Sikhs and Homeland Security

Sikhs Appeal to Department of Homeland Security

One of the most cherished values of our nation is "liberty and justice for all". Sometimes, we overlook what liberty really means and step on it occassionally. We hope Michael Chertoff will consider the new law that contradicts this principle and he will get the people involved in he decision, that which affects them.

Please read the petition below and sign your name to support, yet another appeal to repeal the law that undermines our liberty.

Mike Ghouse, President
Foundation For Pluralism & World Muslim Congress
2665 Villa Creek Dr, Suite 206
Dallas, TX 75234
http://www.foundationforpluralism.com/
________________________________________

Stop Religious Profiling in US Airports

Michael Chertoff
Secretary of Homeland Security
U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Washington, D.C. 20528

Dear Secretary Chertoff,

We are writing to you because we are very concerned about a recent policy shift in screening procedures for the Sikh turban in United States airports. It is our understanding that on August 4, 2007, the Transportation Security Administration ("TSA") changed a longstanding policy on security screenings, recommending that passengers with turbans be pulled aside for secondary searches. This means that millions of Sikh travelers will be singled out based on their religious practice, violating the spirit of religious pluralism that is a founding principle of this country.

We request that you meet with representatives of the Sikh community and other concerned communities to resolve our concerns. We want to work with TSA to develop a policy that will balance the nation's security concerns with the civil rights of those who wear religious headdresses.

As you may be aware, Sikhs are required to wear turbans as an article of their faith. The turban, worn over unshorn hair, signifies a Sikhs' commitment to God, justice and to uphold the principles of her faith. Touching a Sikh's turban is a significant affront to her religious practice. In its new policy, the TSA equates searching turbans to searching a cowboy hat or a beret. This is unacceptable. A turban is a form of religious garb, not a fashion statement.

TSA officials have admitted that the new policy, which specifically cites turbans as an example of headwear that could be used to conceal "threat items," was not thoroughly researched. Nobody responsible for this policy thought it necessary to familiarize themselves with the turban, or even confirm that a "threat item" could indeed be hidden in a turban. Nevertheless, without consulting the concerned communities, and with minimal guidance offered to their TSA screeners, the TSA's new procedures were implemented nationwide.

The TSA has also kept the new screening procedures a secret. This leaves affected communities without a meaningful opportunity to comment upon the policy, or understand how their religious practice may be affected when flying. In addition, the policy on its face is vague and gives screeners unwarranted discretion to engage in possible religious profiling. According to over two dozen reports received by the Sikh Coalition so far, it is clear that TSA field officers nationwide are interpreting the new procedures broadly to target Sikh turbans. This religious profiling also puts an official stamp of approval on the public's stereotyping of Sikhs, Muslims, Arabs and South Asians as terrorists.

Again, we request that you take up this matter urgently, and meet with our community groups to resolve the concerns raised by this new policy. While we fully appreciate the Department of Homeland Security's need to protect our citizens, the practical implementation of this policy means that screeners are conducting religious profiling. We strongly encourage the TSA and the Department of Homeland Security to reconsider their implementation of these new procedures.

We thank you for your immediate consideration of this matter, and look forward to receiving your response.

Sincerely,

The Sikh Coalition, undersigned co-sponsors and concerned citizens worldwide

Please click the following link and do the needful:
http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/1607/t/380/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=304

Co-sponsors

Asian American Justice Center
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC)
Coalition for Asian American Children and Families (CACF)
Darbar-e-Khalsa
Greater New York Labor-Religion Coalition
Guru Gobind Singh Foundation, Maryland
International Institute for Gurmat Studies
Legal Access Network for South Asians
Sikh Council on Religion and Education
South Asian American Leaders of Tomorrow (SAALT)
World Muslim Congress
Foundation for Pluralism
___________________________________________

From: Neha Singh [mailto:]
Sent: Friday, August 24, 2007 1:29 PM
To: Amardeep Singh
Subject: Your Help is Needed: Sign on as a Co-Sponsor By Noon Sunday

Dear Friends,

We are writing to request that you sign on to the attached petition letter to DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, expressing our opposition to the TSA’s new headwear screening policy that effectively requires TSA screeners to conduct mandatory secondary screenings of all religious turbans.

The TSA’s new procedures reflect a reversal of longstanding policy that allowed for religious turbans to be screened only if they indicated a potential threat. The new policy is unacceptable because

1) it specifically lists the turban as an example of headwear that can be subjected to secondary screening at the discretion of the screener;

2) the new procedure and guidance on how to implement them have been kept a secret;

3) the procedures (given the limited information on them released to the public) are disturbingly vague;

4) the new procedures were created without consulting any Sikhs or Sikh organizations.

Thank you to those of you who have already reached out for us. Please let me know as soon as possible, preferably by noon on Sunday, August 26, 2007, whether your organization will sign on to the petition as a co-sponsor. If you have any questions or comments, you can reach me at the number below

Please also send out the link to our petition to your respective email lists and/or relevant listservs. The petition is available online at

http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/1607/t/380/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=304

If you’d like further information, please see the update and community advisory attached below.

Thank you all for your support at this difficult time.

Kind regards,

Neha Singh

Advocacy Director / Staff Attorney
The Sikh Coalition
40 Exchange Place, Suite 728
New York, NY 10005
Ph: 212.655.3095 (ext. 84)
Fax: 212.208.4611
www.sikhcoalition.org
To learn more about the Sikh Coalition, watch: http://alsolikelife.blip.tv/file/17779

Policy Update:

Here’s what we know about the TSA’s new screening procedures for religious headwear: Our meeting with TSA officials in Washington, D.C. yesterday was very troubling. We were told that the TSA’s new policy, intended to target “non-metallic threat items,” allows individual screeners to decide whether they believe someone’s headdress may be able to conceal such an item. That means that 43,000 individuals nationwide who are charged with our security, but have very little idea of what goes under a turban or how to pat it down, now have the right to freely profile everyone that walks through a metal detector with something on their head in US airports. Whether or not a metal detector sounds an alarm, we are told, is irrelevant. Individual TSOs have the right to pull aside anyone with headgear that they think is suspiciously spacious.

Even more outrageous is that the official guidelines accompanying the new policy explicitly cite Sikh turbans as an example of something that could hide a threat item. When asked, the Assistant General Manager of the TSA’s Office of Security Operations admitted that nobody in his office had actually checked whether something could be hidden inside a turban. By leaving community groups out of the decision-making process, the TSA chose to forego adequately researching their new policy. In addition, no cultural sensitivity training has been provided on the topic; no safeguards have been implemented to ensure that this policy achieves its purpose without infringing on anyone’s civil rights. Since the language of the policy is still a secret, we have no idea how broadly it will be interpreted, and whether it can also be expanded to include hijabs, skullcaps or other forms of religious headdress.

While the TSA went to great lengths to explain that the policy is not a mandatory pat-down, but allows for screener discretion, officials seemed oblivious to the fact that in practice, they had just given their employees the right to profile anyone they choose. According to dozens of reports received by our office, TSA officers around the country are implementing this as a mandatory turban pat-down procedure. Saying that religious turbans are an example of something that could contain a terrorist weapon also acts as an official stamp of approval on the turban = terrorist assumption that so many people already make about Sikhs. Not to mention the fact that non-metallic items can be hidden anywhere else on the body as well – your trouser pockets, under your t-shirts, or in your socks. Why then target people for wearing cloth on their heads instead of patting down anyone in a pair of pants?

I’ve also attached below a copy of the advisory we sent to community members yesterday, informing them of what we learned at the meeting.


From: The Sikh Coalition [mailto:updates@sikhcoalition.org]
Sent: Wednesday, August 22, 2007 8:36 PM
To: pritpal@sikhcoalition.org
Subject: TSA Confirms New Airport Turban Search Policy

http://wisdomofreligion.blogspot.com/2007/08/appeal-to-homeland-security.html

India - Bombing Chronology

Chronology of Major bombings in India

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-India-Bombings-Glance.html
Some major bombings in India:

-- Aug. 25, 2007: Bombs rip through crowded public areas in the southern city of Hyderabad, killing at least 42 people.

-- May 2007: A bomb at a historic Hyderabad mosque kills 11 people.

-- February 2007: Bombs detonate on train headed through northern India for Pakistan, killing 68 people.

-- September 2006: At least 30 people are killed and 100 injured in twin blasts at a mosque in Malegaon in western India.

-- July 2006: Seven bombs on Mumbai commuter trains kill more than 200 and injure more than 700 others.

-- March 2006: Twin bombings at a train station and a temple in the Hindu holy city of Varanasi kill 20 people. Kashmiri militants are blamed.

-- October 2005: Three bombs placed in busy New Delhi markets one day before a major Hindu festival kill 62 people and wound hundreds. India blames Kashmiri militants.

-- August 2003: Two taxis packed with explosives blow up outside a Mumbai tourist attraction and a busy market, killing 52 and wounding more than 100.

-- March 1993: Muslim underworld figures tied to Pakistani militants allegedly carry out a series of bombings on Mumbai's stock exchange along with trains, hotels and gas stations in the city, killing 257 people and wounding more than 1,100.

Struggle for soul of Pakistan

Struggle for Soul of Pakistan

National Geographic By Don Belt - Photographs by Reza

http://worldmuslimcongress.blogspot.com/2007/08/struggle-for-soul-of-pakistan.html
http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0709/pakistan/pakistan-p2.html
Map: http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0709/pakistan/photography-map.html

The nation's efforts to straddle the fault line between moderate and militant Islam offer a cautionary tale for the post-9/11 world.

If there is an address, an exact location for the rift tearing Pakistan apart, and possibly the world, it is a spot 17 miles (28 kilometers) west of Islamabad called the Margalla Pass. Here, at a limestone cliff in the middle of Pakistan, the mountainous west meets the Indus River Valley, and two ancient, and very different, civilizations collide. To the southeast, unfurled to the horizon, lie the fertile lowlands of the Indian subcontinent, realm of peasant farmers on steamy plots of land, bright with colors and the splash of serendipitous gods. To the west and north stretch the harsh, windswept mountains of Central Asia, land of herders and raiders on horseback, where man fears one God and takes no prisoners.

This is also where two conflicting forms of Islam meet: the relatively relaxed and tolerant Islam of India, versus the rigid fundamentalism of the Afghan frontier. Beneath the surface of Pakistan, these opposing forces grind against each other like two vast geologic plates, rattling teacups from Lahore to London, Karachi to New York. The clash between moderates and extremists in Pakistan today reflects this rift, and can be seen as a microcosm for a larger struggle among Muslims everywhere. So when the earth trembles in Pakistan, the world pays attention.

Travel 8,000 miles (13,000 kilometers) across this troubled country, as I did recently, and it becomes obvious that, 60 years after its founding, Pakistan still occupies unsettled ground. Traumatized by multiple wars with India, a parade of military strongmen (including the current president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf), and infighting among ethnic groups—Punjabi, Sindhi, Baluchi, Pashtun—Pakistan's 165 million people have never fully united as one nation, despite being 97 percent Muslim. To hold the country together, successive governments have spent billions on the military, creating a pampered and self-serving monolith of mostly Punjabi generals while neglecting the basic needs of the people, for justice, health, education, security, and hope. Lately, these grievances have spilled onto the streets, as lawyers and other opponents challenge Pakistan's military government and demand a return to civilian, democratic rule. Meanwhile, six years after 9/11, the forces of Islamic radicalism are gaining strength and challenging Pakistan's moderate majority for the soul of the country.

It's not just the surging homegrown Taliban, which in one two-week period this year scorched and bloodied the streets of half a dozen cities with suicide bombs. Or the al Qaeda fighters who prowl the western mountains of Waziristan, butchering anyone suspected of being an American spy. Just as chilling are the "night letters" posted on public buildings, warning that all girls, upon threat of death, must wear head-to-toe burkas and stop attending school. Or, in a rising tide of intimidation, the murders of teachers and doctors and human rights workers accused of "crimes against Islam." But perhaps the most telling evidence of all was my encounter with a 22-year-old woman named Umme Ayman, who seemed all too eager to die.

I CANNOT SEE HER FACE, or even her eyes, but I can tell you that Ayman is an impressive young woman. She wears glasses under a black veil and speaks in short, eruptive bursts of English that sound like well-rehearsed lines in a school play. She and a group of 200 female religious students have taken over a public children's library in Islamabad. They are protesting the destruction of mosques run by radical clerics that the government says were built without permits. Riot police, bristling with sidearms and batons, have encircled the library and ordered the students to leave. But Ayman is in no mood to listen.

