State News And Discussion - 3

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[url="http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110120/jsp/nation/story_13468178.jsp"]Deoband Modi pat upsets clerics[/url]

New Delhi, Jan. 19: The praise from the chief of Deoband’s Dar-ul-Uloom seminary for Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi has riled Muslim leaders and opinion-makers.



Separately, most of them demanded that the chief of one of the Islam world’s most well-respected seminaries, Maulana Ghulam Mohammed Wastanavi, should either recant his endorsement for Modi or apologise to Muslims.



Wastanavi is from Gujarat and did an MBA in Maharashtra.



His election against two veteran contenders of Deoband was seen to mark a generational shift at the seminary in more ways than one.



Barely four days after taking over, he told an English daily that the Muslims of Gujarat must move forward instead of getting obsessed with the 2002 violence and stated there was no discrimination against Muslims in development in the state.



Maulana Khalid Rasheed, the Nani imam of Lucknow’s Aishbagh Idgah mosque, said: “The statements are highly irresponsible. Modi sponsored one of the most horrific genocides in India for which the US refuses to give him a visa. Secular Hindus are still fighting for justice to the victims. The Deoband Maulana is otherwise a good person. But he has undermined the institution’s prestige.”



Kamal Farooqi, a former minorities commission chairman and a member of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, said: “His (Wastanavi’s) job is to issue religious edicts and not give a clean chit to a person no secular Hindu in India will appreciate.”



The Shahi Imam of Delhi’s Jama Masjid, Syed Ahmed Bukhari, said he would explore the possibility of “confronting” him with other clerics if he did not apologise quickly.



The only person to back Wastanavi is Zafar-ul Islam, the editor of an English daily Milli Gazette and former head of the Muslim Musharawat.