BOOK REVIEW

Animal Welfare in Islam
By AlHafiz Basheer Ahmad Masri
Published by The Islamic Foundation
Markfield Conference Centre, Ratby Lane
Markfield, Leicestershire, LE67, 9SY, UK. Ph 01530244946
Email i.foundationislamicfoundation.org.uk


The first edition of this book, Animal Welfare in Islam sent ripples throughout the Muslim world. It also brought a huge postbag to author, Basheer Masris doorstep. He began a correspondence with many Muslims and others from all parts of the world. Since his death in 1992, requests for his book continued to come in. It is in this response to those requests and in the hope that this important work may reach an even wider audience, that this revised edition has been produced. This scholarly book shows that concern for animals has been an integral part of Islamic teaching from the beginning. This book will reignite the flame of compassion for all beings which runs so strongly through the Quran and Hadith.

This revised edition of AlHafiz Basheer Ahmad Masris important work Animal Welfare in Islam in collaboration with Compassion in World Farming, will help underscore the concern and compassion for animals which permeate the Islamic teachings. It is a quirk of irony that Islam, which stands for treating animals well, is maligned in certain quarters for its alleged antianimal stance. In Islamic dietary code meat no doubt, figures prominently and Muslims, cutting across their ethnic origins, have been eating meat for ages. Yet, this should not be misconstrued in terms of treating animals callously. Islam exhorts that animals deserve mans care and compassion. The Quran adduces animals as a sign of Allahs wonderful creative power. Several incidents in the Prophets (Pbuh) glorious life illustrate his considerate concern for animal welfare. Many directives of his are on record in standard Ahadith collections, which urge Muslims to be kind towards animals. AlMasris present work accomplishes a remarkable job in bringing into sharper focus the place animals enjoy in the Islamic scheme of things. It documents the concrete steps the Muslim polity took for the cause of animal welfare at a time when this concept was little known and hardly appreciated.

Yet it is time for Muslim society to take stock of its attitude towards animals in the light of the Islamic code on this issue. There is a pressing need for ensuring better conditions at slaughter houses in particular, and for better care of animals in general. In discharging this duty conscientiously, Muslims would earn greater reward and secure Allahs pleasure. It is time also for holding discussion on the vexed issue of stunning, prior to slaughter. This book also compels Muslims and others to objectively examine this issue against the backdrop of Islamic teachings, while bearing in mind the current practices and mass production of meat. This discussion assumes more significance and relevance especially in the Western countries with a sizeable Muslim population.

Animal Welfare in Islam attempts to bring out the kind and compassionate Islamic teachings regarding animal welfare. The Islamic instruction and guidance on animals needs and mans obligations concerning animals is so comprehensive that Muslims need not go elsewhere for any guidance. Islam wants its adherents to think and act in positive terms of accepting all species as communities like us in their own right and not to sit in judgement on them according to our human norms and values. The book also examines animal sacrifice as practised by the adherents of major world religions. It raises the issue of the mass production of meat and exhorts the Muslim community, in the West particularly, to tackle the issue of Halal meat in an appropriate manner.

AlHafiz Basheer Ahmad Masri (19141992) was born in India and graduated with a B.A. (Hons.) degree in Arabic from the Government College of the University of Punjab in Lahore. He also attended the Faculty of Arabic at AlAzhar University, Cairo. During the 20 years he spent in East Africa (194161), he was Headmaster of the then largest secondary school and also held secretarial and presidential posts on religious, social and educational organisations among the African, Asian and European communities, including organisations involved in animal welfare.

In 1961, he settled in England, studied journalism and for six years was the joint editor of the well known Islamic monthly magazine The Islamic Review. In 1964, he became the first Sunni Muslim to be appointed as the Imam of the Shah Jehan Mosque, Woking, England. He continued his animal welfare interests in England, working closely with the charity Compassion in World Farming (formerly the Athene Trust), which published the first edition of this book as Animals in Islam in 1988.

Muslim Education in Contemporary India
A Classified and Annotated Bibliography
Yoginder S. Sikand
Hope India Publications,
85Sector 23, Gurgaon122017
www.hopeindiapublications.com
Rs. 595 Pages 290


Paradoxes characterize the Muslim situation in India. Muslims constitute a minority, yet they are the largest community in India in terms of beliefs, ethos and cultural values. Religion is of course the major binding factor for them. But it is not the sole factor determining their priorities in education. But ethnicity, diverse linguistic profile and regional economies and competition with local communities shape the urges in matter of learning and acquisition of skills. Similarly, they betray a heightened sense of religious and cultural identity and are wary of both, the forces of assimilation and alienation. Aside from their cultural concerns, they are also under the throes of modernization, industrialization and urbanization.

The book under review provides a peek into issues, concerns and problems that confront the largest minority of India. Dr. Yoginder Sikand has assiduously collected a vast number of articles and writings from diverse sources and classified them into five broad categories viz, General Muslim Education, Madrasas and Muslim Religious Education, Urdu and Urdumedium Education, Muslim Girls Education and Muslim Education and State Policy. The material on Madrasa education has consumed nearly half the volume of the book and Urdu medium education also claims another sizable chunk of pages. The author has unearthed enough material on these two dominant cultural concerns that shape the priorities of the community. Sikand, as one who has doggedly pursued the investigation into madrasa curriculum, its modernization and lately, the myth and propaganda linking these institutions with terror activities, has collected wide variety of pieces on the subject. Some of this material has spilled over into the section devoted to Urdu medium education too.

