FOCUS JULY 2022

NIKHAT ZAREEN-HIJAB & ‘LIBERALS’ Sometime in 2018, there was this film, ‘Secret Super Star’, which has done well at the box office for its off-beat content. It is a story of a family- father, mother and daughter. Being conservative, the father was very strict with the growing daughter. Insia, the daughter, dreams of being a singer. Father Farooq Malik, says ‘No’. But passionate Insia secretly pursues her ambition. She gives herself another name. Her mother Najma Malik nurses the desire of her dear daughter secretly without the knowledge of her husband. Life goes on. One day father of the girl gets a job in Saudi Arabia and family plans to shift to Saudi. In the airport, the luggage of the family was such that it was beyond permissible weight. What can be left behind was the worry of the father and he finds the guitar of his daughter packed among other things. In anger he rips it apart and throws it. Outraged at the action of her husband, Najma, the mother of the ‘Secret Super Star’, revolts and walks out of the airport taking her daughter with her. Culmination of the film was the public honour of the ‘Secret Super Star’ who decides to go to the stage to receive the honour without the burqua, which she always donned to keep her identity secret. Now that she was in the company of her supporting mother she dumps the full body face concealing burqua in preference to salwar khamees, reiterating her freedom. All go home happy at the happier ending. The film was well received for its message of women’s empowerment and freedom. Sherwani family of Azampur outside Agra makes shoe parts for big shoe making companies. They have an interesting dimension to their uneventful existence. All of them wear dresses made of tricolors of Indian national flag, so also Sherwanis are fond of singing Vande Maataram. Reportedly entire family of four sings it with pleasure. But the local Muslim community had boycotted the family for their dress habits and for singing Vande Maataram. Crazily even Shahi Imam Maulana Ahmed Bukhari of Delhi Jama Masjid had issued a fatwa declaring Sherwanis as Kafirs, besides the AIMIM of Owaisi too had boycotted the family. Even the school, run by the community rusticated the daughter of Sherwani from the school. While no liberals, whether from the community or from media supported the family for their brave fight, happily, Sherwanis continued with their tricolour dresses and singing Vande Maataram. God bless them. Feel proud to have them, as Indians. Rafia Naaz, as is evident, is a Muslim young lady and was doing her M.com with a local college. Clearly she was aspiring to better herself from the crowd. Being a self starter is real big for any girl, especially if she is a Muslim. She is from Ranchi, Jharkhand. Report is of December 2017 and she was in the news that she was being provided with security by the police in Ranchi. A young girl, doing M.com, is threatened for what?! Reportedly, she was an instructor at a Yoga institute in Ranchi. She ekes out a living for her family by working as a Yoga instructor. So what is the problem for the community, if she works to earn a living, so what if it’s teaching Yoga! And believe it or not no liberals or media channels came to support her, not even the so-called liberals among Muslim men and women. Such stories are there all across India and comes Nikhat Zareen. Indian pugilist Nikhat Zareen emerged as world champion with comfortable 5.0 unanimous verdicts over Thailand’s Jitpong Jutamas in the flyweight (52kg) final of the Women’s World Championship in Istanbul on 19th May 2022. With this win, Zareen became only the 5th Indian woman boxer to be crowned World Champion. “Self motivation has been the success story of the new World Champion Nikhat Zareen”, said her first coach Chiranjeevi on the Telangana boxer winning her maiden World Championship crown at the age of 25. India’s latest boxing sensation has amply proved it and driven the message home through self motivation to script her own success story by being crowned, the new world champion in flyweight championship category. According to Chiranjeevi “She never gives up, come what may and that has made her a world champion woman boxer. There have been many hurdles which Nikhat faced in her journey in the ring but she never gave up. She believed in herself and that has made all the difference. Nikhat’s commitment, passion and guts to keep going is what many athletes lack. But then, she is something special. She is a boxer’s delight in being aggressive at all levels of a boxing event”. That is a lesson for all, how to use one’s aggressive trait positively towards achieving one’s goals of life. Nikhat is telling that, it’s only after you have stepped outside your comfort zone that you begin to change, grow and transform, how true! Boxing Federation of India Secretary Jay Kowli had remarked post the victory at Istanbul “She is a great Indian athlete, who believes in herself and that is the reason why today she is the champion”. Post the podium finish, Nikhat naturally appeared exuberant. “After a long time, I got the chance to perform in the world championship. You never know when you will get a chance again, so I didn’t want to waste even a second. I went into every bout with the intention of giving my 100% in the boxing ring”, was her take, while remarking “it feels surreal to be called the world champion. This Gold Medal is the perfect response to all the critics who mocked me for chasing my dream”. Do you hearken AIMPLB bimbos! “Girls can’t box. Focus on getting a job and finding a groom for yourself”, Nikhat was told growing up in a conservative Muslim family in Vinayak Nagar mohalla in Telangana’s Nizamabad district, when she was angling for boxing. However, her father Mohammad Jameel, a former footballer and cricketer was euphoric. “Her feat will act as an inspiration to Muslim girls as well as all other girls in the country to aim to achieve higher in life. A kid, a boy or a girl, has to make their own way and Nikhat has paved her own way”, Jameel was reported to have exulted before the newspaper men and women. It’s clear therefore that parental support, especially that of the father goes a long way in preparing the female