Kolkata Muslim groups plan pro-Jamaat bandh, want Sheikh Haseena to quit
OVER a dozen Muslim outfits along with Human Rights Association are planning to hold a demonstration in Kolkata on March 30 demanding the stepping down of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Haseena amid the war crime tribunal's verdicts against Jamaat-e-Islami's leaders in connection with the atrocities committed by them during 1971's Liberation War.
Some of the Muslim outfits in Bengal are demanding setting Bangladeshi Islamic orator and politician Delwar Hossain Sayeedi free after the tribunal awarded him death penalty.
Prominent Muslim leaders such as Syed Md Nurur Rahman Barkati, Shahi Imam of Tipu Sultan Masjid and Maulana Syed Athar Abbas Rizvi, imam, Cossipore Masjid are expected to participate in the demonstration. "We had recently filed a deputation to the Bangladesh High Commissioner and it didn't have any effect," said said Md Qamruzzaman, general secretary, All Bengal Minorities Youth Federation. He also said that if their demands are not met, they would appeal to the Indian government to severe all ties with Bangladesh.
Barkati strongly condemned the actions of the Bangaladeshi government and said whatever Sheikh Hasina was doing was not only anti-Islam but anti-humanity as well Earlier, the outfits had planned to hold the protest on Tuesday, but police denied permission, forcing them to hold the protests on March 30 .
NB - Our Jamaati's want the Indian government to protect razakars and mass murderers in Bangladesh! The ongoing events in Pakistan and Bangladesh since 1947 and 1971, show that the Radcliffe line resolved nothing at all, it created and intensified communal conflict. Communalism has always been the south Asian version of fascism, regardless of whether it speaks in the name of Muslims or Hindus. Is there any doubt that the struggle against communalism cuts across frontiers?
Najam Sethi - Pakistan: Pluralism and tolerance
Unfortunately, attempts to rationalize and modernize our education system have continuously foundered on the rock of misplaced, conservative or politically motivated religious elements in society..Two such cases have caught headlines recently. The first is an attempt by Imran Khan's PTI government in KPK to undo the rational cleansing of the textbooks by the previous ANP government by reinserting nations of jihad and "Islamic" vice and virtue into the curricula. The second is an attempt by a section of the media to devalue the teaching of "comparative" religion in schools in which the values of relative compassion, mutual respect and human dignity common to all religions are emphasized.
Najam Sethi - Pakistan: Pluralism and tolerance
Unfortunately, attempts to rationalize and modernize our education system have continuously foundered on the rock of misplaced, conservative or politically motivated religious elements in society..Two such cases have caught headlines recently. The first is an attempt by Imran Khan's PTI government in KPK to undo the rational cleansing of the textbooks by the previous ANP government by reinserting nations of jihad and "Islamic" vice and virtue into the curricula. The second is an attempt by a section of the media to devalue the teaching of "comparative" religion in schools in which the values of relative compassion, mutual respect and human dignity common to all religions are emphasized.
We are secular Muslims, and secular persons of Muslim societies. We are believers, doubters, and unbelievers, brought together by a great struggle, not between the West and Islam, but between the free and the unfree. // We affirm the inviolable freedom of the individual conscience. We believe in the equality of all human persons. // We insist upon the separation of religion from state and the observance of universal human rights. // We find traditions of liberty, rationality, and tolerance in the rich histories of pre-Islamic and Islamic societies. These values do not belong to the West or the East; they are the common moral heritage of humankind. We see no colonialism, racism, or so-called "Islamaphobia" in submitting Islamic practices to criticism or condemnation when they violate human reason or rights...
