na'eem jeenah

‘Those people make the place stink!’

2008-03-24T13:16:00.000+02:00

I have lived in the South African Muslim community long enough to know of a range of vices that its members engage in. I even write and speak about them on a regular basis. However, I occasionally hear or witness something that shocks me and causes me to pull out my ‘Vices’ notebook to add yet another item to the long list there. I also pull out my ‘Ideas’ notebook to add yet another idea for a column I would like to write.
A recent such gem which resulted in shocked notes in both my pocketbooks – a difficult task for someone who is not ambidexterous – was a comment made by a certain maulana about immigrants to South Africa. He was not talking about immigrants in general; he was referring specifically to Muslim immigrants. His major complaint was about the negative effects of the influx of immigrants on mosques.
‘Our wudhu khannas (‘ablution facilities’ for those who do not understand this Urdu/Turkish/Farsi terminology),’ he opined, ‘now stink.’ Pointing to a particular mosque, he spoke about how the mosque infrastructure was ‘crumbling’. And he attributed both the stench and the crumbling infrastructure to the increased use of these facilities by immigrants. My guess is he was not referring to Indian, Pakistani, Bengali, Turkish, Iranian or European immigrants but those from our own continent.
The comments were mind-blowing. My brain was numbed into silence and I found myself unable to say anything in response (which most people who know me will find difficult to believe; my mouth usually leads the way – often with disastrous consequences). I could not even reach into my inside jacket pocket for the little booklets until much later when the full effect of the esteemed maulana’s statements hit me.
Let us, for a moment, ignore the fact that such xenophobic, racist remarks issued from the mouth of a person who is supposed to be part of the ‘leadership’ of the Muslim community. Clearly, this man had no concept of what it meant to be a Muslim. He certainly had no concept of what a masjid was. Anyone that did would not say such disgusting things with any degree of seriousness.
Did he think that the purpose of a masjid is to serve the interests of a small clique of people who rub each other’s back and who circulate money between themselves? Do these congregants of a masjid have to be of a particular nationality? Particular skin colour? Speak a particular language?
Are the immigrants and refugees (muhajiroon in Arabic) in our communities simply tolerated in our mosques? Is it a situation where we South Africans would really rather not have these foreigners there (what with the stink in the wudhu khanna and the crumbling infrastructure) but we put up with it because there really is nothing we can do about it?
Whatever happened to the notion of a mosque as a place of worship for all, a place of refuge, a place that was open to whoever wanted to make use of it? What happened to the idea of a mosque as a house of Allah that belonged to all Muslims? Or is one’s Muslimness compromised because one is an immigrant? The very fundamental understanding of a mosque is undermined and subverted by such comments.
The mosque should be available to anyone who might want to use it. And using it, for most people, simply means being able to pray in it, to perform their daily salah. I remember that, when I was growing up, my parents would allow into the house any stranger that came to the door with a sad story and said that all s/he wanted at that moment was a place for salah. They regarded this as a basic duty of a Muslim to another Muslim and, in fact, something of an honour to have a stranger pray in your house. Now, it seems, some of us get upset because unfamiliar people want to pray in our neighbourhood mosque. I use the word ‘unfamiliar people’ because in many cases the immigrants who pray in these mosques are not ‘strangers’; they live or work in the area where the mosque is located and, as such, ‘own’ the mosque.
I have heard many South African Muslims lament the fact that some immigrant communities prefer to set up their own mosques rather than using already-established ones. After hearing these disgusting remarks, can we blame any immigrant community if they wanted to have nothing to do with South African Muslims? With such attitudes in our community, I ask myself whether the stink in some of our mosques was not there from the time the intention to build it was made.
In a country beset with xenophobia, Muslims should be showing the way forward, teaching our compatriots the benefits of living with and accommodating ‘strangers’. If all our talk of a ‘global ummah’ is to mean anything, it must start with the way in which immigrant and South African Muslims interact with each other. This is a great opportunity for us to demonstrate what ‘global ummah’ means. But it is an opportunity we will rapidly lose if such attitudes become entrenched.
Perhaps our maulana should be given a good book on the sira (life story) of the Prophet Muhammad (s) – in English, Urdu or Gujerati, whichever he prefers. If he read it carefully, he might realise that the first community of Muslims would have ceased to exist if the Madinans were as xenophobic as he is. They would have just gotten rid of all those pesky, poor (and, after travelling on horseback or by foot from Makkah, I could add the word ‘stinky’) Quraish and former slaves from Makkah who came with nothing. In fact, unlike most of the immigrants in South Africa today, those refugees that journeyed with the Prophet (s) were given half of whatever was owned by the host population in Madinah. Surely there must be a lesson there somewhere.
And even before Muslims fled from Makkah to take up residence in Madinah, even before their refugee leader – Muhammad (s) – took up the leadership of the whole of Madinah – over Makkans and Madinans, Muslims from Makkah fled persecution to seek refuge in an African kingdom called Abyssinia, now Ethiopia. If the Abyssinian Negus had been concerned about the crumbling infrastructure in his kingdom, he would have handed them over to their fellow tribesmen and be done with the headache of those immigrants.
Instead, both the Negus and the Madinans welcomed the Muslim refugees. Islam started as a strange thing, developed among immigrants and refugees, and relied on immigrants to spread it to the four corners of the world. After knowing that, we should be dealing harshly with xenophobia in our community.

Shameless and dangerous Islamophobia

2008-02-18T13:04:00.000+02:00

What would you think if you were told that a South African academic spoke about Muslims in South Africa at a conference in Israel, organised by a right-wing Zionist organisation, and said: “I’m going to be talking about ‘Radical Islam in South Africa’, and … I was kinda thinking, well you know, I could have done the same presentation on something called Mainstream Islam in South Africa.”
According to this academic, “radical Islam in South Africa” is the same as “mainstream Islam in South Africa”? A very interesting perspective. Being an academic, of course, he must be able to back up his assertion with evidence. But his startling revelations do not end there. The paper, presented to a conference on “counter terrorism”, adds: “If you look at South African Muslims, some have fought in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union, some have fought in Kashmir against the Indian army, they fought on the side of Iran during the Iran Iraq war in the 1980’s, some have experience in terms of Chechenya.” Again, of course, this great scholar must have got solid evidence to back up these serious claims. He must have interviewed quite a few of these “soldiers”, I am sure.
He also must have done substantial research for his assertion that, “There are groups with Islamist-socialist orientations penetrating gang structures and drug networks.” That I don’t have a clue what “groups with Islamist-socialist orientations” means is irrelevant; he must know what he was talking about, right?
Actually, no. He has no evidence to back up these spurious allegations. Nothing. Nada. Zero. Zilch. It is the kind of thing that would make one’s academic peers shake their heads in embarrassment and disgust. I challenge him to prove that he is not such a source of disgust, this academic who merrily spouts such nonsense and feels no need to explain.
But that’s not enough. Look at this gem quoted in the conference brochure. The academic, we are told “cautioned that radical Islam is becoming more and more mainstream within South Africa.” Why, we South African Muslims might even be to blame for problems with the successful holding of the 2010 Soccer World Cup. “The upcoming soccer World Cup in 2010 will pose a great counter terrorism challenge, he said, offering only the wry consolation that at their current levels of performance, there is little chance that either the Israeli or US teams will make it to the Cup games.” At least the guy has a sense of humour.
The brochure also quotes our academic as enlightening his audience with this incredible information: “More and more Moslems in South Africa travel for education and indoctrination to Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and return to important positions in their communities.” Where are these indoctrinated Muslims hiding out? We (the few Muslims who are not fundamentalist, terrorist radicals) should be informed so that we can keep away from them!
Based on his lecture, the brochure also tells us that, “While not a homogeneous entity, with Sunni-Shii tensions, Shiism is growing [in South Africa] due to the perceived victory over Israel in last summer’s Lebanon war.” Well, what do you know? The Sunnis and Shi’as are bashing each other’s brains out in South Africa, folks. Oh, and by the way, Mr (or is that Professor) Academic, it wasn’t a “perceived victory” over Israel; Israel was beaten! Your friends ran with their tails between their legs. And there is lots of evidence to prove that.
Most readers would likely read these foolish (but dangerous) statements and conclude that this must be the insane, propagandistic and fanciful ramblings of some non-Muslim, anti-Muslim Zionist. That suspicion would be at least partly wrong. The academic who peddles this twaddle goes by the name of Hussein Solomon and is based at the University of Pretoria. The centre he heads – the Centre for International Political Studies – even publishes a glossy, full-colour tabloid rag called Islamic Focus, which publishes authors whose names many Al-Qalam readers will recognise and, hopefully, be disgusted at.
And the conference which Professor Solomon illuminated with this rubbish was the Seventh International Conference of the International Institute for Counter Terrorism, held in Herzliya, Israel, last year. This Institute is a leading Zionist and anti-Muslim “research” institute which aims to entrench Israeli power over the Middle East. It puts out such interesting publications as its book on Suicide Terrorism. A fascinating article on the front page of its website is entitled “Which is the major Islamist threat? Global Jihad or the Iranian coalition”. One of its preposterous studies (it is, admittedly, better researched than Solomon’s paper) “examines the hypothesis that Palestinian women’s involvement in terrorism indicates women’s liberation”.
At the conference Solomon addressed, he was in the illustrious company of such people as the former Mossad head, Shabtai Shavit, American Islamophobes Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson (of “Jihad in America” fame) and former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. I’m sure Solomon was very comfortable with that group.
After all, he is also well-liked by a number of South African Zionists and has written many non-researched papers and done even more conference presentations around the world about the threat of Islam and Muslims not only to South Africa but to the whole of Africa.
One article, I recall, was entitled “Terrorism in Africa”. In truth, it was about what he called “Islamic extremism”. The most barbaric terrorist organisation in Africa, the Christian “Lord’s Resistance Army”, gets a mention only so that the authors can attack Sudan. In the article, Solomon and his co-“terrorism expert”, Anneli Botha, concocted a gory picture of all kinds of terrorist activities in Africa that they claimed Muslims were involved in. He attacks Muslim governments, Muslim organisations and even Muslim aid agencies. For example, “Although some of these [Muslim] NGO's [doing relief and welfare work] have legitimate objectives, those in control of it use it as a vanguard for destabilizing activities. These objectives include the destabilization of regimes or the determination to change the composition of regimes.” Any sane person can see the danger in such writings (and I’m not referring to his poor grasp of the rules of English grammar, which is the topic for another critique). For a brief commentary of this article, see http://naeemjeenah.blogspot.com/2007/01/terrorism-experts-insult-to-academia.html.
I have no doubt that Solomon will be unhappy with this column. In fact, he might even stoop (or is that “rise”) to using the Zionist tactic of asking to meet my boss so that I might be spoken to or silenced. This was what I became used to from Zionist organisations when I was a university lecturer. And Solomon himself last year asked to meet my boss to discuss a comment of mine in Al-Qalam which he didn’t like. I am tempted to say that people like Solomon should be ashamed. I’m not sure, however, whether they “do shame”. At least all those who write for his Islamic Focus (each one probably getting paid much more than Al-Qalam can afford to pay its editor) should feel ashamed for supporting a person with such Islamophobic views.