"We are not terrorists," she says. "We are students. We wish to spread Islam over all the world. If America wants to end Islam, then we are prepared to die defending our faith. We have said our goodbyes." Ayman and the other women sit around the library's circular tables in tiny chairs meant for children. Amid shelves lined with children's storybooks, they have posted signs reading "Allah is for Muslims, not infidels." Across the street, their parents have been holding an anxious vigil for weeks.

"Our fate is with Allah," Ayman says, as other protesters gather around, "but if the government grants our demands, there will be no problem." And what are those demands? "To rebuild the mosques and to make Pakistan an Islamic state." Half a dozen veiled heads bob in agreement.

From the start, the founders of Pakistan intended their nation to be a refuge for Muslims, not an Islamic state. Pakistan was created when India, a British colony for nearly a hundred years, gained its independence and was partitioned into two countries along a hastily drawn border. Pakistan's first leader, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, and his brain trust of secular intellectuals created a fledgling democracy that gave Islam a cultural, rather than political, role in national life. Their Pakistan was to be a model of how Islam, merged with democratic ideals, could embrace the modern world. "Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense," Jinnah said in his inaugural address, but "as citizens of the state."

Sixty years later, having been educated in schools that teach mainly the Koran, the young women in the library are stunned when I mention Jinnah's secular vision for Pakistan. "That is a lie," Ayman says, her voice shaking with fury. "Everyone knows Pakistan was created as an Islamic state, according to the will of Allah. Where did you read this thing?" Such is the certainty of Pakistan's Islamists, whose loud assertions give them political influence far beyond their numbers.

The women may be on the front lines of this protest, but it's clear the clerics in the mosque next door are calling the shots. The children's library is a few yards from one of the most radical mosques in Pakistan, Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, which has posted dozens of lean young jihadists in black turbans around the library, brandishing swords, staffs, axes, and AK-47s. The men from the mosque include pro-Taliban clerics and Javed Ibrahim Paracha, a bearded, heavyset former member of parliament who has been dubbed "al Qaeda's lawyer" for successfully representing several hundred jihadists captured in Pakistan after 9/11. He explains what emboldens these young women to risk their lives for Islam: "This government has lost all credibility," he says. "People look at Musharraf and they see a U.S. puppet who's willing to declare war on fellow Muslims to satisfy America. They also see his generals getting rich, while they're getting poorer every day. People are losing hope. Pakistan and its government are becoming two different things. This will have to change, and soon."

A week later, the standoff comes to an apparent end after the government backs down and agrees to start rebuilding the mosques. The children's library is stripped of all books deemed un-Islamic, and the students take over. In the capital, a mere ten minutes' drive from the presidential palace, the Islamists have won. (Months later, as this story goes to press, the government finally stormed the Red Mosque and killed scores of militants. Umme Ayman survived.)

More than anyone, it was General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq who created Pakistan's current generation of Islamic radicals, and the climate in which they thrive. A Punjabi general with a pencil-thin mustache and raccoon circles under his eyes, Zia seized power in a coup in 1977, had the democratically elected prime minister tried and hanged, and promptly pressed for the Islamization of Pakistan, calling for more religion in the classroom and the use of punishments such as flogging and amputations for crimes against Islam. To Zia, Pakistan's secular founders, with their emphasis on Muslim culture, had it exactly backward. "We were created on the basis of Islam," Zia said, and he set out to remake democratic Pakistan as a strict Islamic state—despite the fact that a large majority of Pakistanis were, and remain, moderates.

Whether by temperament or tradition, most Pakistani Muslims are more comfortable with the mystical and ecstatic rituals of Barelvi Islam, a colorful blend of Indian Islamic practice and Sufism. For a Punjabi farmer whose crop has just come in, it has always been more satisfying to hang out at a Sufi shrine listening to qawwali music and watching dervishes whirl than reciting the Koran in a fundamentalist mosque. Most Pakistanis, though powerless to resist, were lukewarm to Zia's Islamization program, as was much of the outside world.

That all changed in December 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded neighboring Afghanistan, driving hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees—mainly conservative Pashtun tribesmen—across the border into Pakistan. Within months Zia's Islamist dream got a huge boost: The United States and Saudi Arabia joined Pakistan in a covert alliance to supply arms, training, and billions of dollars to an anti-Soviet insurgency in Afghanistan. The motto of Zia's army—Jihad in the Service of Allah—became a rallying cry for thousands of mujahideen training in camps funded by the CIA in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province. Over time, Zia's agenda, and that of the United States, became indistinguishable: If Zia wanted to Islamize Pakistan while mobilizing support for the anti-Soviet jihad, all the more power to him. Besides, the fundamentalist madrassas of northwestern Pakistan made excellent recruiting centers for mujahideen—young fighters who saw the struggle against the Soviets as a holy war.

During the 1980s, as the mujahideen prevailed against the Soviets in Afghanistan, the winds of extremism blowing from the northwest began to chill all of Pakistan. Millions of dollars from Saudi Arabia flowed into the hard-line Sunni madrassas clustered along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, which eventually spread across Pakistan. Not all Pakistani madrassas today are fundamentalist or radical. Some are shoestring operations run by moderate clerics to meet the educational needs of the poor. But the majority—more than 60 percent—are affiliated with the fundamentalist Deobandi sect, an austere interpretation of Islam that calls for a rejection of modernity and a return to the "pure," seventh-century Islam of the Prophet Muhammad. Politically savvy and extremely well funded, more than 10,000 of these schools operate across Pakistan today, compared with fewer than 1,000 before General Zia took power. Thousands more operate unofficially.

By the time Zia died in a mysterious 1988 plane crash, the Islamization of Pakistan was well under way. The following year, the Soviet Union, preoccupied with its own implosion, pulled its demoralized troops from Afghanistan. The U.S. promptly declared victory and returned home, leaving the Afghan people to the chaotic rule of the mujahideen warlords. One crucial chapter in the story of radical Islam's ascendancy had come to a close. The one we are still living had just begun. Osama bin Laden and other leaders of the Afghan jihad now moved freely in and out of northwestern Pakistan and its Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The madrassas swelled with the children of the Zia Generation. In the rugged mountainous land shared by Afghanistan and Pakistan, the seeds of the Taliban, and al Qaeda, had been sown.

"YES, THERE ARE EXTREMISTS here," says Pakistani novelist Mohsin Hamid. "But they are a small minority in a nation of 165 million people. Most of us want nothing to do with violence." This is true. But like moderates everywhere, those in Pakistan have a hard time being heard over the racket rising up from their streets and television sets, a raucous soundtrack of religious sermonizing, Indo-Pakistani saber rattling, and a general gnashing of teeth that passes for public discourse. Ordinary people are also stifled by a government and police force that are among the most corrupt in the world, led by an army that answers to no one. But it is a measure of the country's underlying goodness, and a sign of hope, that 60 years after independence the most revered figure in Pakistan is not a mullah or a sports hero, but a 79-year-old man who routinely washes dried blood off dead bodies and fishes his clothes from a donation barrel.

Abdul Sattar Edhi began serving his fellow citizens a few years after the founding of Pakistan, when he opened a free clinic in Karachi. Later he bought a dented Hillman station wagon, its blue paint peeling, and turned it into Pakistan's first private ambulance. He shuttled poor people to medical care and collected the bodies of the city's homeless from the gutters, washed them, and gave them a proper burial. "I felt it was my duty as a human being," he says, recalling the revulsion he learned to overcome. "It was obvious the government wasn't going to do it."

Decades later, that hasn't changed. While the military accounts for a quarter of the national budget, less than 3 percent is spent on education, health, and public welfare. And so Edhi still tends to Pakistan's dirty work, body by body. His one-man charity is now an acclaimed international foundation. His single, beat-up old station wagon has grown into a fleet of 1,380 little white ambulances positioned across Pakistan, tended by thousands of volunteers. They are usually first to arrive on the scene of any tragedy. In May 2002, when police found the remains of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter murdered in Karachi, it was Edhi who gently collected the body parts, all ten, and took Daniel Pearl to the morgue.

Edhi was born in the Indian town of Bantva, 250 miles (400 kilometers) from Mumbai. As a teenager, he'd gone with his father to hear Jinnah, the tall, gaunt, visionary founder of Pakistan, deliver a speech urging local Muslims to join him in the new country. At first his father hesitated. But during partition, when Hindu mobs began marauding nearby, the family joined the more than 14 million people from both countries—Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs—who fled their homes and crossed to the other side of the line. As many as a million people died in sectarian riots, massacres, and killings along the way.

Edhi's family came by ship, landing on September 6, 1947, three weeks after Pakistan came into being, amid throngs of people shouting "Pakistan zindabad—long live Pakistan!" Within an hour, as he walked the streets of his new home, he saw a Hindu man murdered by a mob of young Muslim boys. "They stabbed him over and over with a knife, and I'll never forget watching him writhe in pain on the ground. All over Karachi, Hindus were packing up and running away, exactly as we'd done in India. Just like that, our joy turned to horror and shame. That's what I remember about partition."

Edhi's adopted city of Karachi has grown from a population of 450,000 in 1947 to a surging metropolis of more than 15 million people. It may be the most cosmopolitan of Pakistan's cities, but it is among the most dangerous as well—a place where Pakistan's widening gap between rich and poor is on full display. Karachi is a sprawling universe of ramshackle neighborhoods that radiate north, west, and east from the glitzy seaside hotels, office towers, and diplomatic fortresses downtown, where car bombs are an occupational hazard and personal security a billion-dollar-a-year business. Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups are known to operate in the squalid "no go" neighborhoods of Karachi, beyond the reach of police and perhaps even Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan's powerful military intelligence agency.

In the middle of all this sits Edhi, a dignified man wearing a gray shalwar kameez (Pakistan's national dress) and a furry black cap in the style Jinnah wore—a fitting touch in a man who describes himself as a "super patriot." In a neighborhood of litter-strewn streets, Edhi's headquarters is a cluttered office that adjoins the two small rooms where he lives with his wife, Bilquis, his partner in the foundation. Edhi's operation relies on donations; he refuses to accept government money or even a ride in someone else's car. He travels by ambulance, in case someone needs help along the way. Outside Edhi's office, a metal crib is stationed on the stairway beneath a sign reading, "Don't Kill Your Baby." Every Edhi Foundation office in the country has such a crib, where a mother can leave an unwanted baby, no questions asked. Edhi's Karachi office alone receives 90 babies a month, half of them alive.

Today a young nurse in a head scarf brings in a newborn left in the crib overnight, a girl wrapped in a soft floral blanket, perhaps four days old, her arms and legs shrunken and disfigured. The nurse places her on Edhi's desk, like a gift. He picks up the infant and gently strokes her malformed hands with his finger, whispering to her in Gujarati, his native language, his long gray beard tickling her nose. As this little girl grows, she'll be given medical care in one of the foundation's clinics, sheltered in its orphanage, educated in one of its schools, and sent forth into a carefully arranged marriage with job skills and a dowry. Edhi has given away hundreds of brides at the foundation's wedding facility, a cross between a Bollywood set and the Elvis Suite at a Las Vegas hotel, with a bed in the shape of a heart. A bulletin board in the lobby is filled with dozens of wedding pictures, each happy bride a miracle child plucked from Edhi's rescue cradle.

Despite his selfless deeds, Edhi is often attacked as "un-Islamic" by Pakistan's hard-line mullahs, who cite his policy on infidels. He has none. Edhi never asks whether an abandoned child, a psychiatric patient, a dead person, or a battered woman is Sunni or Shiite, Hindu or Christian—or, for that matter, Punjabi or Sindhi, Baluchi or Pashtun, Mohajir or Kashmiri. "I'm a Muslim," says Edhi, "but my true religion is human rights."

In modern Pakistan, that's an increasingly lonely position. There are many thousands of dedicated doctors, lawyers, teachers, social workers, and humanitarians—including some in government—who, like Edhi, are working to move their country forward, but the space in which they operate is shrinking. Recently, at Musharraf's bidding, parliament passed a bill to restrict the activities of NGOs and human rights groups. Even as he promotes "enlightened moderation," Musharraf accuses such groups of humiliating Pakistan by publicizing abuses, and declares them a threat to the national interest.

