How to conduct a simple and dignified marriage?

How to conduct a simple and dignified marriage? 

By V M Khaleelur Rahman

I have all praise and respect for Ms A Ameerunnisa of Melvisharam for her excellent article in Urdu (titled "Hamaari shadiyon ka Mas’ala") published in the Omeiat Journal) about the importance of conducting simple and austere marriages as per Islamic norms.

She has rightly pointed out that although Islam has made Nikah (marriage) easy, we have made it very difficult by our uncivilized and greedy way of conducting it in total violation of the principles enshrined in the holy Quran and the Ahadees (Sayings of Prophet Mohammed (PBUH)). The editorial comments about the evils of posh and extravagant marriages are most apt.

I am sorry to say that we Muslims do not conduct marriages in a simple and dignified way. To us Islam means some routine rituals and nothing else. We discuss even small things with all seriousness in and outside the mosques but serious and important issues such as Importance of Islamic marriage without evil dowry are ignored. The Jamaath leaders and Imams do not seem to be interested in reforming the community by bringing in strict rules and regulations for conducting simple marriages and becoming role models for all. If they come together and act honestly, the entire community will have no option but to follow them and thus the evils connected with the marriage will be eradicated. Let them ponder over it and act for the sake of the community which is passing through a difficult period having no leaders worth the name.

There is another way of approaching it also. The have-nots should know their position well and not try to imitate the rich in conducting posh marriages. In the present highly materialistic world one should be very careful particularly the poor because they have no leaders, no ulema, no umara, to guide them. They should become bold enough to face the challenges before them by adopting Islamic codes. Conducting a marriage in a simple way is praiseworthy and dignified. The marriage of the Prophet (PBUH) is a model to us and definitely not the marriage of any prince.

The ulema and umara hobnob with each other closely for their own purposes. There are a very few ulema who have the interest of the community at heart. Why should the have-nots worry about them and dig their own grave by doing things which they are not capable of? The general tendency of the people is to waste money in marriages even by selling properties if they own or getting loans from individuals and banks and landing themselves in trouble. Generally speaking a Muslim family is definitely in no way equal and better to a non-Muslim family in financial standing. Only males are the earning members in most of Muslim families consisting of at least 4 or 5 persons whereas in most of the non-Muslim families both males and females are earning members. One can imagine their predicament in discharging their domestic responsibilities in this situation.

Ms. Ameerunnisa rightly says that dowry is demanded according to the status of the prospective bridegroom. Getting dowry is an insult to the bridegroom and our youngsters should make it a point to consider so and abhor it.

We read a report in newspapers about a Muslim returning the dowry given to him some time ago. There is a glimpse of hope now. There are some youngsters inspired by some Movements who do not want to demand or accept any dowry. There are also some instances of some youngsters solemnising their marriages by giving maher and not taking any dowry.

It is usually seen that the maher given by the husband is a pittance in comparison with the dowry and other things received by him. How can it be called maher in the real sense? It violates the Islamic principle.

I request you and our ulema to comment on this important issue in a convincing manner. There is also an urgent need for the Muslim community to empower their women by giving them higher education and making them stand on their own legs for the sake of its progress and prosperity. The Waqf Board can play an important role in reforming the Muslim community in consultation with the mosque Jamaaths. It should announce every year for some important reform.

Every mosque can constitute a committee to make arrangements for enlightening the people by pamphlets and speeches during Juma prayers to consider dowry as an evil and accepting it as a sin. The mosques can also seek the services of different welfare associations for this purpose. The reforms such as the above should come from within the community to safeguard our identity and Muslim personal law.

TEACHER'S DAY - REMEMBERING A DEDICATED TEACHER

ZACKERIA HAZRATH : A TEACHER WITH A DIFFERENCE

V.M. KHALEELUR RAHMAN

We were fortunate to have many good and dedicated teachers in the Mazharul Uloom High School, Ambur where we studied more than four decades ago. That period is still green in our memory. We cannot forget our teachers who taught us with all care and attention. Every teacher had his own special characteristics, which impressed and inspired us and even now we cannot but remember and respect them very much.

Prophet Mohammed (Sallallahu alaihi wasallam) gave importance to education and teachers. Once he came across two circles of people. The first circle was supplicating to Allah and the other was listening to a discourse by a teacher. The Prophet said “ The first circle is begging God who may or may not give them what they want but the second circle is getting education from a teacher. I have been sent as teacher.” He joined the second circle. This shows that the Prophet gave preference to teachers and education. There are many examples of him giving priority to teachers.