Good Muslims pray 5 times a day every day

2008-01-15T13:01:00.000+02:00

Earlier this month, The Star carried, as the lead story on its front page, an article headed ‘Good imam lured women’. The article concerned a man associated with ‘a mosque in Mayfair’, Johannesburg, who was recruiting women with promises of finding jobs for them. The women were invited to his office by his accomplices, where he fingerprinted them, took ID pictures of them, paid them R200 for their transport expenses and gave them each a cellphone by which he could get in touch with them. None of them were ever called but they would later discover that, unbeknownst to them, they had been married to some – most likely Pakistani – man, allegedly courtesy of the ‘imam’. (He was named in the article, but I don’t think it necessary for him to be named here.)
Although the man’s lawyer told the magistrate that the man was an imam at the mosque, I was later told by someone that he was, in fact, not the imam but the head of the mosque security. Either my informant did not know what he was talking about or the lawyer was lying. Or, perhaps, the truth lay somewhere in between.
I am pretty sure that many Muslims, upon seeing the headline, were upset and wanted to complain to the paper’s editor about an islamophobic headline. There are many reasons why Muslims might feel this way. One is that many Muslims feel that as soon as something negative is said about Islam or Muslims, we have all been shamed and should feel embarrassed about it. A kind of collective guilt. Some of us then become defensive and create a negative impression for Muslims where there might not have been one; others of us become aggressive against our fellow Muslims and verge on disowning Islam in order to say to the rest of society that we Muslims are really ok.
We should be past feeling ashamed for everything Muslims do. If some Muslim somewhere commits some kind of atrocity (and there is a lot of that going on, what with all those Muslim kings and dictators and Usama bin Laden’s boys all over the place), I don’t have to take responsibility for or feel ashamed about it. If some Muslim commits fraud (which cases we often come across in South Africa), then, again, there is no reason for me to feel embarrassed – unless I too am guilty or such acts.
Another reason some of us get upset by such articles is because we feel a need to defend ‘our own’. Because this person is from our community, many of us feel, we are bound to defend her/him. Such a sectionalist attitude has nothing to do with Islam. Islam requires that we defend those who have been wronged and that we defend the values of justice, fairness, and so forth. It does not require us blindly to defend Muslims whether they are right or wrong.
A third reason why some Muslims would be upset by such a headline is the attitude – sometimes subconscious – that our leaders (whether ‘ulamā or political leadership) can do no wrong and ‘my imam’ must be defended at all costs. The fact of the matter is that our leaders can and do do wrong. Often. Simply and uncritically defending them is, again, not really Islamic.
We should, in fact, be grateful that the media do uncover the bad elements of our society, so that we might know who they are and be able to decide what appropriate action to take against them. For we certainly should be taking action against them. Criminals that lurk in our community do us no favours. Indeed, criminals lurking in our communities, like rotten fruit in a basket, slowly make the rest of the community bad as well.
How else do we explain the attitude in certain sections of our community where crime is actually glorified. Many of us have heard of certain Muslim communities where, as the saying goes, the bigger the job you pull, the more respect you get. Or, as someone told me recently, the bigger the job, the better are your chances of getting a rich wife. How has it come to be that crime is viewed as an indicator of success and status?
How do we explain ‘ulamā showing up in court to give support to a convicted criminal simply because he is Muslim?
With such a record, I can very well understand the statement of the lawyer of the (alleged) imam in court. In response to the prosecution’s request for the ‘imam’s’ virtual house arrest, the lawyer appealed to the magistrate that he be allowed less stringent bail conditions. In particular, that he be allowed to go to the mosque because his client was ‘a good Muslim’. He qualified for this status because he prayed five times a day, every day. In response, the magistrate, very appropriately, asked ‘Is he a good Muslim?’ Perhaps the magistrate knew a little more about Islam than the lawyer (or, for that matter, the accused).
Of course, the principle of innocent until proven guilty must not be compromised. If we do not allow for due process so that a person may defend her or himself, we easily descend into the law of the jungle. However, that principle must be considered in conjunction with the level of responsibility that a person has and her or his relationship to society at large. A president of a country and an imam of a masjid have greater societal responsibility than a person with no public profile or responsibilities. As such, the manner with which criminal charges against such people with leadership roles are handled must, of necessity, be different.
A president (or presidential candidate) of a country that has been charged and faces a court case for fraud, for example, should not be allowed to continue in her or his role as president (or presidential candidate). Nor should an imam accused of forgery, fraud or any other serious offence simply continue discharging her or his duties as if life were normal. If such persons do not remove themselves from their positions of authority, they should be removed by right-thinking people within our society. Such removal does not imply that person’s guilt. It does, however, indicate an intolerance of the kinds of actions that the person has been accused of.
And, it indicates that we hold our leadership to a higher standard, that we expect our leadership to be exemplars for society and when a hint of the compromise of this exemplar status is received, action must swiftly be taken.
A few years ago, there were accusations made about a certain imam that he had sexually molested some children in his care. The story had made its rounds not only in the community where the imam was based but nationally. The right thing for the community to have done would have been to remove the imam from his position and for him to face charges in court and clear his name if he were not guilty. Instead, the community shielded him. He then left the town where he had been based and moved to another town, taking on another job as imam and madrassa teacher. Why should anyone of us trust our children to someone who has been accused in this manner. That he did not face his accusers in court does not make him innocent; it makes him a suspicious character. And, if he was guilty, it makes us all complicit in his crimes.

