Was a Muslim journalist deliberately gagged when Door Darshan (DD) telecast resorted to go off the air at Indian Prime Minister's Press Conference? - By Ghulam Muhammed

Monday, May 24, 2010

Letter to the Editor:

Was a Muslim journalist deliberately gagged when Door Darshan (DD) telecast resorted to go off the air at Indian Prime Minister's Press Conference?

Was a deliberate gag manufactured to silence Masoom Moradabai of Urdu newspaper Akhbar e Jadid, when he asked the most crucial question engaging the 200 million Indian Muslims as to how Prime Minister will act on the recommendations of Sachar Commission and Justice Ranganathan Misra Commission reports.

The Urdu journalist was the fifth journalist in the line to be given the chance to address the questions to the Prime Minister. However when he posed the sensitive question about Muslim plight, all of a sudden the DD telecast went dead. Can one imagine a national TV Channel to be so inefficient and callous about breakdown in its telecast of Prime Minister’s Press Conference, without some sanction from the authorities? Was the breakdown of the telecast was designed specially to shield the Prime Minister from replying to embarrassing questions about the abject failure of his government?

One can see the last flashes of Prime Minister's instant distress while the Muslim journalist reeled out the question on behalf of his Urdu newspaper, when the telecast went off the air. Later, TIMES NOW's Arnab cited one more gag by technical breakdown in the same Press Conference telecast when TIMES NOW representative posed a very uncomfortable question that Prime Minister probably would have found difficult to reply to.

These sequences will point to a possibility towards a deliberate policy by Indian Government that had arranged a rare public relations event of the current Prime Minister’s Press Conference, was to run away from public scrutiny on major issues by blanking out the very live telecast, when Prime Minister was supposed to reply. That is most reprehensive and Prime Minister should clear the air, by appearing to press again and respond to these two blocked out questions that Government is bound to reply in able to take the press and general public in confidence.

As it is Muslims are most worried that Indian National Congress under the leadership of Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is merely playing with the community and has no intention of giving an inch to Muslim’s rightful demands. The recent meeting of Muslim community leaders, including from Jamiat ul Ulama, Jamat e Islami, Majlis e Mushawarat and others with both, the Prime Minister and Sonia Gandhi is reported to be a dodging game that Congress is old past master of. Both leaders have been arrogant as if they would be doing a favour to the Muslim leaders by even giving them the time to press their demands and that should be the end of it.

India is a democracy, but the way the Prime Minister replied about a job given to him which is not yet complete and unless that is complete, he is not going to retire or resign. The TV channels were agog as to who was the ‘real’ authority that had given him the ‘job’ and apparently he was categorical about Congress Party, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi not being in the picture, as far as his stay as PM is concerned. It will be a big gaffe, if a perception is formed by press and public that he was referring to an outside power that could have given him the ‘job’ and India’s democracy is just a sham.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com

www.GhulamMuhammed.Blogspot.com

Who Lives in Sheik Jarrah? By Kai Bird - The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/01/opinion/01bird.html?ref=global-home

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

Who Lives in Sheik Jarrah?

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By KAI BIRD

Published: April 30, 2010

AS a boy, I lived in Sheik Jarrah, a wealthy Arab neighborhood in East Jerusalem. Annexed by Israel in 1967 and now the subject of a conflict over property claims, my former home has come to symbolize everything that has gone wrong between the Israelis and Palestinians over the last six decades.

Despite talk of a slowdown in Israeli construction in East Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, Jerusalem’s mayor, toured Washington earlier this week and told officials that the expansion into Arab neighborhoods is going ahead at full speed.

As a result, “The battle line in Israel’s war of survival as a Jewish and democratic state now runs through the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem,” writes David Landau, the former editor of the Israeli daily Haaretz. “Is that the line, at last, where Israel’s decline will be halted?” I hope so.