In this write-up I would like to share my impressions about the late Janab V. Mohammed Zackeria sahib, a dedicated and well-known teacher who served in the Mazharul Uloom High School for more than 40 years and left his indelible shining marks. He was affectionately called “Zackeria Hazrath”. He was actually a teacher with a difference. To him teaching was a mission. He taught his pupils with all seriousness, care and attention. He was very scientific in his words and deeds. He endeavoured his best to make every boy a “gem” in discipline and education. He never tolerated laziness and wanted his pupils to be alert and hard working.

Zackeria Hazrath was not only a teacher, but also a reformer par excellence. He was well versed in Urdu, English, Tamil and Hindi languages. He was good in Arabic and Persian also. Interest of the community was dearer to him. He was a serious person, an authoritative one. He “ruled” us and wanted every one of us to study well and benefit from the school without wasting any time.

He had modern thinking and always opposed superstitious beliefs and revealed in his own inimitable Urdu language how soothsayers, sorcerers, astrologers etc. hoodwinked innocent people for the sake of money. He advised us not to believe them and understand things properly using our intellect and wisdom. He was dead opposed to blind following in any matter.

Zackeria Hazrath’s literary taste was immense. He never failed to correct even the spoken language of his pupils whether it was Urdu, English or Tamil. His pupils as well as their parents were careful while talking to him. He disliked the colloquial and wanted everyone to speak chaste Urdu in its sweet and beautiful form. He used to say “Urdu ka khoon mat karo.Miyan” ( Don’t kill the Urdu language.)

The following “rubayee” penned by him shows his noble thoughts. We have to understand it in the proper perspective and respect the plural society in which we live.

“Ya rub hai teri her jagah hasthi,
Paatha hai thujko daaraa-e-beenaayi,
Masjid mayn Muslim Mandir mayn Hindu,
Karthay kalesa mayn wird hain Easaayee”

O God, your existence is everywhere,
Knowledgeable persons are able to find you,
Muslims in the mosque, Hindus in the temple
And Christians in the church pray to you.

One day Hazrath wrote this “rubayee” on the Black Board in the class room and said that “after all everyone is worshipping the same God”. People like me still remember it because of the beautiful thought expressed therein. It is a powerful thought and this thought is necessary for all Indians where different religious people live happily. We cannot forget this great teacher under any situation. He is no more now. But everything he taught us so happily and so seriously, sometimes even with anger, is in our memory in tact. It is impossible for us to forget him and his wonderful and revolutionary teachings. May Allah rest his soul in peace.

 http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/hamid-ansaris-speech-invigorating-islam-in-india/article7612335.ece

Invigorating Islam in India

 Shiv Visvanathan

              

PTI

In the speech made during the golden jubilee celebrations of Majlis-E-Mushawarat, Vice-President Hamid Ansari exhorted Indian Muslims to focus on issues concerning the marginalised, rather than being fixated on identity. Picture shows him releasing a bookduring the function in New Delhi earlier in the week. 

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Hamid Ansari’s recent speech on Indian Muslims was a creative and thoughtful celebration of India, Islam and democracy. 

Hamid Ansari is an important man who has raised several important questions in the past. As the Vice-President, he has been a frequent target of Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders, who see in him an independent voice, one that speaks courageously about critical issues. The BJP had criticised him for not being present on Yoga Day, forgetting that he had not been invited.

Shiv Visvanathan

In the last few days, leaders from the BJP and the VHP have demanded an apology from him over his representation of the status of Muslims in India. The BJP and the VHP behave like a predictably savage chorus in Modi’s India but rather than responding to them, I want to celebrate Mr. Ansari’s speech made on the golden jubilee of the All India Majlis-E-Mushawarat. The speech opens up new possibilities which deserve a close reading. 

Mr. Ansari is clear that when he speaks about Indian Muslims, he is responding to their condition keeping in mind the spirit of the Preamble and the values of the Constitution. He begins by emphasising that India is among the countries with the highest number of Muslims. 

Integral part of freedom struggle

A community of 180 million people amounting to 14 per cent of the population is not a demographic threat but a cultural possibility. The Indian Muslim contributes not just to India but to the culture of Islam across the world. Muslims were an integral part of the freedom struggle and an integral part of independent India. Yet, he remarks, injustice has been done to them. 

