Our dear Mawlvi
Posted on 10. Jun, 2011 by drmuzaffar in Faith and Religion
Quantum Note
Dr. Muzaffar Iqbal
“Ma as-salam,” she said as she handed me my room key after completing the check in. She was efficient, well-dressed and polite.
“Is the meat halal?” I asked. “Yes,” she said, with a smile, “it is all halal.” I was relieved. This was my first visit to Kazakhstan and having experienced the destruction of even the most basic Islamic norms in Uzbekistan three years ago, I needed to be cautious. In Uzbekistan, I had seen pig farms all the way from Samarqand to Bukhara, both being the mysterious and romantic cities of my childhood, both being associated with personalities noble in my memory: Bukhara with Imam Bukhari and Samarqand with Abu al-Layth Samarqandi, the renowned exegete of the Qur’an. I had then seen drunk men on the streets of Tashkent who would appear as early as 10 am, having barely recovered from their night orgy, but they were not shocking. What was shocking was the unending line of pig farms which on both sides of the road as I went to Bukhara from Samarqand. But Kazakhstan turned out to be a totally different story.
Despite what the lady at the front desk said, the first time I walked into the hotel restaurant I found out that there was no distinction between beef and pork on the buffet table; everything was next to each other. There was a terrible smell in food; even cheese and vegetables had the same smell. When I asked the cook about how they separate halal from non-halal meat, the young man stared at me; he did not know what I was talking about. I had already asked him if he was a Muslim and he had very proudly said, yes. When I came downstairs without eating anything, there was the same lady at the counter. I asked her if she was a Muslima, she said al-hamdu Lillah in broken Arabic and smiled. But when I asked her again about halal and non-halal, she repeated the same answer which she had given me yesterday; after a few more questions, I realized that what she meant pork was this: their hotel has halal pork!
After a few more minutes of conversation, I realized that she has no idea of halal and haram mean. This was, however, only the beginning of the shock. Within the next four days, I was to find out the true extent of destruction of Islam in this ninth largest country in the world—the world’s largest landlocked country with an area greater than entire Western Europe. This destruction happened during the Russians occupation which began in the 18th century, and by the mid-19th century, all of Kazakhstan was part of the Russian Empire.
Most of the terrible crimes against Kazakh people were committed following the 1917 Russian Revolution and the entire religious infrastructure and educational institutes were destroyed between 1917 and 1991. Kazakhstan declared itself an independent country on December 16, 1991, becoming the last Soviet republic to do so. But just like the other Republics of the former USSR, the communist-era leader, Nursultan Nazarbayev, became the country’s new president and the euphoria of Islamic resurgence in Central Asia died out. Officially, more than half of 16.2 million people are Muslim, but there are only a few remains of Islam in reality.
This destruction is fundamental; that is, it was systematic, organized, and brutal. It plucked out hundreds of years of history of these people from their consciousness by removing the basic building blocks of an Islamic polity. Russians were thorough in their ruthlessness; they destroyed mosques, madrasas, slaughtered religious scholars, and killed everyone who publically professed Islam. Compared to the Russian colonization of Central Asia, the British seem benign. In India, Egypt, and all other lands of Islam where British occupiers ruled during the 19th and 20th centuries, there remains a strong fundamental presence of Islam in the lives of people. This is less so in the case of the Muslim lands where French were the occupiers and it is critically absent in lands which were under Russian occupation.
The difference in benign nature of the colonizers notwithstanding, behind this fundamental reconfiguration of Muslim lands stands a one-man institution, that of the Mawlvi, which is ultimately responsible for the survival of basic knowledge of Islam during the last three centuries which have been the most devastating for Muslims in their entire history. It is the Mawlvi who has kept the low flame of Islam flickering in the darkness of the colonial era and even now. He was degraded, devalued, kept in contempt, in a state of perpetual poverty, but nothing severed his ties to the religion he was hoping to keep alive in a polity going the other way; his was a lonely calling. Even in lands where one would not expect this destruction, it is the mawlvi who has been instrumental in keeping this flame alive. A few years ago, I was in a small hillside town of Morocco, where the sound of adhan was an enchanting experience. But when I went to the mosque, I found out that the mawlvi and myself constituted the entire congregation. The mawlvi had dutifully called out the adhan, but no one had come. Then he called out the iqama and no one came; then he led the prayer and before we departed, he said, this is what he experiences every day, but he that does not deter him from his calling.