My family lived in Israel from 1956 to 1958, when my father, an American diplomat, was stationed in East Jerusalem. We lived in the Palestinian sector, but every day I crossed through Mandelbaum Gate, the one checkpoint in the divided city, to attend school in an Israeli neighborhood. I thus had the rare privilege of seeing both sides.

At the time Sheik Jarrah was a sleepy suburb, a half-mile north of Damascus Gate. One of my playmates was Dani Bahar, the son of a Muslim Palestinian and a Jewish-German refugee from Nazi Europe. Before the establishment of Israel in 1948, such interfaith marriages were uncommon, but accepted. Another neighbor was Katy Antonius, the widow of George Antonius, an Arab historian who argued that Palestine should become a binational, secular state.

The Sheik Jarrah of my youth is gone; Mandelbaum Gate was razed by Israeli bulldozers right after the Six-Day War in 1967 that united Jerusalem. But the city remains virtually divided. Few Jewish Israelis venture into Sheik Jarrah and the other largely Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, and few Palestinians go to the “New City.”

Today East Jerusalem exudes the palpable feel of a city occupied by a foreign power. And it is, to an extent — although much of the world doesn’t recognize Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refuses to halt the construction of new housing units for Jewish Israelis in the Arab neighborhoods. “Jerusalem is not a settlement,” he recently told an audience in Washington.

Not all Israelis agree with this policy. For over a year, hundreds, sometimes thousands, of Israelis and Palestinians have been gathering in Sheik Jarrah on Fridays to protest the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes. Israeli courts have deemed these nonviolent demonstrations to be legal, but this has not stopped the police from arresting protesters.

In a cruel historical twist, nearly all of the Palestinians evicted from their homes in Sheik Jarrah in the last year-and-a-half were originally expelled in 1948 from their homes in the West Jerusalem neighborhood of Talbieh. In the wake of the Six-Day War, Israeli courts ruled that some of the houses these Palestinian refugees have lived in since 1948 are actually legally owned by Jewish Israelis, who have claims dating from before Israel’s founding.

The Palestinians have stubbornly refused to pay any rent to these “absentee” Israeli landlords for nearly 43 years; until recently, their presence was nevertheless tolerated. But under Mr. Netanyahu, a concerted effort has been made to evict these Palestinians and replace them with Israelis.
This poses an interesting question. If Jewish Israelis can claim property in East Jerusalem based on land deeds that predate 1948, why can’t Palestinians with similar deeds reclaim their homes in West Jerusalem?

I have in mind the Kalbians, our neighbors in Sheik Jarrah. Until 1948, Dr. Vicken Kalbian and his family lived in a handsome Jerusalem-stone house on Balfour Street in Talbieh. In the spring, the Haganah, the Zionist militia, sent trucks mounted with loudspeakers through the streets of Talbieh, demanding that all Arab residents leave. The Kalbians decided it might be prudent to comply, but they thought they’d be back in a few weeks.

Nineteen years later, after the Six-Day war, the Kalbians returned to 4 Balfour Street and knocked on the door. A stranger answered. “He was a Jewish Turk,” Dr. Kalbian said, “who had come to Israel in 1948.” The man claimed he had bought the house from the “authorities.”
That year the Kalbians took their property deed to a lawyer who determined that their house was indeed registered with the Israeli Department of Absentee Property. Under Israeli law, they learned, due compensation could have been paid to them — but only if they had not fled to countries then considered “hostile,” like Jordan. Because in 1948 they had ended up in Jordanian-controlled Sheik Jarrah, the Kalbians could neither reclaim their home nor be compensated for their loss.

The Kalbians eventually emigrated to America, but their moral claim to the house on Balfour Street is as strong as any of the deeds held by Israelis to property in Sheik Jarrah.
If Israel wishes to remain largely Jewish and democratic, then it must soon withdraw from all of the occupied territories and negotiate the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital. And if not, it should at least let the Kalbians go home again.

Kai Bird is the author of “Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978.”

