Islamic Caste System

[Guest]

Please collect articles on caste system in Islam.

[Guest]

http://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/...karan_caste.htm

Caste in Medieval India: The Beginnings of a Reexamination1
By Dileep Karanth

[Guest]

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritche...tition/410.html

Ambedkar on the muslim society. Some references to the muslim caste system.

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->  Take the caste system. Islam speaks of brotherhood. Everybody infers that Islam must be free from slavery and caste. Regarding slavery nothing needs to be said. It stands abolished now by law. But while it existed, much of its support was derived from Islam and Islamic countries./2/ While the prescriptions by the Prophet regarding the just and humane treatment of slaves contained in the Koran are praiseworthy, there is nothing whatever in Islam that lends support to the abolition of this curse. As Sir W. Muir has well said /3/:—

    ". . .rather, while lightening, lie riveted the fetter. . . .There is no obligation on a Muslim to release his slaves. . . ."

    But if slavery has gone,  caste among Musalmans has remained. As an illustration one may take the conditions prevalent among the Bengal Muslims. The Superintendent of the Census for 1901 for the Province of Bengal records the following interesting facts regarding the Muslims of Bengal :—

    "The conventional division of the Mahomedans into four tribes— Sheikh, Saiad, Moghul and Pathan—has very little application to this Province (Bengal). The Mahomedans themselves recognize two main social divisions, (1) Ashraf or Sharaf and (2) Ajlaf. Ashraf means 'noble' and includes all undoubted descendants of foreigners and converts from high caste Hindus. All other Mahomedans including the occupational groups and all converts of lower ranks, are known by the contemptuous terms, 'Ajlaf ,' 'wretches' or 'mean people': they are also called Kamina or Itar, 'base' or Rasil, a corruption of Rizal, 'worthless.' In some places a third class, called Arzal or 'lowest of all,' is added. With them no other Mahomedan would associate, and they are forbidden to enter the mosque to use the public burial ground.

    "Within these groups there are castes with social precedence of exactly the same nature as one finds among the Hindus.

    I. Ashraf or better class Mahomedans.

        (1) Saiads.
        (2) Sheikhs.
        (3) Pathans.
        (4) Moghul.
        (5) Mallik.
        (6) Mirza.

    II. Ajlaf or lower class Mahomedans.

        (1) Cultivating Sheikhs, and others who were originally Hindus but who do not belong to any functional group, and have not gained admittance to the Ashraf Community, e.g. Pirali and Thakrai.
        (2) Darzi, Jolaha, Fakir, and Rangrez.
        (3) Barhi, Bhalhiara, Chik, Churihar, Dai, Dhawa, Dhunia, Gaddi, Kalal, Kasai, Kula Kunjara, Laheri, Mahifarosh, Mallah, Naliya, Nikari.
        (4) Abdal, Bako, Bediya, Bhal, Chamba, Dafali, Dhobi, Hajjam, Mucho, Nagarchi, Nal,Panwaria, Madaria, Tunlia.

    III. Arzal or degraded class.

        Bhanar, Halalkhor, Hijra, Kasbi, Lalbegi, Maugta, Mehtar."

    The Census Superintendent mentions another feature of the Muslim social system, namely, the prevalence of the "panchayat system." He states :—

    "The authority of the panchayat extends to social as well as trade matters and. . .marriage with people of' other communities is one of the offences of which the governing body takes cognizance. The result is that these groups are often as strictly endogamous as Hindu castes. The prohibition on inter-marriage extends to higher as well as to lower castes, and a Dhuma, for example, may marry no one but a Dhuma. If this rule is transgressed, the offender is at once hauled up before the panchayat and ejected ignominiously from his community. A member of one such group cannot ordinarily gain admission to another, and he retains the designation of the community in which he was born even if he abandons its distinctive occupation and takes to other means of livelihood. . . .thousands of Jolahas are butchers, yet they are still known as Jolahas."

