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The Jamaat e Islami Hind in Kerala, through mass mobilization of its women's wing has broadly hinted that it would plunge into politics with the forthcoming elections for the civic bodies. At the two-day conclave of its women's wing in Kuttipuram, the Jamaat leaders called the Muslim women to come forward to effectively utilize the 50 per cent reservation in local self government institutions.

The meet held on the banks of the Bharathapuzha river on January 24 and 25, marked the culmination of a month-long campaign conducted by the women's wing of the Jamaat aimed at bringing Muslim women out of the confines of their homes to the political front.

The conference also demanded recodification of the Muslim Personal law in a manner that nobody could misuse it to cause injustice to women.

The demands came from K. K. Fathima Suhra, the President of the women's wing while delivering the presidential address. 'The Muslim community should be ready to provide women their real space in Islam', Suhra urged.

Quite in tune with her, State president of the Jamaat T. Arifali declared that 'Women have a way to go forward and no priesthood can prevent them from their onward move'. 'Social revolution is impossible without the participation of women who comprise half of the society', said P.V. Rahmabi, state vice-president of the women's wing.

The Conference was inaugurated by Famous British journalist Yvonne Ridley, who could not attend the conference due to denial of visa by the Indian High Commission. Her telephonic speech was magnified over amplifiers for the mammoth crowd to listen. (Ridley had studied and embraced Islam after being released by the Talibans from captivity in Afghanistan during the early period of American aggression). She said: Muslim women are showing their strength in spirituality and worldly matters and nobody can now avoid their unique collective force.

Miss Ridley said that the new world order has been created by imperialism and Zionism and described it as a global threat. The existence of the world will be stable only by recognizing and defeating it. The backwardness of women will adversely affect social development. Ridley recollected the experience that peace activists faced in Cairo when they tried to express solidarity with the suffering people of Gaza. The activists followed the Gandhian strategy of peaceful protest but were beaten up and harassed.

Ridley expressed her disappointment in denying her visa to enter the country of Gandhi. She added that some forces were trying to damage the good image of democratic India in the world. Ms. A. Rahmatunnisa translated her speech into Malayalam.
Athiyya Siddiqui, national president of JIH's women's wing, Advocate Noorbina Rasheed, state secretary of Women's League, Sauda Padanna, state committee member of JIH women's wing, Raheena KK, state president of Girls Islamic Organisation, and K. K. Safiyya Sharafiya, state committee member of JIH women's wing, spoke.

Fuzzy political scenario
The conference which raised the slogan 'Women power for social revolution' passed four resolutions which demanded to make modifications in reservation and women's reservation, to be in the forefront against dowry, to codify the Muslim Personal Laws and to reclaim ethical and moral values.
Jamaat's foray into politics may add to the fuzzy picture in Kerala where two broad coalitions of political parties have been ruling the roost and capturing the reign of power alternately. Of late, the crucial Muslim votes have undergone splintering due to primacy of Muslim League being challenged by more militant organization claiming to be champions of Muslims and calling for 'rejection of the inert and docile Muslim League politics. The People's Democratic Party of Nasser Mathani, Indian National League and the newly-formed Social Democratic Party are new claimants of Muslim votes.

London: The debt European scholars owe their Muslim counterparts – everything from water pumps and theories of blood circulation to engineering and map-making – was unveiled in a London exhibition titled 1001 Inventions: Discover the Muslim Heritage in Our World' on January 21. At the London's Science Museum. The exhibition will be open till April 25.

The organizers hope to illuminate 1,000 years of neglected science from North Africa to China, thereby providing a bridge between Classical and Renaissance scholarship.

In doing so, organizers expressed hope that the show would help improve understanding between the Muslim world and the West.

“If you neglect the contributions of other cultures [to contemporary civilization], then it gives you a sense of having cultural superiority, which is dangerous,” observed Professor Salim T. S. al-Hassani, who masterminded the exhibition.

“As we move into a new global world,” he opined, “we need to respect and recognize the contributions of all other races and cultures into what we have today. This exhibition demonstrates that.”

The exhibits span from about 700-1700 AD, which Science Museum director Professor Chris Rapley described as a time of “exceptional scientific and technological advancement in China, India, Persia, Africa and the Arab world.”

It aims to highlight the Muslim scholars who built on existing knowledge to develop new ideas about astronomy and mathematics, architecture, medicine and engineering – but which have been largely ignored in European history.

At the 13th-century observatory in Maragha, in Iran, the exhibition notes, star-gazers developed new models for understanding the universe, which helped pave the way for Copernicus' ideas of a sun-centered solar system in 1543.

Abbas ibn Firnas, an Arab-Berber scholar in ninth-century Andalusia, performed one of the first recorded human flights when he leapt from the minaret of the Grand Mosque in Cordoba using a glider stiffened with wooden struts.

Ibn al-Nafis, a Syrian-born Cairo physician (among other things) is also said to be the first to have accurately described the part of the cardiovascular system involving the heart and lungs, paving the way for William Harvey's full description of circulation in 1628.

The exhibit also examines 12th-century engineer Al-Jazari, who invented the double-action suction pump, and his contemporary Al-Idrisi, who drew up a world map centuries before Columbus and Marco Polo set off exploring.

It was not just Muslim scholars busily creating knowledge, however. They worked with Jewish and Christian scientists and elaborated upon ideas from scientists working as far afield as China, ancient Babylonia, Egypt, Greece and Persia and India.

This multicultural message is highlighted in al-Jazari's “Elephant Clock,” which featured an Indian elephant, Chinese dragons, a Greek water mechanism, an Egyptian phoenix and wooden robots wearing traditional Arabian attire.

“Science throughout its history has claimed a hugely important role in diffusing through, or simply sidestepping, cultural or political barriers,” Rapley said, “ … and through that sparking innovation, new ideas and advance.”

The exhibition is based on hundreds of manuscripts from the period, and the claims of discoveries have been verified by experts at the Science Museum.