Education is the key input for change in a society. To this effect, the book etches to broad relief the communitys mindset and the worldview. Muslims in north India have been besieged by problems which range from ghettoisation after Partition to lack of sense of mission, destiny and direction for future, unIslamic resignation and fatalism and a leadership that has a vested interest in promoting sectarian strife and escapism. Instead of emphasizing the universalistic aspect of Islamic humanism, one gets to hear, at best cultural nostalgia or at worst, the voices of communal selfaggrandisement from Deoband, Lucknow and Delhi. Loss of Urdus organic link with economy resulted in the Muslims of the North losing reins of the meager economy. In the aftermath of communal Partition, the demand for reservation became a politically volatile issue.

But, in South, there has been a strong push for universalisation of literacy, establishment of institutions of higher learning and professional colleges, quite in consonance with the aspirations of the mainstream communities. Mappila Muslims of Kerala have gone a step further with amends in even religious curriculum.

Topics selected for the gathering of material have a limited scope for perceptive pieces on more urgent needs of the community to find a place. For instance, few writings discuss the need for Muslims to develop an educational system that would enable their younger generation to navigate the modern world and understand the basic (and new) requirements of democratic citizenship. While Urdu medium education has generated a good deal of discussion, no article seeks to focus on necessity to think afresh on a medium of education that fulfils the needs of the market as adequately as it addresses cultural concerns.

Flawed editing here and there does mar the otherwise smooth flow of the text. But the book marvelously serves the purpose of bringing under sharp focus, issues of education worrying the community.

After SSLC What Next
Conceptualized, Developed Edited by AmeeneMudassar
Published by CIGMA Foundation Trust (R)
NGO registered under Indian Trusts Act.
No. 29, R.V.Road, Opp. Vijaya College, Basavanagudi, Bangalore 560004. Karnataka. Ph (080) 4155 4225.
CIGMA Foundation www.cigma.in
Price Rs 50/
Email ameencigma.in

Yes, deciding a career is not easy. Its a challenge. This book After SSLC,What Next will be the best friend and guide in making the right career choice after 10 std and in future also.
The book comprises career planning processes, courses on offer after SSLC, job oriented training programs, nontraditional career options, competitive exams, details about distance education and correspondence courses and scholarships.

The book is conceptualized, developed and edited by AmeeneMudassar, a social entrepreneur. He is the founder director of CIGMA Foundation CIGMA Infotech, Bangalore.
He has conducted over 200 career guidance programs across 25 cities of India which has benefitted more than 60,000 school and college students.

A new Muslim magazine with articles not just on Islam, but also on a host of issues, from global warming, AIDS, modern education among Muslims, madrasa reforms, gender relations and Muslim women’s empowerment to terrorism, communal harmony between Hindus and Muslims and Western imperialism, in addition to news and feature stories about India’s Muslims…. The monthly ‘Eastern Crescent’, published from Mumbai, promises to make a major splash in the fledgling Indian Muslim English-language media market. And what is special about it is that it is run by an editorial team that consists almost entirely of traditionally-educated maulvis from the renowned Dar ul-Ulum madrasa at Deoband.

Launched in mid-May 2006, the Mumbai-based monthly ‘Eastern Crescent’ is the brain-child of Maulana Badruddin Ajmal, the leading-light behind the Markaz ul-Maarif set of institutions that is now assuming the form of a movem-ent. Ajmal, a successful busin-essman from Assam and himself a Deobandi graduate, is a member of the Central Committee of the Deoband madrasa. The Markaz ul-Maarif runs a chain of schools, orphanages and social work centres in Assam and elsewhere. Another of its major initiatives is a centre in Mumbai that provides a two-year course in English language proficiency to madrasa graduates, most of these being students from the Deoband madrasa.

‘Eastern Crescent’ is published from the Markaz ul-Maarif’s centre in Mumbai. Maulana Bu-rhanuddin Qasmi, its editor, and most of its senior staff members are Deobandi maulvis (also known as ‘Qasmis’) who learnt English only after undergoing the two-year course at the centre, before which most of them had little or no familiarity with the language. And, judging by the generally high quality of the articles that they, along with a team of mainly Muslim writers, both maulvis and others, contribute to the magazine, they seem to be doing a great job. Quite atypically for a magazine run by maulvis, the strictly religious content is minimal, because scores of other Indian Muslim magazines, in Urdu, English and other languages, serve that function. Instead, most of the articles are about serious social, economic and political issues to do with the Indian Muslims—subjects that are generally ignored both in the Muslim-owned and in the non-Muslim media, which is another thing that makes the magazine special and unique.

Modestly priced at a Rs 150 a year (life subscription is five thousand rupees), Eastern Crescent provides a different perspective on Indian Muslim issues—that of an influential section of the traditional ulema who are trying to relate to a host of contemporary challenges in some very creative (and, for some, unexpectedly progressive) ways.

(For more details about the magazine, see the Markaz ul-Maarif’s website www.markazulmaarif.org)