Such rhetoric only emboldens the Islamists, whose influence is growing across Pakistan. Edhi gets half a dozen death threats a week, ranging from crank calls to serious warnings that made him temporarily flee the country. Religious militants harass his offices—a campaign orchestrated, Edhi believes, by Pakistan's Islamist political parties, which compete with him for financial support. A few years ago, a new Edhi Foundation hospital, which cost three million dollars to build, was taken over by students from a radical madrassa north of Karachi. Intimidated by the mullahs, the police refused to act on Edhi's complaint, and his hospital is now a dormitory, with student laundry—black turbans favored by the Taliban—flapping from the windows, like flags over conquered territory.

HIGHWAYS IN PAKISTAN are a kind of national theater, in which throngs of people, nearly all men, hunker down on the roadside like spectators at a cockfight, keenly observing all that passes with an air of amused expectation. Stop along the roadway for a cup of tea, and you hear things. You hear people talk about chronic injustice. They tell stories of people losing their land, their lives, their honor, with no recourse. It is easy to think they exaggerate. And then you meet someone else who changes your mind.

A girl called Najma, who is 16, speaks in a cautious monotone, and it is difficult to know, after what happened, whether she will ever speak naturally again. She still wears the delicate ring in her nose that signifies her virginity. On this day she also wears a pink head scarf wrapped around her face, pretty and round with high cheekbones and wide-set eyes, though now they are dull and without expression, like a captive. She sits next to her mother on the bed where the incident occurred and tries to talk without crying.

Two weeks ago, at one in the morning, five men, maybe six, burst through the door of the family's mud-brick home, which sits on a tiny plot of land in the village of Nizampur in southern Punjab. They identified themselves as police and said they were searching for weapons. One held a pistol to her mother's chest while another pinned her nine-year-old brother, Rizwan, to the floor. And then two men held Najma down on the bed while a third raped her.

The leader masked his face with a scarf, her mother says, but she recognized the raspy voice of their neighbor, a police constable, who lives 200 yards (180 meters) away and wants the plot of wheat that Najma's family moved here to farm as tenants 40 years ago. According to the complaint Najma's father filed with the police, the attack resulted from his refusal to vacate the land. After the rape, the men spent a few minutes ransacking the house. As they left, they delivered a warning: Leave this place, or we'll be back for your other daughter.

Rashid Rehman is a veteran human rights lawyer who volunteered to represent Najma for the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. Rape is epidemic in parts of the country, Rehman says, where it is used as a barbaric instrument of tribal justice; a village might punish a husband's adultery, for example, by gang-raping his wife. Najma's case is typical in southern Punjab, he says, where the British rewarded their local allies with grants of land and autonomy; after partition, these feudal landlords became a law unto themselves. In their world, rape is a tool of intimidation wielded by powerful, politically connected landowners to terrorize peasants, to scare them off their land. If a family doesn't comply, Rehman says, they are often killed. "Who's going to stop them?" he asks.

In this case, he says, the family did everything right. They went to the police the next morning and sought medical help for Najma. She was examined by a doctor, who submitted a medical report confirming the rape. But the local police, who are of the same clan as the constable, refused to file charges. Incensed, Rehman appealed to officials in the nearby town of Khanewal.

Najma shows great dignity for a brutalized teenager. Today, as Rehman heads off to hear the outcome of the appeal, she asks for one last word. "I don't know what my life will be in the future," she tells him quietly, "but I'm ready to face my attackers in public and demand justice for what they did." Of the rapist, she says, "He must be hanged. He must."

At the police station in Khanewal, Rehman meets first with the acting superintendent, a stocky man in aviator glasses with a black baton in his hand and a portrait of Jinnah hanging behind his desk. As Rehman briefs him, the superintendent glances nervously at the six large men in plainclothes, intelligence types, who sit against the far wall, sipping tea. The superintendent takes a few notes, makes a phone call, hangs up. He turns his baton over and over. Finally, the phone rings. Long conversation. He hangs up and says that the forensic evidence in Najma's case has been, unfortunately, misplaced. Rehman asks to see the supervisor.

The afternoon light fades from gold to gray as Rehman waits in another empty office. The electricity is out—yet another rolling blackout. Finally, the police inspector, a Mr. Khan, arrives and pulls up a battered chair. Wearing a shalwar kameez the color of old mustard, Khan is a rangy, loose-limbed speed-talker with a cigarette-scorched voice. He has studied Najma's case in detail, he says, and he's sure what he's about to say will please Rehman, since it will resolve the legal issues once and for all. He pauses, as if waiting for a drumroll.

Najma is lying, he announces, to protect her father from a previous charge of having assaulted the police constable. (Her father is a small, defeated man pushing 70, who can barely walk.) The medical evidence, Khan continues, reveals Najma to be a "habitual fornicator," based on certain measurements he is not at liberty to divulge. To conduct his investigation, he says, he personally traveled to the village and interviewed "60 or 90 people in the village mosque." All declared the police constable incapable of committing such a crime. The case, he says, is closed. It is dark by the time Rehman pulls away from the police station, musing on what will happen to Najma's family. "If they don't leave immediately, they will be in danger," he says. "The constable could send men to rape the other sister, or to rape Najma again. Or he might kill them all, to make an example of them or to punish them for going to the police."

It was a similar lawlessness that drove the people of Afghanistan into the arms of the Taliban in the mid-1990s. The country was then in the midst of a civil war and run by warlords, who grew rich on the opium trade, terrorized the countryside, and seized the lands and daughters of any poor farmer they chose. One day near Kandahar, a mullah and former mujahideen commander named Mohammad Omar said enough was enough. With the Koran in one hand and a Kalashnikov in the other, he rallied his students, or taliban, and launched a new jihad: to cleanse Afghanistan of lawlessness and corruption. Backed by Pakistan, the Taliban triumphed in 1996, took Kabul, and imposed their own extreme vision of Islamic law. Ordinary Afghans, at first, regarded the Taliban's dictates as a small price to pay for an end to civil war.

Rashid Rehman hears stories such as Najma's and fears what lies ahead for Pakistan. In the car on his way back to his office in the Punjabi city of Multan, he sits in the dark, looking out the window at the feeble lights of passing villages. When he speaks, he is calm and clear. "When government fails them, people get angry," he says. "They lose faith in the system and look for alternatives. Think how easy it would be for the Islamists—or Taliban or al Qaeda—to go to the brothers of this girl now and say, 'What happened to your family is not justice. This man dishonored your sister, he dishonored your father and your family name. Join us and we will help you get justice. We will make him pay.' When citizens are denied their basic human rights, they become radicalized. When people are powerless, they are easily manipulated. This is what worries me the most."

MY NEW FRIENDS want to know why Americans think they are terrorists. It's a good question, and an innocent one, judging by the young and open faces of the dozen or so students sharing their evening meal with me. They don't look like terrorists as they sit in a semicircle on green mats in the courtyard of Jamia Uloom-ul-Quran, a small Deobandi madrassa located in a historic downtown mosque in Peshawar. This provincial capital served as headquarters for the Afghan resistance against the Soviets, and jihad is still a going concern here. A block away from the madrassa, at shops selling shoes and used clothes, I'd bought a 50-cent al Qaeda DVD of a suicide bomber preparing for a mission. At the end of the disc, over religious music, the bomber is shown in his car at a distant crossroads, blowing up a convoy. "We know that shop," the students say. "But we're not terrorists."

A few of the students appear to be ten or younger, but most are in their late teens or early 20s. They say their dream for Pakistan is "a peaceful nation, in which justice prevails, in keeping with Islamic law." But they believe, as many here do, that Islam is under attack. By America, by the West, by India, by their own government. Under these circumstances, they say, jihad is justified. What about suicide bombing? Is it sanctioned by Islam? "You must think we have classes here in making bombs or AK-47s!" exclaims one boy, and they all laugh.

"In any Muslim land that's occupied, suicide bombing is allowed," says a personable older boy named Rafiullah, who has bright brown eyes and the beginnings of a beard. A few mention Iraq and Palestine as places where such bombings are justified. Another boy mentions Afghanistan. "But it's not allowed in Pakistan," Rafiullah says, "since we're not an occupied country." ("Not yet!" somebody else interjects, to laughter.) "Nobody has a right to blow you up, even if you're a non-Muslim, or an infidel. If you are here as a guest, you are welcome." He reaches to shake my hand, as if to reassure me.

The call for jihad is rising across Pakistan, but it is here, in the northwest, that the Islamists are taking control. Ever since 9/11, thousands of Taliban fighters have found refuge among their fellow Pashtun tribesmen in Peshawar, Quetta, and the mountainous tribal areas along the Afghan border, especially North and South Waziristan. A year ago this month, the government agreed to a cease-fire with the tribes and abandoned most of North Waziristan to the militants. It's a sign of the local Taliban's strength that the agreement was signed not by tribal elders but by Taliban commanders.

Pakistan's turnabout on the Taliban, which it had strongly supported since 1994, came shortly after 9/11. When Afghanistan's Taliban government, which had sheltered Osama bin Laden, disintegrated under the firestorm meted out by the United States and its coalition partners, President Musharraf confronted a stark choice: Cooperate or suffer the consequences. He immediately sided with the U.S. against the Taliban. It was not a popular decision. Today, Pakistan is under pressure to contain the Taliban and al Qaeda to the tribal areas along the Afghan border, although it's clear that they're gaining in other parts of Pakistan. Many Deobandi madrassas are believed to have an al Qaeda recruiter on the premises. But Muhammad Hanif Jalandhry, who runs a madrassa in Multan, says the reputation of Pakistan's madrassas as factories for terrorists is "propaganda. I tell you, it's the oppressive system we live under that's bringing people to these seminaries. People are seeking refuge and security—and dignity. They are seeking a future."

About a third of the students at the Deobandi madrassa in Peshawar, for instance, are poor kids from far-flung regions of the North-West Frontier Province or the tribal areas. They are like Mir Rahman, 16, a sweet-faced boy from a family of poor herders in the Mohmand Tribal Area. The family lives miles from the nearest public school, which is so badly run that few kids attend. It's not unusual in Pakistan to hear of public schools that receive no books, no supplies, and no subsidies from the government. Thousands more are "ghost schools" that exist only on paper, to line the pockets of phantom teachers and administrators. Faced with choosing between bad public schools and expensive private ones, many poor parents send their children to the madrassas, where they get a roof over their heads, three meals a day, and a Koran-based education—for free.

Pervez Hoodbhoy lives every day with the consequences of the lack of public education in Pakistan. An MIT-trained professor of nuclear physics at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, he was speaking to a graduate-level class in physics a few days after the huge earthquake that devastated Kashmir in 2005, describing the geophysical forces that produced the disaster. "When I finished, hands shot up all over the room," he recalls. "'Professor, you are wrong,' my students said. 'That earthquake was the wrath of God.' "

This, he says, is the legacy of General Zia-ul-Haq, whose education ministry issued guidelines on bringing an Islamic perspective to science and other subjects in the public schools. "The Zia Generation has come of age," he says. "It isn't Islamic to teach that earthquakes are caused by the movement of tectonic plates. Instead, you are supposed to say, by the will of Allah, an earthquake happens." Today a government commission is working to modernize education, but "it goes deeper than updating textbooks," he says. "It's a matter of changing society."

A few miles from Hoodbhoy's classroom, I come upon a crowd of children in a vacant lot. It turns out to be another school—this one a free school for hundreds of street children run by a fireman named Muhammad Ayub, who founded the school 25 years ago because he felt sorry for the kids running wild in the neighborhoods nearby, dropouts who seemed destined for a jail cell, or a slab at Edhi's morgue. Ayub hands me his business card. It bears the name of the school: Second Time Civil Defense Educational Institution on Self Help Basis. "All my teachers are former students," he says proudly, gesturing to two men and a young woman with freckles, standing before the kids, who are laughing and carrying on. "See the looks on their faces?" he says. "This is the future I want for our country."

On a small hill nearby, a group of three or four students from a nearby madrassa, stern young men in their early 20s, are watching Ayub's class. Perhaps they are drawn to the laughing girl with the freckles, who isn't wearing a veil, or perhaps it is something more sinister. They are looking across the divide that runs down the middle of Pakistan, and it's not clear what they are thinking.

