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Fatwa earns Shabana loads of support

Syed Amin Jafri in Hyderabad

Civil rights activists, left parties and prominent religious personalities in the city have decried the religious edict issued by five Islamic seminaries against actress Shabana Azmi and other Muslim film stars.

The institutions were reacting mainly to Azmi's tonsuring her head for the controversial film Water, and want her to "renew the faith."

People's Union for Civil Liberties president K G Kannabiran said, "Any fundamentalist posture by minority or majority community is totally undemocratic."

"I don't think any community leadership has the right to compel any member to conform to their views," Kannabiran told rediff.com.

"What is the great difference between the [Sangh Parivar's] protest against Water, the attack on [social reformist] Asghar Ali Engineer [by fundamentalist elements] and the fatwa against the stars?" he asked.

Kannabiran said the fundamentalist groups of all communities have the same outlook. "I am not able to understand how these groups arrogantly claim the right to issue edicts. They don't have any legitimate authority to give these commands. How can anyone arrogate to himself the authority to issue fatwa?" he wondered.

Urdu writer Jeelani Bano found the controversy utterly unpalatable. "Why is it that they have picked on poor Shabana Azmi?" she asked. "Why don't they bother about Dilip Kumar, Shahrukh Khan, Aamir Khan, Salman Khan and other actors? This only shows their [the Muslim religious leaders'] bias against women and their penchant for projecting non-issues."

Associated with the progressive writers' movement in Hyderabad for over three-and-a-half decades, Bano has penned two novels and 18 books, all in Urdu. "Not only Azmi but also many other Muslim actresses like Nergis, Waheeda Rahman and Meena Kumari performed many un-Islamic acts on the screen such as romancing, dancing and drinking. Where were these ulemas [religious leaders] all these years? Why they have suddenly woken up to a tonsured Shabana?

"Dilip Kumar, Shahrukh Khan, Aamir Khan and other Muslim actors also perform un-Islamic acts on the screen," she continued. "They dance, drink, prance, romance and display large battus on their foreheads. Why don't these ulemas go after them instead of picking on only Shabana Azmi?" Bano wanted to know.

Communist Party of India-Marxist state council secretary B V Raghuvulu termed the fatwa as "unfortunate." Cultural activity and religion should not be mixed, he felt.

"As a professional actress, she did something. But this cannot be construed as an act against her faith or an anti-religious act, " he said.

The fatwa came in for flak from an unexpected quarter too: a section of Muslim religious leaders and prominent personalities found the whole controversy unnecessary.

"These fatwas are unnecessary. The matters covered are not community issues at all. We don't attach any importance to these fatwas," said All India Muslim Personal Law Board secretary Maulana M A Raheem Qureishi. He is also the president of the All India Majlis-e-Tameer-e-Millat, a socio-cultural organisation of Muslims in Hyderabad.

The maulana told rediff.com that "some persons, to gain publicity, have raked up this non-issue. They want to popularise their newly-launched weekly by sensationalising the issue. We also feel that they [the religious seminaries] should not issue fatwas on such trivial issues which concern no one."

Responding to this criticism, Syed Fazil Hussain Parvez, the city-based journalist who sought the fatwa, said:

"There has been a raging controversy in all Urdu newspapers and in Muslim circles in the city on whether Shabana Azmi's act of tonsuring her head was correct and whether she continued to be a Muslim after perpetrating such an act.

"I only acted as the mediator between the Muslim masses and the religious institutions to get the Islamic view on this controversy. I have no vested interest, nor do I have any view of my own on this issue," he said.

Now that the fatwas have been issued, what next? Parvez had no idea.

"I really don't know," he said. "It is for Shabana Azmi and other Muslim stars to act or react. It is up to them to atone for their sins. Acting itself is against Islamic tenets. Committing polytheistic acts only compounds the sin. Why don't you seek their response?"

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