Muslim world’s ‘role model’
LONDON – THE United States can be a ‘role model’ to the Muslim world, President Barack Obama said in an interview broadcast on Tuesday.

‘The thing that we can do most importantly is serve as a good role model,’ he told BBC television in an interview on the eve of a trip to Europe and Egypt, where he plans to deliver a much-anticipated speech to the Muslim world.

He said he hoped his visit would begin a new relationship between America and the wider Muslim community.

‘Democracy, rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, those are not simply principles of the West to be hoisted on these countries – but rather what I believe to be universal principles that they can embrace and affirm as part of their national identity,’ President Obama said.

He said the danger was when the US or any other country thought they could impose these values on another country with different histories and cultures.

‘(But) absolutely you can encourage and I expect we will be encouraging,’ he added. — REUTERS

As the Myths Abound, So Does Islamic Outreach

By Eli Saslow
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 3, 2009

HARTFORD, Conn. — Aida Mansoor expects a skeptical crowd for her diversity training class, so she arrives an hour early to create a reassuring atmosphere. She tapes serene posters of mountains and rivers to the walls of the Hartford Public Library and displays a stack of pamphlets emphasizing that, yes, “Muslims also love and respect Jesus.” A snack table outside the room is divided into two sections, with homemade samosas on one half and generic sugar cookies from a local grocery on the other.

“We don’t want to risk insulting anybody,” says Mansoor, 41.

Seventeen years in this city, a house in the suburbs, almost a decade spent explaining Islam at training seminars across the state — and still Mansoor walks on eggshells. Even in Hartford, a liberal city rich in diversity, practicing Islam in 2009 means she ignores the jokes about her hijab and dismisses the hate mail sent to her mosque. It means she spends a Thursday morning in late May standing here, a few steps inside the entrance to the library, repeating a Muslim greeting to 30 strangers as they file silently past. “Assalaam alaikum,” she says, over and over, and then translates. “Peace be with you.”

Her attempts at cross-cultural connection can sometimes feel futile, Mansoor says, but her energy this year has been fortified by a powerful new ally: President Obama, a Christian who has promised unprecedented outreach to the Muslim world. More than 85 percent of Muslims in the United States approve of Obama’s performance as president, according to a recent Gallup poll, which is his strongest endorsement from any religious group. Obama will travel to Egypt to give a speech about Islam on Thursday, his attempt to bridge two cultures — America and Islam — so often at odds.
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“What he says could go a long way toward dispelling the myths,” Mansoor says. “For a long time, Muslims have been the bad guys in this country. There is so much hate and misunderstanding, and he might be able to help the world overcome some of it.”

Before Obama hosts his global diversity seminar, Mansoor begins her local equivalent. Her class of 30 includes Christians, Jews, blacks, whites and Latinos. Most are here at the recommendation of their bosses. A nurse and a teacher were told that diversity training would help them interact with Muslim clients; a human-relations expert from the city of Hartford takes copious notes to share later with co-workers. Three representatives from the U.S. Census sit in the front row with a list of basic questions — “How do you greet a Muslim? What are the Muslim holidays?” — aimed to improve their 2010 survey.

Mansoor has enlisted help from a few Muslim panelists and Kashif Abdul-Karim, the resident imam at her mosque. She sits near the front of the room while Abdul-Karim begins the seminar with a question.

“What do you think of when you hear the word ‘Muslim?’ ” he asks the students. In his hand, he carries a packet of statistics from the American Religious Identification Survey that offers some possible answers: 67 percent are younger than 40; 46 percent are college-educated; 12.4 percent are engineers. “Just shout out your answers,” Abdul-Karim says, and the students oblige.

“Poor, uneducated immigrant.”

“Arab!”

“Foreigner.”

“Terrorist.”

Mansoor watches intently, sensing a crossroads that will send the seminar in one of two directions. Maybe this will be one of the good sessions, when attendees exchange business cards and say, “Peace be with you,” as they walk out the door. Or maybe it will be one of the bad sessions, such as when an attendee said he was surprised she spoke English, or a student undermined her by distributing fliers headlined, “What They’re Hiding: The Real Islam.”