LINKS:
Pictures Gallery:
http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0709/pakistan/pakistan-photography.html

Field Notes:
http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0709/pakistan/belt-field-notes.html
http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0709/pakistan/reza-field-notes.html

Did you know about Sufism?
http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0709/pakistan/did-you-know.html

More about Pakistan: http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0709/pakistan/pakistan-learn.html

How to help: http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0709/pakistan/how-to-help.html

Fighting the Fanatics

Fighting the fanatics
Mike Ghouse, August 25, 2007

Ashwin Ahmed's write up is right on the money. As a true journalist he has stayed away from being judgmental and has presented different views of each person.

In our group discussions and forums we have treated each person with dignity and due respect, because we believe that diversity of thought ensures that the truth is not buried or hush-hushed. Criticism of a practice brings out the best justification or a blockade for such practice. Our openness to such debates brings nothing but goodness, we need not fear facing issue, however controversial they might be.

Irshad Manji and Asra Nomani are trying to find answers for genuine questions they may have, and that is their God given right. If we cannot help them, we should not be a hindrance either. Where as the approach by Wafa Sultan, Ayan Hirsi Ali and Taslima Nasrin is shaped by their bitter personal experiences, they are way too eager to blame everything on religion. They lose the credibility with people in general and all claims to reform fall flat on the face, however, they do have a few points that needed to be responded.

Neither you nor I are willing to change because some one tells us that they don't like the way we smile. To bring a change one has to be an insider or have empathy with the people whom he/she intends to change. All the great reformers were part of the reform and not an outsider. Mahatma Gandhi's words would have made no sense, had he said "get rid of untouchability" sitting in a distant palace. He was part of the society and lived by example. Wafa, Ayan and Taslima can learn a lesson from the Mahatma.

Mike Ghouse is a Speaker, Thinker, Writer and a Moderator. He is president of the Foundation for Pluralism and is a frequent guest on talk radio and local television network discussing interfaith, political and civic issues. He is the founding president of the World Muslim Congress with a simple theme: "Good for Muslims and good for the world." His personal Website is www.MikeGhouse.net and his articles can be found on the Websites mentioned above and in his Blogs: http://MikeGhouseforAmerica.Blogspot.com and http://MikeGhouse.Sulekha.com . He can be reached at MikeGhouse@gmail.com. Mike is a Dallasite for nearly three decades and Carrollton is his home town
______________________________________________

Fighting the fanatics
26 Aug 2007, 0239 hrs IST,TNN

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/Rest_of_World/Fighting_the_fanatics/articleshow/2311084.cms
The attack on Taslima Nasreen again highlights how Islam is being hijacked by extremists. Ashwin Ahmad profiles three women who, despite death threats, are fighting for change.

Asra Nomani

A former journalist and author, Asra Nomani’s name causes sharp divisions within the Muslim community. While some praise her attempts at helping women become aware of their rights, others see her as a shameless publicity hound, who loves to court controversy. A founder of the Islamic feminist movement, Nomani has been fighting since 2003 for women to be allowed the right to enter mosques by the same entrance as men, pray alongside them and even lead prayers.

On this reason for her stand Nomani says "When I learnt that a woman Umm Waraqa—led women and men in prayer at the time of the Prophet Mohammed, you should know I had spent a lifetime being told the opposite. I was told I couldn’t enter a mosque and when I was allowed in I had to be in the basement or a dark corner."

Ironically, Nomani spent most of her professional life as a journalist writing on issues other than Islam. But the gruesome murder of close friend and colleague Daniel Pearl in Pakistan changed her outlook. Determined to ''save’'her faith from extremists, Nomani went to Mecca. After her return she found herself being harassed as she tried to step into mosques, determined to pray alongside men.

Her stance got her recognition of the unwelcome kind. Her family was ostracised by the local community and hate mail and death threats for Nomani poured in. "My mother received a call, where the caller threatened to slit my throat."Thankfully for this single mother, her family remained her anchor.

Despite the threats, Nomani has persevered, and managed to create some change. In 2005, her friend and co-founder of the Islamic feminist movement Amina Wadud led a mixed congregation in prayer at a mosque in New York.

"Organising the prayer was a moment of empowerment for me. Women are so often the spiritual and religious heads of households. Yet it is rare in a home that you see her lead her son in prayer. Somehow we have divined that he will lead her in prayer."

Nomani has also conducted what she calls 'Freedom Tours'which involve groups of Muslim women scholars travelling across the US to conduct prayer meetings.
But not everyone is convinced. Critics say her crusade was part of a campaign to publicise her book Standing Alone in Mecca. They add that there is good reason for men and women to pray separately — so that they are not distracted by the opposite sex. But despite what they say, more and more women are leading the faithful in prayer. All thanks to Asra Nomani.

Irshad Manji

Even though she has been honoured as a Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum, a lot of people still aren’t ready to listen to Irshad Manji. A brief look into her background will explain why. The first problem is Manji’s book The Trouble with Islam Today. In the book she talks about the inferior treatment of women in Islam, Jew bashing and the lack of ijtihad or critical thinking within the Muslim community today.

Add to this the fact that Manji is openly gay and you begin to understand why some people and organisations hate her; others even want her dead. Small wonder then that her home in Canada is equipped with a security system and bulletproof windows.

Manji talks candidly about reconciling her sexuality with her faith. She says, "I acknowledge that the Koran contains passages implying homosexuality cannot be tolerated. It also contains passages implying that Allah knows what He is doing when he designs the world’s breathtaking diversity. In addition to the verse that says, 'God makes excellent everything He creates,'there are other verses that say, 'God creates whom He will'and nothing God creates is 'in vain.'How do my critics reconcile those statements with their condemnation of homosexuals?"

Manji also feels Muslims have a duty to battle for their freedom to think about Islam and issues concerning Muslims. Why, she argues, should Muslims allow extremists to place a bounty on Salman Rushdie’s head while ignoring the number of honour killings that take place within Muslim families across the world each year? Why are Muslims using the sensitivity of religion to prevent introspection? Manji feels it’s because today Muslims "are confusing dogma with faith."

It is to counter this that she has launched Project Ijtihad. The project aims to ''bring liberal Muslims and non-Muslim allies together’'to discuss issues like homosexuality, marriages between Muslims with non-Muslims, and the reclamation of women’s rights in Islam —- a subject close to Manji’s heart. It also offers Muslim women in poor countries microcredit loans. "This will hopefully help the women to become literate, teach their children, and help them start their own schools."

But while many people praise Manji for her outspokenness —- her book has got positive reviews in the New York Times, there are others who feel otherwise. Critics charge her with ignorance about Islam’s history and Arabic, which make her unaware of the wider debates within Islam.

Her open admiration for Israel, which she has in the past praised for its free press and freedom of expression, has also raised hackles. According to Manji, some of her detractors have dubbed her ''worse than Osama bin Laden.’'
It’s not just extremists. Manji’s book has come in for criticism from 'liberal'quarters as well. Tarek Fatah, founding member of the Muslim Canadian Congress and an initial supporter of Manji, has turned hostile.

On the book, Fatah comments in Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper that ''Manji makes Muslim haters feel secure in their thinking.’'Manji retorts through the same paper, "Mr Fatah feels the book was written by the Jews for the Jews... My thanks to him might be for revealing just how deep the trouble with Islam is today."

Wafa Sultan

Hero and reformist for some, pawn and Islamophobe for others, Syrian-American Wafa Sultan has been admired and reviled in equal measure. But love or hate her, you cannot ignore this psychiatrist’s importance. Named last year in Time magazine’s list of 100 most influential people, Dr Sultan is someone who has become a much sought after spokesperson on Islam, at least in the west.

Sultan’s meteoric rise to fame began when she appeared on Al-Jazeera television on February 21, 2006. Debating with Dr Ibrahim Al-Khouly, a lecturer at Egypt’s Al-Azhar university, she made some comments that immediately got her global attention.

"The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions or a clash of civilisations...It’s a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another that belongs to the 21st century," she argued forcefully on the show.

Her comments were distributed in an online clip on youtube by MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute) where an estimated one million people viewed it, and instant fame — or infamy, depending on one’s point of view — was the result. Interviews with CNN, LA Times and the New York Times followed and today, most debates in the west on Islam include the views of Wafa Sultan.

Sultan’s reasons for her attack on a faith which she once followed go back to events in her personal life. In 1979, when she was a student at the University of Aleppo in Syria, gunmen belonging to the radical group, the Muslim Brotherhood, burst in and shot her professor before her eyes. This act, says Sultan, caused her to question and finally abandon Islam. She now declares herself to be simply "secular."

Her critics insist that no such incident took place at this time at the university. They also believe the MEMRI clip was edited out of context to make her look impressive and provide a pro-Israel slant.

With such a history, it’s no surprise that Sultan’s name causes passions to run high on both sides of the ideological fence. In a recent online debate on Sultan, blogger Firozi Fali wrote: "How often do you see an Arab woman voice a critique of Islam right in the Islamic heartland, on mainstream Arabic-language TV? Not very often would be my guess."

Countering this, fellow blogger Dr M wrote: "There’s nothing remotely courageous about regurgitating orientalistic nonsense on a satellite connection. No Muslim worth his or her salt would babble such neocon nonsense."

While such charges may be unfounded, there is no denying that Sultan’s comments have earned her the admiration of the Jewish community, who describe her as the "voice of progressive Muslims". Last year, she accepted an invitation by the American Jewish Congress to visit Israel.

Such actions ensure Sultan will continue to remain a controversial figure. Add the fact that she’s working a book on Islam and you know the world will continue to hear more about Wafa Sultan.

ashwin.ahmad@timesgroup.com

Twin Bombings in Hyderabad

PRESS RELEASE

Dallas, Texas - Saturday, Aug 25, 2007.

We unequivocally condemn this act of terrorism and appeal to the State Government of Andhra Pradesh to punish the wrong doers. The time for the idea has come to start charging the criminals under Indian Penal code and punish them according to the law of the land.

It is time we do not label the criminals with a religious label as it will dilute the power of punishment when the wrong doer is blurred with other identities, other than his own individual identity. http://worldmuslimcongress.blogspot.com/2007/05/laser-barking-at-terrorists.html

Mike Ghouse, President
World Muslim Congress
http://www.worldmuslimcongress.com/


Twin Bombings Kill 28 in Southern India

Saturday August 25, 2007 5:31 PM
By OMER FAROOQ
Associated Press Writer

HYDERABAD, India (AP) - A pair of bombings tore through crowded public areas in the southern city of Hyderabad on Saturday night, killing 28 people and wounding dozens more, officials said.

The blasts - one in a park during a laser show, and the other in a crowded market area - went off minutes apart, officials said.

Most of the 28 people killed were in the city's Kothi market, said K. Jana Reddy, home minister for the state of Andhra Pradesh.

``This is a terrorist act,'' Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, the state's chief minister.
Television footage taken in the arena where the laser show was held showed large pools of blood and dead bodies lying between rows of seats punctured by shrapnel.

Police with flashlights and dogs searched under chairs looking for more explosive devices.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

HYDERABAD, India (AP) - A pair of bombings tore through crowded public areas in the southern city of Hyderabad on Saturday night, and at least 20 people were feared killed, a police official said.

The blasts - one in a park during a laser show, and the other in a crowded market area - went off minutes apart, said the official, who spoke on condition his name not be used.
At least 17 people were feared killed in the blast at the city's Kothi market, the official said, and at least three in the laser show in Lumbini park.

In May, a bomb at a historic Hyderabad mosque killed 11 people. Another five people died in clashes that erupted after that blast between security forces and Muslim protesters angered by what they said was a lack of police protection.

A series of terrorist bombings have ripped across India in the past two years. In July 2006, bombs in seven Mumbai commuter trains killed more than 200 people. The bombings have been blamed on Pakistan-based Muslim militants.

_______________________________________


August 26, 2007
Bombs in India Kill at Least 42
Associated Press
August 26, 2007 5:54 a.m.

HYDERABAD, India -- Bangladesh-based Islamic extremists may have been behind a pair of bombings that tore through a popular restaurant and a park in this southern Indian city, killing at least 42 people, an Indian official said Sunday.

Saturday's attacks were the latest in a series of bombings to hit India in the last year, and nearly all have been blamed on Islamic extremists with foreign connections -- even when Muslims were targeted.