India acting like an ostrich with its head in sand By Ghulam Muhammed

India cannot act like an ostrich and bury its head in sand, while serious developments in the neighborhood can inflame the whole area. The consequences for US/Israel conspired attack proceed step by step, should alarm our Administration and it should not sit on the fence and see US armed forces once again unleashing blood bath of innocents on contrived pretext. US and Israel's HEGEMONICAL agenda in the oil resource rich Gulf is not hidden to the world. The real reason for the US upping the ante is to manufacture a regime change in Iran. That is openly against the UN Charter's prohibition of interference in the internal affairs of UN member nations. Yesterday, it was Iraq and Afghanistan, tomorrow it will be India, which is already infected by US and Israeli agents in its government and political polity. India had been in colonial bondage for over 150 years and its people have made great struggles and sacrifices to gain independence, which is certainly threatened if India does not cover its bases against US and Israeli moves in Asia. India should work towards 'Asia for Asian' and chuck foreign influences out, before they get further entrenched in the area. The passive and tired leadership of Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh is not up to taking longer term measures to secure India's integrity, freedom and honor. A vigorous public debate should give them the required courage to face the uncertain and danger-laden future and bolster its will to stand up for national interest.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

<ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com>

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/cover-everyones-bases/621192/0

Cover everyone’s bases

C. Raja MohanTags : crajamohan, columnsPosted: Thu May 20 2010, 00:51 hrs
India’s current diplomatic exertions on Iran, marked by External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna’s anxious outreach to Tehran this week, could get a lot more strenuous if the government does not come to terms with the gravity of the gathering crisis in the Gulf.

During Krishna’s brief Tehran sojourn, there was much motion, if not movement, in dealing with the nuclear confrontation

between the United States and Iran. The leaders of Brazil and Turkey, who along with India were part of a third world conclave convened by Iran, declared that they got Tehran to agree on a nuclear compromise that would end the impasse. Dismissing the initiative from two of its old allies and partners, Washington quickly wrapped up a draft agreement among the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council on new sanctions against Tehran.

The Gulf crisis will indeed test Delhi’s strategic acumen and diplomatic mettle in dealing with a range of associated issues from a possible breakdown of international efforts to contain Iran’s nuclear aspirations and a radical redistribution of power in the region.

Iran has long been part of Delhi’s security perimeter thanks to Tehran’s historic role in shaping the geopolitics of India’s north-western frontiers, the Persian Gulf, the Caucasus and

Central Asia. Iran is a major producer of oil and natural gas, two commodities that India will need in ever larger quantities. With India’s physical access to inner Asia blocked by Pakistan, Iran offers the alternative route.

Geography alone demands that India cultivate a strong partnership with Iran. Yet, the pursuit of Indian interests in Iran is circumscribed by the political and economic orientation of Tehran’s current ruling elite. Delhi’s difficulties have become acute amidst the power struggles within Iran, Tehran’s sharpening disputes with its Arab neighbours, its prolonged hostility with the US, and its defiance of the nuclear system. India will be able to do no real business with Iran if the

present conflict with the West is not mitigated.

Reports from Tehran say that Krishna has chosen to “explain” India’s votes in the International Atomic Energy Agency against Iran — three of them during the last five years — to the Iranian leadership. If true, these reports are indeed disturbing; for it

reflects a needless nervousness in Delhi. Worse still it reveals a

focus on the peripheral rather than the central issues arising out of the current crisis.

Delhi has no reason to be apologetic because its votes are consistent with India’s principles and interests. India has always maintained that as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran must abide by its legal obligations. Any fudging of this principle would have severely undermined India’s own nuclear interests — especially in winning international endorsement of Delhi’s civil nuclear initiative.

While Delhi owes Tehran no explanation on the IAEA vote, India has every reason to be concerned about the many implications and consequences of the current stand-off between Iran and the international community.

