In this interview with Yoginder Sikand he talks about his vision for the Jamaat in the coming years.

Could you tell us something about yourself and your background?
I was born in a village in North Arcot district in Tamil Nadu in 1935. I studied in an Urdu school in my village and then went to a well-known madrasa in Oomerabad, the Jamia Dar us-Salaam, where I completed a nine-year fazil course. After that, I spent a little more than two years at the Jamaat-e Islami Hind’s headquarters, then in Rampur, in Uttar Pradesh. There, I studied informally from various scholars. In 1956 I joined the Jamaat-e Islami as a member and began working with the Idara-e Tasneef, the Jamaat’s research and publications department and continued there for around 15 years.

Thereafter, I shifted to Aligarh, where I edited the Jamaat’s monthly Zindagi for some years and then took to editing the quarterly Islamic research journal Tahqiqat-e Islami, which I have carried on for the last twenty-five years. .

What particular areas would you like to focus on as the new Amir of the Jamaat-e Islami?
I think we should carry on in the same broad direction as before, although giving particular attention to some issues that have not perhaps received the sort of focus that they should have. One of these is inter-faith or inter-community dialogue. The Qur’an stresses this and says that Muslims should seek to dialogue with others, no matter what their religion. This is also a means to tell others about Islam.

The Jamaat has been doing this sort of work for many years, such as through publishing translations of the Qur’an in various languages and bringing out a Hindi magazine, Kanti, since 1958, which has a large number of non-Muslim readers. But I feel that we must give more focus to dialogue work than we have in the past. Islam has been present in India for more than a thousand years, but yet a large section of non-Muslim Indians remain ignorant about it. They wrongly think that it is the religion of a particular community of people known as Muslims, while actually Islam addresses itself to the entire humankind. And so they mistakenly think that if some people among such a numerically large community as the Indian Muslims commit a wrong act, in doing so they are dictated by their religion, which is not true. After all, there are people who do bad deeds in all communities.

So, dialogue is also essential to tell others about Islam and to remove the misconceptions they might have about Islam and Muslims.
Inter-faith dialogue is necessary to preserve and protect the democratic set-up of the country, so that each community is given its rights, including the right to freely practice and propagate its religion. If there’s no dialogue there will be conflict and that augurs ill for the progress of the country as a whole. Through dialogue we can tell others about the Islamic perspective on various social and ethical issues. We want democracy to get strengthened. A vibrant democratic environment guarantees such processes of dialogue and reaching out, leading to a cultural fusion which can pave the way for the peaceful co-existence of different cultural streams in this country. We, of course, do not want to force anything on anyone. You can listen to what we have to say if you want, or else you can refuse, but that democratic space for articulating different views must be preserved.

So, what you are saying is that dialogue is also a means to address issues of common social concern. Is that right?
Yes, of course. The Jamaat’s efforts to reach out to non-Muslims have so far been quite limited, restricted mainly to a particular class. The question is of how to make this effort more mass-based. Islam has not become an issue for India, except in a negative sense, as reflected in the negative stereotypical images of Islam and Muslims in the media. We need to make efforts to see that Islam is focused on in this country, but in the positive sense-in terms of providing solutions for the country’s problems, through which people of different communities can work together for common purposes.

Unfortunately, we have not made use of the media as we should have for this sort of work, for which there is much scope and potential.

Given this, do you feel the need for any shift in the Jamaat’s media policy?
Certainly. We need to use the mass media to clear people’s misconceptions about Islam and Muslims and to show them the positive role that Islam and its adherents can play in addressing problems facing the country. The Jamaat brings out magazines and periodicals in various languages, but these have not been very effective in influencing public opinion, because they are read mainly by Muslims themselves. If a story or a report is published in one of our magazines, it does not receive attention outside a limited, mainly Muslim, circle. But if the same story is published in a ‘mainstream’ newspaper it does. It becomes an issue. This reflects the fact that our media is not very effective in reaching out to a wider, particularly non-Muslim, readership or audience. One exception to this is the Malayalam periodical that we publish from Kerala, Madhyamam, which has a large readership, including among non-Muslims, and which also plays a role in shaping or influencing Kerala politics.