The Mawlvis of the Indian subcontinent are far more than mere keepers of faith; they have also kept alive Islamic scholarship in a few places across the subcontinent. While it is true that most mosque-mawlvis have little knowledge of religion, they are at least able to lead congregational prayers and perform the rites of birth, marriage, and death in a polity where most educated people have no idea what to do in these situations. Imagine the state of a society from where even these fundamental rites of one’s passage through life have disappeared! But is there something else the society needs to do, rather than keeping them perpetually on the subsistence level, hurting their self-dignity, and keep insulting them. Can our educated men and women, who even call adhan in the ears of their newly born babies, show some more dignity and self-respect by respecting the mawlvi of their masjid?
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Dr Muzaffar Iqbal
praestans
11. Jun, 2011
a very simplistic artickl. if u'r intu halal meat..perhaps I can ask whether u dutifully and halal-ly sport a full beard – it's is haram to shav. du u hav the caliph in ur cuntry? it's haram to hav any other. du u allow child marriages? it's halal in the qur'an, the sunnah, the practices 'v the rightly gidid maulvies? du u levy the jizyah in the indo-pak subcontinent it's haram if u don't..only Iisa can abrogate it, u no. du u wer ur trousers abuc ur ankls? it's haram tu du so belo. du u make haram slavery? it's halal as the very meat u wish to eat….
Rehmat
11. Jun, 2011
According to New Jersey Jewish News (May 7, 2009) – Stalin’s (a Jew) purge of Muslim Kazakhs in the late 1930s injected large number of Jews into Kazakhstan. Before that, the few Jews there were either descendents of Russian-Jewish soldiers who settled in that area in the 19th century or of Bukharan Jews who traded along the Silk Road. Around 18,000 Jews migrated to Israel after the collapse of Communism in 1990s. Between 15,000-20,000 Jews still live in Kazakhstan. Dr. Alexander Baron is president of Mitsva, the unbrella association of Kazakhstani Jewish institutions and a Jewish representative in Kazakhstan Parliament.
Kazakhstan established diplomatic relation with the zionist state in 1992. Nazarbayev has visited Israel in 1995 and 2000. In 2008 – Israel and Kazakhstan began a joint military developments. Nursultan family is reported to own several billion dollars in foreign banks – thank to Israeli-Kazakh Jewish billionaire Alexander Mashkevich, who owns close to 25% of Kazakhstan economy.
In 2006 – Nazarbayev’s government invited Sacha Baron Cohen to visit Khazakhstan and see himself that Kazakh Muslims are not prejudice as he depicted them in his movie. Baron Cohen, an Orthodox Jew makes fun of his fellow Jews in his movie Borat - a sort of traditional Ashkhenazi humour, hiding behind a purportedly Muslim character – while the words “Muslim” and “Islam” are not even heard in the movie though Jew figure prominently throughout – an Ashkhenazi humour claiming to speak on behalf of world Jewry – but a Zionist project to provoke and divide Israel’s enemies.
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2009/06/27/kazakhstan-pyramid-borat-and-israel/
Logos
11. Jun, 2011
We would definitely support the mawlvi, and others like him. He is spiritually connected, brave and committed…. a quality soul.
The onslaught of imperialism-zionism is to root out all the cultures, histories, identities and ethics of man and replace it with exactly all the senseless, soulless, homogenous garbage as the new mind set of the human race — thus easily controlled by those who do the dominating and destroying.
The great Religions of man came to guide and uplift man to his higher level. Do you see now the agenda of the dark forces? The "Protocols of Zion" lays it out clearly for you.
In the meantime, we must again recapture and revisit the worth of all Religions and see why we had them in the first place.
We can begin by looking at pork and homosexuality again here:http://www.thespiritualun.org/hygiene.htm
Dr.Arshad Afzal
12. Jun, 2011
Oh dear! This guy is utterly gone nuts. He visits central Asian countries with the pre-conceived idea that bits and pieces of Arab culture may have survived . He was in for rude shock! These old colonies of Arabian barbarism had ridden themselves off the malefic effect of Arab culture aka religion.He must rather visit the true,hardcore muslim paradises (Somalia,sudan,Pakistan ,Afghanistan,all Arab countries including oil rich autocratic sheikhdoms)and see the difference:Corruption,slavery (iqama and kafeel business),denial of rights to women ,intolerance,bigotry,crime,unemployment,autocratic rulers,sectarianism,poverty,prostitution behind the curtains and walls of hypocrisy,bigotry,tribalism,disrespect for science and knowledge etc list is endless. Yet people like this writer are paranoid about the lost!!!!!!!!!!! glory of Arab culture aka imperialistic religion.When will these morons grow up.One must give a heck to what other guy is eating or how he takes his bath. He is civilized as long as he keeps himself away from religious freaks and their cultish beliefs! Recruiters of suicide bombers!