    Similar facts from other Provinces of India could be gathered from their respective Census Reports, and those who are curious may refer to them. But the facts for Bengal are enough to show that the Mahomedans observe not only caste but also untouchability.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

http://www.bihartimes.com/book_review/book_review5.html

Muslim Dalits a downtrodden lot

[dhu]

Caste In Yemen

http://www.countercurrents.org/hr-marguerite250404.htm

[Guest]

- Don't know how useful this is - about the historically low position of Roma/Gypsies in ChristoIslamism:
Gypsies: a persecuted race, by William A. Duna
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Both Moslem and Christian religious preachers placed Gypsies outside normal society by treating them as outcasts</b> and not letting them participate in church and religious functions even when they professed to be converted to the religion of that country. <b>Those Gypsies who were sincere in their beliefs were forced to listen outside an open window of the church or mosque.</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
- Racism in Islamic inequality can easily be traced back to the <b>slavery</b> they instituted.
Race and Slavery in the Middle East, by Bernard Lewis

- I have no access to these papers, although they looked promising from google's result page:
(1) Equality and Inequality in Islam
Talal Asad
Man, New Series, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Jun., 1973), pp. 305-306
Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland
Google result provides an interesting statement from this:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The literature on <b>structured inequality within Islamic society</b> is enormous ... of Marx (for whom not all class exploitation is capitalist exploita- tion) as ...<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
(2) Turner, B. S. (1999), "The Sociology of Islamic Social Structures. A Review Essay", Sociology, Vol 33(1), pp. 1-4.
The Google result that first came up with this:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->[PDF] The sociology of Islamic social structures File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat
<b>of social inequality in imperial Islam</b>. However, Gellner’s more general question about. the survival of Islam in a post-communist and postmodern global ... - Similar pages<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Looks interesting, but PDF is missing or only accessible for members of Cambridge journals

- A different page from the same communist site 'countercurrents' which was mentioned by Dhu
"Islam And Caste Inequality Among Indian Muslims" (still manages to blame Hinduism for it somehow) Still, our neighbour the Dar-ul-Islam has not yet become Pardees in spite of Islam's 'gentle' effects.

[Guest]

- Googled to find out more on the <b>Akhdam of Yemen that Dhu mentioned</b>:
(1) [url=http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:8wrWGtk6_WwJ:europa.eu.int/comm/echo/information/eye_witness/2005_05_en.htm+"Akhdam"&hl=en&gl=nz&ct=clnk&cd=3&ie=UTF-8]European Union - Akhdam (Google cache)[/url]

