A conditional charity
By Javed Anand
Nov 19, 2009
The disgraceful conduct of a UK-based Muslim charity with the victim-survivors of the 2002 communal carnage in Gujarat could have been ignored as an isolated, if highly deplorable act. Sadly, this is no isolated incident. If anything, it is but the latest manifestation of a malignancy common to many Muslim outfits, in India and internationally.
For those who missed the news in the November 15 edition of this paper, here is the gist. A UK-based NRI charity named Muslim Relief Organisation (MRO) had built a colony in Detral village in Bharuch district to rehabilitate the victim-survivors of Gujarat’s state-sponsored carnage (2002). Even in charity, it seems, conditions apply.
The MRO has now issued an ultimatum to the Muslims it had helped rehabilitate: Shariah-compliant beards are a must. No rubbing shoulders with fellow Muslims in the village mosque, namaaz only in the special (sectarian) mosque we have built. Banish TV sets from your homes, all music is prohibited. Follow the “Shariah rules” or out you go of the homes we built. For you.
It can’t be an easy choice for Detral’s Muslims who, dispossessed by Hindu extremists seven years earlier, now face a second dispossession: by co-believers this time. My salaams to those village folks who at great cost to themselves have chosen freedom over capitulation to mean despots masquerading as custodians of Islam! A Google search doesn’t tell us much about the MRO or its broader ideological affiliation. But it’s easy to see where they are coming from.
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