We need to help Muslims who are self-employed - By Jyoti Punwani - Sunday Edition - Mumbai Mirror

http://www.mumbaimirror.com/article/82/2011121820111218031330107264cc219/We-need-to-help-Muslims-who-are-selfemployed.html


Today: Sun, Dec 18, 2011

We need to help Muslims who are self-employed

Kashif Ul Huda, who has started a website for his community, says there is a range of voices that goes unheard

 

By Jyoti Punwani

Posted On Sunday, December 18, 2011 at 03:13:21 AM

Muzaffarpur-born and Jamshedpur-educated Kashif-ul-Huda is the man behind TwoCircles.net, the website for all things Muslim. A bio-chemist by training, the 38-year-old, who’s lived in the US since 1995, is in Mumbai to host a meet of the Muslim elite on how they can help empower the community economically. He tell us why Muslims need to stand on their own feet, be it in the media or in business. Why did you start TwoCircles.Net? I had seen the Jamshedpur riots of 1979, and was here during the Babri Masjid period. Then Gujarat 2002 happened. I felt helpless in the US. I joined online discussions but realised that Muslims have no hard facts to go by. So I started gathering data in 2005 and set up IndianMuslims.info. Around then, the Gudiya and Imrana episodes happened. (Gudiya re-married after her soldier-husband was reported dead; when he came back four years later, the panchayat asked a pregnant Gudiya to return to him. Imrana was raped by her father-in-law, after which Deoband issued a fatwa declaring her marriage null and void.) The media was making a spectacle of Muslims, and no sane Muslim voice was being heard. That’s when I started thinking about how important it was to have a daily news cycle for Muslims, taking advantage of the new medium of the Internet. Obviously you found the English mainstream media lacking. The full range of Muslim voices doesn’t reach the English mainstream media. Those that do, get filtered. The mainstream media has its constraints, it caters to a much wider audience. So there’s always need for community-driven media. Also, with a few exceptions, the English media doesn’t completely understand Muslim issues. I was asking a Hindi newspaper editor in UP about how they cover Muslim issues, and he said they are cautious, these are sensitive issues. Thanks to us, mainstream media can learn how to cover Muslims without offending sensibilities. Your reports reflect Muslim voices. But what about getting the other side of the story? And how do you cross-check what’s told to you? We have developed a large list of contacts. For example, we got news from Gopalganj in Bihar that hundreds had died in anti-Muslim violence. We rang up our contacts and didn’t get any corroboration. So we didn’t do that story. When our reporter covered the Moradabad violence in July, he was shown the damage done to Hindu homes too, and he reported that. We also carry all viewpoints, be it Zakir Naik, or the Central Madarsa Board’s opposition to the Right to Education Act. The mainstream media always portrays Muslims negatively. We try to bring in the positive angle too. If we talked only about discrimination, the young will lose hope.  For example, we decided to hold this conference on empowering Muslims. Many in the community felt we should be focusing on the way the State is hounding Muslims as terrorists. But we feel with the new economy, we need to find ways to help Muslim entrepreneurs. Many Muslims are self-employed. With no access to credit, how can they develop? What about government programmes directed specifically towards Muslims? They don’t reach Muslims. I’ve been touring UP, and people just haven’t heard of these schemes. The State doesn’t take the community into confidence before implementing any welfare scheme. They provide anganwadis where toilets are a primary need. I did an article in the EPW: ‘How not to do minority welfare’, and sent it to minority affairs minister Salman Khurshid. He replied that he had read it - that’s all. Not just Muslims, Indians largely survive without government support. The aim of this conference is to try set up an organisation which can provide financial and intellectual support to self-employed Muslim. It’s a daily struggle for most of them. The second aim is to bring Muslim elite back to the community. They feel disconnected from the larger community. What was your most remarkable finding in your travels through Kerala, Gujarat and UP? In Kerala, Islam came at the time of the Prophet, through trade. In Gujarat too, that’s how Islam entered. In both places, there’s an interesting mix of local and Islamic traditions, which is unique. Islam is very much rooted in the Indian tradition. But because of the continuous onslaught of propaganda, Muslims have also started believing that they came here with Babar and they are ‘Babar ki aulad’. There is no contradiction between being Indian and Muslim - that’s why the name Two Circles. As Muslims and as Indians, we have a stake in what’s going on in the country.

(Ramazan) Roza, Hazare agitation go hand in hand in Mumbai-DNA | Wary of BJP, Muslims stay out - telegraphindia.com

http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report_roza-hazare-agitation-go-hand-in-hand-in-mumbai_1577345

Roza, Hazare agitation go hand in hand in Mumbai

Published: Friday, Aug 19, 2011, 5:00 IST | Updated: Friday, Aug 19, 2011, 1:20 IST
By Manoj R Nair | Place: Mumbai | Agency: DNA

Taking part in the anti-corruption protests while observing their day-long Ramzan fasts, Muslim supporters of Anna Hazare’s campaign say that they are fulfilling doing both their religious and national responsibilities.
Among those on a hunger strike at Azad Maidan since Tuesday are Muslims who are also observing the Ramzan fast.