"Available information points to the involvement of terrorist organizations based in Bangladesh," Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh state, where Hyderabad is located, told reporters after an emergency state Cabinet meeting. Mr. Reddy didn't name any groups, but Indian media reports, quoting unnamed security officials, identified Harkat-ul-Jehad-i-Islami. Mr. Reddy declined to provide more details. "It is not possible to divulge all this information," he said.

Authorities say Harkat was also behind the bombing of a historic Hyderabad mosque in May that killed 11 people, although little evidence linking the group to the blasts has been made public. Many Muslims say Hindu extremists were to blame.

Following that attack, five people were killed in clashes between security forces and Muslim protesters, angered by what they said was a lack of police protection. Hyderabad has a history of Hindu-Muslim violence, and Mr. Reddy praised residents for their restraint in the wake of Saturday's attacks.

Both the restaurant and the park were popular with Hindus and Muslims. The restaurant was destroyed by the bomb placed at the entrance, and most of the deaths reportedly occurred in the blast. Blood-covered tin plates and broken glasses littered the road outside.

The other blast struck a laser show at an auditorium in Lumbini park, leaving pools of blood and dead bodies between rows of seats punctured by shrapnel. Some seats were hurled 100 feet away.

By Sunday morning, the death toll had risen to 42 as victims succumbed to injuries sustained in the attacks, said K. Jana Reddy, the state home minister. Some 50 people were wounded in the two blasts.

Two other bombs were defused in the city Saturday, one under a footbridge in the busy Bilsukh Nagar commercial area, and another in a movie theater in the Narayanguba neighborhood, a police official said. Late-night movie showings were canceled across the city.

Much of India's Hindu-Muslim animosity is rooted in disputes over the Himalayan territory of Kashmir, divided between India and mostly Muslim Pakistan but claimed in its entirety by both countries. More than a dozen Islamic insurgent groups are fighting for Kashmir's independence or its merger with Pakistan. More than 80% of India's 1.1 billion people are Hindu and 13% are Muslim. But in Hyderabad, Muslims make up 40% of the population of 7 million.

Little progress has been made in the investigation into the May mosque bombing. Underlying the divide, Muslim leaders have said they don't trust local police to handle the investigation into the attack. A series of terrorist bombings have ripped across India in the past two years. In July 2006, bombs in seven Mumbai commuter trains killed more than 200 people, attacks blamed on Pakistan-based Muslim militants.

Copyright © 2007 Associated Press

Appeal to Homeland Security

Appeal to Department of Homeland Security
http://worldmuslimcongress.blogspot.com/2007/08/appeal-to-homeland-security.html

One of the most cherished values of our nation is "liberty and justice for all". Sometimes, we overlook what the liberty really means and step on it occassionally. We hope Michael Chertoff will consider the new law that contradicts this principle and he will get the people involved in he decision, that which affects them.

Please read the petition below and sign your name to support, yet another appeal to repeal the law that undermines our liberty.

Mike Ghouse, President
Foundation For Pluralism
2665 Villa Creek Dr, Suite 206
Dallas, TX 75234
www.FoundationforPluralism.com
________________________________________

Stop Religious Profiling in US Airports

Michael Chertoff
Secretary of Homeland Security
U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Washington, D.C. 20528

Dear Secretary Chertoff,

We are writing to you because we are very concerned about a recent policy shift in screening procedures for the Sikh turban in United States airports. It is our understanding that on August 4, 2007, the Transportation Security Administration ("TSA") changed a longstanding policy on security screenings, recommending that passengers with turbans be pulled aside for secondary searches. This means that millions of Sikh travelers will be singled out based on their religious practice, violating the spirit of religious pluralism that is a founding principle of this country.

We request that you meet with representatives of the Sikh community and other concerned communities to resolve our concerns. We want to work with TSA to develop a policy that will balance the nation's security concerns with the civil rights of those who wear religious headdresses.

As you may be aware, Sikhs are required to wear turbans as an article of their faith. The turban, worn over unshorn hair, signifies a Sikhs' commitment to God, justice and to uphold the principles of her faith. Touching a Sikh's turban is a significant affront to her religious practice. In its new policy, the TSA equates searching turbans to searching a cowboy hat or a beret. This is unacceptable. A turban is a form of religious garb, not a fashion statement.

TSA officials have admitted that the new policy, which specifically cites turbans as an example of headwear that could be used to conceal "threat items," was not thoroughly researched. Nobody responsible for this policy thought it necessary to familiarize themselves with the turban, or even confirm that a "threat item" could indeed be hidden in a turban. Nevertheless, without consulting the concerned communities, and with minimal guidance offered to their TSA screeners, the TSA's new procedures were implemented nationwide.

The TSA has also kept the new screening procedures a secret. This leaves affected communities without a meaningful opportunity to comment upon the policy, or understand how their religious practice may be affected when flying. In addition, the policy on its face is vague and gives screeners unwarranted discretion to engage in possible religious profiling. According to over two dozen reports received by the Sikh Coalition so far, it is clear that TSA field officers nationwide are interpreting the new procedures broadly to target Sikh turbans. This religious profiling also puts an official stamp of approval on the public's stereotyping of Sikhs, Muslims, Arabs and South Asians as terrorists.

Again, we request that you take up this matter urgently, and meet with our community groups to resolve the concerns raised by this new policy. While we fully appreciate the Department of Homeland Security's need to protect our citizens, the practical implementation of this policy means that screeners are conducting religious profiling. We strongly encourage the TSA and the Department of Homeland Security to reconsider their implementation of these new procedures.

We thank you for your immediate consideration of this matter, and look forward to receiving your response.

Sincerely,

The Sikh Coalition, undersigned co-sponsors and concerned citizens worldwide

Please click the following link and do the needful:
http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/1607/t/380/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=304

Co-sponsors

Asian American Justice Center
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC)
Coalition for Asian American Children and Families (CACF)
Darbar-e-Khalsa
Greater New York Labor-Religion Coalition
Guru Gobind Singh Foundation, Maryland
International Institute for Gurmat Studies
Legal Access Network for South Asians
Sikh Council on Religion and Education
South Asian American Leaders of Tomorrow (SAALT)
World Muslim Congress
Foundation for Pluralism
___________________________________________

From: Neha Singh [mailto:]
Sent: Friday, August 24, 2007 1:29 PM
To: Amardeep Singh
Subject: Your Help is Needed: Sign on as a Co-Sponsor By Noon Sunday

Dear Friends,

We are writing to request that you sign on to the attached petition letter to DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, expressing our opposition to the TSA’s new headwear screening policy that effectively requires TSA screeners to conduct mandatory secondary screenings of all religious turbans.

The TSA’s new procedures reflect a reversal of longstanding policy that allowed for religious turbans to be screened only if they indicated a potential threat. The new policy is unacceptable because

1) it specifically lists the turban as an example of headwear that can be subjected to secondary screening at the discretion of the screener;

2) the new procedure and guidance on how to implement them have been kept a secret;

3) the procedures (given the limited information on them released to the public) are disturbingly vague;

4) the new procedures were created without consulting any Sikhs or Sikh organizations.

Thank you to those of you who have already reached out for us. Please let me know as soon as possible, preferably by noon on Sunday, August 26, 2007, whether your organization will sign on to the petition as a co-sponsor. If you have any questions or comments, you can reach me at the number below

Please also send out the link to our petition to your respective email lists and/or relevant listservs. The petition is available online at http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/1607/t/380/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=304.

If you’d like further information, please see the update and community advisory attached below.

Thank you all for your support at this difficult time.

Kind regards,

Neha Singh

Advocacy Director / Staff Attorney
The Sikh Coalition
40 Exchange Place, Suite 728
New York, NY 10005
Ph: 212.655.3095 (ext. 84)
Fax: 212.208.4611
www.sikhcoalition.org
To learn more about the Sikh Coalition, watch: http://alsolikelife.blip.tv/file/17779

Policy Update:

Here’s what we know about the TSA’s new screening procedures for religious headwear: Our meeting with TSA officials in Washington, D.C. yesterday was very troubling. We were told that the TSA’s new policy, intended to target “non-metallic threat items,” allows individual screeners to decide whether they believe someone’s headdress may be able to conceal such an item. That means that 43,000 individuals nationwide who are charged with our security, but have very little idea of what goes under a turban or how to pat it down, now have the right to freely profile everyone that walks through a metal detector with something on their head in US airports. Whether or not a metal detector sounds an alarm, we are told, is irrelevant. Individual TSOs have the right to pull aside anyone with headgear that they think is suspiciously spacious.

Even more outrageous is that the official guidelines accompanying the new policy explicitly cite Sikh turbans as an example of something that could hide a threat item. When asked, the Assistant General Manager of the TSA’s Office of Security Operations admitted that nobody in his office had actually checked whether something could be hidden inside a turban. By leaving community groups out of the decision-making process, the TSA chose to forego adequately researching their new policy. In addition, no cultural sensitivity training has been provided on the topic; no safeguards have been implemented to ensure that this policy achieves its purpose without infringing on anyone’s civil rights. Since the language of the policy is still a secret, we have no idea how broadly it will be interpreted, and whether it can also be expanded to include hijabs, skullcaps or other forms of religious headdress.

While the TSA went to great lengths to explain that the policy is not a mandatory pat-down, but allows for screener discretion, officials seemed oblivious to the fact that in practice, they had just given their employees the right to profile anyone they choose. According to dozens of reports received by our office, TSA officers around the country are implementing this as a mandatory turban pat-down procedure. Saying that religious turbans are an example of something that could contain a terrorist weapon also acts as an official stamp of approval on the turban = terrorist assumption that so many people already make about Sikhs. Not to mention the fact that non-metallic items can be hidden anywhere else on the body as well – your trouser pockets, under your t-shirts, or in your socks. Why then target people for wearing cloth on their heads instead of patting down anyone in a pair of pants?

I’ve also attached below a copy of the advisory we sent to community members yesterday, informing them of what we learned at the meeting.


From: The Sikh Coalition [mailto:updates@sikhcoalition.org]
Sent: Wednesday, August 22, 2007 8:36 PM
To: pritpal@sikhcoalition.org
Subject: TSA Confirms New Airport Turban Search Policy

neha@sikhcoalition.org, pritpal@sikhcoalition.org, updates@sikhcoalition.org,

Muslims Stand with Darfur

Muslims Stand with Darfur
Mike Ghouse, August 18, 2007

Ray Hanania,

Thanks for writing the following piece, indeed, as a Muslim, I have written a similar piece and have continued to write urging Muslims to speak out against injustice and the genocide.

I have made this appeal time and again for Muslims and every human on the earth to take time to understand this crisis; nearly half of a million people have been killed and more than 2 million innocent Citizens have been displaced and it is a shame if we sit in silence, and in another note, I wrote that to regain our lost moral grounds, we have to express that we stand for justice.

This disgusting act of apparent silence of Muslims has a additional shameful turn to it - it is the Muslims killing other Muslims and this is where we need to speak out most. We have to condemn this barbarism, first because as Muslims we have to speak out even if it is against our own family members. Justice is the most important element of world peace. If there is an organization doing something about it, please join them, one such group is www.Savedarfur.org.

We have to speak out and speak up when there is injustice no matter where and to whom. That is the least we can do. I am glad the Jewish organizations have taken this up and we support them.

The Arab reluctance on the issue is wrong, even if they think Jews are taking advantage of this situation, they should have simply joined the voices of Justice on Darfur. May be this would have been an opportunity for Israel to ponder over its’s own apartheidic policies.

When it comes to nearly 75% of Muslims who are not Arabs, they have raised voices against Darfur genocide, they have spoken, but they are not given the voice in the media, that does not mean they have not.

By the way, Savedarfur organization that we support has not listed our organization, despite three follow ups and requests via emails and additional phone calls. I am sure there are plenty of Muslim Organizations who support these efforts out of conviction for Justice, but because either they are Muslim they are not listed to make it appear that there is no Muslim organization and feed the wrong information to the writers around the world. I do not understand if they have other reasons, I have copied the emails to some of my Jewish friends to let them know about this as well.