The first is about the credibility of the UNSC itself. Three rounds of UNSC sanctions have not forced Iran to stop its uranium enrichment programme. And Tehran is not trembling at the sight of the draft fourth resolution. Despite its minimalism, the new resolution will have no credibility if it runs into the opposition of Brazil, Turkey and other non-permanent members of the UNSC.

Facing a resolution that has neither teeth nor legitimacy, Iran will be right to hold that the metaphorical emperor of the post-Cold War world — the UNSC — has no clothes.

If the Bush administration gave “unilateralism” a bad name in the handling of the Iraq crisis during 2002-03, the Obama administration might be close to doing the same with “multilateralism” in its handling of Iran. Believing that American decline is real, betting that its military machine is

exhausted after Iraq and Afghanistan, and sensing that the multilateral coalition against Iran is on its last legs, Tehran may be sorely tempted to test the resolve of President Obama. Amidst a growing clamour at home for a tougher policy towards Iran and accusations that he is weak on national security, the Obama administration would be under pressure to act. With Israel straining at the leash for a military solution, Obama is between a rock and a hard place.

In this emerging situation, India’s main task is not about defining a diplomatic position that covers all political bases and potential contingencies. Nor does it involve a return to the old ideological impulses of third world solidarity.

Delhi’s current focus on the minor stakes in Iran — an oil field here or a pipeline there — stands in contrast to the enormity of the current dynamic in and around Iran. Delhi’s immediate task is to join the international effort to avert a war in the Gulf. It must press Washington and Tehran to begin an unconditional bilateral dialogue to address all issues of mutual concern. The world has had enough of shadow play between the two of them.

Looking ahead, India must assess the prospect that the US may not be able to remain for ever the principal provider of security in the arc of crisis stretching from Pakistan to Somalia, via Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and the Gulf of Aden.

Just as the failure of the great powers to act against Italy’s invasion of Abyssinia led to the political demise of the League of

Nations in the ’30s, the Iran crisis has the potential to wreck the post-war international order and destroy the regional equilibrium.

Promoting a new concert of powers that can step into the breach between a weakening America and an irrelevant UNSC is the real long-term challenge before India’s national security planners.

raja.mohan@expressindia.com

Banning the burqa ... A bad idea ... The Economist, UK

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=16108394

Banning the burqa

A bad idea...

...whose time may soon come in parts of Europe

May 13th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

WHEN Jack Straw, a British Labour politician, said a few years ago that he would prefer Muslim women to uncover their faces during appointments with him, because he “felt uncomfortable about talking to someone ‘face-to-face’ who [he] could not see”, liberal opinion was scandalised. He had no more right to request this than he did to ask a teenager to take out a tongue-stud or anything else that might offend middle-aged men: indeed, arguably less because the covering was for reasons of faith, not fashion. Today, however, some European governments are going further than Mr Straw ever wanted to. Starting with Belgium and France, they plan to ban the face-covering niqab or burqa altogether (see article).

Europeans’ hostility to the burqa is understandable. It doesn’t just deprive them of the beauty of women’s faces; it offends the secularism that goes deep in European—and especially French—culture. Its spread goes hand in hand with the growth of a fundamentalist version of Islam some of whose proponents have attacked the secular societies they live in; and, at a time when those societies feel under threat, the burqa makes it harder for police to identify security risks.

For people raised outside the Gulf or Afghanistan, dealing with somebody whose facial expressions are hidden is uncomfortable. Unlike the headscarf, the burqa appears, in itself, to be a restraint on female freedom, and also symbolises what many Europeans see as the repression that women can suffer in Islam. And although many, and probably most, Muslim women wear the headscarf out of choice, some tell the police that they were forced to wear the burqa against their will.

Nor do democracies give absolute rights to citizens to wear what they like. The consensus about what is tolerated and what deemed offensive or dangerous varies. People cannot, in most countries, walk the streets naked. And Europeans clearly favour a ban. A recent poll found that a majority backed one in France (70%), Spain (65%), Italy (63%), Britain (57%) and Germany (50%). In America, with its stronger culture of religious freedom, only a minority (33%) was in favour.

