By Jagdish N Singh
The uproar over what Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind president Maulana Arshad Madani recently said at the annual general session of the organisation’s faction led by him, is hardly surprising.
Defining Islam’s ‘Allah’ and Hinduism’s ‘Ishwar’ (God) as the same entity, Maulana Madani said, “When there was no one (no Gods), the question is who did Manu (the famous Hindu law giver) worship?… Very few people know that when there was nothing in the world, Manu would worship ‘Om’. I asked, ‘Who is Om?’ Some said Om has no colour, no shape. Like the air, it is everywhere. It made the skies and the earth. I said this is what we call Allah. You call the same thing Ishwar.”
He said, “Om and Allah are the same God worshipped by Manu, the first man or the progenitor of humanity… ‘Om ‘is just air, it has no form, it has no colour and it is everywhere, it made the sky and land’… this is what we call Allah, you call Ishwar, those speaking Persian call ‘Khuda’ and those speaking English call God… Manu, that is Adam, used to worship one Om, that is one Allah.”
Maulana Madani claimed that India was the birthplace of Islam. He said that the “first Prophet of Islam, Adam, descended here. The last Prophet of Islam, Muhammad, came to complete the same religion.”
Arshad Madani’s nephew Mahmood Madani said on the occasion that the land of India is the “birthplace of Islam and the first homeland of Muslims… To say that Islam is a religion that came from outside is completely wrong.” He added, “Hindus and Muslims have been living in the country like brothers for around 1400 years, and we have never converted anyone into Islam forcibly.”
Observers say that the Madani’s interpretation of Islam and its history is hardly acceptable to the larger Muslim community across the country. Generally, the religions of the Book have fixed interpretations. Islam is a religion of the Book. The Muslims in general are hence highly unlikely to be inclined to any reinterpretations of their religion.
No wonder, Ulama of Barelvi Maslak has already opposed Madani’s assertion. Mufti Muhammad Salim Barelvi, a trainer on the dargah’s madrasa Jamia Razavia Manzar-e-Islam, has said that Madani’s assertion is opposite to the fundamental tenets of the faith of Islam, Aqeedah-e-Tawheed. He has clarified that to say Allah and Om as one is not true. Allah Ta’ala can be referred to solely by the names mentioned in the Quran and Hadith.
He has asserted Allah is not the wind. Allah is rather a creator of everything, including wind. Hazrat Adam, not Adam Manu, is the primary human being and the primary prophet. The qualities of Hazrat Adam talked about by the Quran, Hadith and Ummah Islamia have not been thought-about in Hindu faith.
The observers warn the secular-progressive forces across India against being carried away by the Madani interpretation of Islam. They say Madani and the likes have been exponents of the Deobandi school of thought. This school represents the orthodox, radical version of Islam. It aims at ‘reforming’ the Muslim society along the radical sectarian lines and preserving the Muslim culture from the influence of modernism.
The secular-progressive forces in India may take note of what the growing influence of the Deobandi school of Islam has done over the recent decades to Pakistani society and, of late, to Afghan society. They may also bear in mind that Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind has seldom backed any progressive measures of the government of India. Jamiat today opposes the government’s efforts to implement a uniform civil code (UCC) in India.
The observers add Madanis may presently be talking of the oneness of Islam and Hinduism so as just to first make Islam acceptable to the larger secular Hindu community in India and then impose the radical version of Islamic social and political order across India.
After the address of Arshad Madani, Jain Muni Acharya Lokesh Muni, who happened to be present at the said Jamiat session, rightly said that “all the stories regarding Om, Allah and Manu are all rubbish.” The Jain saint, however, claimed that the first Jain Tirthankar was Rishabh. His sons were Bahubali and Bharata, after whose name this country ‘Bharat’ was named.
(Jagdish N. Singh is a senior journalist based in New Delhi. He is also Senior Distinguished Fellow at the Gatestone Institute, New York)
Source: OneIndia