Rapists, teddy bears and other injustices

2007-12-20T12:58:00.000+02:00

Two incidents in the past two weeks left many Muslims shaking our heads – partly in disbelief and partly in embarrassment or shame. The first was the case of the Saudi woman (still anonymous) who was sentenced to 200 lashes, and the second was the case of the British teacher, Gillian Gibbons, who was sentenced by a Sudanese court to serve 15 days in a Khartoum jail.

And while we shook our heads, islamophobes rubbed their hands in glee. This, after all, is exactly the kind of thing they need every once in a while in order to justify – even if it is only to their own twisted minds – all their prejudices and hatred against Islam and Muslims and it helps them to feel that they really are superior to us.

In the Saudi case, a 19-year-old married woman met a man, who she had known previously, in a car. While she and the male friend were in the car, the car was hijacked – something that might sound very familiar to South Africans, and the couple was driven to a remote location where they were both gang-raped by seven men, she 14 times. All the protagonists were arrested and four of the rapists were sentenced to between one and five years in prison. (I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels that five years is a completely inadequate sentence for gang-rape.) The woman (and her companion) who was kidnapped, raped, violated and subjected to one of the worst injustices that any woman can be was not, as would be expected, sent for counselling and provided with physical and psychological support. No, Muslims don’t do that kind of thing, do we? Instead, she was sentenced to 90 lashes for being with a strange man! What kind of idiocy is this? What kind of mockery is this of Islam and the shari’āh?

But the story did not end there. She subsequently appealed her sentence. The Appeal Court increased it to 200 lashes and six months’ imprisonment. (So, I suspect, for being raped she will spend her ‘Id al-adha in prison.) The Court added on the 110 lashes plus six months because, they said, she had tried to influence them through the media. Men (the judges were, of course, men), you see, are weak. That’s why women must be locked up in their homes so that we don’t get sexually excited by them. And that’s why they are so dangerous when they talk to the media – because our minds are weak and we might get influenced by them. Even if “we” are the judges in an appeal court. What an insult to the integrity and intelligence of men; what an injustice to the persons of women! Her lawyer was suspended and now faces disciplinary action. He too spoke to the media saying that the punishment meted out to his client contravened shari’āh – in which he is absolutely correct.

Almost two weeks later, certain Saudi officials said that the woman had confessed to having an extra-marital affair and that the additional punishment was because of that. For them, and for many other Muslims, such a “confession” – if indeed there was such a thing – is sufficient to justify the torture of rape victim. How can any Muslim (or any person) believing in justice and compassion (The Just and The Compassionate are two of the names of Allah) think that this can acceptable? Have we become insensitive barbarians who live by some form of law of the jungle? Further, if she did confess to adultery (let us assume that the reports of her “confession” actually meant adultery when they said “having an affair”, then the punishment is not what the Qur’ān prescribes for adultery. And if she did make such a confession, was her male companion also sentenced similarly?

In a different sort of way, the Sudanese case was just as ridiculous, if less unjust. A British school teacher, Gillian Gibbons, asked her Grade ** class to name a teddy bear. A little boy suggested it be given his name: “Muhammad”. Gibbons accepted the suggestion and the teddy bear, with more power over the lives of people than it realised it had, was duly named. So far, so good. Sounds like a fairly typical school day.

But the parents of one of the children then complained to the authorities that Gibbons had, in fact, maligned the name of the Prophet Muhammad (s). She was arrested, charged, hauled off to court and almost sentenced to receive 40 lashes. She apologised for any offence she might have caused and her sentence was reduced to 15 days in jail! As crazy as it all sounds, it did not end there. The next Friday, hundreds of Muslims held a demonstration after the jumu’ah prayer, calling for Gibbons’ head, demanding that she be sentenced to death. Fits in quite neatly with the image of the bloodthirsty Muslim, if you ask me.

Before Gibbons could serve out her full 15 days’ jail term, she was “pardoned” by Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir, adding an element of tragic humour to the whole sorry episode. How can we apply any sense of logic to this case? Are we Muslims really that stupid? Perhaps many of us are, if the calls to radio stations and comments on blogs are anything to go by. One caller said, with no shred of evidence, that Gibbons must have been indoctrinating the children. His proof? He had been a teacher so he knows what it’s like. As if one’s own misdemeanours are enough to accuse others of being similarly guilty. One blog commentator lamented that the teddy bear matter was “damaging to Islam’s image, but in the end common sense prevailed”. What common sense? Besides, justice is much more important than “Islam’s image”.
I have decided to start a campaign to evaluate the conduct of all Muhammads, Ahmads, Mustaphas and any others who have a name that was attached to the Prophet Muhammad (s). The campaign is currently recruiting volunteers. If any Muhammad, Ahmad, Mustapha falls short in his general conduct, his parents (or whichever relative named him) should be taken into the street and flogged publicly. The first parents to face this must be of the little Sudanese boy who suggested the name for the teddy bear.
We should also organise a vigilante force to find the parents of the Sudanese president and have them lashed. How dare they give that insolent boy the name (Hassan) of the grandson of the Prophet (s)?

The year of remembrance; the year of Keys

2007-11-25T12:50:00.001+02:00

Sixty years ago this month, on the 29 November 1947, a number of terrorist groups in what is often called the “Middle East” were rewarded for their murderous brutality: the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 181. That resolution partitioned British Mandate Palestine into two states: a “Jewish state” on 55 percent of the land and an “Arab state” on 45 percent of the land. This despite the fact that, at the time, Jews made up only 30 percent of the population and owned only seven percent of the land.

Ironically, the only state established on that land has not been a state for the indigenous people but the state of Israel, a state for mostly immigrants with no lineage connection to the land. Today, that state covers about 80 percent of the land and has colonised the other 20 percent. It was a state established, on the 15th May 1948, on dispossession, murder, theft, colonialism and racism. It still is a state based on dispossession, murder, theft, colonialism and racism.

The months surrounding these two dates witnessed a number of brutal massacres, resulting in the murder and maiming of thousands of people. These months also resulted in about 750,000 members of the indigenous population being forced out of their homes and made into refugees. Today, they and their descendants number more than six million refugees.

This month marks the 60th anniversary of that fateful resolution adopted in New York, the resolution that condemned an entire people to decades of misery and to refugeehood. Sixty years later, it is time that the world corrected that injustice.

And next year will mark 60 years of what Palestinians refer to as their catastrophe, or Al-Nakba. It is time for the nakba to end!

As in South Africa, where Black people are requested ad nauseum to “forget the past”, “not live in the past” or “don’t blame the past”, Palestinians too are constantly told to forget this history, to move on as if the events of 60 years ago never happened, to wipe the slate clean and begin, not a new chapter but a new book. These demands are unjust and contemptible.

Does anyone in South Africa ask Afrikaners to forget the South African War (formerly called the Anglo-Boer)? Or to forget the concentration camps they were confined to by the English? Does anyone ask Jews to forget the Nazi genocide against them in the middle of the twentieth century when six million of their number were systematically killed? No!

Why, then, should Black people forget the crimes of Apartheid that we were subjected to? Why should Palestinians forget the crimes of Zionism that they were subjected to (and continue to be subjected to)?

It is true that history is written by the victors, not the victims. The powerful are usually the ones to shape how the story gets told. But memories are not the property of the powerful, to use, abuse, discard and forget at their whim. Oppressed people have long memories; memories are weapons and they are given up only voluntarily.

The next 13 months, for Palestinians, will be a demonstration of just how important memory is. It will be a commemoration of a humanitarian catastrophe and a celebration of six decades of resistance and of remembering.

Palestinian memories are not just in their heads and their hearts; there are also physical manifestations of these memories. Thousands of older Palestinians still have, neatly wrapped in cloth, their house keys with which they locked up their homes as they fled from the Zionist terrorists. Thousands of younger Palestinians, too, have these keys, handed down to them from their parents or grandparents, keys for houses that still stand, occupied by settlers who would prefer that those keys and those memories did not exist.

But they do. And 2008 will be remembered all over the world as the Year of the Keys, the year to open the door for the return of Palestinian refugees to their homes, the year of making known that the keys to peace and justice do exist for Palestinians, that peace and justice in the Middle East (or, as many Indian and Pakistani friends prefer to say, “West Asia”) is possible – when the refugees are allowed to return and allowed to open the doors of their homes long colonised.

Palestinian historian, Dr Salman Abu Sitta, compiled a list of 531 villages and towns ethnically cleansed in 1947-48 by Zionist terrorists; their populations converted into refugees communities. The majority of those that belonged to these depopulated localities, and their descendants, now live in refugee camps in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Many villages were razed to the ground, destroyed, in an attempt to remove all trace that there were people who lived on this land, who belonged to the land and who owned the land.