(2) Yemen Mirror - Akhdam: Ongoing suffering for lost identity Sunday , 16 July 2006 By Mohammed al-Qadhi
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->They hardly call us humans; it is true that we may be darker in color and lower in the social status but that does not give them the right to exercise discrimination against us.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--> <!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Legends Surround their Origin</b>
Legends surround Akhdam history which is mostly unknown and highly <b>controversial</b>. The most common account is that they descend from Abyssinian soldiers who stayed in Yemen after a failed invasion in the sixth century AD. The soldiers, from ancient Ethiopia, were so hated they were forced to accept the worst jobs, such as transporting and disposing of human sewage and collecting garbage. <b>In one of his research, Professor Kaid Tarboosh said that the Akhdam used to do such worst jobs even in ancient Ethiopia.</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->(that is, 'research' says Akhdam plight today is ok, because it was just as bad in their <i>legendary</i> past)
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Akhdam are considered to be the country's largest and poorest minority who do not belong to any tribe. They are poorly educated and <b>are not allowed to marry into higher social castes.</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->After slavery was abolished with the birth of the 26 September Revolution in 1962, their social position remained relatively the same. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
(3) YEMEN: Akhdam people suffer history of discrimination - UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>According to the most popular account</b>, they are the descendants of Ethiopian invaders from the sixth century, forced ever since into the performance of menial jobs, such as sweeping and shoe-making.
Generally isolated from the rest of Yemeni society, they reside in low-income districts outside of the cities.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->"Most popular account" for their origin: meaning there are more.<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The Akhdam are Arabic-speaking Muslims, same as the rest of the population. They <b>do not belong to any of the three main Arab tribes</b>, however, that make up traditional Yemeni society<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
(4) Minority Report: Yemen's Akhdam "Out-Castes"
Historically attested racist Islamic slavery affecting today's population:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->With the abolition of slavery in Yemen (in 1962!), the Akhdam are now all "free" but face widespread discrimination and economic hardship:
<!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->They are almost always kept at arms length, and any chance of social integration is next to impossible. Their name, akhdam, is the plural of the Arabic term khadim, which literally means servant, a term far predating their common occupation nowadays as sanitary workers and garbage collectors, and is given to any Yemeni-born person with black skin, especially in the north of the country.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->Note: no proof they ever invaded, it's only a <b>legend</b>, one of several origin legends created for them.
They are stuck in slums, one of which (see photo on page)
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->lies "virtually in the shadows of the multi-million-dollar presidential mosque<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->(5) The Accursed Minority: The Ethno-Cultural Persecution of Al-Akhdam in the Republic of Yemen: A Documentary & Advocacy Project
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->the Al-Akhdam are persecuted on account of their being of African-descent in a country with an Arab-majority.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
(6) ETHNIC VIOLENCE AS A CASTE SYSTEM: A CASE OF CRUEL TRADITION Huda Seif - Research project

[dhu]

i also was surprised that the commie site carried the akdham article. in fact, i posted that article once on a now defunct (hara-kiri'd) indian site, it did manage to shut up the resident mullas for a few days.. there is something about that article where the self-styled liberals will pause to consider the heathen-believer paradigm before slithering back into progressive mode.. here's the surprising response of one well-known hindu baiter to the article:

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--> Ah, yes!

Of the world's 50 least evangelized countries, 37 are within The 10/40
Window  also described as a realm populated by "strongholds of Satan".
"The majority of those enslaved by Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism" live
here, says AD2000.
http://www.valleyskeptic.com/missionaries_1040.html

That begs the question: what are Haitians enslaved by? Surely not
Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism? Why do bleeding hearts fail to bleed in
this and other such instances?
http://www.coastalpost.com/04/04/21.htm
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity....id=884907706-54
http://www.foodfirst.org/pubs/backgrdrs/...6v3n3.html
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0301-10.htm
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml%3Fi=2...&s=wilentz
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO402D.html
http://www.counterpunch.org/williams03012004.html

Enslaved by voodoo?

A Defense of Voodoo From Three Common Criticisms
...
Marx's critique of Christianity was that by getting people to
concentrate on the afterlife, they would tolerate the oppressions
which Marx so detested in the early capitalism of England in the early
and mid-1800s. The critique is phenomenally like the attack many
modern Christians make against Voodoo--namely the religion is
fatalistic and encourages people to tolerate the horrible oppression
that they suffer. That is, Voodoo is accused of being an opiate of the
people, just as Marx accused Christianity of this. link<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