Mike Ghouse, President
World Muslim Congress
2665 Villa Creek Dr, Suite 206
Dallas, Texas 75234 - USA

www.WorldMuslimCongress.com
www.FoundationforPluralism.com

http://www.mideastyouth.com/2007/08/17/column-on-jerusalem-post-on-darfur/

Column in Jerusalem Post on Darfur
Ray Hanania (Palestine/USA)
August 17th, 2007
This Palestinian stands with Darfur
By Ray Hanania
Jerusalem Post August 15, 2007

One would hope that what is going on in Darfur would bring people together. Instead the tragedy has blurred moralities because it has cast ethnic black Africans as victims of Arab oppression.

Rather than subdue Sudan, the Arab League has stood by doing nothing, except to argue that bringing up the Arab aspect of the conflict is wrong. And why should the Arabs act when the United Nations - where Arab clout is practically non-existent - has done so little?

The UN is characteristically shackled by larger political forces which have stymied plans to create a truly international force over four years of worthless rhetoric.

Although Muslims around the world are quick to champion Muslim rights, even when they are “Muslim wrongs,” there is a cultural hesitancy over Darfur driven by racism; the victims, who are mostly Muslim, are “Abeds” - the Arabic word for “slave,” which, when used in this context, is equivalent to “nigger” in English.

Much of the movement to protect the persecuted black Africans in Darfur from the Sudanese government’s militia allies, including the notoriously brutal Janjaweed, is based in the West, where good causes make for great celebratory music festivals, fabulously huge fundraisers, and news media coverage for headline-addicted Hollywood types.

THE JANJAWEED were unleashed by Sudan’s government to repel a rebellion in Darfur, although the Sudanese claim they have no ties to or control over the Janjaweed. Yet the best that a spokesman for the government of Sudan can do is to blame it all on the Jews. During an interview with a Saudi newspaper, Sudan’s defense minister, Abdel Rahim Mohamed Hussein, accused “24 Jewish organizations” of “fueling the conflict in Darfur.”

Hussein brushed off what the rest of the world decries as genocide as the result of “friction between farmers and herders and shepherds.”

Sudan’s response sits well with many who would love to distract attention from the atrocities by claiming the negative publicity is being generated by a Jewish conspiracy. The logic goes that Jews are only too happy to help because Darfur refugees are not Palestinians but black Africans oppressed by Israel’s sworn enemies, the Arabs.

EVIDENCE CITED by Abdel Rahim Mohamed Hussein and other Sudanese officials is that often heading up the do-gooder campaigns such as Save Darfur are an array of Jewish American organizations. Actually, I counted nearly 50 US Jewish groups in the coalition.

Yet overlooked is the presence of many Arab American and Muslim American organizations, too, including the Arab American Institute, Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), Muslim American Society (MAS), American Islamic Congress (AIC), American Islamic Forum, and the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA).

Not included, however, is the largest Arab grassroots organization, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC).

Many of the 78 Arab American newspapers have run stories that reflect Abdel Rahim Mohamed Hussein’s line of thinking.

SAVING DARFUR is not a cornerstone of Arab or Muslim American concerns, and I suspect that even the involvement of many of the Arab groups participating in the coalition is related to politics; knowing full well that if they are not part of the effort, the Jews might turn Darfur into one big bash-the-Arabs (and Palestinians) campaign.

But I ask: Is there anyone who just cares about the lives of innocent people? Can’t we just help people without blaming things on “the Jews,” or “the Arabs,” or “the Muslims?”

Sudan is no different than any other country in the world. The rich get richer, living off the enormous profits of the oil industry, while the poor get poorer, struggling to survive with dwindling food and water.

Why should the Arab-Israeli conflict play a role in the Sudan crisis? It may be true that US Jewish organizations are seizing an opportunity to cast the Arabs in a bad light. But on the other hand, why bother when Arabs are already portrayed so negatively in the Western news media?

Even if Jewish leaders may be enjoying the drubbing the Arab reputation is taking in Darfur, are the Sudanese government and Arabs in general saying the Jews started the fight there?

From a Palestinian standpoint, I know it is exactly troubles like these that harm our cause.

But we are undermining our cause if we insist that the world not pay attention to other crises as bad or far worse than our own.

The first people who should be standing up to tell the Sudanese government to stop oppressing innocent people and to disband the Janjaweed are the Arabs, Muslims, and especially the Palestinians.

The writer is an award-winning Palestinian American columnist, author and stand-up comedian. www.hanania.com

END

Muslims demand an apology

Muslims demand an apology from MIM.
Let not this behavior go unaccounted.

Updated daily... updates listed below this op-ed.

Mike Ghouse, August 10, 2007

“We were all set to kill her”, said Majidullah Khan about Taslima Nasrin. It is an atrocious condemnable statement. it is time to reflect and figure out how to prevent this from happening now and in future.

The incident happened in Hyderabad, India on August 9th. The Majlis-e-Ittehadul-Muslimeen (MIM) has warned that it will not allow Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasrin to go back alive if she dared to come back to the city while the Majlis Bachao Tehreek claimed that their plan to kill her was foiled by the MIM attack.

"We are very proud of our MLAs and activists who assaulted her," said MIM leader and Member of the State Legislature Akbaruddin Owaisi. "We will implement the fatwa issued against Taslima if she comes to the city again."

Killing or threatening to kill is a crime in India, punishable by a life sentence to life itself. The above named men in their misplaced fervor claim to represent Islam while Islam forbids killing an individual. Qur’aan 5:32, “Because of this did We ordain unto the children of Israel that if anyone slays a human being-unless it be [in punishment] for murder or for spreading corruption on earth-it shall be as though he had slain all mankind; whereas, if anyone saves a life, it shall be as though he had saved the lives of all mankind.”

As Muslims of India and the Muslims around the globe, we urge Mr. Owaisi and Mr. Farhat apologize to not only Ms Nasrin but the Muslims of the world for the audacity of insulting them by speaking in their behalf without their permission. These misguided individuals should be indicted for threatening to kill, under the Indian penal code.

As Muslims of India and Muslims around the globe, we urge Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy and Home Minister K. Janardhana Reddy to ask the MLA to resign from the Legislature for violating the spirit and the word of the constitution of the Republic of India.

Taslima Nasrin is a rebellious writer and raises her voice when something appears unjust to her. We do not condone many of her provocative statements. However much we may disagree with her; her right to speak must be defended. We are a democracy and in a true functioning democracy, criticism ought to be cherished, as it keeps the leaders on their toes. Islam has a built-in system to incorporate new ideas through discussion and consensus called Ijtihad. She is in essence calling for Ijtihad, whether some consider her to be a Muslim or not, does not matter, the issues do matter.

Hecklers, all over the world are unwelcome, however, the test of decency and civilization is to allow free speech. Often they indulge in cat calls of stupidest statements, no matter what race, nation, or status they have including some presidents, but occasionally they do bring in important points to the dialogue, where many voices are not being heard.

When the Movie, ‘Passion of the Christ” was released, members of the Jewish community were wary of the release, fearing an increase in anti-Semitism. A Danish newspaper printed cartoons that were disparaging of the Prophet Muhammad, causing a disruptive few to create havoc around the globe in the name of Islam. When the movie Water was released, Deepa Mehta was castigated by many Hindus for the portrayal of widowed girls being forced into prostitution, the cast and crew was vandalized by a few in the name of Hinduism. President Carter released a book about the apartheid treatment of Palestinians (both Christian and Muslim Palestinians) in Israel, he is being harassed, even in the model American democracy, a few are intolerant.

US Congressman Tancredo called for Nuking Mecca, The Rev. Pat Robertson called for assassination of Hugo Chavez the President of Venezuela because he is a severe critic of Bush Policies. Intolerance is on the rise all over the world, Muslims have their own share, no single group has monopoly on intolerance. No society or a culture is ever perfect.

These are the dynamic values constantly changing with interaction within and without the various societies and sub-cultures. Screaming at Taslima, Deepa, Mel, President Carter or Tancredo will not make the problem go away. The right of free speech protects all of us, but it is not free speech to incite murder to suppress free speech.

There are a lot of injustices in the world; Free speech allows us to have our say to struggle against the perceived injustices. Justice is the key to peace for a nation or a community, without which peace is in peril.

Whether it is coming from Salahuddin Owaisi, Bal Thackeray or any one else, they should be answerable in the court of justice, file a law suit for a public threat or disturbing the peace. Let's take a principled stand on all the issues; if it is good for one, it has got to be good for others. Let justice be the corner stone of our democracy.

Solution:

File a law suit against Mr. Owaisi and Mr. Farhat for inciting and threatening to kill another human being. Let’s put the blame squarely on the wrong doer and not his family, town, culture or his religion. If we make the mistake of giving them a religious label, that in itself is inciting hatred. The mistakes were made by those men and not their religion.

Please note: Several Muslim Organizations/intellectuals have condemned this, they are all listed below

Mike Ghouse is a Speaker, Thinker, Writer and a Moderator. He is president of the Foundation for Pluralism and is a frequent guest on talk radio and local television network discussing interfaith, political and civic issues. He is the founding president of the World Muslim Congress with a simple theme: "Good for Muslims and good for the world." His personal Website is www.MikeGhouse.net and his articles can be found on the Websites mentioned above and in his Blogs: http://MikeGhouseforAmerica.Blogspot.com and http://MikeGhouse.Sulekha.com . He can be reached at MikeGhouse@gmail.com. Mike is a Dallasite for nearly three decades and Carrollton is his home town

.

Continuous Updates below:

1. Indian penal code that they can be charged - August 11, 2007
2. Islam does not condone gangsters - August 10, 2007
3. Taslima and her technicolor boat - August 11, 2007
4. Muslim intellectuals condemn -August 10, 2007
5. Attacks on Taslima Reprehensible - August 10, 2007
6. They could have killed her - August 10, 2007
7. Shame on you hoodlums - August 12, 2007
   

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INDIAN PENAL CODES

Saturday, August 11, 2007

Hasni, thanks for the forward about today - Indeed, we have the penal codes to sack the members of MIM and clear the branding of Muslims or Islam with such acts of individuals.

TIMES OF INDIA

Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen's fresh threat on Friday that it would "not spare" Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen the next time she visited Hyderabad compounded the crime its MLAs and activists had committed when they attacked her at a book release function. They can be prosecuted under following provisions of IPC: -

Section 503 defining criminal intimidation. "Whoever threatens another with any injury to his person ... with intent to cause alarm to that person or to cause that person to do any act ... or to omit to do any act ... as the means of avoiding the execution of such threats, commits criminal intimidation." -

Section 506 penalising criminal intimidation: "Whoever commits the offence of criminal intimidation shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to two years ...; and if the threat be to cause death or grievous hurt ..., shall be punished with imprisonment ... which may extend to seven years." -

Section 350 defining criminal force: "Whoever intentionally uses force to any person, without that person's consent, in order to the committing of any offence, or intending by the use of such force to cause, or knowing it to be likely that by the use of such force he will cause injury, fear or annoyance to the person to whom the force is used, is said to use criminal force to that other." -

Section 351 defining assault: "Whoever makes any gesture, or any preparation intending or knowing it to be likely that such gesture or preparation will cause any person present to apprehend that he who makes that gesture or preparation is about to use criminal force to that person, is said to commit an assault." -

Section 352 penalising assault or criminal force: "Whoever assaults or uses criminal force to any person ... shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to three months ..."

Section 355: "Whoever assaults or uses criminal force to any person, intending thereby to dishonour that person ... shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to two years ..." -

Section 120B penalising criminal conspiracy to commit any illegal act. The offender will be punished as if he had abetted that crime. -

Section 153A: "Whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by signs or by visible representation, promotes or attempts to promote on grounds of religion .., disharmony or feelings of enmity, hatred or ill-will between different religious ... groups ... shall be punished with imprisonment which may extend to three years."

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Islam does not condone Gangsters
Mirza A. Beg, Friday, August 10, 2007

The attack of Tasleema Nasreen in Haydrabad, India and threatening her life is one more example of the impotent rage by religious bigots, because they find themselves incapable of living the ideals of their religion, and meeting the intellectual challenges.

I have not read the writings of Tasleema Nasreen, a citizen who has been chased from her native Bangladesh, currently living in India. Therefore I have no opinion on her writings. For the sake of discussion let us assume that what her detractors say is correct about her writing. It should not be difficult to prove her wrong by writing rebuttals, most of all by living the humane tenets of Islam. They do not seem to have faith in their own capabilities, or the greatness and grandeur of Islam to with stand small pin-pricks.

