Tavleen Singh Posted online: Sunday, March 02, 2008 at 2315 hrs IST
The scariest religious institution I have ever been to is the Darul Uloom in Deoband. In the hour I spent wandering about its grounds on my single uninvited visit a couple of years ago I understood why it had inspired the Taliban. It is an institution that remains frozen in seventh century Arabia, a time when men were primitive and women got a primitive deal. I saw one woman while I was there and she was veiled to the eyeballs. The angry young students I met were Islamists to a man and the maleficent power of Saudi Arabia manifested itself in their refusal to speak to me because they were only allowed to speak Arabic. So they said. This most important Islamic seminary on the Indian sub-continent may not be directly training jihadis but it is responsible for perpetuating a narrow, literal interpretation of Islam which is the ideology that inspires the jihad. Last week, this seminary was in the news because it declared cinema offensive to Islam and held a conference of bearded clerics at which terrorism was discussed. The cinema fatwa can be ignored because it is meaningless except to literalist interpreters of Islam and they do not go to the movies anyway. The All-India Anti-Terrorism Conference held in Deoband on 17 Safar 1429H (February 25) we need to pay careful attention to. Most newspapers reported on their front pages that the conference had condemned terrorism. As someone who thinks of the Deoba
RE:Reading between the lines of Deoband fatwa
by Vasanth Srinivas on Mar 11, 2008 04:00 AM Permalink
Oh! so where from a 7th century ape got access to the internet and started posting in English...?
So far so good, but the next paragraph and the one after clarifies that the Darul Uloom%u2019s idea of terrorism is different to yours and mine. It%u2019s not attacks by Islamist suicide bombers on us idol-worshippers that they are worried about but attacks on Muslims. Listen. %u2018The Conference expresses its deep concern and agony on the present global and national alarming conditions (sic) in which most of the nations are adopting such an attitude against their citizens, especially Muslims, to appease the tyrant and colonial master of the West . . . the conference strongly demands the Indian Government (sic) to curb those maligning the madrassas and Muslims%u2019. As I suspected, nothing has changed in the cloistered world of the Darul Uloom. If it had the declaration should have contained at least one reference to innocent infidels being killed by Islamist suicide bombers as they prayed in temples and went home from work on Mumbai%u2019s commuter trains.
RE:Reading between the lines of Deoband fatwa
by Rajeev on Mar 11, 2008 01:07 AM Permalink
SEE OUR SO CALLED NEUTRAL (ACTUALLY THE PSEUDO SECULAR), THEY CHANGED REVERTED BACK THE ACTUAL MESSAGE.
THAT'S WHY MANY WERE WONDERING THAT HOW COME ISLAMIC ESPECIALLY Darul Uloom in Deoband CONDEMN TERRORISM. NOW UNDERSTAND THEY CONDEMN THE MUSLIM KILLINGS, NON-MUSLIM KILLING IS FINE FOR THEM.