One of those villages was Lubya. Lubya does not exist anymore; its people are refugees. Instead, money was collected from South African Jews to establish – on the ruins of Lubya – the “South Africa Forest”. And since this oppressive colonialist forest bears the name of our country, I will briefly describe what Lubya was and known for.

Lubya was (is) in Northern Palestine. It is known as the hometown of Abu Bakr al-Lubyani, a prominent Muslim scholar of the fifteenth century who taught Islamic religious sciences in Damascus. Most Palestinians cannot stop talking about the beauty of the Palestinian villages they had come from. Not so the people of Lubya which, it seems, was not known for its beauty. Instead, its reputation derived from the ingenuity and intellectualism of its people and their legendary folkloric narratives. And its cactus.

Lubya was attacked in July 1948 as part of the Israeli “Operation Dekel”. It was occupied on the 16 July and all 596 houses were razed to the ground. The village was successfully ethnically cleansed and its 2726 inhabitants forced to become refugees.

This year of remembrance, the Year of the Keys, is one that South Africans must commemorate, beginning on the 29th November, when protests will be held globally. The United Nations calls it the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. In protests, rallies and exhibitions around the world, it will be the beginning of the commemoration of 60 years of Al-Nakba.

* For all those that are interested in the events of 1947-48 and the ethnic cleansing that took place, visit http://www.palestineremembered.com, which contains stories, maps, videos, statistics and oral history.

There is no virtue in forced suffering

2007-10-01T01:22:00.000+02:00

A friend that my wife had not spoken to in a good few months gave us the good news recently that she was pregnant. And, she added, she intended fasting for the whole month of Ramadan.

She had also fasted the whole month of Ramadan when she was expecting a previous baby – while in her seventh month of pregnancy. And, she had fasted the whole month while breastfeeding another.

Many people will read this and say “Masha Allah” because of this friend’s (actually, her husband’s, but let’s ignore that little detail for now) determination to fulfil the compulsory act of fasting in Ramadan – even under such difficult circumstances. Most Muslim scholars have said that a pregnant or breastfeeding woman does not have to observe the Ramadan fast, that she is exempt if she fears for the health of her baby or herself. The latter part of that sentence, the qualification, needs some reflection.

I’m not particularly impressed at hearing of pregnant or breastfeeding women fasting. In fact, when I heard what our friend was doing, I was a little concerned. While most mothers or mothers-to-be are quite sensible and will consult a medical practitioner or are quite happy to stop fasting if they feel there might be any danger (or if they hear the cries of a hungry infant), some feel there is something meritorious in fasting in such a situation, as if they develop a greater closeness to Allah because of it. This is a misplaced virtue.

Sometimes there is no serious consideration given to how the fasting might affect the foetus or the infant? What does it mean when we say “if she fears for the health or life of her baby”? Can an expectant mother automatically make such a decision – by herself – without first getting professional advice? If a child is exclusively breastfed, the impact on that child of her mother remaining hungry for the entire day can be substantial. There is a good chance that the milk of a fasting mother will dry up. Or that the milk might not be as nutritious as it might have been were she not fasting. Or that supplementing breast milk with substitutes will result in the baby later rejecting the breast.

The scholars did the right thing: they gave the mother the right of choice, they left it to her to decide. It is noteworthy that Islamic law, in matters of ritual worship such as salah or fasting, places such the power of decisions in the hands of the individuals rather than in the hands of an authority figure. The problem arises, however, when a such progressive scholarly opinion gets interpreted through the lenses of ignorant attitudes which dictate that there is virtue in suffering.

The Prophet (s) is reported to have said: “Allah has relieved the travellers of fasting and half of the prayer, and the pregnant and the breast-feeding women of the fast.” When Allah has “relieved” the believer of an obligation, when Allah has granted a favour to us regarding certain of our obligations, how can we regard ourselves as better believers if we refuse the favour of our Lord?

I sometimes get asked why, when I’m travelling, I shorten my salah. We are not travelling in the desert, the argument goes, we don’t ride camels, so our travelling is not as difficult as it was for the Prophet (s) and the sahabah and we, therefore, should not shorten our prayer. Again, who are we to reject the favour that Allah has granted us? What arrogance is it that suggests that we can be better if we do what we want rather than what Allah has allowed us to? It is not “better” to pray the full salah when travelling. And it is not “better” for a woman to fast when she is pregnant or breastfeeding.

Many of us have a mistaken notion that the best ‘ibadah (service of Allah) is the one that is made the most difficult. Does Allah really need us to suffer in serving him? Is forced deprivation a way of showing our commitment to Allah? Is that what He requires?

Bukhari reported from Anas that, during his hajj, the Prophet (s) saw a man leaning on both sides on his two sons, whereupon he asked: “What is the matter with this man?” The people said: “He has vowed to walk during hajj.” The Prophet (s) said: “Allah is in no need whatever of torturing this man.” Then he commanded the man to perform his hajj riding. The Prophet, incidentally, performed his hajj while riding his camel.

Truly, Allah does not need us to torture ourselves. Of course, He obliges us to serve Him, he asks for our sacrifice even. Our lives as Muslims should be characterised by struggle in order to create a better world. And, as many Muslims who languish in prisons like Guantanamo Bay and who have lost family members in the struggle for justice know, service to Allah sometimes results in great hardship and sacrifice. But to deliberately and unnecessarily harm ourselves in our ‘ibadah and then think that that harm will be pleasing to Him is not an Islamic notion. It is even worse to think that He will be pleased by us harming an innocent child (or foetus) and thinking that we are worshipping Him in the process. Allah is, after all, the Compassionate and Merciful.

It is not easy to give a blanket fatwa on a matter such as whether a mother can fast while pregnant. That is why the well-known Muslim scholars did not give such blanket fatawa. They preferred to leave the decision in the hands of the individual so that individual decisions can be made, on a case-by-case basis. Every mother is unique; every child is unique. And the decision about whether the mother should fast must be an individual one, made with some degree of assistance from a medical professional. But Allah has granted an exemption. Therefore, there should be no guilt associated with her not fasting if that is her decision, nor should there be any particular glory attached to the fact that she does, if that is her decision.

Warning: this column does not have a halaal stamp!

2007-09-05T01:17:00.000+02:00

In January this year, political commentator Mohau Pheko wrote a rather ignorant article, published in the Sunday Times, about the “halaal” symbol used on various foodstuffs in South Africa. Arguing that South Africa was a secular state that should neither support nor oppose any religious beliefs or practices, she went on to claim that, in South Africa, “Christianity is the de facto official religion of the country”. Her main thrust, however, was that the use of the halaal symbol was a religious imposition on millions of non-Muslim South Africans. As I said, pretty ignorant (and, dare I say, shameful for a political commentator).

At the time, I wrote an 800-word response to Pheko which was not published. While I stand by my argument against her, I am becoming increasingly convinced that the Muslim community in South Africa is heavily accountable for making a mockery of the notions of halaal and haraam.

Halaal now, in South Africa, is understood by many people as meaning a type of food (often, even, as a “Muslim” word for curry – which implies, of course, that pap is haraam even without the vleis). In fact, as all Muslims know, the term means something that is acceptable or permissible. And, generally, Muslims know what things are permissible. Indeed, the first principle of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) is that all things are permissible unless something can be proved to be impermissible (haraam) through textual proof (from the Qur’ān or sunnah).

This, unfortunately, is not the attitude that the South African Muslim community has internalised. Hence we have numerous halaal-certifying agencies (and numerous turf battles between them): because ordinary Muslims are not willing (and have not been allowed) to exercise our own judgement in respect of such issues.

I’m not saying that these agencies should not exist; having travelled in countries tiny Muslim populations, I can appreciate the assistance of such certification. However, the level of control and regulation by these agencies is becoming obscene.

A friend of mine opened a water bottling plant a few years ago and he tried marketing his product mainly to hotels and conference centres. When I met him soon after he started his business, he proudly gave me a few bottles of water – on the house, of course. Beautiful bottles, but I was amazed that they carried a halaal stamp. “This is silly,” I told him. “You are a Muslim, you are bottling this and you know that water is by nature halaal. Why do you have to have this stamp?” It turns out that when he tried marketing his products, he ran into a brick wall. The purchasers at these businesses refused to buy his water unless it was certified “halaal”. They insisted their Muslim clients would otherwise not drink the water!

