Ban on Burqa... here we go again!
Now they have banned
burqa in a college in
Hyderabad and have invited wrath of Muslim families... Phew! What the hell is wrong with these people? What the hell is wrong with us? Why are we constantly looking for something petty to do to cause someone some trouble, some anguish and... well, a lot of mayhem!
First of all, I wonder why nobody wants to know about the purdah system and only brands it as a practice which has to do with Islam... thank you, but no, thank you! It has nothing to do with being a Muslim. Read archives of this blog
here to know more about the rights of women in general and the purdah system in particular.
Coming back to my initial point, why are we so dissatisfied with a normal life? Why do we constantly look for things to upset the normal scheme of things? Oh God! Why can't we have mutual respect and some tolerance?
Won't it be so much better if we spent all this time trying to cement the bond between communities and creating harmony for all to live without the fear of being killed or discriminated against, for some reason or the other.
It is so very unfortunate that we behave like animals... they have reasons to kill each other because they are all different. But what's our problem? We are all the same... the same species, the same structure, the same living pattern and well, the same race as created by the almighty - human beings. Why can't we take that one common link and build on that rather than take umpteen number of points to distinguish and divide the one race God created.
We are divided in countries, cities, castes, races, colour, class, and of course religion. What a misfortune... that it does not end there... Christians are divided as Catholics and Protestants, Muslims as
Shia and Sunni, Hindus as various things actually... Brahman and
Kayast and what-not. And to top it all, comes in the language divide... wow... are we gifted with Math or what! We don't know how to build bridges to walk
up to each other and embrace the common link of humanity but we sure know how to disregard God's plan and walk all over each other to satisfy the egoistic urge to prove ourselves the better devotee... the better Muslim, the better Hindu and so on...
What exactly are we doing? Labelling each individual? Moving towards a day when each and every person will stand alone and say I'm right... with no one to second the opinion... or worse... no one to even hear him say that
coz everyone will be busy saying their own thing. Better prepare for this eventuality...
coz its not very far.
God help the
burqa clad women and their cause in
Hyderabad... but I wish, sincerely, that at least education institutes were removed from such petty politics.
Finally!
Finally I'm back... and this time... I do intend to stick around for good. Interestingly, I had been toying with the idea of returning to this platform for a few days now and even wrote another post (but had to save it for completion for some reason) for the same. However, I keep that aside to come back with a good piece of news. In fact it is what drove me to write today. So here I go.
This morning, when I opened the paper, I was expecting the usual dope on crime, politics,
Rahul Gandhi,
Hanif Sayyed's conviction etc. etc., however, I was pleasantly surprised to see a front page item in
TOI captioned 'Bigamy (actually its
Polygamy) against spirit of Islam, says law panel'. Aha!! What a joyous moment for me! Finally... I mean finally someone took a closer look and figured out the true nature of this much misunderstood concept.
Read more about what Islam says about Polygamy
hereThe Law Commission has come to understand that the concept of polygamy conflicts with the true spirit of Islam and the traditional understanding of the Muslim law on the same is gravely faulty. Well, its such a relief that this concept can no longer be twisted and used by cheap, ill-intentioned men to justify a second marriage. A case in point can be the trashy 'love-saga' between the convert-to-Islam
Chand Mohammad and
Fiza. An
embarassment for Islam and for human beings in general. Lets hope this observation of the Law Commission serves as a wake-up call to the million of people who try to take advantage of the general ignorance towards the
'Shariah'. As unfortunate as it is, Muslims have always misrepresented Islam and one can't really blame others for misconstruing any idea or concept laid down by Islam.
However, speaking of Shariah, it is interesting to note that polygamy is the only concept that one may find worthy of criticism in the law that governs the Muslims over the world. There is no other angle, and I say that with absolute knowledge, there is is no other angle in the whole of the Shariah that one can criticise for the sake of being outdated or irrelevant or unjust.
In fact, I would suggest that in the absence of any other code of conduct, why don't we actually adopt the 'shariah' as the uniform civil law of the country. For the well read it will come as no surprise that until 1807, the criminal law of the land was as laid out in Islam. Yes, the British were astute enough to follow 'Islam's way' to deal with crime. So why don't we take it up to govern the country. And before anyone takes offence or thinks that I am biased, let me make this very clear that it is not communally motivated and is a simple suggestion for uniform governance of the people of the country. Rest, obviously, is for the people in power to decide.
But coming back to where we started, I'm really happy that some bit of fog has been lifted and people may get a better view of Islam on this concept at least.
Until next time...