The mother of two pre-teens, wife of a cardiologist and a recent participant in an American Patriots tour of Civil War battlefields, Mansoor had never planned to answer for so much hostility. Originally from Sri Lanka and raised in England, she moved to the United States in early 1992 and rarely spoke publicly about her faith to non-Muslims until Sept. 12, 2001. Hours after the terrorist attacks, a church in nearby Newington, Conn., invited Mansoor and her husband, Reza, to explain their faith to the Catholic congregation. The Mansoors asked for time to consider. A local imam had told all hijab-wearing women to stay in their homes for at least three weeks, and the local newspaper had printed a story about the possibility of Muslim internment camps.

“We were terrified, but we decided either we face this now or we pack up and leave,” said Reza Mansoor, also originally from Sri Lanka. “If we were going to stay, we had to explain our faith. What was the other choice? To live in a country without self respect or dignity?”

The Mansoors walked into St. Mary’s in Newington on Sept. 12 to eerie silence. They explained the basic tenets of their faith, condemned terrorism and left without incident. News of their visit spread to more churches, to more towns, and the Mansoors were transformed into accidental ambassadors.
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If the passage of time has eased Aida Mansoor’s timidity as a public speaker, it has done little to soften her audience. According to a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, 29 percent of Americans see mainstream Islam as advocating violence and 48 percent have unfavorable views of Islam, the highest such percentage since 2001.

Mansoor’s class includes Rickey Reed, a census worker in attendance because he wants to “know more about them beyond September 11th.” Ken Steller, 63, came in part so he can educate friends who believe all Muslims are extremists. “In America, we hear one thing and assume it’s that way for all Muslims,” Steller says. “So many people just wait for the information to come to them. I like to go get it.”

After Abdul-Karim finishes his introductory lecture at the library, Mansoor plays a series of media clips compiled during the past year. The 2008 presidential election, Mansoor says, revealed the worst of Islamophobia in the United States. “Anytime you turned on the TV, they were saying, ‘You know, maybe Obama is a Muslim,’ ” she tells the class. “Well, first of all, he’s not a Muslim. But more important: So what if he was? What’s wrong with that?”

Mansoor turns out the lights and starts the projector, which the class takes as a cue to relax. The nurse pulls out her BlackBerry and types out an e-mail. The human-resources director for the City of Hartford doodles on her notepad. One of the census employees closes his eyes as Mansoor plays the first sound bite, from a broadcast of Michael Savage’s radio show:

“We have a right to know if [Obama’s] a so-called friendly Muslim or one who aspires to more radical teachings,” Savage says.

Then comes a clip of Sen. John McCain at one of his campaign rallies, responding to a woman who asked whether Obama was Arab: “No ma’am,” McCain says. “He’s a decent, family man, citizen . . . .”

Eventually, Mansoor finishes with a video of an experiment conducted by a television station. The clerk at a bagel shop pretends to refuse service to a Muslim woman, and the camera focuses on other customers’ responses. Three customers congratulate the clerk for taking a stand against “un-American terrorists.” Several others leave the store in protest. One man, moved to tears, tells the clerk, “Every person deserves to be treated with respect, dignity.”

Mansoor stops the tape and turns on the lights. She’s crying. The attendees set down their pens and cellphones. They’re watching now.

“This always brings tears to my eyes when I see it,” Mansoor says. “This is what we face every day. Every day. Maybe it gives you a little bit of an idea what it must feel like. What are your reactions?”

Nobody speaks.

In a few minutes, Mansoor will begin to collect a stack of forms labeled “Professional Development Evaluation,” on which attendees rate their experience in diversity training class. They will judge Mansoor’s effectiveness on a scale of 1 to 4, and she will receive mostly 2s, for “satisfactory,” and some 3s for “very good.” But the feedback she cares most about is whatever happens next, standing in front of 30 strangers, teary-eyed, and waiting for somebody to respond.

Finally, Lillian Ruiz, the human-relations director, raises her hand.

“I think we need to stand up like we did in the 1950s,” Ruiz said. “You watch things like this and it makes you want to just fight back and do something, because it’s so sad. Obviously, discrimination is still very alive.”

“Yes,” Mansoor says. “Yes. Thank you.”