Tolerate the burqa with pride

Yet the very values which Europeans feel are threatened by the burqa demand that they oppose a ban. Liberal societies should let people wear what they want unless there is a strong argument otherwise. And, in this case, the three arguments for a ban—security, sexual equality and secularism—do not stand up. On security, women can be required to lift their veils if necessary. On sexual equality, women would be better protected by the enforcement of existing laws against domestic violence than by the enactment of new laws forcing them to dress in a way that may be against their will. On secularism, even if Europeans would prefer not to have others’ religiosity paraded on the streets, the tolerance that Westerners claim to value requires them to put up with it.

European governments are entitled to limit women’s rights to wear the burqa. In schools, for instance, pupils should be able to see teachers’ faces, as should judges and juries in court. But Europeans should accept that, however much they dislike the burqa, banning it altogether would be an infringement on the individual rights which their culture normally struggles to protect. The French, of all people, should know that. As Voltaire might have said, “I disapprove of your dress, but I will defend to the death your right to wear it.”

‘Terror’ victims – US and India, having different enemies, should follow different strategies By Ghulam Muhammed

Monday, May 17, 2010

‘Terror’ victims – US and India, having different enemies, should follow different strategies

The announcement of a list of ‘terror’ organisations by Indian authorities openly exposes how far Indian policies are dictated by US overlords and how US ends up imposing its own way even in administrative field by insisting on dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s.

India had never had the need to publish any such list in the past nor has it to institutionalize a ‘war on terror’ regimen to respond to its own list of adversaries/enemies who have sapped its constructive and peace energies. The new modes operandi is unabashedly picked up from the US security and defence establishments. The commonality of names in list of the two countries will further strengthen how much India is being led through the nose by the overbearing US overlords.

US ‘war on terror’ is overlapping with ‘war on Islam’.

India has no mandate from its people to join any ‘war on Islam’. Indian administration had realised long time back, that even if an extremist Hindutva group is all for declaring an open war on Islam and Muslims, India’s integrity, security and internal peace cannot be compromised by following the uncalled for misadventure. India’s 200 million Muslims are well meshed with Indian democracy as far as it is allowed to and are peacefully integrated in its political environment. Any wholesale disturbance in this delicate balance of communal interactive equilibrium could be the first step towards the unraveling of the very Idea of India.

For the Indian public it is not a rocket science to figure out that US has its own compulsions in setting up a semi-permanent ‘War on Terror’ machinery that coincides with its hegemonical designs on Muslim world that is sitting on the largest oil reserves of the world.

India should learn and definitely has learned from its experience, as to how it had to eat humble pie and make up with Iran on more congenial terms than when it had chosen to oppose Iran at IAEA under strong open blackmailing pressures from the US.

It has now realised that the sacking of Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar, who was in the forefront of negotiating with Iran the terms for gas supplies to India through Pakistan and/or through undersea pipelines was a blatant attack on India’s sovereign right to be free from such external pressures. Mani Shankar was sacked by open arm twisting by the Bush administration, who had Manmohan Singh government over the barrel with the stick and carrot negotiations leading to civil nuclear supplies agreement. In fact, nothing short of giving back the Petroleum Ministry to Mani Shankar will restore the confidence of the people in the bona-fide of their Prime Minister to confirm that his government is not mortgaged to the US handlers.

The Jairam Ramesh outburst over a vested interest coterie in Indian government and the ruling coalition partner, Indian National Congress, unreasonably hindering investments from China, is still fresh in public arena. It should be added for good measure that the same vested interest coterie is similarly against any investment from Arab investors, who are not only our major oil suppliers at present but could be for long term foreseeable future too. Indian government has hidden policies unknown to and uncleared by Indian public to close all investment opportunities to the US clique, to the exclusion of other more soft term investors. India should debate openly as to the clear benefit of opening Indian economy to different investors to hedge our future from vagaries of economic turmoil in western economies. It will give us more freedom to write our own future economic plans without being heavily entangled to the US and its dependants. Needless to add how our economy’s financial control parameters had kept us less prone to the recessionary upheaval that was direct result of uncontrolled financial trickery by Wall Street gnomes.

