Muslim groups in Rajasthan have taken strong exception to “offensive and provocative” remarks about Islamic faith, culture and values made publicly by certain authors invited to the Jaipur Literature Festival which concluded in Jaipur on January 25 last. They have demanded that the organisers desist from providing an open forum to writers seeking “cheap publicity”. The Rajasthan Muslim Forum regretted that the organisers of the five-day literary event “surreptitiously” brought controversial Dutch-Somalian activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali to one of the interactive sessions and allowed her to voice her “biases and prejudices”. Another invitee to the festival, Pakistan-born British author Hanif Kureishi, was however seen defending the criticism of Islam in the name of freedom of expression.
Muslim Forum convenor Qari Moinuddin said here on Wednesday that the writers of Islamic origin who had turned away the religion for their vested interests were trying to get respectability by appearing at such literary events and distorting the image of Islam.
“Ayaan Hirsi Ali finding fault with Islam because it does not allow homosexuality is outrageous. She is out to change the definition of religion per se,” said Mr. Moinuddin, a religious scholar of eminence. Jamaat-e-Islami Hind State president and forum’s member Mohammed Salim said Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s proclamation that Islam needed to go through an “enlightenment process” had left a wrong impression among the audience, many of whom might not be aware of the revolutionary ideas propagated during the Islamic history.
The Muslim Forum wondered why the Literature Festival organisers were keen to project the controversial authors of Islamic origin alone who relished criticising Islam on the pretext of freedom of expression. “We never saw a Christian writer attacking Christianity or a Hindu author bringing Hinduism into question at the festival,” said Mr. Salim. Paikar Farooq, convenor of the newly-established Association for Protection of Civil Rights, said the controversial writers of Islamic origin were raising the bogey of so-called Islamic fundamentalism rising in Europe for gaining “cheap popularity”: “We in India should reject such bogus writers masquerading as intellectual elite,” he added.