Commenting on the condition of Muslims in India, a renowned Islamic scholar and author, Dr. Javed Jamil said that by and large Muslims couldn’t achieve the position and status they deserve in India. There are several factors responsible for it. No single factor can be held accountable for it. The Government of India, political parties, Muslim organisations and Ulema all are responsible for that. He was speaking on “Muslim Empowerment and Its Roadmap” at a public meet at JIH headquarters in the Capital on 18 February.
Presenting the position of Muslims in India, Dr. Jamil said India has the second largest population of Muslims after Indonesia. They are constitutionally minority, ideologically second largest majority and socially deprived community in India. But the worry is that they behaved only as minority. They presented themselves as minority. And they tried to solve their problems only as minority. They neither played the role of the second largest majority nor did they play the role of the most deprived community. It is our biggest weakness. Whatever the field, we can’t succeed unless we make concerted and comprehensive efforts.
Elaborating the Muslim empowerment, the learned speaker further said that most of our efforts for empowerment are limited to certain fields. Those are limited to education empowerment or some religious matters. We left aside a lot of fields of empowerment. We deserted economic empowerment. We abandoned ideological empowerment. While the fact remains that we need comprehensive empowerment. Sustained continuous efforts are needed for comprehensive empowerment. We can’t succeed unless we make efforts for comprehensive empowerment. There are four fields of comprehensive empowerment: ideological empowerment, political empowerment, economic empowerment and social empowerment.
Shedding light over ideological empowerment, he said that we should be ideologically so strong that we can defend our ideology. We can present our ideology before others. We should have the strength to influence the policy of government according to our ideology. We took the ideological empowerment only as reading the Qur’ān and practising some religious traditions. We are failed to present the ideology the Qur’ān presents. Our Ulema’s behaviour is completely apologetic and defensive. When we were attacked, we kept on responding to that. We did not expose these false ideologies. We could not show the destruction made by these ideologies.
Speaking over other empowerments, he further said that we completely ignored economic empowerment. That’s why we have very few to give Zakat but we have a lot of recipients of Zakat. We have many rich men. On the front of political empowerment, we did nothing. We did not raise any issue rather we only reacted to some religious issues. As for our social empowerment, we did something on educational empowerment. But we ignored woman empowerment.