The recent arrest of an innocent Imam from Emirate flight  taking off from New Delhi airport, on mere unsubstantiated suspicion by a US based NRI lady is clear proof how US media and security propaganda against Muslims is being reflected in Indian security, media and general public’s own profiling of Indian Muslims.

P. Chidambaram, India Home Minister’s instant intervention in ordering release of the Imam, shows how India is still independent in assessment of the profiling of its own terror suspect and is not needlessly and blindly following US dictates.

It is unimaginable that US President Obama, generally painted as proto-Muslim, would have reached out publicly and intervened to save any such innocent Muslim arrested in the State, over such flimsy pretext of Muslim profiling. News of such unwarranted arrests all over US are becoming very common and no human rights group has taken cudgels in earnest against such spurious profiling and demonizing of Muslims in the US that borders on hate crime by US authorities.

Indian authority should be rightly more vigilant to protect their freedom being eroded by their overbearing strategic partner, the USA.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com

www.GhulamMuhammed.Blogspot.com

Tendencies of Inner Surveillance in Democratic India: Challenges of Establishing Native Ethnographer’s Identity Among Indian Muslims

http://www.cultureunbound.ep.liu.se/v2/a07/cu10v2a7.pdf

Tendencies of Inner Surveillance in Democratic India: Challenges of Establishing Native Ethnographer’s Identity Among Indian Muslims

Paper by Tabassum 'Ruhi' Khan - University of California Riverside

Obama's cancer warning should identify the source back home By Ghulam Muhammed

Obama's cancer warning should identify the source back home

The cancer that American Jewish Neo-cons had inserted in the international mainstream, through their war on terror --- in fact a war on Islam --- is spreading through relentless and continuous feeding of the disease by the votaries of the evil designs on world peace. Though India since its independence had never been fully comfortable with its 15% Muslim citizens, and had successfully marginalized them through institutionalized apartheid and organised communal riots with the fascist extremist Hindutva organisations being in the vanguard of attacks on the lives and properties of Muslims in India, the media lead now given by the US on profiling Muslims and publicly arresting and humiliating Muslims on unproved and fictitious charges, has emboldened the fascist elements in India, to 'wash their hands in the flowing Ganges' -- as the Urdu proverb goes (to make hay while the sun shines). The arrest and humiliation of an innocent Imam travelling abroad on legitimate speaking tour, has shocked the common people in India who are sensible enough to figure out the prejudices of a communalized police force. On the flimsiest ground of overheard phone conversion by a NRI (Non-Resident Indian) reportedly living in the US, being apparently brought the bug of suspicion from the US itself, overreacted and informed the the flight crew about her suspicions that the bearded Mullah could be a security threat. That triggered a series of events that resulted in an entirely peaceful and innocent Muslim clerk to be victim of the heightened paranoia that is spreading all over the world like the Icelandic cloud of volcanic dust. And there is no visible cure for the blinding of common sense by prejudicial communalised security forces. (Shoot first, ask questions later).

It is heartening that the Indian Home Minister P. Chidambaram is reported to be  annoyed at the police overreaction and had to intervene. 

