enough so that they can avail the fruits of globalization. There is an urgent need to look at the plight of Muslims separately. Govt. can play an important role in this regard. Prof. Abdul Mateen, Director of the Centre & Conference convener, presented 10 resolutions in the light of the deliberations of the conference. Dr. P.H. Mohammed gave “Rapporteurs Report” on the conference. Mr. A. Nageshwar Rao, proposed vote of thanks. Dr. Masood Ali Khan conducted the proceedings & introduced the guests. Mr. C.M. Eshwariah, Finance Officer MANUU, was also present. During the 3-Day Conference. Twelve Technical Sessions on different themes & two Symposiums were held. More than Hundred Papers were presented. Earlier the concluding day of the conference started with an Open Panel of Technical session XI, chaired by Prof. Abhijit Das Gupta, Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, Delhi. The first paper was presented by Dr. Farida Siddiqui Associate Professor, CSSEIP, MANUU on Margins, Marginalised and the Establishment of Turkish conquest in India: A study of social Exclusion and Inclusion of marginalized groups in which she tried to integrate the role of Islam with the exclusion & inclusion. The paper shows that many people from excluded community converted to Islam under the Turkish rule because they got attracted towards Islam due to its inclusionary policies. Dr. Manorama expressed her concern for dalit exploitation while Dr. Anil showed the exploitative behavior of certain groups towards lower strata of the society through Urdu Literature. Dr. Habeebul Haq Ansari explained the role of science in life which he tried to relate with secularism. Technical session XII on the theme of Exclusion of Muslim women, children and labour was chaired by Prof. Sudhir Jacob George and Prof. Sudarshan as co-chair. Dr. P.H. Mohammed, K.M. Ziauddin, S. Abdul Taha all faculty members of CSSEIP studies presented papers on various dimensions of socio-economic exclusion of Muslims particularly Muslim women of the country. Mohd. Hussain explored the possibilities of empowering women especially Muslim through SHGs. Prof. Arvindu Ansari, Dept. of Sociology, Jamia Millia Islamia showed her concern about communal violence, Insecurity & Ghettoisation among Muslims in India. Her study particularly focussed on the Jamia Nagar area which consists of Abul Fazal Enclave, Batla House & Zakir Nagar in N. Delhi. 

The Quran cannot be usurped: an interview with Amina Wadud

By Martina Sabra
First Published: September 3, 2008

BONN, Germany: Islam, gender equality and human rights are compatible — this is a basic conviction of Amina Wadud, author of several books about Islam and women. Martina Sabra interviewed the Islamic feminist at a recent conference about Women’s power in Islam in Germany.

Wadud, a visiting scholar at Starr King School for Ministry in California, is renowned for leading a gender-inclusive Muslim prayer in New York in 2005. She discusses her spiritual journey up to this controversial event and her ideas about “Islamic feminism.”

Common Grounds News: Until the age of 20, you were a Christian. Your father was a Methodist minister. Today you are one of the best-known Muslim reform thinkers worldwide. Why did you become a Muslim?

Wadud: I was always interested in theological ideas. As you’re saying, my father was a Methodist minister. I was raised as a Christian and very, very interested in ideas about God, about morality, about human nature and about spirituality. So before converting to Islam I was a Buddhist and lived in an Ashram and practiced meditation, which I still practice today.

When I was 20, I stepped into a mosque not far from where I lived. I wanted to know about Islam. I am very interested in the relationship between the profane and the sacred.

For me, Islam gave me a language, and actually Arabic was an important part of it — it gave me the language of tawhid, the language of God’s intimate relationship with the creation, but also the power to bring harmony to things which are disparate. That for me is the epitome of surrender. Islam helped me to understand my experience with Christianity and Buddhism. It is a reasoned revelation. This is maybe not for everyone; some people have a more simplistic understanding of Islam. But this is how I lived it.

When I was given the opportunity to study a little bit about Islam, I was very impressed, especially with the Quran. For me, the Quran opened up a relationship between my logic, my reasoning, my understanding of the world, my love and desire for nature, and for the world beyond the world, for the unseen. And so I have developed my work specifically with the area of Quran and gender, and that is the area that I think it is sort of a gift to me because it is something that I love doing.

As a child, you witnessed the civil rights movement in the United States. As an adolescent, you say that you were very conscious about personal freedom and intellectual independence. Wasn’t that in strong contradiction with the conservative mainstream Islam of the 1970s?

Certainly, I faced many contradictions. The struggle to be Muslim was easiest at the beginning, when I made the transformation from my post-Christian, post-Buddhist state into being a Muslim. Then, knowledge was the main impetus. Now it is more difficult, there is more that I understand and therefore more responsibility. My perspective is part of a reform and that makes it sometimes difficult because it is not mainstream.

