Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Times of India Does it Again – VIII
The Times of India is on the rampage again. Tired of presenting its Front Page as the prime repository of news all the evils of the corruption and deep fissures in Indian politics and society, it has decided to bring in the Muslims in the focus to divert the attention of its harried readership to savour the rich store of inanities that its so-called progressives, including S. Balakrishnan and M. Wajihuddin, can dish out as quickly as any fast food in the now news-hungry land that has develop the acquired taste, nay the addiction to now feed on the sleaze and filth.
The distortion, disinformation and misinformation is deliberate and verging on criminal when Times of India owners allow its staff to sow seeds of dissension, division and strife in the community. While on the one side, it is burning midnight oil to feed the flames of ‘Asha ke deep’, making up friends with Pakistan, it has gone on to attack Sharia laws with its typical treatment of news in headlines, that has no bearing to the truth. This double dealing newsmaking can only earn deep resentment in 200 million Muslims of India, for deliberate provocation of India’s prime newspaper to take on the supposed might of the Mullahs, by distorted representation of Islam to open it to public derision and scorn.
It would have been fitness of objective reporting, if Times of India , had published the full scan of the Deoband fatwa, which according to TOI report headline has declared --- Women’s earnings Haram. Apparently TOI headline is being used by its editors without full knowledge of what the word ‘Haram’ connotes in Sharia. It merely exposes the open ignorance of the TOI staff, who have been allowed to frame headlines to inflame emotions and outrage among Muslims of India . The whole fatwa needs lots of context to be available for such mischievous and provocative headline. TOI’s S. Balakrishnan himself uses the same word ‘Haram’ in the next report on inside pages as describing proximity between males and females in a confined space, that can lead to unwanted consequences. Islamic Sharia from Malaysia to Saudi Arabia being Muslim dominated states; promote the same norms of Sharia that Deoband is plainly expounding. Deoband is not coming out with anything new or of its own exclusive authorship and copyright. The motive behind such attacks on Deoband, Sharia and Muslim society is to stop their commanding role in the newly emerging political clout of the Muslim voters that practically all political parties at all level are fully apprehensive of and have set the commercially handicapped mainstream media to start a campaign of distortion, disinformation and division among the Muslims. Muslims are neither uninformed of such Machiavellian shenanigans, nor are prepared to let barking dogs keep on barking. The quotes of harebrained women scholars who may be academically informed but woefully ignorant of the conspiracies hatched against Indian Muslims and therefore can only earn widespread derision and scorn for their almost automatic and programmed intervention in the national debate without any overall societal mandate.
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai