Wednesday, October 15, 2008
BESA…When Muslims Saved Jews
BESA…When Muslims Saved Jews | ||||
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"I had people say 'Muslims save Jews! How is that?'" the American Jewish fine art photographer told IslamOnline.net in a telephone interview. Gershman has been engaged in a 5-year project that honors stories of Albanian Muslims' heroism in saving thousands of Jews, who either lived in Albania or sought refugee there, during World War II. The "BESA… a code of honor" project began when he was seeking out photographs of righteous, non-Jews who helped Jews during the Holocaust, in New York. Gershman was amazed to find among them Muslim names that he was told belongs to Albanians. His quest then took him to Yad Vashem, the holocaust museum in Jerusalem, where he found more Albanian names. "I traveled all through Albania and Kosovo where I met the rescuers' children, who are in their sixties or even older, the rescuers' widows, and in some cases the rescuer himself." After more than four years of collecting stories and shooting black and white photos, Gershman's first exhibition was held last November at Yad Vashem. The exhibition then went the UN headquarter in New York before starting a world tour. A full length documentary is in progress along with a fine art book of the heroic profiles of Muslims saving Jews in Albania and Kosovo. The premier of the film worldwide is expected in 2009. "I am proud and happy to show this story to the world," Gershman says Qur'anic BESA
People usually ask Gershman about the title he chose for the fruit of his painstaking five-year efforts. "BESA is a tribal Albanian culture that goes back to thousands of years," he explains. "What BESA says is that if some one knocks on your door you have an absolute obligation – no matter who that person is – to save their lives." There is no any evidence that any Jew was turned over to Nazis in Muslim-majority Albania. There were ten times more Jews in Albania after WWII than before. "In fact, Albania is the only Nazi occupied country that sheltered Jews," says Gershman. "They came in as guests. They were given Muslim names, they were living with Muslim families." From the saviors' tales, Gershman found that Albanian Muslims considered BESA a manifestation of the Islamic teachings of keeping the promise and protecting the weak. "I remember that some of them said 'there is no BESA without the Qur'an.'" Gershman believes that to Muslim Albanians, the idea of not saving Jews from the Nazis was inconceivable. "They did this in the name of their religion. They absolutely had no prejudice what so ever. "I asked them 'why did you do this? What was in the Qur'an that you did this?' They would only smile. "Some of them said 'we have saved lives to go to paradise.'" Message to West Gershman believes the Albanian Muslim heroism is of extraordinary significance. "In one way it's a small story because we are not talking about hundreds of thousands of people being saved. But it's an important story," he insists. "It says that there are good people in the world, and they come from every religion." Gershman says believes that the stories of Albanian religious tolerance left a legacy that runs in the face of stereotyped portrayal of Muslims. "My message to the Western world is that there are so many good people in the world and so many of them are Muslims," he maintains. "If you see my pictures and the stories, there is no question that these are good people. "I defy if anybody sees my pictures, especially in the West, and say that these people are militants or supporters of violence." The Jewish American, who has studied Sufism, says Islam is not what many Westerners think. "To me Islam is poetry, is science, is to be with the divine. Islam is beauty." | ||||
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Two Letters and a Story in Hell - By Amaresh Misra
Two Letters and a Story in Hell
I want to tell everyone a didactic story.
We all knew that torture in Indian jails is a reality; but it has taken two letters to prove why people like Javed Anand, who argued against having any sympathy for innocent Muslims arrested for belonging allegedly to a dreaded organization like SIMI—an organization against which a proper Court tribunal dismissed the Government of India’s plea for a ban—are either sadists, safedposhcriminals or simply lackeys of the anti-Muslim, communal forces in India.
What do these letters say about Yogendra Yadav and his stand? Only he can answer for despite issuing statements against the official version in the Batla House encounter—whatever the reason—he has chosen not to take a powerful enough stand against the ongoing Muslim Persecution in India. What also to say about people like Siddharth Vardarajan who make a big issue about being leftists and sensitive about secularism—appear on International platforms needlessly—but who do not take stand against torture?
On
If
Criminal/Intellectuals like Swapan Dasgupta hate UP and 1857 because it militates against their smelly, underdeveloped, toady `India Today’ type facile, vapid, yet aggressively anti-Muslim, anti-people `modernity’.
It is on the point of torture inflicted especially on Muslim youth that despite mutual disagreements, people like Javed Anand, Siddharth Vardarajan and Swapan Dasgupta ultimately share in a conspiracy of silence.
Yes—back to the November 2007 bomb blasts in UP. As usual Muslim youths were picked up—Aftab Ansari, who was picked up from Kolkata in
But there were two other boys who were also picked up by the Police—their names are Muhammad Hakim Tariq Qasmi and Muhammad Khalid Mujahid. Both these boys are still lodged in the Barabanki jail. But the Courts have dismissed the charge of sedition against them—as is bound to happen, they too will be let off as innocents caught wrongly by the Police as the latter do not seem to have any evidence against SIMI or their alleged adherents.
But what happened to those boys while they are in Police custody, especially that of the Special Task Force (STF)? Both boys have written letters in Urdu to the Judge and the Jail Superintendent. I found these at a Hindi site called Mohalla, run by conscientious Indians, mostly young Hindus.
They are here before you in English, translated, quite badly I suppose by me:
Letter Number 1
To,
The Jail Superintendent and the Chief Judicial Magistrate, from the district jail,
I, Muhammad Khalid, am a resident of mohalla Madeeyahoon, district Jaunpur, UP. On
Letter Number 2
To,
The Jail Superintendent and the Chief Judicial Magistrate, from the district jail,
I urge that I, Muhammad Tariq, son of Riaz Ahmed Sakeen, hail from Sammupur Rani Ki Sarai, Azamgarh. I was picked up on 10th December (2007) in front of my medicine shop in Azamgarh by the STF and for 10 days I was tortured mercilessly and a video was made, which showed planted false stories regarding my person. On 22nd December, the STF people took me to Barabanki and showed my arrest with RDX and other explosives. This, when I was in their custody for 10 days—I had never possessed RDX or any other explosives. From 24th December to 2nd January, the STF put me in their office on remand. The second remand phase started from January 9th when I was under the charge of the Faizabad CO. They tortured me day and night to force me to say things they wanted to me to say; on the night of 17th January 2008, Rajesh Pandey, the CO City of Faizabad, and OP Pandey, the STF daroga, forced me to hold a red color battery (on which the word Shakti was prominent and there was something which was constantly sticking to my hands). Then I was a forced to hold bottles of Dabur Kevda. Then I was blindfolded and taken to another room. I do not know what other things they forced me to hold as I was blindfolded. This much I understood that there were bags and boxes. I am afraid that they tried taking my fingerprints through various means. I beg of you these people want to frame me; I am a peace loving, patriotic citizen of
What do you now say—masters of culture and intellectuals of
I know some people might think that Amaresh Misra should tread cautiously and that he will make enemies—I do not care. The people I have named—with the exception of Yogendra Yadav—if they come face to face with me—to yeh log to gayo. All of them are shit scared of the UP temper and the fact that they by not exposing the truth, by deliberately suppressing the truth as in Vinod Mehta’s case, have obstructed justice as defined by India’s constitution, and they are guilty as hell.
Well, I have a more hair-raising story to tell regarding another torture and it exposes several other lovers of secularism…
EMBEDDED COMMENTS TO MR. SULTAN SHAHIN’S INTRODUCTORY REMAIRKS:
EMBEDDED COMMENTS TO MR. SULTAN SHAHIN’S INTRODUCTORY REMAIRKS:
| Muslim Penchant for spinning state-sponsored conspiracies: Will it turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy? |
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| But do we ever come across a word of gratitude, even gratitude expressed to God, for what “in practice already had become a Brahmin-dominated state” to have not gone the There is any number of voices during the last 60 years that have lauded the fact that thanks of leaders like Do those Muslims fighting for their cause, no matter how legitimate even remember and remind the common Muslims of the larger perspective? Do we even hear our intellectuals, barring a few, of course, even restrain themselves in the language they use for their perpetual grievance-mongering? The larger perspective is that if the British and Indian National Congress has not come to terms on partition, the total Muslim population of undivided India would have been to the tune of 500 million or about 30% of the total population or even more. That larger picture had to be projected to point out the perfidy behind dividing the Muslim population in three parts while merely 3% Brahmins/Suvarnas/ Aryans, have managed to fool the rest of the non-Muslims and ruling the country with a concocted majority. While that majority, like the force of gravity, is gradually and certainly disintegrating, Muslims have yet to get the larger perspective of how their presence in the nation and in the subcontinent, should regain their weightage. … Do we ever wonder what would be our situation if we were living as a religious minority in an Islamic state? Since the oil boom of 70’s millions of Indians, in the same ratios of Muslims to non-Muslims, namely 10% Muslims and 90% non-Muslims have been living in the Islamic states the Arabian Gulf and enjoying a comparably better standard of living than that of India. They have not been given citizenship rights, as they are guest workers; but even now after a second generation has taken over, none of those immigrant Indians would like to come back to Islamic countries have a millennium long history of coexisting and thriving with other communities in their midst. That cannot be denied by motivated propaganda by vested interest during the current phase of demonisation of Muslims and Islam, by the hired hands of US/UK/Israel. Do we ever move our lips or lift our little finger in support of the religious minorities living in Islamic states next door? Well, what to support them, we have hounded out the one Muslim lady who dared to speak for them in We have tens of thousands of mosques and madrasas running throughout the length and breadth of this country, The constitution of but one of our mosques, a dilapidated and disused one, was demolished by people who were characterised by the Supreme Court as miscreants, and we blew that into an issue of our religious freedom in the country. It is surprising that Mr. Shahin has not a single word for ‘the miscreants’ who virtually unleashed a fascist revolution in We have still not solved that problem and allowed it to fester, to our nation’s detriment. The onus of solving the problem is in the hands of the same government that had helped the Fascists in demolition of Babri Masjid. We want justice from our own state, our own judiciary, and our own people. Why cant Mr. Shahin instead of addressing the victims to forgive and forget, not condemning and asks for justice for Muslims. Or is that the way of the secularists to prove their secularism by appeasing the fascists. Do our intellectuals take time off fighting the system and tell us it is not in our interest to allow a cancer to grow. It is easy for Mr. Shahin to call the Muslim factor, as cancer, while having no guts to call a spade a spade by calling for the destroying the cancer of Hindutva fascism. His own credibility is on the line. The mosque is gone. The Mosque will never go. Take this from just one humble member of the 15 Crore of Indian Muslims. Babri Masjid has become the symbol of their freedom in We apparently don’t worship bricks and soil. Bricks too are gone in any case. Why can’t we initiate an amicable solution, as it would be in our own interest too? We need a plot of land to pray, we can pray anywhere in the area. Why do we need to blow it out of all proportion, make it such a big issue, when the country – the system - is allowing us to have as many mosques and madrasas as we wish? There can be no barter of our right to reclaim what is due to us. Shahin Saheb has every right to pursue his one-sided effort to denigrate and demonise Muslims and exhort them to accept what is on the table. But Sultan Shahin does not represent the consensus of the overwhelming majority of Indian Muslims. An analysis by Sultan Shahin, editor, NewAgeIslam.com ---------------------------------------------------------- |
You write:
"What crime has the Indian state committed to be reviled so? Or, the Indian system (Nizam), which would presumably include the constitution? Well, it did not declare itself a Hindu state as Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi, the founder-ideologue of Jamaat-e-Islami and the mentor of SIMI, advised it to do and treat Muslims and other religious minorities as second class citizens. Had it done so, it would not be accused today of hatching conspiracies against the rights of the minorities."
If
Pandit Nehru is on record saying Majority communalism is worst than Minority communalism. Nehruji was fending off competition from Hindu Mahasabha and Hindu extremists within his own Congress fold. His distaste for Hindu fundamentalists is well-known. (Compare and contrast this with Nehruji’s warm associations with the ‘fundamentalist’ Muslim Ulema of Deoband who were against partitioning of
Besides as a student of history, Nehruji was aware that
Those who are still for Hindu Raj as the Ideal for India’ should have taken appropriate lessons, when Nepal, the only Hindu state in the world, turned republic and the Hindu King was sent packing abroad, after a democratic election.
So Mr. Shahin's strenuous efforts to convince Indian Muslims that they should thank their stars for at least being allowed to live in their own land, even if as the neo-shudars, is bound to go over the head of an overwhelming majority of Muslims. And if this is self-fulfilling prophecy; then let it be.
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
www.ghulammuhammed.wordpress.com