China’s Attempts to Modernize Ethnic Uighurs’ Housing Creates Discord

The government, citing danger and overcrowding, began moving Uighur families out of Kashgar’s labyrinthine old city. (By Maureen Fan — The Washington Post)
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By Maureen Fan

Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 24, 2009; Page A08

An Ancient Culture, Bulldozed Away

KASHGAR, China
— For hundreds of years, Uighur shopkeepers have been selling bread and
firewood along the edges of Kashgar’s old town to families whose
ancestors bought their traditional mud-brick homes with gold coin and
handed them down through the generations.

Now, this labyrinth of ancient courtyard homes and narrow, winding
streets is endangered by the latest government plan to modernize a way
of life that officials consider dangerous and backward.

Left behind are piles of brick and rubble, houses without roofs and
hurt feelings. It is the most recent fault line to develop between
Chinese rulers and Xinjiang province’s majority ethnic Uighur
population, a Turkic-speaking people who have long chafed under
Beijing’s rule and who worry that their culture is slowly disappearing.

Like Tibetans, Uighurs resent the influx of Han Chinese immigrants
who dominate government and economic positions and have pushed for more
autonomy and economic opportunity. Some Uighurs have waged an
occasionally violent campaign calling for independence. Beijing has
cracked down hard during periods of unrest and its tough line against
suspected separatists has made many Uighurs reluctant to speak on the
record about their objections to government policy.

Here in China’s westernmost city, a $448 million plan to move about
50,000 residents out of the old city and into modern apartment
buildings kicked off last month with the first 100 families
transitioning into government housing. Officials say some houses are
too far away from fire hydrants and that the old city is dangerously
overcrowded. While the earthen homes have stood for centuries, the
deadly earthquake that hit Sichuan province last May only added urgency
to the project

“Because many houses were built privately without any approval, the
life of residents is not convenient and the capability against
earthquakes and fire is weak,” a local state-run news report said
recently. “Our target is every family has a house, every family has
employed members and the economy will be developed.”

About 220,000 people, or 42 percent of the city’s residents, live in the old town.

On the streets, where some houses have already been demolished and
others have been marked for removal, feelings of resentment were
evident. A bilingual education program begun in local schools several
years ago, for example, had been welcomed by Uighurs who agreed that
learning Mandarin Chinese would be good for business. But recently,
some schools have started teaching just Mandarin, angering parents who
want their children to also use their own language.

“They want us to live like Chinese people but we will never agree,”
said a 48-year-old woman in a red jacket and brown head scarf, who
declined to give her name. “If we move into the government apartments,
there are no courtyards and no sun. Women will need to cover up to go
outside and we will have to spend money to finish decorating our rooms.
This is our land. We have not bought it from the government.”

A 60-year-old man with a neat beard and a wool hat expressed his
disapproval as he walked to evening prayers along a narrow road that
would soon be widened to 20 feet under the government’s plan. “If the
government gives me money, I will go. Everybody is unhappy about this,
but government is government, we can do nothing,” he said.

For now, community service officers are visiting families one by
one, urging them to come to their offices and discuss compensation
plans for moving out. “Let’s see when they bring the bulldozers,” the
woman in the red jacket said. “We will talk then.”

Chinese officials in Kashgar could not be reached for comment.
Chinese authorities are often criticized for not being sensitive to
groups outside their own majority ethnic Han culture. During the
Olympic Games, for example, officials could not understand objections
to their use of Han Chinese models and actors to stand in for members
of China’s minority tribes.

Large-scale, raw-earth building complexes are rare, according to Wu
Dianting, a professor of regional planning at Beijing Normal
University’s School of Geography, who did field research in Kashgar
last year.

“The buildings are very scientific. They are warm in winter and cold
in summer. The technology used saves material and is environmentally
protective,” Wu said.

The old town is also one of the few authentic representations of
Uighur culture left, he said. “The old town also reflects the Muslim
culture of the Uighurs very well — it has the original taste and flavor
without any changes,” he said. “Here, Uighur culture is attached to
those raw earth buildings. If they are torn down, the affiliated
culture will be destroyed.”

