The Indira Gandhi National Open University has decided to establish atleast one Study Centre in each Block of the Muslim dominated districts identified in the Sachar Committee Report where educational opportunities are less. Muslim educational institutions and madrasas in Bangalore, Gulbarga, Belgaum, and Dakshina Kannada districts who are desirous of establishing Study Centres of IGNOU under Sachar Committee Educationally and Economically Backward Scheme may contact the Karnataka State Minorities Commission, Bangalore for application form and other details. The Study Centres will offer vocational programmes in addition to BPP, BA, B.Com programmes of IGNOU which may help in imparting education and income generation to the minority population, especially the girl children.

(Chairman, Karnataka State Minorities Commission, 5th Floor, Visveswarya Main Tower, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Veedhi, Bangalore - 560001. Tel: 080-22864204, 22863400)

The Education For All (EFA) Trust commissioned a community study room in the Chandra Layout slum here on November 8. The 22 feet by 12 feet study room will enable the students from the slum to gather in the room for study, a facility that is unavailable in their small houses. The construction was funded by a few philanthropists. It is situated in the first floor of the Rahman Khan Government Urdu Model Higher Primary School. EFA Trust has been instrumental in providing a state-of-the art building, toilets, garden and educational aids to the School.

Honoured: Miss Sara Siddiqui, student of the Pre University first year at the Hasnath College for Women has won the third position in the All India English Essay Competition held by the UGC Academic Staff College at the Aligarh Muslim University. The topic of the essay was ‘Communal Harmony’. Mr. A. Razack Adam Sait, secretary of the Hasanath Education Society announced an award of Rs. 5000 for Sara Siddiqui while felicitating her.

The BSA Crescent IAS Academy here will begin coaching for Muslim and Christian minority students from December 2007. Admission is open to even members of Backward Classes. The coaching comprises counseling, guidance, lecture sessions, seminars, group discussions and periodical weekly and model revision tests. Intensive coaching will be also be provided in all optional subjects and general studies.

Separate hostel facilities will be provided for girls and boys. The Academy is located at Seethakathi Estate, Vandaloor, Chennai-600048.

Though admission test for Karnataka students have already been held on November 24, those who could not appear due to absence of information, can still approach Director, M. F. Khan (Ph: 044-22751155) for special consideration.

(Note: The press release was received at Islamic Voice office only on November 4, a week after the November issue of Islamic Voice had been dispatched. The newsitem is still being carried after the Academy assured that exceptionally deserving candidates who missed the admission test from Karnataka could still be considered as a special case.)

Sanchetana, an NGO based here has completed 25 years of service in promoting health awareness in the underprivileged sections of the City.

A report titled Reproductive Health Program Review 2005-2007 brought out on the occasion states that the reproductive health and sexuality programme of the organization addresses nearly one lakh people in two wards of Ahmedabad city. It maintains two health centres in these areas which provide counseling, clinic services, contraceptives and maintain data on health status of the community and provide linkage with health centres of the government. The clinics of the Sanchetana allow women to hold discussions on fertility control, infertility, family planning options, care during pregnancy, hygiene during menstruation and also sexual coercion.

Health education has resulted in better awareness as birth of girls has improved and couples have begun to shun preference for boys. Similarly, couples now prefer to have deliveries in hospitals. While 76 per cent deliveries were reported to be in hospitals in 2005-06, in the subsequent year, the proportion went up to 81 per cent. Campaign also resulted in substantial increase in adoption of birth control methods by both men and women. Around 1,000 new-borns were fully immunized in the two wards in the two-year period.

Sanchetana’s campaign for right to quality education resulted in at least 200 Muslim children ebing transferred to Gujarati medium schools from Urdu medium schools. This was owning to the pressure from Muslim mothers who realized that Urdu medium education was making their children misfits in the society and they were not able to write even a simple application or read the boards on city buses.

Sanchetana also organized Wenlido physical training programme for women against sexual assault. Wenlido is a system pioneered in Canada by Gitta Ridder. It could be translated as ‘the path to women’s strength’. Eleven girls were trained in the martial art.

Sanchetana’s most important contribution in post-2002 Gujarat has been its constant struggle to promote communal harmony. It has involved both Hindu and Muslim health workers and community development volunteers all through its 25 year journey to tackle health issues in slum peopled with Hindus and Muslims. It has organized the fun trips for these workers to pilgrim centres belonging to both faiths and has also involved them in observing International Women’s Day (March 8), Ambedkar Jayanthi, World Peace Day (September 21), and in celebrating each other’s festivals.

The report Reproductive Health Program Review 2005-2007 is a provides very useful insights into the work of Sanchetana which has worked tirelessly in conflict ridden Gujarat during its most troubled period.

Director Dr. Hanif Lakdawala observes in the report: ‘The dark clouds need to burst. It must rain heavily and the sun rays must reach where they have not reached’.

The report could be had from : Sanchetana Community Health and Research Centre, 045/46, New York Trade Centre, Near thaltej Cross Roads, Thaltej, Ahmedabad-380054, Gujarat, Ph. 079-26857848, Fax: 26843395, email: sanchetana.sanchetana. org, www.sanchetana.org

stockmultiplier. co.in, the online portal of Parsoli, is the first-of-its-kind Islamic online to be available for Muslims in India. Parsoli Corp. Ltd, an Ahmedabad-based brokerage that caters to a Muslim clientele launched this online trading facility last month..

The product envisages opening of accounts, namely a demat account, and an online trading account, the Chief Financial Officer, Mr Talha Sareshwala, said.

The new product would enable the investor to execute his orders by himself and a frequent trader could have an exchange look-alike trading screen. It has been designed in such a manner that the customer would not have to part with funds in his financial account or securities in demat account unless the trade request was executed successfully.