The following are not about the organisation of the Islamic caste system, but example cases of it in action.
One of the many cases of Islamic caste atrocities in the Pardees next-door:
Pakistani graduate raped to punish her low-caste family (Times online, Sep 2006)
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->A YOUNG Pakistani woman has been kidnapped, raped and beaten by a gang of high-caste villagers because her uncle eloped with one of their relatives. She was chosen for punishment because she had recently gained a degree and was the pride of her low-caste family.
Ghazala Shaheen, 24, and her mother Mumtaz were abducted last month by men dressed in police uniforms from their home near Multan in southern Punjab.
Her shocking ordeal mirrors that of Mukhtaran Mai, 29, who became a symbol in the campaign for women’s rights in Pakistan after she was gang-raped because her 12-year-old brother had been seen with a higher-caste woman. Six men were found guilty but five later had their convictions overturned.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->According to her relatives, she had been selected as a kidnap target to maximise her family’s humiliation. She had been been the first in her family to gain a degree. This earned her a job as a local schoolteacher, but the offer was withdrawn after officials said they did not want to be associated with someone who had been raped.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Of course, the Islamic witness rules for women come into play:<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Last week human rights campaigners said Shaheen was unlikely to see her attackers brought to justice because President Pervez Musharraf had failed in an attempt to repeal the Hudood Ordinance, which requires four male Muslim witnesses to support a rape charge. If the accused is acquitted, the victim becomes liable to prosecution for adultery.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The prospects of a successful prosecution appear slim. Only Mirani has been arrested on kidnapping charges, and without the four essential witnesses a rape conviction is unlikely.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->A similar case in 2002

[Guest]

The Muslims of Pakistan also have a notion of martial races vs. non-martial races.

Mohammed Ali Jinnah is viewed by the Pakistani Punjabis as a short, dark, skinny, puny Gujarati Muslim.

A similar view is held of all Urdu speaking, South Indian and Bengali Muslims. All of whom are "Kaale Kutte" (Black dogs) according to them.


The Upper castes of Pakistan are the Sayyads, Sheikhs, Mughals and Pakhtoons (Pathans).

The Sayyads, Sheikhs are equivalent to the Hindu Brahmanas and are a priestly/religious group.

The Mughals(Turks) and Pakhtoons(Afghans) are the "Kshatriyas", the warrior class of Islam. These are ones who conquered Hindusthan for Islam.

There is a second class of warrior castes ranked below the above two.

They are the Muslim Rajputs, Gujjars, Jatts, Awans, Janjuas and other farming castes of Punjab. These castes consider themselves as martial, but are regarded as second rate by the Turks and the Pakhtoons.

Apart from these there are lower castes known as Ajlaaf.

Even below these are the untouchable or outcaste Muslims know as the Arzal.
Historically these people were slaves during Islamic rule.

The British freed them and they have improved to "outcaste" status now.

The Arzal group was recorded in the 1901 census in India:

“with whom no other Muhammadan would associate, and who are forbidden to enter the mosque or to use the public burial ground...They are relegated to "menial" professions such as scavenging and carrying night soil"

[Bodhi]

Can we expand the scope of the thread to also include christianism, (pseudo-)sikhism etc - who are usually seen attacking Hindutva being caste-centric, and present themselves as free of "caste system"?

If agreed, then Mods are requested to change the title to Caste in Islam, Christianism, Sikhism...etc.

And here is the latest episode, which you can expect will never be appropriately reported by the biased (anti-)Indian Media:

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><span style='color:red'>Upper caste and Dalit Catholics clash, police shoot and kill</span>
by Nirmala Carvalho

In Tamil Nadu upper caste Catholics attack Dalits, destroying dozens of their homes. They are “guilty” of demanding a separate parish. Police move in and fire at attackers.

New Delhi (AsiaNews) – Two Christians died and many more were wounded shot by police who intervened yesterday to stop clashes between Dalit Catholics and upper caste Catholics in the diocese of Pondicherry-Cuddalore (Tamil Nadu).

Troubles started on 7 March when a group of Dalit Christians from the Villupuram district began a hunger strike to protest discrimination in a local parish by the Vanniyar.

Three months ago Dalits from St Jabamalais Annai Church in Earyur built another church dedicated to Saghaya Madha (Our Lady of perpetual Help) and sought to have it erected as a separate parish with its own priest.

They were backed in their demands by two political groups, the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (Vck) and Ambedkar Makkal Iyakkam (AMI). The VCK even put up posters calling for the closure of St Jabamalai and the recognition of the new parish church.