Kamala Suraiya: The literary star of Kerala is no more

Cracks show in Bulgaria’s Muslim ethnic model
Sun May 31, 2009 8:17pm EDT

By Anna Mudeva

KRUMOVGRAD, Bulgaria (Reuters) – Twenty years after Bulgaria’s then-Communist regime mounted an official campaign of persecution against its Muslim minority, Mustafa Yumer fears rising xenophobia could bring the nightmare back.

Yumer led resistance and hunger strikes against a drive to force Muslims to adopt ethnic Bulgarian names in the spring of 1989. Now he says growing anti-Muslim rhetoric is fomenting ethnic hatred and opening old wounds.

“We are all very worried,” said the 65-year-old philosopher and former teacher. “People are scared by far-right parties who preach and want to see Bulgaria becoming a single ethnic nation.”

Muslims make up about 12 percent of the Balkan country’s 7.6 million people with most of the rest belonging to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. The country won praise for avoiding ethnic clashes after the end of the Cold War, in contrast to the former Yugoslavia which borders it to the west.

Bulgaria is the only European Union member country where Muslims are not recent immigrants. Most are the descendants of ethnic Turks who arrived during five centuries of Ottoman rule that ended in 1878. They live alongside Christians in a culture known as “komshuluk,” or neighborly relations.

But the rising popularity of the ultra-nationalist Attack party and hardening attitudes of other rightist politicians toward the Muslims ahead of a July parliamentary election have exposed cracks in the Bulgarian model.

Attack is unlikely to form part of the next government, but it has helped set the tone for the election campaign.

Ethnic Turks and Pomaks — Slavs who converted to Islam under Ottoman rule — are shocked and dismayed at accusations that they aim to create autonomous enclaves and that some of their villages are nests for radical Islam.

“If we sit and don’t work like Bulgarian patriots, one day they will conquer us indeed. They will annex whole regions,” Attack’s leader Volen Siderov told an election demonstration in May.

There have been over 100 incidents of vandalized mosques and other Muslim buildings in the last 2-3 years.

Girls have been banned from wearing the traditional Muslim scarf in some schools and universities — Bulgaria’s first glimpse of an issue that has raised tensions in western Europe.

RADICALISATION?

Some Muslims fear losing civil rights, gained in the past two decades, and a possible repeat of the repression of the 1980s if nationalists join a coalition government after the July 5 vote.

Commentators say the rise of nationalism has been helped by a combination of voter apathy and discontent at low living standards, high-level corruption and organized crime.

A “revival process” launched by the late communist dictator Todor Zhivkov to forcibly assimilate Muslims culminated with a campaign to force them to change their names, and the exodus of over 300,000 ethnic Turks to neighboring Turkey in 1989. <

Crucial papers related to Babri Masjid case missing from UP govt. secretariat

Submitted by admin4 on 31 May 2009 – 12:55pm.

• Indian Muslim

By Mumtaz Alam Falahi, TwoCircles.net,

New Delhi: Some important documents related to the Babri Masjid case
seem to have been destroyed in the Lucknow secretariat of the Uttar
Pradesh government as it has been unable to produce them before the
special court since 2002.

Despite several orders by the special court hearing the case, the
state government could not produce the files comprising correspondence
between the Chief Secretary and the authorities of Faizabad district.
In 1949 Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had sent a telegram to the
chief minister of Uttar Pradesh asking the authorities to remove the
idols forthwith. That important telegram is also missing from the files
of the secretariat.

“The 1949 correspondence between chief secretary and authorities of
Faizabad includes different letters and a telegram of PM Jawaharlal
Nehru to Chief Minister of UP that idols should be removed forthwith.
The court has been seeking the documents since 2002 but the government
was delaying. When the court became tough the chief secretary appeared
before the court in person last week. He told the court there was no
such file in the secretariat,” Advocate Mushtaque Ahmed Siddiqui
looking the case along with Advocate Zafaryab Jilani told
TwoCircles.net on phone from Lucknow.

“When the court asked chief secretary to submit the files comprising
correspondence between Faizabad DM and chief secretary, he came up with
the files in which letters sent from Faizabad DM are intact but there
is no letter sent by chief secretary to the DM. The telegram of PM
Nehru was also missing in the files,” Advocate Mushtaque said.

