Photo: Lady in red hat


Lady in red hat
Originally uploaded by TwoCircles.net

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Talibanizing secularism

Secularism is indeed a foreign concept for India. Many Indians have difficulty understanding it and therefore are confused on how to apply it in their personal and professional lives. Latest example is Supreme Court’s Justice Markandey Katju. While denying a request by a Muslim student to keep a beard while going to a convent school, Justice Katju termed it as “overstretching” of secularism. Denying the plea of Mohammed Saleem, a 16 year old student of a Christian missionary school because school had a right to make rules that it seems fit would have ended this matter. But Justice Katju overstretched himself and said “We don’t want to have Talibans in the country. Tomorrow a girl student may come and say that she wants to wear a burqa. Can we allow it?” First thing objectionable in his statement is that he is associating beard and burqa with the Talibans. Taliban was a puritanical group that emerged in Afghanistan few years after Russian occupation ended and provided stability to the r...
Read more

Rahmani-30: A school of hope

Image
The Muslims of North India for historical reasons have not had very friendly relations with the local police. I was in Patna visiting Rahmani-30 when Abhayanand, Additional Director General of Police makes a visit in his official car. Rahmani-30 is set up on the pattern of Bihar Super-30 which is a successful experiment to pick and train 30 students from poor economic background and prepare them for entrance exam of famous Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). Abhyanand waits while group of twenty odd Muslim students finish their afternoon prayers (Asr). These students have recently appeared for the class tenth exams and selected to Rahmani-30 after an entrance test and an interview. Entrance test was held in Bihar, Jharkhand, and West Bengal – clearly a sign of increasing popularity of the institution that is barely a year old. A year ago, Maulana Wali Rahmani, Sajjada Nasheen of Khanqah Rahmaniya, Munger and Secretary of All India Muslim Personal Law Board requested Abhayanand to h...
Read more

Speak gently

So after assigning Prophet Moosa and Haroon (alaihe salaam) their duty as prophets, Allah tells them not to become weak in their zikr. Then these verses follow... Go, both of you, unto Pharaoh. Lo! he hath transgressed (the bounds). (43) And speak unto him a gentle word, that peradventure he may heed or fear. (44) Surah Taha. Translation by Picthall http://quranexplorer.com/ So even to Firaun, the biggest transgressors of his time, Moosa alaihe salaam is told to speak to him gently so that he may understand or fear. Now contrast this to the attitude of Taliban and Saudi moral police aka Muttawa. And almost every masjid has people with that kind of mentality who take it upon themselves to mind everyone's else business and do not hesitate in humiliating others in public by telling them what in their opinion is haram. For these kind of people Islam is a fixed system that ceased to exist after khulfa-e-rashedeen. By removing all artifacts of the era of the prophet they are removing the...
Read more