Issues

A US sponsored seminar highlights Muslim situation in India as well as United States.


Hyderabad: A two-day seminar here on ‘Civil Society: Multi-culturalism, Democracies and the Media’ threw ample light on the situation of Muslims in the United States and India. It brought forth the role the media could play in bringing about greater bonding among communities. The seminar was organised by the Urdu Span magazine, mouthpiece of the United States embassy in India, and the South Asia Media Association on September 8 and 9, 2005.



Prof. Zahid Bukhari,
Director, MAPS project,
Georgetown University, Wahington D.C.,

Speaking at the seminar, Prof. Zahid Bukhari, director and Principal Investigator, MAPS (Muslims on the American Public Square) Project of the Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., said the minorities in the United States are of immigrant nature. They face twin challenges of settling in a new country and preserving their religion, culture and ethos. But the founding fathers of the US foresaw this possibility very clearly and declared that the majority would not force its culture down the throats of the minority. A debate continuously goes on in the US regarding the integration, isolation or assimilation of the minorities. There has been a discussion on whether the US is a melting pot or salad bowl. Whenever the US Society faces a crisis, one particular minority is persecuted and its rights get eroded. However, such things were later regretted. Till very long, the Black were not considered human beings. They received the right to vote in 1960. Much earlier than that, the children in the US were reminded that a good Red Indian is one who is dead.


The mainstream US society consists of WASP (White, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant). Catholics though constitute 25 per cent, their patriotism was doubted till very recently. ‘How could someone who is loyal to the Vatican, could be loyal to America?’ was the question raised regarding the Catholics. Riots against Jews and Catholics were commonplace in the past. The Jews established their first hospital in 1867. They conceived the project merely due to the widespread suspicion that Jewish patients were being poisoned. Till 50 years ago, the restaurants and hotels displayed the notices saying ‘Jews, Blacks and dogs are not allowed’. In the second World War, nearly 1.10 lakh Japanese-Americans, 70,000 of whom were citizens of the US, were put into internment camps.


Today the figures about the Muslim population in the US vary from three million to 10 million. No authentic statistics are available as the US census does not record the religion. However, we have conducted two surveys and found that 20 per cent of the US Muslims are Black-Americans. One third are from the sub-continent. 25 per cent are from Arab countries while seven per cent are from African countries. Queries regarding the place of birth revealed that 64 per cent of Muslims in the US mentioned 80 different countries as their place of birth whereas 36 per cent said they were US born.


Our studies reveal that immigrants pass through five different stages during their settlement in the US. First stage involves livelihood issues when he/she tries to attain economic footing. In second stage, religious practices such as namaz, fasting, zakat and Haj are organised. Third stage entails taking care of relatives back home and in fourth stage they get conscious of symbols such as beard, hijab, halal meat etc. In fifth stage, the immigrants become matured and think of integrating with the people around them and take up social problems.


Diversity among US Muslims has begun to manifest itself through mosques that are distinctly sectarian. There are 300 Islamic schools in the US and several study circles and Sunday schools operate at various levels. They set aside nearly one billion dollar in zakat every year.


The September 11 incident has suddenly hurled US Muslims into the fifth stage. Muslims have now begun to take interest in issues that impact the wider society. Yet, it can be said that Muslims are not facing the kind of situation faced by the Jews and Catholics in past decades and centuries. There is phobia and insecurity among Muslims, but they have also begun to question as to why they are there in the US. So a new strategy for struggle is evolving.



Prof. Javed Alam
Professor of comparative politics,
Central Institute of Indian and Foreign Languages (CIEFL), Hyderabad

Democratic rights enjoyed by Muslims in India are more than those by citizens of several Muslim countries. The Indian Constitution recognises the cultural and educational rights of Muslims. In the US, pluralism was talked about for centuries. But in India the pluralism was talked about in context of communities which had wide-ranging food tastes, dresses, languages, ethos and beliefs, inasmuch as their entire philosophy and outlook of life was altogether different from each other. Cultural difference between various communities in India are more than those found among nations in Europe. Below the communities’s culture, lie the differences owing to caste.


The unrest in subaltern communities is because they are producers while wielders of power are upper-caste elite. Muslims in India are a pan-Indian community and are different from OBCs (other backward classes) as Muslims have a wider intelligentsia and have produced Presidents and Chief Justices of the Union. In the new political framework, the Muslims have begun seeking justice and egalitarianism.