The court has taken in its possession the files presented by the
chief secretary and asked him to produce the telegram and the letters
sent by chief secretary to Faizabad DM on July 6. The court has gone on
vacation and first hearing will take place on July 6.

The court has expressed its anguish on how the papers were destroyed when the case is open.
How significant are the missing papers? “Though the Babri Masjid is
established with other evidences, if court gets the government records
it will be weightier,” the advocate said.

Could there be some conspiracy to destroy or misplace the documents?
“Some authorities below the chief secretary level want that those
papers do not reach the court. Their purpose could be just to delay the
case,” Advocate Mushtaque said.

He, however, said the state government will be forced to find the
papers. The court asked the government to either declare that the
papers were never with them or give details as to how and when they
were destroyed and what action was taken against those responsible for
it.

The Riverdale Press: Muslims are quick to condemn terrorist attempt

Muslims are quick to condemn terrorist attempt

By Kate Pastor

When Khalid Isa heard about the attempted bombing of Riverdale Temple and the Riverdale Jewish Center, his first thought was to hope it wasn’t the work of Arabs.

The American-born Palestinian owner of Sqweez Juice Bar & Grill on West 238th Street between Waldo and Greystone avenues got little relief, however, from learning the alleged terrorists identified themselves as Muslims.

“It’s a misrepresentation of Islam because this is exactly what Islam tells us not to do,” said Mr. Isa, who together with other local Muslims and Jews has started a group called World Peace, One Falafel at a Time. The group is dedicated to enabling dialogue between Muslims and Jews, and ending violence between the groups.

“This is not the way to be, this is not the way to think, this is not the way to grab somebody’s attention, this is not the way toward peace,” he said of the alleged conspirators.

“It’s ridiculous because these are guys who converted to Islam in jail and they don’t know what the hell Islam is about. They have no idea,” Mr. Isa said.

Many Muslims in and around Riverdale have condemned the violence allegedly planned for Riverdale Temple and the Riverdale Jewish Center on May 20, drawing clear distinctions between their religion and the beliefs held by men thought to be jailhouse converts to Islam.

Three Imams from different Mosques showed up at the Riverdale Jewish Center’s solidarity rally on Friday. The Muslim American Society of Upper New York’s board president, Ali Salhab, a former Riverdale resident, also walked a letter into the Riverdale Press, repudiating and denying any religious justification for the violent plot.

“We just want to make sure that our neighbors understand where we stand on this issue,” said James Momani, who accompanied Mr. Salhab.

It seems, however, that not everyone does.

Last week, Mr. Isa got a phone call from a friend whose child attends The David A. Stein Riverdale/Kingbridge Academy, MS/HS 141. She was upset because after the foiled plot Islamic children started being taunted by other kids at school, he said.

Mr. Isa’s friend asked if he would consider giving a talk at the school to discuss the true meaning of Islam with children, some of whom may have gotten the wrong idea.

“The word Islam means peace, comes from the word Salam that means peace,” Mr. Isa said, personally enraged that the men he calls “uneducated, uninformed idiots” claim to be bound to him by faith.

The negative impact of violent acts like the one thwarted in Riverdale last week spared almost nobody.

“Hate crimes hurt all of us,” said Mr. Momani. “Today they do something to you, tomorrow they do something to me.”

When Muslims react to violent extremism here in Riverdale, said Basheer Hasan, a Muslim who manages a gas station on Broadway, “It’s gonna be the same reaction like everyone else.”

CAIR Questions FBI Tactics in NY Synagogue ‘Plot’
New details of informant’s actions prompt Muslim group’s concerns

(WASHINGTON, D.C., 5/26/2009) ­ A prominent
national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group today questioned the
FBI’s tactics leading up to the arrest of four New York men for
allegedly plotting to attack Jewish institutions in that state.

Based on early reports of a foiled plot to bomb a synagogue and a
Jewish community center and to shoot down military planes, the
Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) initially
applauded the FBI and the other law enforcement agencies that took part
in the investigation.

In a statement issued today, CAIR cited newly-revealed
details of the case that indicate the alleged “plot” may have been
based more on the financial inducements of a government informant
than on the predisposition to terrorism of three petty criminals and a
mentally ill Haitian immigrant. The Associated Press described the
alleged plotters as “down-and-out ex-convicts living on the margins in
a faded industrial city.”