Some years ago the Jamaat set up what it called its Media Cell. How has that been functioning?
I don’t think it has been very effective. The Media Cell limited itself to documenting articles or reports in the media that concern Muslims and providing information on such issues to Jamaat leaders. I think we need to move much beyond this and build up a proper media team. This holds true for other Muslim organisations as well, so that their voices are heard beyond the confines of the community, too. Now, for this, I think it is crucial to reach out to non-Muslims in the media. There are many Hindus and others in the media who strongly believe that different views should be allowed to flourish. We need to approach them to put forward our views and the concerns of Muslims.

But do you see a tendency on the part of the non-Muslim Indian media to present Muslims and Islam in a particular negative light?
Such tendencies are there, but we must not generalise. Yes, some forces have a vested interest in propagating such stereotypically negative views about Islam and Muslims.

Once, a non-Muslim told me, ‘Muslims did this and that in India when they ruled the country’. I simply answered, ‘I am not a historian. I can only talk of Islam. I can only say if a deed done by a certain person calling himself a Muslim-be it the Mughal Emperor Babur or Akbar or Aurangzeb-was in accordance with Islam or not. I cannot defend any ruler simply because he claimed to be Muslim, if his actions were not in accordance with Islam’. I told him, ‘You should not equate Islam with Muslims or with Muslim rulers’. Unfortunately, that is what a large section of the media actually does.

But, that said, one has to say that there are many fair-minded Hindus and others in the Indian media. They want to present the facts about Muslims and Islam in an objective manner, because they believe that Muslims, as fellow Indians and as human beings, ought to have their rights as well as lives protected. In fact, some of these people were far more vocal in highlighting and protesting against the recent massacre of Muslims in Gujarat than Muslim media persons. We need to reach out to such people. This we can do through organising seminars, conferenc-es, etc.. The Jamaat has tried doing this, but we really must expand our work in this regard. Further, we should encourage Muslims, including those associated with the Jamaat, to enter the media, including the non-Muslim-owned media, where they can present Islam and Muslims in an objective and fair manner and highlight the problems of the community.

In South India the Jamaat seems better organized and more socially engaged than in the North, although the majority of the Indian Muslims reside in North India. Perhaps this is also true for other Muslim organizations. How do you account for this?
Yes, this is true. Before the Partition, North India was leading. Most Muslim leaders, religious and political, came from there, especially from Delhi and what is now Uttar Pradesh. But the Partition hit North Indian Muslims particularly badly. Many middle-class and modern educated Muslims of the area migrated to Pakistan. Then came the Zamindari abolition, which hit the Muslim landlord class in the north. This, and the sub-division of small holdings, reduced large numbers of Muslims to penury. In contrast, the Partition did not affect South India much, except for small pockets like Hyderabad. Few South Indian Muslims migrated to Pakistan. Economi-cally, too, they were saved the drastic decline that the North Indian Muslims faced, because there were and still are strong Muslim trading groups in the south. Then, unlike in South India, in large parts of the north, Muslims, in their opposition to British rule, also opposed English education, which made them lag behind. Also, historically, relations between Hindus and Muslims in South India have been much better than in the north, which, for centuries, has witnessed so many battles and conflicts. Because of this, Muslims in the south have been able to organiSe themselves and establish institutions for the community in a much more effective way than in the north. In Tamil Nadu, where I come from, Muslims form just around five per cent of the population, but there is a substantial well-educated and prosperous class among them.

In contrast to the north, Muslims are more respected in Tamil Nadu. So, for instance, you won’t find anyone deliberately annoying Muslims by playing music before mosques there and so on. Although communal forces are getting strong in the south now, I think this difference with the north still remains, by and large.

courtesy : islamic voice