So, we now have bottled water bearing halaal stamps; we even have toothpicks proudly declaring themselves to be halaal. Because (in complete violation of the first principle of fiqh) in South Africa, of course, the water is haraam unless it can prove itself to halaal. And so too with the toothpick and all the other (obviously permissible) items we see on the supermarket shelves.

On a radio talk show on a Muslim station a few years ago, I called in to ask the representative of a halaal-certifying agency why they certified water. He responded that some of these bottling companies had parties on Friday nights and even if one drop of alcohol fell into the water, it would become haraam. I assumed from this response that these companies have their parties – with alcohol – in the area where their water bottling takes place. Very bad practice. I also assumed from the response that these halaal agencies send their inspectors every Friday night to attend these parties to monitor whether alcohol falls into the water vats. What a taxing job! The next step, I suppose, is for all our taps to have halaal stamps as well. Who know what kind of shenanigans go on at the parties at Johannesburg Water, astaghfirullah!

We are making a pious mockery of what can be very rational notions of halaal and haraam. The principle of the permissibility of all things is quite liberating in how it informs people that the world is available to you to use ethically – except for a small number of things which are prohibited and which are clear.

The Prophet Muhammad (s) is reported to have said: “Allah has prescribed certain obligations for you, so do not neglect them; He has defined certain limits, so do not transgress them; He has prohibited certain things, so do not do them; and He has kept silent concerning other things out of mercy for you and not because of forgetfulness, so do not ask questions concerning them.”

I suspect that bottled water and toothpicks falls in the category of those things about which we should “not ask questions concerning them”. Let us embrace the mercy of Allah, rather than accusing Him of forgetfulness.

The notion of halaal is also one referring to that which is wholesome and good for human consumption. I find it quite comforting to know that the best form of halaal food is that which is good for my body, in which animals have not been mistreated before they became meat on my table. I’m sure many people, Muslim and non-Muslim, would find such a notion beautiful. However, when we mock the concept by wielding halaal stamps like weapons to prevent people from eating – as we do, that beauty fades.

It is this same attitude which has reduced our understanding of the shari’ah to an understanding simply about halaal and haraam (or, more correctly, about haraam) and about punishments: stoning, lashing, amputating hands, etc. Who gives much consideration these days to the objectives of the shari’ah, principles articulated by scholars for centuries such as the protection of life or the protection of the intellect or, as some scholars argue, the protection of the environment. If we place these objectives uppermost in our minds, the way we understand shari’ah and how it should be “applied” would change radically.

Finally, let me remind ourselves about Allah’s warning. We are told in Surah 9, Verse 31: “They (Christians and Jews) have taken their rabbis and priests as lords besides Allah, and the Messiah, son of Mary, although they were commanded to worship no one except the One Allah. There is no deity but He, glory be to Him above what they associate with Him!”

‘Adi bin Hatim, who had been a Christian before accepting Islam, once heard the Prophet (s) reciting this verse and he said: “O Messenger of Allah, they do not worship them.” The Prophet (s) replied, “Yes, but they prohibit to the people what is halaal and permit them what is haraam, and the people obey them. This is indeed their worship of them.”

Let those voices be heard!

2007-07-26T01:16:00.000+02:00

I was recently invited to speak at a meeting called in solidarity with the Palestinian people. The meeting, in Johannesburg, was called by a coalition of women’s organisations and was for women only.

I felt quite pleased and honoured, for a number of reasons. One reason is that there have been numerous attempts over the years to form such coalitions of South African Muslim women that would serve the interests of and speak in the name of these women.

The Muslim Youth Movement (MYM) Gender Desk (as one speaker at another meeting held by a rival coalition noted) had, for many years, held the formation of a national Muslim women’s coalition as one of its objectives and I, as a leader in the MYM, had vigorously supported the idea. So, knowing that there are some attempts being made in this direction were very pleasing (this was before I realised there were rival coalitions – but that’s the subject of another discussion). It was also exciting that women were getting together to talk not just about “women’s issues” but about the “affairs of the ummah”. And, of course, I was honoured to be invited to address this gathering of women. (I must add that I was thrilled when I saw what a large gathering it was: hundreds of women from various parts of Gauteng, from organisations doing all kinds of great work.)

Then, a couple of days before the event, I noticed an announcement of the meeting with a list of speakers. (I usually check when I’m invited who the other speakers might be; this time I didn’t.) And, shock, horror, I realised that all five speakers that were to address this exclusively female congregation were men! I couldn’t believe it; it didn’t make any sense.

Were there no (Muslim) women that could speak about Palestine? There must be, for I have met and heard many of them. I have even heard some of them speak in a mosque. I am sure they were not a figment of my imagination, my fantasy that women actually can speak about politics and other such things. Some of them, as I recall, have really loud voices and shout as if no one was listening to them. Well, maybe no one was, judging from the speakers’ list for this event.

To say that I was disappointed would be a bit of an understatement. Not that I have anything against men, of course. I’m all for men taking a stand and talking politics and other important issues that the world has to face. Too few do. But, this was an event organised by women, for (only) women, and yet there would be no women’s voice to be heard.

Perhaps I’m overreacting; perhaps these women were just tired of listening to each other and needed some fresh voices. Well, my ego would likely prefer that interpretation; it’s nice to think of one’s self as having a “fresh voice”. But my head – which tries to outwit my ego and usually succeeds – said that couldn’t be it.

So, there we were, five male speakers, in this hall packed to capacity with women. Two of the speakers spoke from behind a curtain. I thought it might be because they didn’t want to share a platform with me. (On this occasion, my ego clearly won the tussle and wiped the floor with my head.) The other three of us ignored the curtain. (Incidentally, when the two purdah-ed speakers concluded their talks, they emerged from behind the curtain and walked through the female audience towards the exits at the back of the hall.) A good thing too, since one speaker had a slide presentation which would have lost its power and its point behind the curtain and another had a set of brilliant posters to show the audience.

But, the make-up of the panel was not the only insult to the women. One of the speakers – and I’m not saying whether he was a veiled speaker or not – began his presentation with a patently anti-woman and Islamophobic “joke”. You must have heard the one about the Afghan (although the speaker said Iraqi) man who, before the war, used to walk so many paces in front of his wife but now walks even more paces behind her. When asked about the change, he said, “landmines”. As I said, profoundly sexist and profoundly Islamophobic. But, the audience laughed. As they did for others of his sexist jokes.

Why would women want to listen to a man who insults them and then expects them to laugh at the insults? Why do they then laugh? I suppose one could ask, in another context, why a black person would listen to a white person making racist jokes, expecting him to laugh and why he would then laugh. Power, perhaps? The belief that this man (or white person) is more knowledgeable and, hence, his jokes must be worthy of a laugh? Of course, with an all-male panel, one should expect that women start to believe that men are the more knowledgeable.

Following this event, I reflected a little on the need for groups like the MYM Gender Desk, forcefully promoting the notion that women have a right to speak and be heard. A brochure from that organisation, for example, says, under the heading “Let the women be heard!”: “Women have not had much of a say in the interpretation of Islam, and their voices have been suppressed in mosques and other institutions. There therefore exists a ‘voicelessness’ of women in Islam. We work towards ensuring that the woman’s voice is heard.”

Interesting concept, that: the idea that the woman’s voice must be heard. We might remember that, barely 10 years ago, a Muslim radio station went to court to try and ensure that it could merrily have its programming without a single woman’s voice being heard on air. When the powers-that-be at the station realised that this might result in their losing their licence, they quickly found a fatwa that said it was halal for a woman’s voice to be heard.

But allowing Muslim women’s voices to be heard is more than an exercise of having female tongues moving; it means that women should be able to express themselves and be listened to by all of us on issues that affect the community, on our political, economic and social lives. Many, many Muslim women, in their daily lives, are very influential in the work that they do, shaping the lives of people and influencing the structures of societies. It’s such a pity, then, that they don’t get the same reception in the Muslim community. We do ourselves – as a community – a great disservice by silencing them.

Lessons of freedom from a Muslim past

2007-07-12T01:13:00.000+02:00

Anyone visiting some of the Southern areas of Spain cannot help but feel uplifted and humbled. I had the opportunity recently to be uplifted and humbled when I was in Spain for a conference. The fine splendour of Al-Hamra, the majesty of the excavation of Madinah al-Zahra, the overwhelming beauty of the arches of the Great Mosque of Cordoba are all awe-inspiring - despite the ugliness that has been caused to some of these by Spanish rulers over the centuries. For me, one of the less spectacular sights that touched me in a very special way was a life-size statue in one end of Cordoba’s old city.