Dr. Rehana Sultana
Director, Women’s Studies,
Maulana Azad Urdu University, Hyderabad

Around 1905, the term minority got associated with Muslims in India in the aftermath of partition of Bengal. Muslims have equal Constitutional rights.


But media has different yardsticks when it comes to judging Muslims. Hindu preacher is termed as ‘promoter’ while a Muslim activist is called ‘Jihadist’. Muslim Personal Law is accused of being ‘an instrument of deterring progress’. Ulema are provoked into issuing some awkward statement on some issue of personal behaviour and then a hue and cry is raised over conservatism among Muslims. The controversy on the Sania Mirza’s dress is one such controversy. Much against all this we have found that burqa or hijab has enabled several Muslim girls to attain modern education and lent them mobility for banking, employment and shopping.



Prof. Abdur Raheem
President, South Asian Media Association

India and the United States symbolise the most pluralist countries in the world. Demographic projections speculate that majority of the US population by 2050 will be non-white and it will be a highly multi-racial society. Similarly, France despite higher level of homogeneity, 25 per cent of population is such that it has one or both parents non-white. This shift in population is a phenomenon world over.



Prof. C. M. Naim
Dept. of South Asian Studies
University of Chicago

Civil Society, as a concept, draws attention to the existence of a sector or arena in any democratic polity within which citizens come together and form associations and then strive to gain a cause. In that process, they learn to represent themselves to the Government and the Economy, the two major centers of power, and also to each other. Civil society requires that groups be formed through voluntary action on the part of individual citizens. In other words, social, ecological or economic issues, for example, take on more importance than any ties of religion, kinship or caste. An individual citizen can join such a group or, for that matter, opt out of it without any hindrance from society or law. Civil Society can exist only within democracies, and a democracy, too, can survive only when it allows such voluntary groups to appear and function without hindrance. These groups, more commonly known as NGOs in India, have gradually become more prominent and active in South Asia, particularly so in India, and indicates the strength of Indian democracy. In my view about these NGOs or Civil Society is not that their efforts bring about certain changes or spreads shared values, but that their existence spreads the idea of ‘sharing’ itself. We learn not only to represent ourselves better, but also learn better to recognise the existence of others. A civil society survives only when one group does not coerce another group to adopt a particular lifestyle. For me it is difficult to accept that the Muslim majority should declare the Ahmedis outside the pale of Islam.



Maqbool Ahmed Siraj
Journalist, Bangalore

India is a multi-cultural, multi-lingual and multi-religious country where vertical segmentation of caste turns the society into a complex miasma. Urbanisation and modernisation also divide people into backward and forward. Reservations put them into various other categories. Media has therefore to be highly careful in handling news and interpreting currents and cross-currents. But media cares two hoots about the multi-hued society. Media imbalance has been responsible for stereotyping of certain communities by reinforcing myths. Media maintained silence on Mandal Report for complete nine years, although it benefited the 52 per cent of the Indian people. Gorkhaland agitation was misinterpreted as a separatist movement. People were not made aware of the rural-urban and producer-dealer divide in Punjab which was fuelling the Sikh militancy in 80s and 90s. Media does not understand the difference between ‘Nepalese’ and ‘Nepali’ people.


The Media and IT combination is now turning the mass democracy into mosaic democracy. Diaspora can now be consolidated. Small segregated islands of erstwhile culturally marooned people are now getting linked into a solid whole as websites of news, culture and films are connecting these people. Lo and behold, Jang and The Asian Age get published in London; Malayalam newspapers have centres of publication in the Gulf; elections in Bradford, Leicester and Birmingham borrow trends from Lahore and Karachi; -e-fatiha can be done on the website of the Karachi’s shia graveyard website; Bohra, Jains and Sikhs websites connect these mercantile communities. In the days ahead, the media and democracy would have to take these tiny communities seriously. In the tiny Arab state of Qatar, the Al-Jazeera is empowering women. Mahvash Siddiqui of the Public Affairs Section in US Consulate in Chennai spoke about her own experiences as a youth in the US and in the State Dept job and said the US was an open society and people from all faiths and cultures could join the state services. Mr. Ravi Candadai, Consul for Public Affairs at the US Consulate in Chennai welcomed the gathering.


(Report compiled by Maqbool Ahmed Siraj, maqbool_siraj@rediffmail.com)