They find the low road of violence easy to take. It is uncivilized and un-Islamic, behavior, of brawn over brain. Intimidation and extortion are the only values they understand and practice. They neither read nor understand the humane attitude of the Prophet Muhammad, who did not attack those who insulted him, and there were many in Mecca at the time, who did. He returned the insults with visits to the sick with kind words. When he returned triumphant to Mecca, he did not punish any one who had not been guilty of cruel violence.

They obviously are in violation of the Indian penal code for attack on Ms. Nasreen and threatening her life, but emotionally they have insulted Islam much more than the detractors of Islam or Ms. Nasreen ever could, because they sully the name of Islam by acting in its name.

It is unfortunate that while India is making great strides towards modernity, many in the provincial legislators are criminals or support criminal behavior. Bal Thakary in the name of Hinduism has held the whole state of Maharashtra and its great city Mumbai ( Bombay) hostage as his fiefdom and has engineered riots where hundreds of people have been killed. Modi, who is still the chief minister of Gujarat has used the levers of power to kill and deprive minorities of their constitutionally guaranteed rights.

With this backdrop when three Muslim legislators from Hydrabad condone threats on the life of a woman whom they accuses of insulting Islam or Yaqub Qureshi from UP feign to put up a bounty for the killing of Danish editorial Cartoonist, the Indian government and the legal system finds itself hamstrung and fears accusations of the persecution of minorities.

These people are not only insult to their own religions they are an insult to the rule of law under the elegantly designed Indian constitution. They exploit the raw baser emotions of the populace for self aggrandizement. Tolerance of opinions is the hallmark of civilization and great religions. By not bringing such criminals to the bar of justice, not only the religions are insulted, but most of all it injures the Indian Republic and the rule of law. The country as a whole and the weaker sections of the society eventually pay grim price.

I urge the Government of India and the state governments to bring the legislators from Hydrabad and all others who indulge in patently illegal and unconstitutional activities to the bar of justice.

---------------------------------------------

Taslima and her technicolor boat
By Farzana Versey

Well, here is a interestingly balanced piece on Taslima Nasrin.

Let's keep the two issues separate... One was about the reactions of those few Muslims invoking the name of Islam for their bad acts and the other one is completely a different issue - it is Taslima Nasrin herself.

The first one' action do not sound like the acts of Islam; the Prophet prayed for goodwill of those miscreants who threw stones on him.

The MIM people used the name of Islam as though all Muslims had approved and given them the right to speak for Islam, and as though that fatwa against Taslima is endorsed by Muslims around the world.

Who can speak for Islam? No one is and paradoxically each one is. We are individually judged for our acts and we should individually bear the responsibility. However, this MIM act implicates Muslims and Islam, and each one of us is responsible to untangle Islam and Muslims from these individual acts. It is quite a difficult topic and all of us have to work on it. No easy answer.

Mike Ghouse

On the Heels of Sir Salman
Taslima and Her Technicolor Boat
By FARZANA VERSEY

Taslima Nasreen, like many contemporary Muslim writers, is trying to portray the victim of religion. The best manner in which to do so since Sir Salman (before he was knighted) showed the way is through the dark Islamic tunnel. Let the pot sizzle with some concern for the backward Muslim world. Take large doses of the Quran, the veil, the Prophet and carefully carve it into little bits for easy consumption.

The problem is that Muslims are a bunch of fools. They imagine that most of these books will have an impact. They don’t. On Thursday, a group of activists from the Majlis Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) barged into her press conference and apparently roughed her up. Television channels showed us this unruly mob get into a scuffle and throw bouquets of flowers still covered in cellophane. Taslima in her blue saree stood aside. No channel showed us what transpired before.

As always, they brought in a ‘conservative’ and he naturally said what conservatives do: she deserves it for constantly maligning the religion and the Prophet. The television anchor smiled and turned to the ‘liberal’ in the studio. This liberal has suddenly discovered she is a Muslim and the usual stuff about freedom of expression was dished out.

I don’t think Taslima or anyone should be physically attacked. What no one has bothered to find out, though, is that the organization that was involved is not a sanctioned Muslim outfit; not many Indian Muslims outside the city of Hyderabad have even heard about it. But, what is the message being sent out to the world? That not only are Muslims a bunch of uncouth fellows, they also beat up women. I can imagine the Western world nodding in agreement and saying, “We told you so.”

When Taslima Nasreen was not allowed to return to Bangladesh for fear for her life, she went to the West for a while. She could not adjust there, so she found solace in India. India that has been busy shunting out Bangladeshi immigrants became her temporary home. She did not have a word to say about the migrants who were being denied citizenship rights even though they have lived in India for 30 years or more.

If Taslima is all about this major literary voice being stilled, why is it that very little analysis is being done of her writings? Why is she always in the news for a perspective other than one of literary or ethical significance? Even when she wrote an autobiographical account in which several writers and political figures were mentioned, not for their role in damaging society but for sleeping with her, she was harping on freedom of speech. How different is this attitude from one of those Hollywood satellite social climbers that claim their pound of tabloid mileage and money based entirely on having had a close encounter with a celebrity? She has imprisoned her own mind and then goes out crying for escape.

Give her complete freedom and she won’t know what to do with it. She has nothing much going for her. Lajja revealed what one always suspected since that day in July 1993 when a fatwa demanding her head was pronounced in Bangladesh – that she was wallowing in quasi-historical truths to suit her convenience. She had ended her 13-day saga with false hope, “Let us go away…to India,” she made her character Sudhomoy Dutta, the sturdy secularist and patriot, say.

Does she imagine that India is some sort of Utopia? A few months ago, she had been ranting against Pakistan’s “tyrannical” yoke, quite forgetting that she lived in a different country. Of course, since she wants to make India her home, this is the best she could do. She felt that all talk of pan-Islamic or Muslim unity was essentially a myth, and nothing had shattered it more convincingly than the breakaway of East Pakistan from its parent unit in the west.

If there is no unity in the Islamic world – and most of us have been long saying so – then on what basis does she paint the whole Islamic world with the same brush? There are pockets of fanatics and she has had to deal with some. I have to belabor the point that a fatwa is an opinion by an individual or a group; it is not a sanctioned edict. If it were so, then all those who have fatwas on their heads would have been killed by now and not managed to write their life stories or create magic realism in Manhattan.

The only reason Taslima prefers India, specifically Kolkata, is the language. This is ironical. East Pakistan moved out of the ‘tyranny’ of West Pakistan largely due to the language issue. Now, she is speaking out against parochialism and perpetrating it herself.

What is she trying to prove? Her ‘humanitarianism’, which hangs round her neck like an albatross, weighty, but drawing sufficient attention to her prized position? Or is she just another writer with perfect timing and a sharp marketing sense? Take the reference to a sentence in her first book: “Most of Suranjan’s friends were Muslim. None of them thought he was Hindu.” What does this mean? Was she trying to say that a religious person could not have friends from another community? Is faith designed to make you inhuman? Then Marxists should be the most human and humane people on earth, and she herself would have written about communal harmony in the purest sense instead of sprinkling stereotypes from Bollywood movies.

If she scratched herself, she would be faced with a truth she refuses to acknowledge: She is so insecure that she feels the need to deny her antecedents. Were it restricted to a personal position it would have been all right, but she uses characters insidiously to make generalizations only in order to anoint herself as a progressive.

Shrewdly, she has selected a time when Islamic or fringe Muslim societies are going through a phase when the red alert sounds every time their names get mentioned. She has a nice bandwagon to ride on.

Farzana Versey is a Mumbai-based writer-columnist.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Muslim Intellectual Forum condemns attack on Taslima Nasreen
Statement:

We the Muslim Intellectual Forum categorically condemn the dastardly attack on Taslima Nasreen by three MLA's of the Muslim Ittehadul Muslimeen(MiM) at a Press Conference in Hyderabad. It is an attack on the basic democratic and secular foundations of the Indian
nation.

Interestingly this attack was not led by any conservative Muslim organization, but was the handiwork of legislative members sworn to uphold the Indian constitution. Therefore this attack reeks of political motivations, both on part of the MiM and its ally the ruling Congress-I.

Apart from the fact that Taslima Nasreen's writing continues to hurt the sentiments of a vast cross-section of Muslims, but yet in a secular democracy and a free society, we need to tolerate dissent and the freedom of conscience.

A problem also lies wherein Tasleema does not understand the difference between the ethos of Bangladesh and India. Yes, in India we do have a problem of communal
carnages and the fact that Mulsims are the victims of discrimination which has now been validated by the findings of the Sacchar Committee Report. But our culture and ethos is based on the foundations of a unique secularism, based on the concept of "Sarva
Dharma Samabhava", unparallel in the world and which is evolving as we speak. This concept could provide a globalised world with certain key answers that it is
desperately seeking.

Hindus and Muslims along with their compatriots from other religions enjoy, experience, and live in a vibrant multi-religio-cultural milieu, which is very different from Taslima's experiences in Bangladesh. If Taslima's intention is to genuinely contribute to the cause of reform, she is going about it in the wrong way. She cannot achieve this by constantly
berating Muslims, their beloved Prophet Muhammad (p.b.u.h.) and Islam and calling for changes in the text of the Holy Quran itself. This only reveals her utter ignorance of historical processes and the role of religion as a social force of progress in the human
quest for an egalitarian society. Little does she know that the seeds of democratic
reform are enshrined in three key Islamic tenets of Shura, Ijma and Ijtihad and she would be well advised to study these revolutionary concepts.

Also the fact lies that the issue of Taslima Nasreen is being cynically manipulated with a view to further demonise the Muslim community. It is apparent that Taslima is beholden to the Government as she is desperate for residentship, but all the Government is
willing to give her are 6 month visa extensions. Even at the time of her last extension, as one would recall, her article which was highly derogatory of the Prophet Muhammad ( p.b.u.h.), appeared in the Outlook magazine and created a national uproar.

So the government is playing its old cynical game of pandering to the communal fringes and stoking the embers so as to unsettle society. The three MLA's of the MIM who attacked Taslima in the full glare of the national media, would not have done so without the support of their party as well as the tacit backing of the their ally the Congress-I. It was on the basis of these guarantees that these MLA's were later let of lightly by the local police.

This is on the similar lines that the West, especially Britain and Blair, used the issue of Salman Rushdie to demonise Muslims and Islam. There to certain Muslims were politically illiterate enough to fall for the obvious traps.

At the time when there is a national consensus that, there has to be a national effort to draw out Muslims from the socio-economic backwardness as well as a similar support for justice for the victims of the Mumbai carnage of 1992-93, it is imperative that Muslims focus their energies on issues of national consequence.

The Muslim community would be best advised to see through the manipulative designs and ignore such minor and insignificant issues. The only democratic and civilised way to deal with Taslima is to either ignore her or answer her with the pen, violence is not an
option even to be considered. This has been the tradition and spirit of Islam. Also the democratically and politically illiterate Muslim extremist fringe would be best advised to study the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad (p.b.u.h.) himself and learn the basic lessons of universal peace, respect and compassion.

Recent history has shown, that a few more attacks on Taslima Nasreen will mean that she will be nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature, if not win it! So we humbly request you to heed our advice.

Warm Regards
In Solidarity

Feroze Mithiborwala
(Convenor)
Asif Khan
Hanif Lakdawala
Afaque Azad
Arif Kapadia
Irfan Mulla

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Attack on Taslima Nasreen : Most reprehensible
By Dr.M.K. Sherwani, LL.D Posted August 10th, 2007

The brutal attack on Taslima Nasreen in Hyderabad once again brings to the forefront the perverted, outrageous and misconceived religious frenzy of those Muslims who lack total sensitivity to the problems confronting the community. It reflects the mental bankruptcy of those who think that the resplendent horizons of Islam can be blurred by the rubbish writings and silly utterances of the non-entities like Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasreen.

The worst part of this gory incident is that the mob was led by three legislators of Majlis Ittehadul Muslimeen whose President Mr. Salahuddin Owaisi has praised chivalry of his party men in attacking a woman. Mr. Owaisi is a type of politician, who once, while addressing a Muslim convention in Lucknow after the demolition of Babri Mosque, in his emotional outburst, declared that the Constitution of India must be thrown into Gomti ( a river which passes through Lucknow). His statement was met with strong protest from the Muslim audience and he had to leave the dais.

Further, the contention that the government of India has hurt the religious susceptibilities of Muslims by granting visa to her has no basis.