Mr. Ansari points out that Partition hangs as a shadow over independent India and that the Indian Muslim has been “made to carry unfairly, the burden of political events and the compromises resulting from the Partition.” The trauma of Partition as memory, as violence is still present out and the responses to it have been uneven. 

Then, Mr. Ansari, turning official, quotes the Justice Rajinder Sachar Committee’s Report to emphasise the fact that on most socio-economic indicators, Muslims are “on the margins of the structures of political, economic and social relevance, their average condition even worse than the country’s historically backward communities, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.” This, while being predictable, is immaculately true. However, it is Mr. Ansari’s handling of the problems that offers new possibilities. He lists out the problems of the Muslims bluntly as relating to a) identity and security; b) education and empowerment; c) equitable share in the largesse of state; and d) a fair share in decision making. 

He commends the spirit of Sabka saath sabka vikas (Development for all), one that captures the spirit of inclusiveness and representation that resonates the tenor of what he is trying to communicate.

However, Mr. Ansari is no apologist for the community. He slams the Muslims as being “ trapped in a vicious circle and in a culturally defensive posture that hinders self-advancement.” 

Mr. Ansari’s critique of the status of Indian Muslims brings out a fascinating set of points. He observes that “tradition is made sacrosanct but the rationale of tradition is all but forgotten.” As a result, Jadeediyat or modernity has become “a tainted expression.” He claims that critical thinking is needed both for “the affirmation of faith” and “the well-being of the community”. He also contends that a fixation on the questions of identity and dignity create a defensive mode of thinking. 

He exhorts the Mushawarat, a grouping of “respected minds,” to focus on issues concerning women, youth and the marginalised, who constitute “the overwhelming majority” of Indian Muslims. Mr. Ansari’s plea to the community to think along plural, secular and democratic lines is hard-headed and clear. Here is a leader and a scholar who both cares for the community and yet can be both confident and critical about it. But Mr. Ansari goes further. He remarks astutely that the way we solve a problem might add to the problem and quotes “a close observer” who pointed out that “agitation against discrimination can arouse the very emotions that foster discrimination.” 

The solution to the problems faced by the Indian Muslims lies in devising a form and content which heals old wounds and does it without inflicting no new ones. The Muslim is, here, easy with her identity, comfortable in her Indian citizenship and confident that she can solve problems within the framework of Indian democracy. This is cultural confidence, citizenship and constitutionalism at its creative best. 

The VHP and BJP must be tone-deaf to democracy to have missed the sheer creativity in Mr. Ansari’s speech. A Muslim problem is no longer merely a Muslim problem but an Indian one to be shared with the wider community. Mr. Ansari emphasises that a lack of communication among communities has frozen the diversities of Indian society. 

In his speech, problem-solving is not only creative but plural and democratic. The Indian thought experiment, whatever its flaws, becomes a model relevant for the world. It combines an ethics of memory, interpretation and innovation. 

Creating a new Islamic imagery

But Mr. Ansari as a scholar, reflecting on the recent debates in Islam, goes dramatically further. He cites the work of Mohammed Arkoun, the Algerian scholar. Arkoun like U.K.-based scholar of Islam, Ziauddin Sardar, does not reduce Islam to essentialist categories. He is neither an Orientalist nor a fundamentalist but is keen to develop that plural space where Islam is no longer a closed official corpus replete with rituals of ideology and domination. He seeks to create a new Islamic imaginary, opening up new fields of reflection and research within the Islamic domain. Arkoun was no ivory tower intellectual but a scholar who engaged in the everydayness of debate and policy. 

Mr. Ansari invites us to be Arkouns where Islam, in an open-ended manner, critiques modernity while also confronting itself. 

If Ziauddin Sardar created a new perspective on Islam through his idea of Islamic Scienc and his journal The Critical Muslim, Arkoun sought to go beyond the dogmatic enclosure of Islam to permit the entry of the unthinkable into the official enclosure. His journal, Arabica, was a venture in that direction. Mr. Ansari, like Arkoun and Sardar, points to the fecundity of Islam, its creative possibilities. They do this while remaining believers. Islam in in their eyes becomes an apparatus for the creative transformation of modernity. 

