Notes & Nuggets

Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (JIH), one of the leading Muslim organisations based in Delhi, will make a detailed presentation to the Finance Ministry and the RBI on the need to amend the RBI Act and kick-start Islamic banking in India.


“The Central Bank should allow the Islamic bank to have no-fixed rate regime as Islamic banking is based on participatory, co-operative and investment banking,” said Mohammad Talha, first manager, Qatar International Islamic Bank and one of the speakers at the national seminar on Islamic banking organised by JIH in Mumbai recently. The RBI has already set up a working group on Islamic banking headed by Anand Sinha.


“After 9/11, petro-dollars are going to South-east Asia instead of Europe and the US. We aspire to channelise petro-dollars to India. If it is allowed, Islamic banks in India with its network in other countries and syndication can facilitate investment by equity funds and high net-worth individuals in India,” Talha said, adding that once Islamic Banking is launched in India, it can also help domestic firms raise bonds in West Asia.


A Bahrain-based private equity fund, with a corpus of $1 billion, wants to start a India-specific fund. Also firms like Abu Dhabi Investment, Qatar Investment Authority and Islamic Bank Finance House are looking at investing in India. “Indian Islamic Banks can definitely help channelise these funds properly. Islamic banks can effectively tap property worth billions under the control of Awqaf and Zakat,” opined H. Abdul Raqeeb, member of JIH and convenor of the seminar.


Explaining the working of Islamic bank, Raqeeb said it is interest-free banking based on Islamic law, Shariah. In this system, the depositor and bank will come to an agreement wherein both the parties will share the profit or losses at the end of the year. The bank will invest in stocks, bonds, infrastructure projects and so on. If the loss arises, the shareholders of the bank will absorb the loss. In the case of lending, the banks will not charge any interest, but levy a service charge. Overdrafts are provided, subject to a maximum, free of charge. “Islamic banking can revolutionise the micro-finance sector in the country and become a boon for the debt-ridden farmers in Maharashtra,” said Dr Ausaf Ahmed, a retired official of Islamic Development Bank, Jeddah.


Commenting on the international scenario, Talha said Islamic banking across the world is a $300 billion industry spread over 35 countries. MNC banks like Citibank, Grindlays, HSBC, ABN Amro and Sache banks are offering Islamic banking products. Even home-grown banks like ICICI and Kotak Mahindra Bank are offering Islamic banking products in West Asia. Islamic Market Index of Dow Jones has launched over forty Islamic indices. FTSE, London also offers Islamic indices in US, Europe, the Pacific and South Africa.

The Dept of Social Work, Jamia Millia Islamia in collaboration with the Delhi Kalyan Samiti, Government of Delhi, has set up a Markaz-e -Niswan (Women’s Development Centre) to cater to the needs of women and adolescent girls in the Jamia neighbourhood. The Markaz-e -Niswan aims at providing them with confidence and mutual support, a forum in which they can critically analyse their situations and devise collective strategies to overcome their difficulties. The Markaz acts as the hub for a number of satellite out-reach centres located in various colonies. Its activities are conducted at outreach centres as well as at the Markaz-e-Niswan also. Facilitators provide inputs in confidence building, communication skills and disseminate information. To start with, women and adolescent girls have been provided with skills like Cutting, Tailoring and Fashion Designing, Cooking and Baking, through short-term courses. One of the innovative programmes at the Markaz is the Ummeed Project on Life Skills for Adolescent Girls. The Ummeed Project focuses on adolescent girls and attempts to implement a package of inputs that would lead towards inculcating life skills like: critical thinking and creative thinking, decision making and problem solving, coping with emotions and stress, effective communication and inter-personal skills and spatial orientation and orientation in time.

Sir Syed Ahmad khan, the founder of the AMU was not only a social reformer, educationist, theologian, Islamic thinker or political ideologue, but also a successful journalist. In 1860, he started bilingual and purposive journalism in Urdu by publishing the “Loyal Mohammedans of India.” Contrary to the widely held view that his two periodicals, the ‘Aligarh Institute Gazette’ (1866) and ‘Tahzibul Akhlaq’ (1870) were bilingual publications, Sir Syed had, in fact, set multi-lingual journalism in motion in Urdu as these periodicals published material in Persian and Arabic also.


This has come to light in a recent thesis on Sir Syed’s contribution to the growth of journalism with special reference to ‘Aligarh Institute Gazette’ and Tahzibul Akhlaq.’ The thesis is submitted by M. Shafey Kidwai, Reader, Department of Journalism and Mass Communi-cation. It is the first thesis in Journalism and the University has awarded Ph.D. degree to M. Shafey Kidwai.


The thesis was evaluated by renowned Sir Syed scholar, Professor David Lelyveld. The thesis running into nearly 500 pages has also verified the biographical details and accomplishments of Sir Syed. It contains important biographical details which are at variance with what Hali wrote in ‘Hayat-e-Javed.’ Hali mentioned that Sir Syed’s ancestors migrated to India during the time of Shahjahan, but Sir Syed made it clear, in the first issue of the “Loyal Mohammedans of India,” that his forefathers came to India in the reign of Akbar and that his father’s name was Sayyid Mohammad Muttaqi, not Meer Mohammad Mutaqi as mentioned by Hali.

After a prolonged controversy and political turmoil, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav finally laid the foundation for Mohammad Ali Jauhar University here on September 18. The University would be constructed on an area of 200 acres and it would include faculties of humanities, education and law, central library, engineering college, mosque, reception, guest house and auditorium, gym, sports complex and nursing training institute. Addressing a public meeting after laying the foundation, the chief minister said that paucity of funds would not be allowed to hamper the progress of the university. He said that a medical college would also be established in the university and he had fulfilled his promise of setting up the Jauhar University, named after Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar, who made significant contribution to the country’s freedom struggle. The life time chancellor of the university, Azam Khan pointed out that this would have been achieved 10 years back if the government had got some more time. The Rector of Nadwa Lucknow, Maulana. Rabe Hasan Hasani, the Japanese Ambassador, Yasukuni Noki, Speaker Vidhan Sabha, Mata Prasad, MP Amar Singh and MP Ram Gopal Yadav were also present at the function.