COMMUNITY INITIATIVE

A Muslim Group in Kerala has pioneered
a Medical Aid Programme that reaches out to help
Muslims and non-Muslims.

The Kerala Nadwat ul-Mujahidin (KNM) is one of the most influential Islamic reformist movements in Kerala. The KNM is also involved in social work and activism. One of the many projects that the KNM youth wing, Ittihadul Shabbanul Muslimeen (ISM), has taken up is to provide free medical assistance to thousands of needy people, regardless of community.

The medical aid programme launched 15 years ago is based at the KNM”s headquarters in Calicut with Naufil, a young hotelier being its coordinator. He is assisted by two pharmacists, providing free medicines to several hundred people from Calicut and surrounding villages.

The programme is conducted through a unit in the government-run Calicut medical college hospital, manned by some 20 volunteers, plus some 50 ‘pain and palliative centres’ across Kerala. Volunteers, many of them, girls associated with the KNM’s women’s wing, the Mujahid Girls’ Movement (MGM), collect donations from all and sundry which goes into buy medicines for free distribution to card-carrying patients who approach the clinics with prescriptions of medicines from government hospitals which they cannot afford to purchase themselves. In addition, some doctors pass on the free samples and others contribute unused medicines. Donors also belong to various communities. Collection boxes in KNM-run institutions are another source of generating funds. The patients are selected on the merit of the case and economic status of the patients. Patients are issued cards with details of ailments. The cards are valid for an indefinite period, so that the patients could revert to the clinic if the ailments relapses.

The ISM has around 2000 people such card-holders across Kerala, of which around 40 per cent are non-Muslims, explains Mujeeb ur-Rehman Kinalur, the amiable president of the ISM.

The Calicut headquarters maintains a list of around 200 blood donors, mostly ISM volunteers, and patients with cards who need blood, can access this facility free. ‘We plan to extend this programme all across Kerala shortly’, says Kinalur. He also talks about the ‘Eye Donation Pledge Campaign’ that the ISM has launched. Aware of the controversy about organ donation in some Muslim circles, he says, ‘we have received a fatwa from the Jamiat-e Ulema-e Kerala, saying that it is permissible for an individual to pledge his eyes for donation after death for the cornea grafting on those suffering from retinal atrophy. So, too, in the case of the brain and kidneys. If you die, your eyes die with you, but if you choose to donate them, you can bring light to someone’s life’.

Under its medical aid programme, the ISM has also been engaged in improving existing infrastructural facilities in government hospitals catering to mostly general public. Says Shahjehan, a businessman who volunteers for the programme, ‘Last year we reconstructed 15 wards in the medical college hospital, spending some Rs. 70,000 on each ward. We also donated some critical needed medical equipment to the hospital’. ‘Before that’, he enthusiastically adds, ‘we provided linen, wheelchairs and stretchers to the Government Beach hospital. Two years ago, we celebrated Independence Day by cleaning government hospitals across Kerala in places where we have our units’.

‘We also organise annual campaigns on issues like AIDS or against smoking’, Shahjehan goes on enthusiastically. We have now started two clinics in the suburbs of Calicut, where, we have our own doctors, who treat patients for a nominal fee of ranging from Rs. 5 to 10.’ ISM plans to establish a full-fledged diagnostic laboratory for medical tests. But, he says, the required funds are a major problem.

‘Our medical programme as well as the other forms of social work and activism, are an expression of our commitment to society, not just to Muslims alone but to everyone, in general’, Kinalur stresses. ‘As Muslims’, he says, ‘we must help all those in need, no matter what their religion or caste’. For details contact : Mujeeb ur-Rahman Kinalur on kinalur@gmail.com

A single application wanting to know the status of Muslims in the country has virtually moved the entire government machinery across the country.

In what could probably be the most exhaustive use of the Right to Information Act, 2005, a single application wanting to know the status of Muslims in the country has virtually moved the entire government machinery across the country. The application filed by a Delhi resident has 101 questions that relate to a whopping 23 ministries or departments of the government and also to all states and union territories across the country.

The union ministry of home affairs has already forwarded the application to all states and Union Territories. Separately, the ministry of minority affairs has asked 23 central ministries and departments for information that is to be provided to Mohammad Zabeeh Afaque of Delhi. The information will be provided directly to the applicant and could run into a few thousand pages. Afaque in his questionnaire has raised issues that are pertinent for the growth of Muslims and tracking the work done at the ground-level, especially for Muslim women. For example, in case of health, he wants to know how many hospitals are there in the 90 districts that have been termed as ‘minority concentration’ by the government last year and how many Muslim women are employed in hospitals across the country, what is their designation and how many were hired after 2001 and so on.

For the banking sector, the questions go like this: How many banks have special cells for regulation of credit for minorities? Out of the total employees in all registered banks, how many are Muslims? Another important question that could underline the status of women is: How many Muslim students received the merit-cum- means scholarship and how many of them are girl students?

The applicant also wants to know the number of madrasas in India and how many of these were established after 2001 and what is the ratio of girl students. How many Muslim girls dropped out of school each year; how many of them graduated; how many Muslim children never attended school; how many Muslim women enrolled in PhD; what is the literacy rate in India and especially in Muslim concentration areas, Afaque goes on to ask. On ownership of homes, the application seeks details on what is the percentage of Muslims who own land; how many Muslim women own land in the country and how many shopping malls and other commercial properties are owned by Muslims. The applicant has probably gone a step ahead of the much publicised Sachar Committee Report that studied Muslim demography in India, and gone on to ask how many FIRs were lodged in 2007 across India and how many were filed by Muslims. In another question, the applicant asks how many Hindus and Muslims were displaced in riots in India since 1947. It goes to ask the number of advocates in India and how many of them are Muslims. Other questions range from the number of Muslim employees in the IAS, IPS, defence services, scientists in the Indian Space Research Organisation to seeking details on the average per capita income of Muslims.
(Reported by Ajay Banerjee, Tribune News Service)