children, for greater things of life, more so among Muslim girls. Times group in-house writer Siddharth Saxena writes "Zareen's world championship mantle has lessons for current day India. Her victory is a punch against the patriarchy of small town India and punch for hope for Muslim girls. She means so much to young Muslims who encounter an uglier reality". He quotes Nikhat saying "As a small town Muslim girl taking up boxing, I was always aware that we had to be in a daayra and work within that boundary. Often girls don't try to come out of that comfort zone. Their dreams remain just dreams". If the above success stories of Muslim girls have warmed our hearts in general, there is this number of girls stuck with their vision blocked by hijab. While there are many celebrating their empowerment and achievement, a lot of white was being turned into black, by writings on hijab. Some of the reports appearing in the print media indicate the insularity and angularities suffered by a section of Indians in general. “Legal luminaries divided on hijab law” was a report datelined Mumbai. “Hijab: Petitioners want binding religious sanction: Karnataka government”, was a report datelined Bengalooru. “Hijab violates other students’ right to equality: Govt.” was another report from Bengalooru. “After violence, uneasy calm prevails in Karnataka College”, was the third report from Bengalooru. “Keep religion private, say friend from different faiths” & “Hijab row: blame game continues” were reports from Mangalooru. Thus, there were any number of reports with journalistic and so-called intellectual inputs, talking and furthering the cause of divisive politics of hijab. In a world, where likes of Zareen have travelled so far from Hyderabad to Istanbul to be recognized as World Boxing Champion, these girls and their misguiding guides are miserably stuck with hijab. No wonder, the 20th May 2022, global papers had the headline “Nikhat Zareen becomes World Champion”, to the utter chagrin of these self-styled women’s rights’ champions who continue to misguide these innocent Muslim girls refusing to attend college, because of college dress code, while insisting on wearing hijab. Zeenath Shaukat Ali is the Director General of Wisdom Foundation, she writes in TOI “Is wearing Hijab Mandated by Religion?” According to her ‘a scholar of Islam argues that the Quran does not stipulate this form of dress’, while advocating decency and modesty in clothing she remarks ‘word hijab is not equivalent to clothing in Quran’. Zeenath Ali further writes that “Prophet Mohammed recommended modesty and decency in appearance and dress. But to suppose that his recommendations enjoined a cloistered uniform for women in the present, is wholly opposed to the spirit of his reforms”, while adding “unfortunately Muslim scholarship has been appallingly negligent in setting the record straight in matters relating to hijab and gender”. According to Zeenath Ali “Kosova, Azerbaijan, Tunisia, Turkey are among the Muslim majority countries which have banned the hijab in public schools, universities, government buildings, while Syria and Egypt have banned face veils in universities. Besides in Indonesia, Malaysia, Morocco, Brunei, Maldives and Somalia, all Muslim majority countries, hijab is not mandatory.” However while many non-Muslim countries in the World have banned hijab, it is to the credit of Indian democracy that there is absolutely no restriction of any kind for the purported Islamic sartorial inclinations, except in some educational institutions as a dress code, that too inside the class rooms only. However, the villain’s of this hijab controversy are journalists/ newspapers and their liberal intellectual brigade masquerading as Muslim women’s rights warriors. A report datelined Lucknow “AIMPLB to take-up hijab row at month end meet”, spoke of All India Muslim Personal Law Board taking up the hijab issue in their regular monthly meetings. Reportedly the General Secretary of the board had remarked “Banning hijab is intrusion in constitutional rights of Muslims in the country”. But report also included positive noises from the All India Muslim Women Personal Law Board. The president Shaista Amber welcomed the Karnataka High Court verdict, while remarking “If schools have a dress code laid down in the rules, it should be followed. Education should be prioritized”. Thus, newspapers highlighted more negatives and ignoring to highlight positive statements of people who matter. Take the case of this girl, Bibi Muskan Khan, who is reported to have screamed “Allah-hu-Akbar”, when some group of boys in saffron shawl hackled her, with a shout of ‘Jaishree Ram’, while entering the college in burqua and she was called brave and was rewarded with cash for her “bravery”. What these organizations and individual who rewarded the girl should realize is, it is India and none would attack a girl physically in public. May be it could have been branded ‘boldness’, instead of bravery. Al Qaeda Chief Ayman al-Zawahiri releasing a video praising this Muskan Bibi and our media taking it further for her so-called bravery, is taking the matter rather too far. An issue of little relevance was attempted to be internationalized. Fortunately, the father of this Muskan, Mohammad Hussain Khan from Mandya had distanced himself from the controversy, saying ‘our family has nothing to do with terrorist organizations? In conclusion, it can be safely said that there are lessons from the achievements of Nikhat Zareen and her ilk not to be block headed with communal leanings and suffer without experiencing the exhilaration of success that can attend to them, just like Zareen, if only they remain open to change at least for their own individual progress. Hope these girls understand the message from the success of Nikhat Zareen in achieving her dream. While, we are about it, it may not be out of place to suggest that, should the community as a whole decide against this burqua and related sartorial constrictions imposed by the males of the society in the name of religion, it will surely pave a through-fare for the community to get into the main-stream civil society. Hope the community takes this suggestion positively and in right spirit.