In response some 500 upper caste Christians went on a rampage on Sunday, attacking Dalits and torching over 30 huts.

Police said that when they moved in to stop the protest they were pelted with stones and were thus “forced” to open fire on the aggressors. M Periy Nayagam, 40, and A. Magimai, 24, were killed and 40 more people were wounded.

Fr G Cosmon Arokiaraj, secretary to the Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India, told AsiaNews that the “confrontation in the area between Dalit and Vanniyar Catholics goes back quite some time, but the Church does not want to split a parish along caste line,” but is working towards “gradually removing discrimination against the Dalits and uprooting all forms of discrimination.”

These tragic incidents show that it is urgent to ban many forms of discrimination against Dalit Christians both within the Christian community and especially society at large. In fact “since the Christian community is perceived as a single entity,” he explained, “the government does not recognise to Dalit Christians the same rights as other Dalits.”

In the Indian caste system, states have granted specific benefits and quotas in schools and public service for Dalits to compensate for their secular low social standing.

“For years Dalits have been discriminated within the Church itself,” he said. “They cannot sit with upper caste members in the same church; they are buried in separate cemeteries; they cannot use the same roads as upper caste people. When the mother of a Dalit priest died in the 1990s the upper caste did not allow the funeral procession to use the main road; even the bishop failed to bring about a compromise.”

“In India more than 65 per cent of all Christians are Dalit, but Christians represent only 2.3 per cent of a population of 1.1 billion people.”
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Islamic caste system in Yemen</b>

<img src='http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/02/27/world/27yemen-600a.jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image' />
Languishing at the Bottom of Yemen’s Ladder.

SANA, Yemen — By day, they sweep the streets of the Old City, ragged, dark-skinned men in orange jump suits. By night, they retreat to fetid slums on the edge of town.

Slide show on The Akhdam of Yemen

They are known as “Al Akhdam” — the servants. Set apart by their African features, they form a kind of hereditary caste at the very bottom of Yemen’s social ladder.

Degrading myths pursue them: they eat their own dead, and their women are all prostitutes. Worst of all, they are reviled as outsiders in their own country, descendants of an Ethiopian army that is said to have crossed the Red Sea to oppress Yemen before the arrival of Islam.

“We are ready to work, but people say we are good for nothing but servants; they will not accept us,” said Ali Izzil Muhammad Obaid, a 20-year-old man who lives in a filthy Akhdam shantytown on the edge of this capital. “So we have no hope.”

In fact, the Akhdam — who prefer to be known as “Al Muhamasheen,” or the marginalized ones — may have been in this southern corner of the Arabian Peninsula for as long as anyone, and their ethnic origins are unclear. Their debased status is a remnant of Yemen’s old social hierarchy, which collapsed after the 1962 revolution struck down the thousand-year-old Imamate.

But where Yemen’s other hereditary social classes, the sayyids and the judges and the sheiks, and even the lower orders like butchers and ironworkers, slowly dissolved, the Akhdam retained their separate position. There are more than a million of them among Yemen’s fast-growing population of 22 million, concentrated in segregated slums in the major cities.

“All the doors are closed to us except sweeping streets and begging,” Mr. Obaid said. “We are surviving, but we are not living.”

The Akhdam have not been offered the kind of affirmative action programs India’s government has used to improve the lot of the Dalits, or untouchables, there. In part, that is because Yemen never had a formal caste system like India’s.

As a result, the Akhdam have languished at the margins of society, suffering a persistent discrimination that flouts the egalitarian maxims of the Yemeni state.

Even the recent waves of immigrants from Ethiopia and Somalia, many of them desperately poor, have fared better than the Akhdam, and do not share their stigma.

The Akhdam who work as street sweepers, for instance, are rarely granted contracts even after decades of work, despite the fact that all Yemeni civil servants are supposed to be granted contracts after six months, said Suha Bashren, a relief official with Oxfam here. They receive no benefits, and almost no time off.