SEE: Islam Not to Blame for Bronx Terror Plot (Huffington Post)

“This entire scheme seems to be the product of sending yet another
FBI agent provocateur into an American mosque to instigate a ‘plot’
that would likely never have been hatched but for the rhetorical and
financial inducements of the government informant. As a defense attorney said of the informant
in this case, who was also the informant in a previous case, ‘Where he
goes conspiracies blossom.’ According to the family of one of the
suspects, the FBI informant even promised to pay for a liver transplant for his dying brother.

“We need to know who first suggested the specific targets in this
plot and, if it was the FBI informant, why a government agency would
create a scenario that may drive a wedge between two American religious
minorities.

“These arrests seem to be based on a government formula for
announcing law enforcement ‘victories’ that we have seen all too often
in the past – take a paid informant, insert him into a mosque or
community without probable cause of criminal behavior, locate marginal
characters open to financial or rhetorical inducements, facilitate
criminal actions suggested by the provocateur, and then announce
‘terror’ arrests with great fanfare.

“This formula, which could be used in any faith community, produces
flashy arrests but rests on shaky constitutional ground and does little
to advance legitimate law enforcement goals. It also serves to alienate
an entire religious minority and provides fodder for those who seek to
demonize Islam and marginalize American Muslims.”

SEE: Terrorism Arrests: Snitch, Sting, then Controversy (AP)

CAIR’s statement reiterated the American Muslim community’s
longstanding repudiation of terrorism in all its forms and encouraged
anyone who is aware of criminal activity to immediately contact law
enforcement authorities.

SEE: Muslim Organizations Condemn Terror Plan: Is Anyone Listening?
SEE ALSO: CAIR’s Anti-Terrorism Campaigns

The statement also restated CAIR’s concerns about Justice Department guidelines, implemented under the Bush administration, which allow race and ethnicity to be factors in opening an FBI probe.

In an interview with the New York Post,
the girlfriend of the alleged ringleader said the informant was
constantly around, “It was like he was stalking him.” The girlfriend of
one of the other alleged plotters said: “They aren’t radicals they were
just financially motivated. They aren’t terrorists. If [the informant]
wasn’t in the picture they would’ve never come up with this idea. This
was not their idea. They make it sound like they sought him out and
said we want to do this when he’s the one who approached them. He
enticed them with money.”

The New York Times wrote:
“Everyone called the stranger with all the money ‘Maqsood.’ He would
sit in his Mercedes, waiting in the parking lot of the mosque in
Newburgh, N.Y., until the Friday prayer was over. Then, according to
members of the mosque, the Masjid al-Ikhlas, he approached the young
men.”

A lawyer who represented the last terror suspect tried in New York
state called the FBI’s operation “a foolish waste of time and money.”
He said, “It is almost as if the FBI cooked up the plot and found four
idiots to install as defendants.”

SEE: FBI ‘Lured Dimwits’ Into Terror Plot (The Times)
SEE ALSO: Yet Another Bogus ‘Terror’ Plot (The Nation)

CAIR noted that the FBI informant in a similar case in California
recently stated that he views Islam as a threat to national security.

SEE: FBI Spy: “Islam Itself is a Threat to National Security”

In March, a coalition of major national Islamic organizations announced that it is considering suspending outreach relations with the FBI,
citing similar incidents in which American mosques and Muslim groups
have been targeted. The American Muslim Taskforce on Civil Rights and
Elections (AMT) also called on the FBI to reassess the use of
informants as agents provocateurs within the Muslim community.

CAIR, America’s largest Islamic civil liberties group, has 35
offices and chapters nationwide and in Canada. Its mission is to
enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil
liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote
justice and mutual understanding.

Gujarat’s Mundra port sees import of Quran objectionable, holds back its 4,000 copies for a month | TwoCircles.net

Gujarat’s Mundra port sees import of Quran objectionable, holds back its 4,000 copies for a month
Submitted by admin3 on 25 May 2009 – 11:15am.

* Crime/Terrorism
* Indian Muslim

TwoCircles.net Staff Correspondent

Ahmedabad: The 4,000 copies of the Holy Quran in Arabic script landed at the Mundra port more than a month ago but these are yet to be handed over to the consignee in Gorevali village of the Muslim dominated Banni area in the Rann of Kutch within Kutch district.