In what used to be the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, in a small square about 5 metres by 5 metres, is a statue – little more than life size. The statue is of a man whose Hebrew name was Moshe ben Maimon; Arabs referred to him as Abu ‘Imran Musa ibn Maimun; he is known around the world by the name the Greeks gave to him: Moses Maimonides.

Maimonides was a product of the period of Muslim rule in Spain: a Jewish rabbi, scholar, philosopher and political advisor who thrived under Muslim rule and who served and was served by the Muslim culture that he found himself in. A prolific writer, he wrote mostly in Arabic. This includes his famous theological-philosophical work The Guide for the Perplexed and some of his exegeses of the Torah and Talmud, mostly written in Arabic and later translated into Hebrew. His writings and his innovative thought - on issues as diverse as theology and medicine - were produced during the period that Jews refer to as the Golden Age of Jewish Culture - during Muslim rule in Spain. He is regarded as the most influential figure in Medieval Jewish philosophy. He remains the most widely debated and controversial Jewish thinker among modern scholars.

While Maimonides’ writings on philosophy influenced a number of Muslim philosophers, he acknowledged a great debt that he himself owed to Muslim philosophers who were also children of the same period and who spent at least some of their time in the same city – Cordoba – that he is famously linked with: especially Ibn Rushd, Ibn Farabi and Ibn Sina. After Cordoba, Maimonides lived some part of his life in Morocco and then in Egypt, where he became a physician and adviser to Salahuddin Ayyubi. He became known as the greatest physician of his time.

It was a glorious period in history; a period which saw often sharp debate between many luminaries who have shaped how we today view the world, some of whom I have mentioned above. It was a period and a context of intellectual growth, based on an intellectual freedom that was fostered and protected by the Andalusian society and its Muslim rulers, a freedom that was regarded as paramount in the development of civilisations.

Maimonides’ statue is particularly poignant because he, a Jew, is a symbol of a kind of religious and intellectual tolerance that allowed such civilisational growth and fostered such development in human thought and such scholarly endeavour. He is a symbol of an Andalusian society that freed the mind and acknowledged and rewarded those who exercised these minds in the service of knowledge and of people.

How sad, then, that Maimonides and his family were forced to flee their homes in fear of the new rulers, the fundamentalist Almohades (or Al-Muwahhidun), who were intent on converting everyone to Islam. How tragic, that that period of religious and intellectual freedom (and thus growth) which is an example for all civilisations, was followed soon after by a period that we can look back on as one of the worst examples of religious intolerance and persecution – the Christian conquest and the Spanish Inquisition, which resulted in a genocide against Jews, Muslims and Unitarian Christians.

The rule of the Church that followed Muslim rule in Spain saw some of the most horrific human rights abuses that we know of. That period witnessed the unrelenting persecution of religious minorities (including Christian minorities), the brutal suppression of independent intellectual exercise and the fiery attacks against women who dared to think or speak for themselves. It was also a period when - as often with such contexts - words and labels took on different and particularly horrific meanings and implications. Terms like “witches”, “heretics”, and “Moors” were all employed skilfully as part of the agenda to suppress any independent thinking and action.

No Jewish Maimonides could arise in such an environment, no Muslim Ibn Rushd.

Andalusia, during its heyday, presents an important lesson for the world today - especially for Muslims. The critical importance of free thought for the development of Islamic scholarship, the Muslim ummah and humanity more generally, cannot be taken for granted. The fear that often inflicts Muslim thought and debate today - on minor jurisprudential as well as on major philosophical matters - is an unhealthy feature that suppresses our growth and development as individuals and as communities. The fear of being called a feminist or a kafir by fellow Muslims is more characteristic of the Spanish Inquisition than it is of Muslim Andalusia.

For those of us that live in Muslim minority contexts, even the period after the fall of Andalusia - when Muslims there became a minority - presents important lessons. The fatawa that fuqaha of the period gave for the persecuted Muslim minority are fascinating to read as one witnesses their grappling with changing circumstances, with their attempts to relate the shari’ah to an entirely new and previously unheard-of context.

It is this heritage of Andalusia - along with the heritage reflected in Al-Hamra and the Grand Mosque in Cordoba - that has resulted, over the past few decades, in a number of Spanish people questioning their own identities. Their need to reclaim the Muslim heritage of Spain as Spanish heritage has resulted in many of them converting to Islam and seeing in Islam a continuation of the Andalusian tradition. Many other Spaniards who see the same need to reconnect with that tradition, but without becoming Muslims themselves, also play a role today in the reclamation of Spain’s Muslim past and in restoring respect to the period of Muslim rule in Spain

Justified strike, unjustified violence

2007-06-13T00:58:00.000+02:00

It is the largest strike in democratic South Africa. And a very necessary strike too.

All of us that complain bitterly about the poor service we receive from civil servants such as nurses, police and teachers, and complain about the level of corruption in some of these sectors should pause for a moment to consider how much we as a society actually value these public servants – as reflected in how much we pay them to serve us.

Their salary demands certainly are not unreasonable and their tough negotiating attitude is definitely justified. The fact that this strike brings together four union federations and a number of independent unions of public sector workers in a joint action is itself a reflection of the level of anger and frustration among these workers who regularly hear about how the South African economy is growing but don’t see the real benefits of this growth for themselves.

But such frustration and anger is not sufficient justification for some of what has been characterising this strike.

In particular, it is a grave problem that health workers have taken the kind of attitude they have. Many of them insist on striking even though, in terms of the Labour Relations Act, they are regarded as essential service workers and hence not allowed to go on strike. Such a stipulation is, of course, entirely justifiable and moral.

Hospitals have to function. Sick people have to receive treatment. The measure of the morality of a society is how that society treats its most vulnerable members. This includes those that are sick, the aged and the children. When we treat these vulnerable groups simply as pawns to serve our own interests – no matter how justified those interests might be – we lose a fundamental moral argument about the justice of our cause. When we are unconcerned that the fight for our own interests will endanger not only the well-being but even the lives of people within these vulnerable groups, then we, as a society, border on the criminal.

Let us also be clear about the state of vulnerability that we are referring to. I have a medical aid hospital plan. If my family members need to be hospitalised, we will go to a private clinic. Most of the public sector workers on strike belong to medical aid schemes that provide them with very good benefits – mostly better than what I have. The people who need to access health services at public hospitals and who are currently being turned away from Chris Hani Baragwanath in Soweto and from King Edward in Durban and from Tygerberg in Cape Town by striking nurses come from the poorest sections of our South African community.

They are not just vulnerable because they are ill; they were already vulnerable because of their poverty. They are, most of them, part of the working class. And, most of them pay a considerable amount of money to transport themselves to hospitals – only to then be turned away without treatment.

And so, we might ask, what is the commitment of striking workers to the broader interests of the working class – not just to workers. What is their commitment to working class mothers and gogos who have to access health services? What is their commitment to babies born (or about to be born) into the working class? What is their commitment to the parents of any child who might die because of the strike?

While we all should not only sympathise with but actively support the just struggles of public servants for better wages and better working conditions, we should also expect better service from our public servants. And that better service, in the case of health workers, should be available even during a strike like the current one.

The ongoing, constant struggle of workers for better working and living conditions is an extremely important one and critical for the development of a democratic society. Workers form the backbone of a society and their proper and just compensation for the work they do and their building of our society must be provided for.

But workers in the public sector, particularly those in sectors such as health, have a special role and responsibility of service. This does not mean that they should be expected to serve completely selflessly and without expecting just rewards. But it does mean that that special responsibility must be paramount and must be privileged.

It is not privileged when nurses in public hospitals turn patients away and when nurses who are working are dragged out by their striking colleagues and prevented from saving lives.

Perhaps these incidents should not surprise us, however. We live in a society where human life and well-being has been considerably cheapened. When a person can be killed for a cellphone, should we be surprised that people are refused treatment by others who want increased salaries? Or that principals get sjamboked in their schools because they insist on keeping these schools open for learners who want to attend?