When I first began to work on things that I considered to be gender mainstream, or gender-inclusive, the notion of Islamic Feminism had not been discussed. I wrote “Quran and Woman” in the end of the 1980s. In fact, many see the book as the beginning of female-centered exegesis of the Quran, which is an important part of what we now recognize analytically as Islamic feminism. Muslim women are not all interested in Islamic Feminism. Some of them are not even interested in being Muslim. For me, I have not had a problem with Islam so much as I had a problem with the way in which Islam is practiced. And that this kind of Islam can sometimes be aggressive against women’s full rights.

In your writings, you often refer to Christian and Jewish religious thinkers, among others Paul Tillich and Martin Buber. In your books “Quran and Woman” and “Inside the Gender Jihad” you defend pluralism, the freedom of opinion and the right to be different from an Islamic perspective. According to your writings, the Quran should be re-read from a gender perspective and in the light of its historical context. Yet, the Quran is considered to be eternal and unchangeable. How does that match?

I think that unless you have had a real connection with the Quran, you will not understand how it is a force in history as well as in spirit. You will not be able to understand that there is cooperation between the reader and the text. You will say that there is some flaw with methodology. But you have to understand that the readers can use the text for whatever they want, because there is a dynamic relationship between the text and the interpretation. The text is both created in time but also evolves beyond time.

Could you give an example of how that works in practice?

We are now participating in a global reform movement for a Muslim personal status law, and the very fundamental basis for that yields back to the egalitarian trajectory of the Quran. The Quran did not complete that in the context of the prophet’s lifetime. But the Quran is not usurped by even its own historical context. But some people have grown up in a culture where the Quran is used for a narrow and restrictive interpretation so they consider that interpretation the only interpretation. And that’s problematic from my perspective. My work has shown that the interpretation is never complete. Meaning is never fixed.

Martina Sabrais a freelance writer based in Germany. This abridged article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews). The full text can be found at www.qantara.de. Copyright permission is granted for publication.

[2] 

Published on Saturday, December 19, 2009 by Agence France Presse

LAAYOUNE, Morocco - Western Sahara independence activist Aminatou Haidar returned to the disputed Moroccan territory on Friday, more than a month after staging a hunger strike that led to a standoff with Rabat.

 

Western Saharan independence activist Aminatou Haidar rests at her home in Laayounne, in the disputed territory of Western Sahara December 18, 2009. (REUTERS/Stringer)

The 42-year-old mother of two launched her protest on November 16 at Lanzarote airport, in Spain’s Canary Islands, days after Moroccan authorities denied entry to her native Western Sahara.

 

She had been returning from a trip to the United States, where she had received the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Prize in New York.

As her health deteriorated and the affair turned into a stalemate between Madrid and Rabat, French President Nicolas Sarkozy intervened this week, asking Morocco to give Haidar a passport, the French presidency said late Thursday.

Haidar, who campaigns for the independence of Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony annexed by Morocco in 1975, was released late Thursday from hospital in Lanzarote, where she was admitted a day earlier at her own request, and taken to the airport for the flight home.

"This is a triumph for international law, for human rights, for international justice and for the cause" of Western Sahara, Haidar said in Lanzarote.

"The first thing I am going to do when I arrive will be to kiss my mother and my two children."

Her plane touched down shortly after midnight (0015 GMT) in Laayoune, the main city in Western Sahara.

Police said Haidar carried out entry requirements at the airport, stating on a form that she was "arriving in Morocco", before leaving in a car driven by her uncle.

The Moroccan foreign ministry confirmed Friday that Rabat had granted the request of "friendly countries and partners" for Haidar’s return to Laayoune but said it remained firm on "total respect for Moroccan law by everybody without exception and on the integrity of the national territory."

Haidar was accompanied on her flight home by her personal doctor, who looked after her during the first days of her hunger strike before she refused medical treatment.

She had insisted on continuing her hunger strike despite her admission to intensive care late on Wednesday.

The activist had turned down a Spanish offer of citizenship or political asylum, and vowed to return to Western Sahara "dead or alive, with or without my passport." Related article: US ‘pleased’ at return home

Morocco had barred her return, saying she had rejected her Moroccan nationality and passport, an account she has denied.

Morocco annexed the Western Sahara following the withdrawal of colonial power Spain in the dying days of the regime of right-wing dictator Francisco Franco, sparking a war with the Algeria-backed Polisario Front movement.

The two sides agreed a ceasefire in 1991, but UN-sponsored talks on its future have since made no headway.

Morocco has pledged to grant the phosphate-rich territory widespread autonomy, but rules out independence.

The United States is "pleased" with Morocco’s decision to readmit Haidar, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said.

"This humanitarian gesture is reflective of the true spirit and generosity of the Moroccan government and people, and underscores the urgency of finding a permanent solution to the Western Sahara conflict," she said.

© 2009 AFP