But the trend set by America's Jewish Neo-con does not appear to be ebbing and that cancer is spreading all over the body politics of all countries of the world wherever Muslims have their presence. The cancer that US President Barack Obama has identified to be wrecking Pakistan, has to be properly diagnosed for its origin and its feeder proteins before any treatment could work. Obama should first take care his own backyard from where this cancerous volcanic cloud is spreading out.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

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http://www.indianexpress.com/news/they-put-me-in-jail-because-i-have-a-beard-and-run-a-madrassa/619220/0

'They put me in jail because I have a beard and run a madrassa'

Zahid Rafiq , marooshamuzaffarTags : Maulana Noor-ul-Huda, Islam, madrassa,Islamic scholarPosted: Sat May 15 2010, 03:50 hrsNew Delhi:
Maulana Noor-ul-Huda, the respected Islamic scholar who was taken off an international flight, arrested and thrown into Tihar jail because a woman co-passenger misunderstood what he was saying, believes the police reacted to the way he looks and what he does, rather than to the facts of the situation.

“I had to spend a night in jail just because I have a long beard and I am from Deoband and I run a madrassa. More than the mobile phone conversation, it seems to me that my profile appeared suspicious to them,” Huda said. “I kept saying that I am a religious man who tries to make people better human beings, but it didn’t help.”

Huda was forced to get off Emirates flight EK511 en route to London via Dubai on Wednesday morning after the passenger in the seat next to his thought he was telling someone on his mobile that he was about to blow up the aircraft (udaane waala hoon).

Actually, the maulana was only telling his son that the aircraft would take off soon (udne waala hai).

Emerging from Tihar after being bailed today, Huda described what had happened. “I was talking to my son after settling in my seat. He asked me when I would be airborne. I replied, ‘Jahaaz udne waala hai’ (the plane is about to take off),” he said.

“After that, I switched off my phone and waited. After a while I began to wonder why we were not taking off. I also realized then that the woman sitting next to me was not in her seat,” Huda said.

According to the police, the woman, an NRI reportedly living in the US, had overheard Huda’s conversation, got out of her seat and told the crew that he was about to bomb the aircraft.

“Then some plane officials came and stood around my seat,” Huda said. “They asked for my papers and wanted to know whom I had been speaking to. They then told me to get off the plane, saying they would send me by the next flight. But then, the police arrested me. They should have understood the meaning of ‘udna’. What else was I supposed to say?”

Huda said the police had treated him well, but he had still suffered enormous mental torture. They had asked him why he was associated with a madrassa connected to the Deoband seminary, and why he had come to Delhi, he said.

Huda runs the Madrassa Dar-ul Uloom Farooqiya at Deoband in Saharanpur, UP, and was going to attend a conference in London. He is one of the 10 children of the respected Urdu ustad at Dar-ul-Uloom Deoband, Abdur Raheem Bastawi.

The police also called up Huda’s 18-year-old son Fazlullah, who had accompanied his father to Delhi and to the airport, and had made the call that created the confusion.

“The police should have set my father free after they had established he was a respected man who has never done anything illegal in his life,” Fazlullah said. “But instead, they arrested him and put him in prison. For what? We had never seen a jail before, never been to a court before. This is the first time this has happened to anyone in our family.”

Fazlullah said he had come to Delhi also to check out some coaching centres that teach English. “I am doing my Class 12 through the National Institute of Open Schooling. I wanted to look at some places that teach English. I want to do a B.Com,” he said.

Fazlullah said the police called him when he was at a friend’s home in Welcome Colony after dropping his father at the airport. “They told me there were some problems in Abbu’s documents, and he would be sent to London by another flight. But a few hours after that, Abbu’s phone was switched off. I was very tense.” According to the family, the police questioned Huda until 3 am on Thursday.

Qamar-ul-Huda, the younger brother of Noor-ul-Huda, said, “Just because the woman misunderstood the conversation between father and son, this problem was created. This is totally wrong. This is be-izzati. Because we wear a beard and a kurta, we are seen as being Osama (bin Laden).”

Khairullah, another of Huda’s brothers, said Huda keeps travelling across the world to deliver lectures, but has never faced a problem. “He is very tense. Our sister has not stopped crying since the time she heard this has happened,” said Khairullah.

Rehmatullah Noor, the eldest of Huda’s five children, said, “Kabhi socha bhi nahin tha aisa hoga.” (We had never imagined something like this would happen.)