Additionally, South African society is increasingly becoming materialistic and individualistic. Again, is it any wonder that some workers would adopt as violent an attitude as in the examples above, when they regularly see evidence of people that they worked and grew up with suddenly join the ranks of millionaires and billionaires, when those who used to be leaders of their trade unions have become – overnight – directors of corporations and driving flashy cars and living in the most upmarket suburbs? Why, workers would wonder, should they not share in this new-found wealth of our nation.

Indeed, the concern only for the self – and its concomitant lack of any concern for other people – is at the heart of much of the violent crime in South Africa. And I am not sure that we can expect that to change for as long as our society bases its understanding of progress on a capitalist notion of wealth and individual advancement without acknowledging the need to address the very critical basic needs of the vast majority of our people.

Workers, and the working class more generally, have an important role to play in this, in stressing working class solidarity – as we have seen with sympathy strikes in the past weeks – and in stressing human solidarity. The lack of solidarity gives rise to a lack of care and to unconcern about the well-being of people that we are responsible for and, even, an unconcern about whether they live or die.

Children and mad people not allowed. Oh, and women too!

2007-05-17T04:28:00.000+02:00

Like most other people with email addresses, I am swamped daily by junk mail that chews up my bandwidth and wastes my time as I hit the worn “delete” button. With all my spam filters, I still receive a few hundred spam mails a day in all my email boxes combined.

It is, therefore, quite amazing that my eye spotted a gem of an email in among the junk recently. I opened the attachment – curious at the subject line – and saw a bold headline. “Children and the Musjid,” it said. Since it was only four paragraphs long, I read it. Actually, I think I read it because I have a latent masochistic streak (and maybe because I sensed the possibility of material for my column).

Quoting a hadith, the author (a well-known “Hadhrat Maulana” from India) says that children and insane people should be kept away from the mosques “to safeguard the purity and sanctity of the Musjid”. He goes on: “Children as well as insane people are careless in regard to matters of tahaarat (purity). The possibility of them defiling the Musjid is strong.” The author adds a few sentences on the problem of mosque carpets being defiled by children and gives instructions on how such carpets must be cleaned (“remove the particular portion and wash it”).

Children also, according to the author, “create a disturbance distracting the attention of the musallis. The Shariah, therefore, does not permit bringing children to the Musjid.”

Of course, this is not new. We have heard it all before. But it irritates me each time I hear it.

The “defilement” argument, of course, seems to be most relevant and convincing of the need to keep children (and mad people) out of the masjid. But it is not consistent with the Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad (s). Anas b. Malik narrated that a desert Arab stood in a corner of the [Prophet’s (s)] mosque and urinated there. The people shouted, but the Messenger of Allah (s) said: “Leave him alone.” When he had finished, the Messenger of Allah (s) ordered that a bucket (of water) should be brought and poured over it.

This was an adult man that deliberately urinated in the mosque. The Prophet’s response was one of compassion and understanding, not of hysteria, punishment and proscription for the “defiling” of the mosque. Yet Hadhrat Maulana wants children to be banned from mosques because there is “the possibility of them defiling the Musjid”.

But it is necessary to look at the broader picture too. The Prophet’s (s) attitude to children more generally and, in particular, his response to children in the mosque is crucial to examine. We know that, while he was praying salah, he picked up his grand daughter Umaymah. There are also reports of his grandson, Hasan, sitting on the minbar while the Prophet (s) was delivering a khutbah. And a report of an incident when he was leading the salah and, while in prostration, one of his grand children jumped on his back. The Prophet (s) stayed in prostration until the child got off. When people asked about the lengthened prostration, the Prophet (s) explained the reason. He did not then forbid the children from entering the mosque, complaining about their being a “distraction” to the worshippers or speak about “the possibility of their defiling” the mosque. His attitude towards children, in general, was one of compassion and love and he extended this to the mosque.

Yes, of course, little children will make a noise in the mosque – else they can’t be little children. I’m sure Hasan and Husain and Umaymah made a noise in the Prophet’s (s) mosque – else they couldn’t have been little children. Yet their grandfather’s response was an inviting, rather than a repelling one.

And that is a reflection not only of the compassion and love for children that the Prophet (s) had, but also of his wisdom. How could he, on the one hand, instruct people to pray their salah in the mosque and advise them to instruct their children to pray salah from age seven and, on the other hand, prohibit children from coming to the mosque. Where will they then pray? At home without their parents?

More importantly, how do we expect children to grow up feeling an attraction to the mosque and the activities in it if, when they are young, they are made to feel unwanted and like outsiders in that space? Such an attitude will either result in little Muslim schizophrenics or in those children extending their mosque exile into their adulthood. If we want adults to fill our mosques, we have to invite them in when they are kids.

The attitude of “kids and mad people out” is also reflective of a broader problem. Those who usually are most vocal about keeping children out of the mosque are also those who are most vocal about keeping women out of the mosque. What such people really want, it seems, is for mosques to be (in most places in South Africa, to remain) exclusive men’s clubs.

Perhaps we should also open little cigar rooms at the back of the mosque (or, perhaps, little argila / hooka rooms) so that the men can have quiet, undistracted, undefiled periods of prayer followed by good ol’ male bonding with smoky rituals.

I must add that I do think the notion of the sounds of children playing (and even crying) being regarded as “distractions” is not a savoury and, dare I say, “sunnatic” one. Children sounds should be consoling and comforting to our hearts, music to our ears and should, in fact, help to focus us on Allah’s presence through hearing the sounds of his miracles.

But I can understand that some among us would feel distracted by such sounds because we might think that these are the sounds that only women should hear, because only women should be caring for children. Again, it’s an attitude contrary to that of the Prophet (s).

I wonder how such people would have enjoyed their prayers in the Prophet’s (s) mosque – where children jumped onto the imam’s back while he was in sajda, where Bedouins urinated on the floor and where, according to a report in Bukhari, dogs (which had urinated) would even walk through the mosque. (Hamza bin ‘Abdullah narrated: “My father said. ‘During the lifetime of Allah’s Apostle, the dogs used to urinate, and pass through the mosques. Nevertheless they never used to sprinkle water on it.’”)

Such defilement! Such distraction! Almost makes one feel that it’s better to pray in the darkest corner of one’s house!

Accountable for our silence

2007-04-18T09:14:00.000+02:00

I suppose we should be pleased and relieved that such a wide range of forces across the world is taking up, so seriously, the issue of the massacre of Muslims in one part of the world. One would certainly be hard-pressed to find the international Zionist movement to be so passionately against the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians or the Christian right calling for a UN force to prevent the massacre of Iraqis.

But Zionists and the Christian right have not only jumped onto the Darfur bandwagon, they have even eclipsed the left in their passionate support of the people of Darfur (and their calls for military intervention). Suddenly, one sees huge campaigns organised by such groups about Darfur. Even the South African Union of Jewish Students is now focussing its attention on the massacre of Muslims in Darfur.

What is it that has resulted in this outpouring of support for an oppressed Muslim community? Where are Muslims in all of this? And what is really happening in Darfur?

Apart from these usually anti-Muslim groups, leftist organisations, activists and intellectuals have been speaking about the Darfur crisis for the past few years. They have taken up the issue variously from the perspective of a human rights catastrophe, (which it is), as a genocide (which it isn’t), with an eye on imperialist objectives in the region (which are substantial), as a racist war by Arabs against Africans or a combination of the above.

The Muslim response, however, has been quite muted – internationally, with few exceptions (including a protest outside the Sudanese embassy in Pretoria organised by the Muslim Youth Movement and supported by the Palestine Solidarity Committee). Most Muslims in South Africa are generally ignorant about what is happening, don’t buy into the usual media spin about the issue but don’t bother to find out for themselves what the truth is and have a knee-jerk reaction to the news that Muslims might be committing any kind of atrocities. Thus, because the issue is framed as a Muslim government massacring other people, South African Muslims either prefer to remain silent on the matter or to defend the Sudanese government.

Since when are we able to believe and defend a Muslim military dictatorship? Undemocratic, dictatorial governments exist across the Muslim world. They all, without exception, deserve our scorn, derision and active opposition. And there really is no reason to believe them when they defend themselves against charges of human rights abuses. The Sudanese government, for all its pretence of being some kind of an ‘Islamic’ government, is no exception.