“If any supervisor wants to dismiss them, they can do that,” said Ali Abdullah Saeed Hawdal, who started working as a street sweeper in 1968. “The supervisors use violence against them with no fear of penalties. They treat them as people with no rights.”

The living conditions of the Akhdam are appalling, even by the standards of Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the Arab world.

In one Akhdam shantytown on the edge of Sana, more than 7,000 people live crammed into a stinking warren of low concrete blocks next to a mountain of trash. Young children, many of them barefoot, run through narrow, muddy lanes full of human waste and garbage.

A young woman named Nouria Abdullah stood outside the tiny cubicle — perhaps 6 feet by 8 feet, with a ceiling too low to allow her to stand up — where she lives with her husband and six children. Inside, a thin plastic sheet covered a dirt floor. A small plastic mirror hung on the wall, and a single filthy pillow lay in the corner.

Nearby, a single latrine, in a room approximately 3 feet by 3 feet, serves about 50 people. The residents must carry water in plastic jugs from a tank on the edge of the slum, supplied by a charity group.

Wearing a brown dress, with a rag tied around her head, Ms. Abdullah said she and her family brought in no more than 1,000 Yemeni riyals a week, about $5. She begs for change, while her husband, Muhammad, gathers metal and electrical components from trash heaps and sells them.

Like most people in the shantytown, they have no documents, and they do not know how old they are.

“We are living like animals,” Ms. Abdullah said. “We cook and sleep and live in the same room. We need other shelters.”

When the winter rains come, the houses are flooded, she said. On the cold days in winter, the family burns trash to stay warm.

Richard Bramble, a British doctor who works in a charity-sponsored clinic inside the shantytown, said half of the deaths there over the past year were of children under the age of 5, and one-quarter were in the first month of life.

The death rates from preventable disease are even worse than the nationwide average in Yemen, where overall infant mortality is already an appalling one in nine, and maternal mortality is one in 10. Most of the women among the Akhdam start having children in their early teens, residents said.

Part of the problem, many members of the community say, is that most of the Akhdam have internalized their low status and do not try to better themselves, find real jobs or seek an education. Much of their meager income goes to buying qat, the plant whose leaves many Yemenis chew for its mildly narcotic effects.

“They do not even push their children to become soldiers,” said Muhammad Abdu Ali, the director of the medical clinic in the shantytown and one of the Akhdam. “They have given up on changing their situation.”

In the past two years, members of the Akhdam have begun to organize, creating a political front to lobby the government and seek development aid from charity groups. Earlier this month, hundreds of Akhdam demonstrated in the city of Taiz to protest their mistreatment, and afterward a government supervisor accused of stealing money from Akhdam street sweepers was fired.

But efforts to help the Akhdam have sometimes backfired. International donors have mostly preferred to work through Yemeni mediators, who have often misused or stolen the money intended for the Akhdam, said Rashad al-Khader, a Yemeni lawyer who has been representing the Akhdam for seven years.

The Yemeni government has occasionally built shelters for the Akhdam, but has not provided them documents for those shelters or the land, Mr. Khader said. And it has done little to help them improve their access to health care and education, despite a series of election-year promises to the community, according to Akhdam leaders.

The government does, however, seem embarrassed by the plight of the Akhdam, Mr. Khader said. When the new national political front was formed a few months ago, government officials insisted that its proposed name be changed — removing the term “the marginalized ones” in favor of “those in extreme poverty.”

The popular notion that the Akhdam are descendants of Ethiopian oppressors appears to be a myth, said Hamud al-Awdi, a professor of sociology at Sana University. Most of them have roots in villages in Red Sea coastal plain of Yemen, and many of them may have African origins, he added. Little else about them is clear, despite a number of academic studies.

Some Akhdam have found ways to improve their station. Mr. Hawdal, after working as a street sweeper for 20 years, became a supervisor, and now lives in central Sana with his wife and five children in two rooms that are relatively clean, a world away from the slums at the city’s edge.