“Muslims need not worry about their religious tenets while trading online anymore, because we will offer Shariah-compliant trading.” Says says Zafar Sareshwala, managing director and chief executive officer of Parsoli Corp. Muslims are not allowed to invest in companies involved in the business of alcohol, gambling, the media, and those that have a high income from interest, such as commercial banks and financial institutions.

While internationally Islamic investment products are among the fastest growing in the world, Indian Muslims largely stay away from formal investing. This is because members of the community in India have lacked Islamic investment products.

Parsoli already has an Islamic investment index, which is a guide for Muslim investors, and recommends the companies that Muslims are allowed to invest in. The guide also has constructed a model portfolio. According Sareshwala, this portfolio has outperformed the BSE’s 30-share benchmark index, the Sensex, by 16 per cent since January.

The online trading platform also will lead Muslim investors to Islamicequity.co.in, where Muslim scholars will answer Shariah-related queries of investors. Parsoli will have at least two Muslim scholars answering investors’ questions at any given time.

“Through the Internet, we usually get questions from first-time investors,’ says Sareshwala, “Typically, they ask what kind of companies they can invest in, whether they can do futures and options trading or even intra-day trading.”

Sareshwala says that having Muslim scholars answer online investor questions is bound to give a boost to the confidence of first-time Muslim investors who would otherwise have been wary of entering the stock market.

For over five decades, Maktaba Jamia, Mumbai branch has been the favourite haunt of Urdu writers in the city. But board of directors of Delhi based Maktaba Jamia Ltd., a publishing wing of Jamia Millia Islamia has directed the Maktaba’s Mumbai in-charge to close operation and hand over the accounts and details of its books as well as its furniture.

Outraged at the sudden announcement of its closure, a group of writers has decided to oppose the move. “It’s not just another bookshop. It’s our literary Mecca. They just cannot shut it down,” said Hasan Kamal, Urdu poet-columnist.

Eminent writers have demanded an inquiry into the reasons that led to the imminent closure. “They have not cared to run Maktaba professionally for the last several years. An inquiry is needed,” said Urdu journalist-activist Sajid Rashid.

For the Urdu lovers, this is not just a bookshop. It’s an institution. The brainchild of eminent educationist and former President of India, Dr. Zakir Hussain, Maktaba traces its origins to the creation of Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia in the late 1940s.

When Zakir Hussain and a few friends set up Jamia Millia, they also founded the university’s publishing wing and called it Maktaba Jamia. Aimed at promoting pure literary works in Urdu, Maktaba, through its branches in Delhi, Aligarh and Mumbai, has lived up to its illustrious founders’ wishes.

More than half a century ago, Mumbai was on the cusp of a literary revolution. The hub of the progressive writers’ movement, Mumbai attracted poets like Ali Sardar Jafri, Kaifi Azmi, Majrooh Sultanpuri and Sahir Ludhianvi. Stars of Urdu fiction’s firmament Krish Chandar, Saadat Hasan Manto, Rajinder Singh Bedi, Ismat Chugtai and Khawja Ahmed Abbas settled here.

And Maktaba, being located in the heart of the Muslim locality, became a popular place. Maktaba has contributed immensely to the promotion of Urdu. Maktaba’s city branch acted as a magnet for Urdu writers since it was founded in 1949.

The decision to shut the shop seems to have been taken unilaterally. A letter dated November 12 from its general manager Humayun Zafar Zaidi directs the Maktaba’s Mumbai in-charge to wind up the operations.

Former MP and Muslim intellectual Syed Shahabuddin has said that the upliftemnet of Muslim lies in the reservation for he community in all departments. He said that until and unless reservation is not given to them, they would remain backward in the country.

Shahabuddin was speaking at the national council of the ‘All India Qaumi Tanzeem’, a Muslim body headed by MP and NCP leader Tariq Anwar here recetly. He said that if congress set up Sachar committee to know the malaise of the community and do nothing to cure them it suggest that the party is playing mockery with the community.

The National Council of the Tanzeem was attended by representative from different states. Shahabuddinn said that the way different governments have behaved with Muslim in last sixty years is enough to suggest that what they have done to uplift the community. “The situation have become so aggrieved that Muslim are losing confidence in the secularism of the country. Is Muslim problem will be solved through commission and community” he asked Tariq Anwar said that after the Sachar committee report it has become clear that how Muslims were surviving in the country. “Now it is our duty to jointly pressurize the government to implement the Sachar report in Toto” he said adding the government should also implement the suggestion of justice Ranganathan commission which suggest the reservation for Muslims. Other speakers also echoed the view expressed by the Shahabuddin and Tariq Anwar.

Meanwhile ‘Muslim Reservation Movement’ has decided to stage dharana before the parliament to press the government to provide reservation to the Muslims in all departments. The movement president and Samajwadi Party MP Shafiqur Rahman Barq said that in the present circumstance reservation have become essential for the community as the condition is deteriorating day by day. ‘We will launch agitation inside and outside of the parliament in favour of our demands.

American Federation of Muslims of Indian Origin will hold its 16th international convention on Education on December 29-30 in collaboration with Jamea-tul-Hidaya campus here. Delegates from the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, Middle East and Far East are expected to attend. The convention will felicitate students who have excelled in their secondary and senior secondary board exams. Students, their parents, teachers, educators and social activists across India will participate in the Convention. Participants deliberate on how to create awareness and increase educational standard in the community. Haryana Governor A. R. Kidwai, Deputy chairperson of Rajya Sabha Rahman Khan, Union Minister for Chemicals and Fertilizers Ravilas Paswan will participate. Mr. E. Ahammed, Union Minister of State in the Ministry of External Affairs will be the guest of honour.

Community Round-Up