Deoband, November 03: Union home minister P Chidambaram on Tuesday said Islamic seminary Darul Uloom’s fatwa or edict against terrorism last year was a “call to duty” for not just Muslims but all “right-thinking individuals”.
Some half-a-million clerics waited overnight on a mamoth sugarcane farm — the size of about three football fields — behind the seminary to hear Chidambaram, filing in atop pick-up vans, in trucks, buses and even on bullock-carts.
Chidambaram did not disappoint, delivering a speech that was punctuated with Urdu translations. “We cannot view Islam as an alien faith. This is a land of their (Muslims’) birth and this is where they will live and work,” the minister said.
He called his visit to Deoband “significant” and said it was his “duty” as home minister to “reach out to every section of society and understand their doubts, fears and aspirations”.
Clearly, the minister’s approach was one of calming riled sensitivities, since Muslims often allege that police frequently harrass innocents in their pursuit of terrorists.
It seemed to work. Thousands of clerics shouted “Chidambaram zindabad (long live Chidambaram)”, even as he spoke.
“I would urge that more voices be raised loudly and clearly against terrorism and all forms of violence,” the home minister said.
Chidambaram, along with minister of state for IT Sachin Pilot, took a chopper from Delhi for a whistle-stop tour of Deoband and attended the general session of Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind, a frontal organization of Indian Muslims.
Darul Uloom in Deoband is considered one of the most important Sunni theological schools in the world, next only to Cairo’s Al-Azhar university. There has been sharp international focus on the seminary in recent times especially because the Taliban and most Pakistani militant groups follow the Deobandi school of thought.
Last year on February 25, the seminary took a historic step and issued a fatwa against terror, ruling that killing of all innocents was un-Islamic.
The home minister appreciated the role of the Deobandi clergy in the freedom movement and promoting spiritual education. However, he said, “Along with religious education, science, maths and English provide the best assurance of quality education for Muslim children.”
Darul Uloom had on Monday rejected the idea of central madrassa education board to govern religious education, asking the government instead to set up more schools for those Muslims who wanted a secular education.
–Agencies