HVK Archives: Khilafat: A call to reject the state
Khilafat: A call to reject the state - The Sunday Observer
Varsha Bhosle
()
22-26 October 1996
Title : Khilafat: a call to reject the State
Author : Varsha Bhosle
Publication : The Sunday Observer
Date : October 22-26, 1996
On October 7, tucked away from the front pages, a small
PTI news item reported a symposium held at the Haj House
in Mumbai and organised by the Students Islamic Movement
of India to call for establishment of Khilafat, the
Quranic concept of a world government based on moral
principles had down in the Sunnah.
The symposium was but a prelude to a 10 day, nationwide
campaign to be launched on November 28, and was attended
by delegates from Burma, Palestine and that haven for
moderates: Iran.
In his address, the organiser of the campaign, Mohammed
Adil Khot, urged Muslims worldwide to strive for the
creation of Khilafat without it, Islam is incomplete.
Under it, all human beings have to obey the commandments
of Allah, the One and Only God.
Khot decried the evils of nationalism which had manifest-
ed in world wars, massacre of innocents in Chechnya and
Bosnia, and attacks on mosques such as the A1 Aqsa. (The
report does not mention the Babri. I wonder why: self-
censorship by whom?)
The president of the symposium, Maulana Majibullah Naqvi,
director of Jamia-ur-Rashad of Azamagarh, UP, said that
nationalism gave rise to fascism on the basis of caste,
colour, race and nationality - and it became a rallying
point for the exploitation of weak nations (however that
works).
I have produced the full report in this column as I doubt
you'll have noticed it elsewhere. If it has been pub-
lished by the major newspapers, I must say, it was admir-
ably concealed.
As I write, it's been a week since the item appeared. And
since there has been no guidance from our secular column-
ists on the implications of this event in that interim, I
presume it's a mundane thing, not one foreboding evil
(nothing stemming from Islam can).
However, that does not stop me from pondering over what
transpired and what was declared at that other pan-
Islamic symposium called by an Egyptian cleric in London
recently. Especially as our home-grown version follows so
close on its heels, and as no Indian newspaper carried
its details either.
In the UK, there was a major to-do over the conference,
and permission was initially denied since delegates
included suspected terrorists from Lebanon Algeria,
Syria, Nigeria, Afghanistan and, of course, the declared
terrorist states: Libya, Iran and Iraq.
I doubt that the company had got together to swap recipes
and knitting techniques.
Her Majesty's Government finally game a nod, on condition
that delegates accept police `protection'. Everybody was
happy: protectors couldn't possibly be busy registering
names and faces...
As the PTI mentions deputies from Iran at SIM's symposi-
um, I wonder if the reporter got a bead on every foreign-
er present. After all, with our resources - which means
that out wealthy press barons cannot afford to send
staff abroad to learn and investigate - their information
is hearsay or based on what the West lets leak. I do not
believe that any Indian reporter could tell a Syrian
from a Lebanese, leave along recognize foreign sedition-
ists.
More urgent is the question whether the police monitored
a meeting calling for, in effect, the rejection of the
authority of the State and the Constitution - the same
attended by aliens.
Which is anyway a ridiculous thing to expect from out
police, in light of the entire secular press coming out
in arms against the deportation of even illegal immi-
grants.
The concept of Khilafat, as anyone with a modicum of
sense will realise, urges all Muslims to unite into a
single nation devoid of geographical boundaries and
regional loyalties.
In other words, an Indian Muslim must identify more with
a Pakistani Muslim than with his own Hindu neighbour. And
if he must respect a temporal government, it should be
one such as Saudi Arabia's: the Muslim ethos must always
supersede an Indian ethos.
Say what you may, the SIM campaign scheduled for next
month is going to add fuel to the already volatile af-
fairs of India.
There is another aspect to Khilafat which the report does
not touch on, which is understood by Muslims, and without
also which Islam remains incomplete: its ultimate aim is
the Islamization of the world. For, like Christianity,
and unlike Hinduism, Islam is a proselyting religion.
But, whereas the educated and sly West sends in overtly
gentle missionaries, there are no such self-constraints
on the desert states. While the US put the issue of
abortion on the back-burner, the world saw a new Islamic
fundamentalist government pop up this month.
I have little against the gentlemen of SIM: they are
doing exactly what is expected of and predicted about
them. They are precisely what secularists have been
saying they aren't: anti-nationalists to the core and
with allegiance elsewhere. They have simply endorsed what
the RSS has been saying all along.
But what does make of the conspiracy of silence among the
otherwise clamorous secularists and hawk-eyed editors who
cry foul the minute any Hindutvawadi group even sneezes?
A little bird tells me that a certain Indian daily is
secretly being funded by a certain tremendously rich
sultan (it's easy to believe: a bias is obvious). This
must be how Khilafat works: to safeguard Islam in a
foreign land, some smuggle in men with guns and RDX, and
others sneak in those with pens. I can't say which modus
operandi is deadlier.
I can anticipate the rejoinders condoning Khilafat that
only "moral" principles are sought to be followed, that
it's to eradicate Muslims castes, feuds, blah blah.
Unfortunately, it's these very principles that caused
Shah Bano's predicament and made sedate Hindus take a
negative interest in religious affairs.
While Shia fights Sunni even in all-Islamic states, while
the SIM itself will reject the Quranic eye-for-an-eye
form of criminal justice, whom are they kidding about
global Islamic principles?
Then they'll say that this is a fringe group, that all
Muslims aren't like it, that Indian Muslims honour their
motherland. And I say put your money where your mouth is:
the Supreme Court has been flooded by letters from all
sorts of Muslims against the implementation of the uni-
form civil code - so why this hush now?
Unless, if at all they exist, the rational among Muslims
are a negligible minority.
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