As regards the Darfur crisis, Muslims should be in the forefront of the campaign in support of the unarmed and brutalised masses in that region. Darfur, once a great Muslim empire, today is being raped and its people are battered and tormented as pawns in a political battle. And its assailants are all Muslims. The Muslim enthusiasm for Darfur should be no less than the Muslim enthusiasm for Palestine or Iraq. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

And the pretended uncertainty that some Muslims have about Darfur, based on the fact that Zionist and Christian right groups are campaigning on the Darfur issue is, at best, a smokescreen for ignorance and apathy and, at worst, an excuse for being silent in the face of Muslim human rights violations and crimes against humanity.

Yes, these groups have their own agendas for supporting the Darfur cause. The Zionists, for example, have long insisted that the Palestinian solidarity movement around the world should also target the various Arab regimes for their human rights violations (as if the argument that “my neighbour is as bad as or worse than I” makes my oppression ok). Having failed to distract the movement in that way, Zionists have now chosen to take up their own campaign against a Muslim regime so as to divert attention away from the Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people.

There is also a strong American imperialist agenda behind the sudden concern for African victims of gross human rights violations: oil! Sudan, it has been established, has the largest oil reserves in the world. But, that oil has been promised to the Chinese by the Sudanese government. Darfur is a convenient entry point for a soft occupation and establishment of foreign military bases in Sudan.

So the historically-known supporters of oppression and dictatorship do have their own agendas. But, that should not cause Muslims to ignore the very real suffering of the people of Darfur. As an aside at this point, I should point out that the reason I refuse to call the crisis ‘genocide’ is because ‘genocide’ implies an intention and an effort to wipe out an entire group of people based on their religion, ethnicity or other such characteristic. Such an intention and effort does not exist in Sudan. The Fur people (from whom Darfur gets its name) are not being attacked because they are Fur. Indeed, I have met Fur people who live undisturbed and, sometimes, happily and comfortably in Khartoum.

There are complex reasons for the Darfur crisis (and the allegation of Arab vs. African is not one of them). Primarily, as with many other wars and battles, the crisis is caused by a battle of elites: Fur elites and Northern Sudanese elites – who have ruled together for many years, sometimes tenuously – have fallen out among themselves because they could not agree on the sharing of power. The former then decided to win their demands through insurgent action. The government retaliated with the kind of barbarism and brutality that makes one ashamed to be human. Conveniently for Khartoum, there was another factor that assisted it in prosecuting its war: increased desertification in the North West had intensified the competition for land between the agriculturalists in Darfur and the pastoralists further north. The government mobilised this competition, armed certain groups within the pastoralist community and led them into a brutal war.

The victims – the people of Darfur – are those who are not part of the elites in battle and who, in fact, benefit little from any of these elites. And so their lives have been made miserable, tens – if not hundreds – of thousands of people have been massacred in the most terrible ways, livelihoods and homes have been utterly destroyed, war crimes have been committed, villages have been bombed from the air by government forces, rape has become commonplace. The once powerful empire of Darfur is virtually a waste land. And innocent, struggling people are – as usual – the victims.

The perpetrators – Muslims, all of them – intransigently refuse to account for their actions. The Sudanese government has just agreed to allow UN forces into Darfur. We wait to see whether that is an agreement that will be honoured on the ground. And we wait to see how the imperialist forces might use the UN involvement for their own ends. And so, while the Zionists and the imperialists and the UN argue and debate about how best to resolve the Darfur crisis and argue about whether it is a genocide, the people of Darfur continue to die and to suffer and to become refugees and to become miserable. And all of us who remain silent – whatever excuses we use for our silence – will one day be accountable for not speaking out.

And to Him is our return

2007-03-26T08:22:00.000+02:00

“The Hamas government must be recognized, not only because recognition of Hamas would be good for Israel… but because this is the right move by any criterion of justice and international law.” Such a statement is probably not unusual to many Al-Qalam readers. But it is unusual for many Jews and particularly when it comes from an Israeli Jew.

It was these kinds of statements that made Tanya Reinhardt an enemy to many Zionists; it was the same kind of statement that endeared her to Palestinians and Palestinian supporters globally. And it is these kinds of statements that are being remembered now in obituaries and speeches around the world. Professor Tanya Reinhardt died on Saturday, 17 March 2007, aged 63.

A linguist (who studied under that other very famous Jewish linguist known for his pro-Palestinian positions, Noam Chomsky), Tanya was a strong, outspoken and unwavering critic of Israeli policies and a strong defender of Palestinian rights. Apart from her against-the-grain comments on the Hamas electoral victory, she also opposed the Oslo Accords at a time when there was much euphoria about it globally – including from many Palestinian quarters; she argued that it would perpetuate and strengthen the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory, and she was proved correct. She also insisted that the real reason for Israel’s recent war against Lebanon was to make the Litani River Israel’s northern border.

But, arguably, her most important contributions to international solidarity with the Palestinian struggle was her contribution to the debate on the boycott of Israeli academics and academic institutions. Favouring a boycott, she nevertheless differentiated between institutions and individual academics, offering a nuanced perspective on the boycott question that has been quoted, analysed and critiqued by the Palestine solidarity movement around the world. These positions resulted in her academic position at Tel Aviv University becoming increasingly uncomfortable and, in December last year, she moved to New York to teach at New York University.

Tanya Reinhardt is among those who, being part of a privileged oppressor class by accident of birth, are able to transcend that accident and fearlessly articulate themselves in favour of justice and in opposition to their privilege. Like a number of other Israeli Jews and a number of White South Africans under Apartheid, she chose the difficult path of speaking truth to power, despite the uncomfortable and, often, frightening personal consequences.

When I heard of Tanya’s death, I immediately sent out an email to the Palestine Solidarity Committee mailing list with the subject: "Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi raji'un – To Allah we belong and to Him is our return." Later, I remembered what I had been taught when I was a little boy and realised that some Muslims might take objection to my subject line. Many Muslims are taught – as I was – that when you hear news of a Muslim death, you should respond with these words from the Qur’an. However, when you hear of the death of a non-Muslim, you should respond “Fi naari jahannam” – Into the fire of hell.

Fortunately for me, I was quickly dispossessed of such unIslamic notions when I joined, at age 14, a halqa of the Muslim Youth Movement. It was there that I learnt to study the Qur’an and it was there that I learnt of Qur’anic verses such as 2:62: “Verily, those who have attained to faith [in this scripture], as well as those who follow the Jewish faith, and the Christians, and the Sabians – all who believe in God and the Last Day and do righteous deeds shall have their reward with their Sustainer; and no fear need they have, and neither shall they grieve.” And verses such as 5:69 and 22:17. How could I, after this, say “fi naari jahannam” when Allah’s attitude and guidance was so different?

I was also exposed to various ahadith related to this issue, such as the one where the Prophet is reported to have stood up when the funeral of a Jew passed by. When he was told the deceased was a Jew, he responded: “Is it not a living being?” Muhammad (s) also performed the funeral prayer for Abdullah ibn Ubai, the leader of the hypocrites in Madinah, and gave his shirt for Abdullah to be buried in.

The attitude that many of us Muslims have of us being a chosen people who exclusively will realise the favours of Allah must be debunked. We cannot afford to offend the spirit of the Qur’an with such selfish wishes which the words of Allah and the practice of the Prophet Muhammad militate against.

The Prophet showed extreme concern for all who were to die or had died. Remember his loving attempts to counsel his uncle Abu Talib when the latter was on his death bed? Yet Abu Talib refused to embrace Islam even at the very end. Muhammad’s (s) attitude was always one of mercy, not one of hatred or anger – even towards those who had sworn to be his enemies.

That mercy is beautifully captured in a hadith narrated by Usama bin Zaid: “The daughter of the Prophet (s) sent (a messenger) to the Prophet requesting him to come as her child was dying, but the Prophet returned the messenger and told him to convey his greeting to her and say: ‘Whatever Allah takes is for Him and whatever He gives, is for Him, and everything with Him has a limited fixed term and so she should be patient and hope for Allah's reward.’ She again sent for him, swearing that he should come. The Prophet got up, and so did Sa’d bin ‘Ubada, Muadh bin Jabal, Ubai bin Ka’b, Zaid bin Thabit and some other men. The child was brought to Allah’s Apostle while his breath was disturbed in his chest. On that the eyes of the Prophet (s) started shedding tears. Sa’d said, ‘O Allah's Apostle! What is this?’ He replied, ‘It is mercy which Allah has lodged in the hearts of His slaves, and Allah is merciful only to those of His slaves who are merciful (to others).’”

And so, to Tanya Reinhardt, I say: “Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi raji’un”. After all, we all – Muslim or not – belong to Allah and we will all return to Him.