The consignment along with some 500 CDs have been sent from Dubai. The copies of the Holy Quran are meant for free distribution and not for sale.

This is despite the fact the consignments have been sent legally and the consignee has got valid documents. Even assistant customs commissioner at Mundra Ashok Nagade admitted to journalists that the import of the Holy Quran was not illegal. He said that the customs department would hand over the material to the consignee as soon as certain investigations were over.

The copies of the Holy Quran are meant for Jamia Darul Masiha, an Ahl-e-Hadees madrasa at Gorevali run by Abdul Qayyum Khan. Set up in 1952 by Khan’s grandfather Haji Dalil Khan, the madrasa has been imparting Islamic education among 40,000 Muslims of Banni region bordering Pakistan.

The consignment has been sent by Khan’s father Haider Khan working in Dubai.

Speaking to TwoCircles.net, Khan said that after the consignment landed, he contacted a number of clearing agents but all of them refused to entertain him. Finally, he himself went to the customs officials along with the papers of the consignment sent by his father.

“As soon as I reached the customs office, I was surrounded by police and intelligence sleuths who were waiting for him in advance’’, Khan told this reporter over phone from his residence in Gorevali on Sunday evening.

“I was surprised by this behaviour of the customs officials as also the intelligence sleuths from the central and state agencies because I had valid documents and the consignment was sent legally’’, Khan stated.

However, Khan cooperated with the agencies and gave them all the information about himself and the sender of the consignments. “Investigators told me that they had advance information that some objectionable materials are being sent to me and hence, they were waiting for me to personally reach and claim it’’, narrated Khan.

However, customs officials, who checked each and every copy of the Holy Quran found nothing objectionable.

“Their objection was to some of the CDs packed within the cartons of the Holy Quran’’, said Khan. But this was not illegal because the papers sent from Dubai mention CDs as part of the consignment.

Khan said that the copies of the Holy Quran were meant for distribution among the local people. “The copies of the Quran were gifted in Dubai by several people and my father sent them for the benefit of the people here’’, he explained.

He said that though the custom officials had finally become convinced and agreed to release it after conducting investigations. “But now I will have to pay the demurrage charges because the customs allow free storage only for 15 days in their godowns’’, informed Khan.

Khan’s madrasa is affiliated to Jamia Salafia Islamia University of Banaras in Uttar Pradesh.

In Gujarat, Kutch district has the largest concentration of Muslims, most of them located in border areas.
Nothing is going to change unless we start to rule India
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on 27 May 2009 – 4:39pm.

Muslims r 2nd class citizens in India. I respect and love most of the indians and i also know that constitution gives us rights but in practicality it is not observed.It is not the time for tears but to snatch the rights by whatever means.We r cornered to the wall.Since our history tells us that we were brave when we had real faith in Almighty ALLAH now since we have faith on the people and that too on politicians we become nothing more than heap of ashes.In allama Iqbal’s words”Mussalman nahee rakh ka dher hei”.We have to rise again we should read our glorious past and conquer the world again let us rise o muslim ummah let us rise together.Fight and fight till persecution is no more.SO again i would like to quote Allama Iqbal’s words”Dayar e ishq mein apna Muqam paida kar”.
It is my sincere advise to all muslims to read Allama Iqbal too.Let us be united and stand together and have firm faith in ALLAH.Even if we dont have anything to eat and let us not depend on any government.cuz we were the rulers and we r destined to rule.Cuz the sovereignty belongs to ALLAH alone.

* reply

SUGGESSTION
Submitted by S.M.PASHA (not verified) on 26 May 2009 – 8:32am.

SOME SHER DIL” MUSLIM MUST COME FORWARD AND FILE A CASE AGAINST THE UNJUST ACTION OF THE AUTHORITIES.

* reply

Shame on the Govt.
Submitted by Patwardhan (not verified) on 25 May 2009 – 4:34pm.

Pay demurrage charges for no fault of the consignee. Amazing logic. If you dont pay they desecrate it or burn it ! This is Modi’s Gujarat. “Real Secularism” in action for all to see