There is a strategy of struggle laid out playfully, transparently and creatively. Mr. Ansari claims that the struggle for actualisation should be constitutionally imaginative; reciprocal in that a community does not get warped through isolation; and yet adaptive without losing a sense of integrity. Such a vision of change goes beyond Islam to become a model for thought experiment and lived change, also relevant in other contexts. 

In this sense, Mr. Ansari’s speech is a celebration of Islam, India and democracy — creatively done, thoughtful yet immaculate in its arguments. It deserves to be celebrated, debated, re-invented. India must match Hamid Ansari in creating a democracy for the future where a conversation of religion and democracy creates new orders of justice and creativity. Thank you Mr. Vice-President.

(Shiv Visvanathan is a professor at Jindal School of Government and Public Policy.) 

Keywords: Hamid Ansari, Indian Muslims, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bhartiya Janata Party

(Courtesy: The Hindu dated 4th September 2015) 

CHENNAI LEATHER MARKET - SEPTEMBER 2015

CHENNAI LEATHER MARKET

V.M. Khaleelur Rahman

The leather market, not only in Chennai but everywhere in the world, seems to be slow and prices down. Nobody is able to find the real cause for this rare phenomenon witnessed in the market since mainly three or four months. It is the rare phenomenon because all kinds of leathers are slow in movements. Even in leather products such as shoes, garments and goods, restricted activities are taking place both at home and abroad. 

According to reliable sources only top manufacturers of leather and leather goods are able to get some orders from European customers for high quality items. Some good quality lining leathers are also in demand in overseas markets. While goat upper leathers are sold at around US$2.50, lining leathers are sold at around US$1.50 per sq. ft. C&F. Japanese customers have also done some contracts, of course at reduced prices. But the quantities sold are not much. On the whole as said above, the market is slow, if not very slow. 

Some exporters have received enquiries from their customers abroad for goat and sheep leathers. This shows that market may revive in the coming months. 

Even big industrialists and trade experts says that the present leather market is panicky. The only silver lining is that exchange rates are favourable to Indian exporters who do business in US dollar, Euro and Japanese Yen. 

As far as Chennai leather market is concerned, higher selections in  tanned goat skins  are sold at around the following prices:

3/5 sq. ft. R/V/IF lot combined Rs.80

4/6 sq. ft. Run, Fifth and Inf. Fifth Rs.85, 70 and 60

5/8 sq. ft. Run, Fifth and Inf. Fifth Rs.90, 75 and 65

whereas tanned goat skins lining selections are sold at around the following prices:

ABC linings 3/5 sq. ft. Rs.45, 4/6 Rs. 46 and 5/8 Rs.48 per sq. ft.

Goat Rejection and Langda are sold at around Rs.30 and 25 per sq. ft. respectively. 

Many tanners are having stocks for disposal. Big business is not taking place.

Offers of exporters are at around the following prices: 

                                S/C OR F/C GOAT LEATHERS 

Material	Size/sq. ft.	Substance	Selection	Price US$ per sq. ft. C&F
Goat upper leather	4/7	0.6/0.8 mm	ABC	2.50
Goat milled leather	4/7	0.6/0.8 mm	D/E – G/H	1.70 – 1.60
Goat suede leather	4/7	0.6/0.8 mm	All Suede	2.40
Goat lining leather	3/5 or 4/7	0.5/0.7 mm	TR-1/2/3	1.55
	6/9	0.6/0.8 mm	TR-1/2/3	1.65

                                                     F/C SHEEP LEATHERS

Material	Size/sq.ft.	Substance	Selection	Price US$ per sq. ft. C&F
Sheep upper leather	4/7	0.6/0.8 mm	ABC	2.55
Sheep Upper leather	6/9	0.8/1.00 mm	ABC	2.70
Sheep lining leather	4/7	0.5/0.7 mm	TR-1/TR-2/TR-3	1.70/1.60/1.50
Sheep lining leather	5/8	0.6/0.8 mm	TR-1/TR-2/TR-3	1.75/1.65/1.55

Quotations for Japan are as under: 

F/C sheep suede leather

All Suede 6/8 sq. ft. JY240, 5 sq. ft. and up JY235 and 4/7 sq. ft. JY230 per sq. ft. C&F 

F/C sheep lining leather 

TR-Lining 4/7 sq. ft. JY140 and 5/8 sq. ft. JY145 per sq. ft. C&F

Many exporters feel that market will pick up slowly in the coming months as Europen customers are returning from their summer holidays and to resume activities.

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