Shadab Haidar, a resident of Mumbai Central, was one among them. On the evening of August 16, the first day of the protests, Haidar did not have a full meal after breaking the fast. Instead, after breaking the fast with some dates and water, Haidar joined other campaigners in an ‘indefinite fast’. More than three days into the protest, he said he will continue his fast till Hazare ends his campaign in Delhi.

Firoze Mithiborewala, another member of the group that is on an ‘indefinite fast’ said he had decided to take part in the anti-corruption movement after Hazare’s first protest in April. He is also observing the Ramzan fast. “It is just a coincidence that it is a holy month for both Hindus and Muslims. Hindus are also observing the Shravan fast. We pray together,” said Mithiborewala.

Aslam Gazi, Mumbai-based worker of Jamaat-i-Islami Hind said that while he observed his day-long fast, he spends a few hours daily at Azad Maidan.

“Our organisation has been associated with Anna Hazare for the last 10 years and have supported his work. I have even visited his village,” said Gazi.

Dr Riyaz Pathan, a homeopathic doctor from Khopoli near Panvel, has been taking part in the anti-corruption protests in the town since Tuesday while following the Ramzan fast.

On Thursday, he took part in a 3-km-long cycle rally that was organised as part of the anti-graft campaign in the town. The cycle rally began at 6pm and ended an hour later after covering most parts of the town. At 7.30 pm, Pathan ended his fast with a glass of water.

He said he is not exhausted by the demands of the day-long fast and the hectic protests.

Pathan said, “It is not at all tiring; it is a privilege to take part in the protests and do something for the country.”
Mithiborewala said: “It is as spiritually rewarding as a Roza.”
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http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110819/jsp/nation/story_14396604.jsp

Wary of BJP, Muslims stay out

RADHIKA RAMASESHAN

Delhi Municipal Corporation workers clean up Ramlila Maidan on Thursday ahead of Hazare’s fast. Picture by Prem Singh New Delhi, Aug. 18: Many Muslims feel Anna Hazare’s drive against corruption deserves their support but their backing is clouded by the apprehension that the RSS and the BJP are “exploiting” the momentum his campaign generated to their political advantage. Citing such misgivings, some members of the minority community said they were chary of hitting the streets with the other protesters and chose to express their solidarity “silently”. The Ramazan month, when daytime fasting has to be broken after sundown, also made participation in a round-the-clock hunger-strike “more impractical”, they said. An editorial in the Urdu daily Jadid Khabar, published from Delhi and Moradabad, said corruption had to be dealt with head-on. But it also spoke of how Hazare’s self-professed ethical movement had virtually morphed into a call for ousting the “secular” UPA government and, therefore, acquired an overt political colour. The paper stressed it would not support an initiative to topple the Centre, however “laudable” the intentions were. It debunked the comparison between Hazare and Mahatma Gandhi, contending that while Gandhi fought for freeing India from colonial rule, a movement to get rid of a “democratic set-up” was not the same. Democracy, the editorial said, vested every adult with the right to vote, and this was the accepted process to make and unmake governments and not the “street crusades” launched by “civil society”.  “I made it clear that Hazare’s movement smacked of fascism, it was unconstitutional. If I had to make a moral choice between fascism and corruption, I would say better to live with corruption instead of fascism,” said Masoom Moradabadi, the editor of Jadid Khabar. A government employee, not wanting to go on record, conceded that while the Centre had botched up Hazare’s arrest, it was “extremely reasonable” earlier by engaging him and his team in a protracted dialogue on the Lokpal bill. “If the government is run according to their agenda, Parliament is rendered irrelevant,” he said. He questioned the “moral” underpinning of the Hazare campaign and asked why it counted Delhi’s traders’ associations as a principal supporter. “These organisations are circulating pamphlets eliciting backers. But do Hazare and Arvind Kejriwal realise that barring exceptions, they rarely file income tax returns scrupulously?” he asked. The Hazare team had attempted to reach out to Muslim representatives before he embarked on his fast this time. One of them was Delhi’s Jamaat-e-Islami Hind. About two weeks ago, Kejriwal and Kiran Bedi called on its president, Maulana Sayeed Jalaluddin Umary, and sought his co-operation for their “good work”. They claimed that the movement was “apolitical” and it had nothing to do with the RSS. When Hazare was picked up by police, the Jamaat issued a statement condemning his arrest and advising the government to elicit his group’s opinion while framing the Lokpal bill. “But let me tell you that we are not that exercised over the violation of civil rights. The Muslims fear one thing: that the events would most likely favour the BJP in the next election and damage the Congress. Everybody wants corruption to go but we don’t want the BJP at the Centre,” a businessman and social activist said. [ Regretfully, the news of the visit of Anna Team led by Kejriwal and Kiren Bedi to Jamaate Islami Hind's President Maulana Syed Jalaluddin Umari, was not carried by even most of the Urdu newspapers that have direct access to Muslim community in various Muslim majority areas of the country. It does smack of a rather imposed ban on Anna news in Muslim media by some influential quarters. GM]