As he leaned on a cushion chewing qat, with a television chattering in the background, Mr. Hawdal pointed proudly to a plaque on the wall commemorating his long service as a sweeper. He has sent all of his children to school, unlike most of the Akhdam, and one of them made it as far as ninth grade.

But Mr. Hawdal acknowledged sadly that all of his children had since dropped out. He was running out of money, he said. But that was not the only reason.

“They had no hope of doing anything except street sweeping,” he said.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

<!--QuoteBegin-Bodhi+Mar 11 2008, 06:24 PM-->QUOTE(Bodhi @ Mar 11 2008, 06:24 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->Can we expand the scope of the thread to also include christianism, (pseudo-)sikhism etc - who are usually seen attacking Hindutva being caste-centric, and present themselves as free of "caste system"?

If agreed, then Mods are requested to change the title to Caste in Islam, Christianism, Sikhism...etc.[right][snapback]79531[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I agree that caste discrimination is rampant in Islam and christanity but they are able to keep it under wraps by not discussing it openly in media. More needs to be done so that this issue is discussed in public.

Regarding caste in sikhism it is more to do with certain particular castes rather than an problem in the whole sikh panth.

I think we should avoid pointing fingers at our own people(sikh) in this matter. Some khalistanis attack Hinduism but it does not mean we should adopt their mentality of attacking our own.

Thank u.

[Guest]

<b>Caste an important factor in pakistan election</b>

The role of castes and the biradari system in Pakistani politics also needs to be re-evaluated.

I checked the outcome of the elections in my village in Sahiwal district. The population is almost completely Arain, yet a Syed from PMLN beat the other two candidates by a crushing margin. The Arain candidate from the PPP came third with a negligible number of votes. The story was repeated in neighbouring villages, which are dominated by similar castes. A similar description will be applicable to rest of the Punjab, to say the least.

If this episodic evidence is not sufficient, let us take the overall figures of the winning candidates.

<b>According to the figures published by the Daily Times on February 25, 2008, 34 candidates who are Syed and 8 who are Qureshi won national assembly seats. They jointly won 42 seats or 16 percent of the National Assembly seats while their share in the population may not even be 5 percent.</b>


<b>Syed and Qureshi are the upper caste of muslim society.</b>

[Bodhi]

<!--QuoteBegin-Harshvardan+Mar 11 2008, 08:06 PM-->QUOTE(Harshvardan @ Mar 11 2008, 08:06 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin--><!--QuoteBegin-Bodhi+Mar 11 2008, 06:24 PM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Bodhi @ Mar 11 2008, 06:24 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->Can we expand the scope of the thread to also include christianism, (pseudo-)sikhism etc - who are usually seen attacking Hindutva being caste-centric, and present themselves as free of "caste system"?

If agreed, then Mods are requested to change the title to Caste in Islam, Christianism, Sikhism...etc.[right][snapback]79531[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Regarding caste in sikhism it is more to do with certain particular castes rather than an problem in the whole sikh panth.

I think we should avoid pointing fingers at our own people(sikh) in this matter. Some khalistanis attack Hinduism but it does not mean we should adopt their mentality of attacking our own.
[right][snapback]79536[/snapback][/right]
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

which is why I said pseudo-sikhism and am not pointing fingers at sikhism. real sikhism is almost never at conflicts with SD.

[Guest]

<!--QuoteBegin-Bodhi+Mar 12 2008, 09:10 PM-->QUOTE(Bodhi @ Mar 12 2008, 09:10 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->which is why I said pseudo-sikhism and am not pointing fingers at sikhism.  real sikhism is almost never at conflicts with SD.[right][snapback]79583[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Rather than using the word pseudo-sikhism we could use the word khalistani since it conveys the meaning more correctly. The people who blame hindus for casteism are also the ones supporting khalistan.