Insights

Cities, south of Mumbai are awash with new age Islamic preachers (dai’ees) these days. They address audiences in English, supply lot of reason and logic for Islamic ideology, understand the complexities of the modern age and avoid stoking sectarian differences. Be it Dr. Israr Ahmed from Pakistan or Dr. Zakir Naik from Mumbai, or Dr. Farhat Hashmi from Multan or Ameenul Hassan from Vaniyambadi or Mayin Kutty Mathar from Kochi, they have introduced a whiff of fresh air into the musty corridor of Islamic dawah.


It is unmistakably English that has broadened their vision and canvas. Even their audiences find it easy to relate to them due to their (listeners’) broader understanding of the society, polity, diversity and complexity of India and the fast globalising world. Moreover, they are either professionals or had professional education. Israr Ahmed and Zakir Naik have MBBS degrees. Mayin Kutty Mather is a practicing advocate at Cochin High Court. Ameenul Hassan possesses a BE degree and is into construction business. Farhat Hashmi has a Ph.D. from some Western university. They are into dawah out of conviction, not by way of profession. Livelihood comes from sources other than dawah. Their insight into Christianity, Hinduism and other religions through personal study is profound. Ahmed Deedat, a second or third generation Gujarati from South Africa, started it all in Durban and trained a few in taking upon missionaries. Four decades later, Deedat’s (now lying in a hospital in a vegetative state) work is being replicated all over the Commonwealth states and the US.


Electronic media is the greatest aid for the new age dai’ees. It has taken their message as well as fame far and wide. Till a few years ago, they depended on cassettes. Now Qtv and a few other national channels in the Islamic world relay their programmes. Dependent as they are on the modern means of communication, liberalism informs their attitude towards modern gizmos, gadgets, products and processes that new technology has delivered.


While the traditional religious scholars raised controversies; provoked sectarian divisions, if not hostility; and relied heavily on rhetoric (couplets of Iqbal and Hali, proverbs, a lot of gesturing, unnecessary high decibles et al), the new age dai’ees are soft-spoken, to the point and full of substance on Islam’s philosophy. They can command audiences ranging between 5,000 to 10,000 while the best of traditional ulema are content with just about 200 heads. They go ecstatic if the number touches four figure.


The new age dai’ees have set off sirens of alarm for the traditional clergy which feels threatened. In a new twist of their envious rivalry, they have begun to pass edicts (fatwas) against watching Qtv. It must be rejected with the disdain and contempt it deserves. One wishes the tribe of these exponents of Islamic message more power to their tongue. Ameen!

English is emerging as the language of global consensus among Muslims too. Popularity of the new age preachers makes it evident. It is amenable to modern technology, something that was hallmark of Arabic aeons ago. It is tolerant of all ideas. The very fact that people from all faiths, nations and communities use it, endows it with this quality in abundance. Even in India, it is the best medium to reflect the pan-Indian realities. No other Indian language equals its capacity to reach various corners.


But one should be aware of the traps it lays. English is the language of elite. All that gets associated with it, gets elitist. There are few people in India who have inherited English from their mothers. But English users are spread all across the country and are the most vocal, powerful sections of the people. It can therefore safely be assumed that everyone who uses English, is an educated person. And will be powerful, to boot.


English can elevate people psychologically, intellectually and economically. But often it does so by cutting its users away from the grassroots realities. English users are therefore seen more engrossed with birthdays, bouquets, cakes, cars, clubs, send-off parties, dogs, donuts, farmhouses and share market. Halwa, munni, chowki, roti, paani, charpoy and bakri, things that evoke common concern, are hardly their cup of tea. So the capacity to reflect the pan-Indian reality should not be confused with ability to represent the grassroots Indian reality.


It is where a note of caution is a must for the new age preachers, some of whom have begun to set up a chain of elite schools. It is fine till one preaches Islam from the podium. But when it comes to the classrooms, it must correlate itself with mainstream syllabi. The kids have to be provided with a balanced view of native culture, faiths, issues and problems. But dawah activists in India, torn as they are between two cultures, two identities and two sets of books, tend to succumb to idealizing one reality and demonizing another. In one such school, the kids were asked as to who was the first man in space. Children yelled, ‘Yuri Gagarin’. But that was not to be. The teacher corrected them. ‘It was the Holy Prophet who ventured into space’, the kids were reminded with reference to Meraaj (ascension). The lady teacher would not accept amendments unless another teacher counter questioned her as to why Prophet Adam, his wife Hawwa (Eve) and Jesus Christ should not be taken as first three ‘to venture into the space’ as either they travelled from the heaven to the earth or the vice versa. It was only then the realization dawned.


A curriculum that alienates kids from their surrounding ambience, could very well take them to Montreal, Melbourne, Maryland or Hong Kong and Hawaii but will be fraught with the risk of making them aliens into their own native soil.


The high fee structure in these ‘Islamic schools’ provides substance to the charge of their being elitist. On such school in Chennai even coerces the father of the kids to be bearded. Why impose something on people that Allah and his Prophet (peace be upon him), did not make obligatory? The fact that these conditions would keep the non-Muslim kids away from these schools is enough to warn us that their products should be ready for culture shocks in an India which did not turn Islamic despite 650 years of Muslim rule.


Dawah is all right from the stage. But Islamizing education has all the risks of providing justification for those intent upon saffronising education. It is where we need to differentiate between providing Islamic education alongside the secular subjects and Islamizing education.

I have been reading the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA) since 1988. Currently, it is in 22nd year of its publication. Now it is printed on glazed paper, on A-4 size (i.e., India Today size) and carried multi-coloured photographs. When I began getting it in 1988, it was on matt paper and carried black and white photographs.


The WRMEA interprets the issues pertaining to the Middle East in a way that one naturally develops a sympathetic view of Palestinians and Arabs against forced occupation of Palestinian land. It exposes the doings and manipulation of the powerful Zionist lobby in the United States, the influence it is able to peddle in the State Department, the way it fuels the elections of the US Presidents and the rich dividends it reaps. Its commentaries and analyses focus on the personalities and events that portray the real strength of the Israeli lobby in the US and virtual absence of support for the Arabs.
Last time when I visited Washington D.C., I paid a visit to the WRMEA office on the Massachusetts Avenue. It was a small one-room office where sat Richard H. Curtiss, its executive editor and Publisher Andrew I. Killgore. I also met journalist Greg Noakes, whose byline no longer appears in the magazine. The magazine is run by a clutch of former US diplomats who served at various Middle Eastern capitals. They are all Christians.


Over the last 22 years, WRMEA has developed a whole lot of arguments and viewpoints that try to tilt the US public opinion in favour of the Arabs. These are well-reasoned and have carved out a full constituency of support for the Arab cause and does all these with a finesse that is customary of the US media.


But it appears the magazine is not in good shape. Heretofore, it was bringing out 10 issues a year. It recently cut down its pages from 98 to 82 in order to remain afloat and announced that it may have to do away with one more issue. It has made no bones about its being in ‘survival mode’. I fear for its life and pray for its longevity because it is the only alternative medium to get to the other side of the story at a time when the pro-Israeli bias of the US mainstream media is at its height.