India, despite all its infirmities, inequities, conspicuous discriminations and constantly serious erosion of its secular values, remains a pluralistic and vibrant society. The vast multitudes of Hindus and Muslims believe in a peaceful coexistence and multi-cultural ethos which have not lost their significance even after the fascist forces have been making unrelenting endeavor over the last more than five decades. And, no doubt, if there is any Fundamental Right in the Indian Constitution which is equally available to all, then certainly it is the ‘FREEDOM OF SPEECH’. To buttress my viewpoint, let me quote the concluding observation by a renowned journalist Mr. Ziyaul Haque, while writing in 2000 the review of my book ‘Secular Horror – A Real Story of Fifteen years ordeal with Indian secularism’( the book is the story of my prosecution for fifteen years at Tees Hazari Court New Delhi under section 124a(sedition) on the basis of one article ‘Secularism vis-à-vis Hindu Chauvinism’ published in Radiance Viewsweekly, Delhi in 1984)

“......... Sherwani is a fire-brand, which is evident from the periodic resolutions of the All-India Muslim Forum, of which he is the president. The forum is headquartered in Lucknow. His booklet in verse, Iblees and Maulanas is a biting satire on the state of affairs in Muslim religious life.

At the end, one is tempted to ask a question: Suppose Sherwani was caught in Islamic horror, rather than its secular variant, would he have survived to narrate his experience? To be precise, had he been accused by Iran’s mullahs or Afghanistan’s Taliban for sedition, would he have lived to recount the episode? No prize for guessing.”

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'They could have even killed Taslima', say journalists
Posted August 10th, 2007 by Tarique

By IANS

Hyderabad : If Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen escaped unhurt in Thursday's attack by Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) legislators and cadre at the press club here, it was thanks to the journalists present.

The journalists acted as a shield to save Taslima, who was targeted by MIM activists at a book release function.

Only six media persons, mostly photographers, were covering the function as the organisers had invited only a handful of people to the function and Taslima's visit was also kept under warps.

"The legislators and those accompanying them were ferocious. Had we not intervened things would have gone out of control," Ravikanth Reddy, correspondent The Hindu, told newspersons.

Reddy, also secretary of the Hyderabad Press Club, was attending a meeting of the club office bearers in the boardroom at the time when three MIM legislators along with a few supporters barged into the hall where the function was on.

"For half hour no policeman reached the place and it was very difficult to control the legislators and their supporters who were throwing everything they could lay their hands on," Reddy told IANS.

Some missiles hit the journalists and a couple of writers and other participants who stood between Taslima and the attackers.

Innaiah Narisetti of the Centre of Inquiry, the organisers of the book release function, bled after the attack along with K.V.S. Giri, a photographer of Deccan Chronicle.

"It is because of the presence of journalists that the legislators were a bit restrained but the mood of the others was nasty. One of them was shouting 'Kill her'," said Reddy, who had tried to pacify the legislators.

"I told them not to resort to such activities in the Press Club. We have let out the premises to an organisation and it was our responsibility to ensure that no harm was caused to the participants of the function," he said.

"Though we managed to push the legislators and some others out of the meeting hall and escorted Taslima to the store room, another group of people arrived and they were more aggressive," recalled H. Satish, photographer of The Hindu.

"Taslima requested us to call the police, and I told her that the police will be reaching in a few minutes," he said.

"Anything could have happened in those 30 minutes. Fortunately the crowd was not armed. We don't know but they could have even killed her," he said.

"She came behind me to protect herself. She was really scared," said K.V.S. Giri, who received minor injuries in the scuffle. "The attackers threw books kept on the dais at her and some hit me."

Innaiah Narisetti, who saved Taslima from several missiles, termed the attack as "shameful".

"It is shameful on the part of our legislators to resort to such use of abusive language and physically attack her. They took oath on the constitution of India but their behaviour was shocking," said the intellectual.

"The attack on a woman writer is shocking but I think this will not deter her from writing for the rights of women," said V. Komala, whose Telugu translations of Taslima's book "Shodh" and Jung Chang's bestseller "Wild Swans" were released by the novelist at the function.

Meanwhile, journalists took out a rally and demanded stern action against those involved in the attack on Taslima.

The three legislators and some others arrested by the police were granted bail late Thursday by a court.

SHAME ON YOU HOODLUMS
Firoz Bakht Ahmed
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I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall
defend, to death, your right to say it — Voltaire

August 10 happened to be the blackest day for Indian
democracy as that lunatic fringe of cowardly,
undemocratic and waspish legislatures of
Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen made a travesty of law.
While the country is on the verge of its 60th
Independence Day achieved as a result of interfaith
concord, the barbaric hoodlums have again proved what
havoc organized religion can create. Owing to that,
the image of India has been tarnished in the world.
The attack by the lawmakers is a shame on the values
of democracy. As elected MLAs, they are expected to
respect and protect the freedom of expression as
enshrined in the Constitution.

These legislatures have brought shame to the nation.
How do they justify the attack on a woman? What
precedent are they setting for the Muslim youth? Their
statement after the attack shows that they have no
respect for the law let alone the women.

The loony MIM activists and their ilk represent the
intolerant sections that do not believe in values of
amnesty and mutual co-existence. They are in a
minority now but if they go unpunished, the malaise of
violence against voices of dissent will spread like a
weed very rapidly.

Their leader Sultan Salahuddin Owaisi, went a step
further patting on the back of the three vandalizing
legislatures and threatening that if she would ever
step in Hyderabad, she would be killed by them, a
similar comment that was uttered by Alia Andarabi in
her burqa-clad appearance on the CNN-IBN programme.

Before the ghastly act of terror is faded out of
public memory and anything else becomes the
“breaking news”, the MLAs must be tried under law.
Another problem with the community and the media is
that no platform is given to the voices of sanity in
the community and only patented brands representing
(who actually never represent) Muslims are encouraged
in television debates.

Targeting writers and artists by the fundamentalist
fringe is not new but the horrendous attack on Taslima
is a first on several counts. Till now, the orthodox
clerics only had stopped short of violence against
celebrities like Shabana Azmi, Sania Mirza etc and
their ire was directed against the police, innocent
civilians and public property, now the trend has
become a really dangerous one after the entry of the
educated ones like Glasgow famed doctor suicide
bombers and now legislatures. Muslim community today
has been like a rudderless ship.

It is true that Taslima did write some derogatory
remarks against the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) but
Muslims must realize that respect for him can never be
reduced by people who do not realize that the freedom
of expression and press is applied equally on both
sides and with it also comes the responsibility of not
hurting the religious sensibilities of others.

For a law abiding Muslim like me, it was so
embarrassing to see a lone woman in a foreign country
being manhandled by the so called custodians of Law
and Islam as well! I have felt let down these
co-religionists of mine who turned into savages
assaulting the author with files, bags, chairs,
flowerpots or any anything that came lying handy and
that too sarcastically at the Press Club of Hyderabad.
Eminent Muslim lawyer M Atyab Siddiqui states that
true, her lifestyle statements may not be in line with
Islamic injunctions on women, but she is well within
her rights to do so.

Dr Aziz Burney, the learned Muslim scholar and editor
Rashtriya Sahara Urdu daily opines that the best
treatment to works like Lajja or Satanic denouncing
religion is to ignore them and leave the matter
between the writer and God rather than taking law in
hands. Such protests actually render popularity to
otherwise sub-standard literary work. He said that
Prophet Mohammed actually invited dissent rather than
punishing those who spoke against him or Islam. He
believed in convincing.

Muslims have been put to shame by this remark of
Akbaruddin Owaisi, MIM, legilature when he said, “We
are least concerned about our MLA, “We are Muslims
first and it is our responsibility to punish all those
in any manner who have said anything against Islam.”
Certainly such acts do not help Islam. What authority
or which Hadith asks for the murder of dissenters, the
Owaisis should explain as we all know that Islam was
not spread by the likes of Owaisis but by the Sufi
saints whose life was generous like a river. The
honourable Owaisis overlooked the fact that ours is
not a totalitarian but secular country. Truth is
whether it is Gujarat, Hyderabad or Mumbai,
legislatures of all parties, have been known for
violent expressions regarding religious and ethnic
loyalties and they know how to get out of it.

Such people fail to understand that these blatantly
violent and anti-democratic expressions are the worst
possible publicity of their faith and owing to their
zealous misdeed, a common Muslim who is in majority,
has to pay dividends. As reaction to this, without
ado, the media will brand the entire Muslim fraternity
as a lot of extremists.

The legislatures turned goons from the
Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) defied not only all
democratic norms but even the Islamic ones as the
religion doesn’t allow such cowardly attacks on
women and other people. We may like or dislike what
Taslima Nasreen writes but when on Indian soil —
world’s largest democracy — no one has the right
to attack her.

Such people neither read nor understand the humane
attitude of the Prophet Muhammad, who did not attack
those who insulted him, and there were many in Mecca
at the time, who did. He returned the insults with
visits to the sick with kind words. When he returned
triumphant to Mecca, he did not punish any one who had
not been guilty of cruel violence.

I ask one question, Is it left to the MIM fiefdom of
honourable Owaisi and sons to decide for us Indians as
to who should be allowed a visa and who should not —
depending on their understanding of blasphemy and
heresy. The Owaisi family has been running the MIM as
its private business which is deplorable. It recalls
the ghetto mindset of the Gujarat BJP that banned
Parzania from being filmed in the state or that of
Yaqoob Qureshi, Mulayam’s minister who announced Rs
51 crore prize for Danish cartoonist’s head.

It seems that the kind of attacks in one of which
Taslima Nasrin had been subjected to in the Press Club
of Hyderabad by the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimin
legislators turned extremists, will never let Islam
and Muslims have a peaceful existence. It is time that
all right thinking Muslims condemn the attack on
Taslima that actually is an attack on amnesty, humane
attitude and the basic democratic and secular
foundations of the Indian nation.

Quite interestingly, the attack wasn’t planned by
the clerics but by the legislative members sworn to
uphold the Indian constitution. The machinations
behind the heinous act smack of attaining cheap
political publicity at the cost of Islam and Muslims
who both felt embarrassed by these annihilators of law
and order. These zealots proved more dastardly that
even the clergy of Lal Masjid in Islamabad. These
legislators should thank their stars that India has no
Musharrafs to crush such attackers.

No doubt that people like Taslima Nasrin and Salman
Rushdie with their third rate literary works have been
hurting the sentiments of the Muslims all over the
world yet in a democratic set up and an independent
and secular society, it is of paramount importance
that we accept freedom of expression and conscience.

We all Indians, Hindus and Muslims and all the others
know that our culture and ethos is based on the
foundations of a unique secularism based on the
concept of Sarva Dharma Samabhava, globally unique and
locally practicable

Well, the tragedy with Taslima is that she had been
exploited by some people who were Muslims in name and
resultantly she took up cudgels Islam. Her experiences
in Bangladesh had been unpleasant and rather than
following the right track since her Lajja in 1993, she
has been found wayward. But the fact is that the best
advocates of the religion are the acts by its
followers. In case of Islam she had come into contact
with drastically morally depraved Muslims. The
solution is not in casting allegations against the
Prpohet or being vitriolic regarding Islam but in
interpreting the religion the Sufi way.

True that these legislatures are no ones to do moral
policing but Taslima herself is accused doing of what
others are accusing the MLAs. The Muslim community
best be advised to see through the manipulative
designs and ignore such minor and insignificant
issues. The only democratic and civilized way to deal
with Taslima is to either ignore her or answer her
with pen as violence at any cost is inhuman and
Un-Islamic.

The attackers have rather done a great favour to
Taslima that she might have been noted for female
Knighthood by Britain or may be another attack like
this can help her being nominated for the Noble prize
for literature! This is what some actors do by way of
their kisses — perfect fundas to remain in
limelight! Now she will have ‘Z’ category security
at our coast! (The author is a commentator on social,
religious and political matters) ***

FIROZ BAKHT AHMED, A-202 Adeeba Market and Apartments,
Near Rehmani Masjid, Main Road, Zakir Nagar, Oklhla,
New Delhi 110 025. Ph.: 26984238, 26984517,
98109-33050 E-mail: firozbakht@...

Sukhia Sab Sansar Khaye Aur Soye
Dukhia Das Kabir Jagey Aur Roye

The world is 'happy', eating and sleeping
The forlorn Kabir Das is awake and weeping