Mosques and the law: India
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Are mosques integral to Islam?
1994 verdict of SC
From: AmitAnand Choudhary, Is mosque integral to Islam? Query may delay Babri case, March 24, 2018: The Times of India
Court May Re-Examine 1994 Decision
Adjudication of the politically sensitive Ayodhya land dispute case will be delayed as the Supreme Court said it will first decide whether the apex court’s 1994 decision that a “mosque is not an essential part of Islam” needs to be re-examined by a Constitution bench.
A bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices Ashok Bhushan and S Abdul Nazeer said it would examine whether a five-judge bench was required to go into the question of whether a mosque was integral to Islam, but they turned down the demand that the 70-year-old legal battle between Hindu and Muslim communities over ownership of the nearly 3 acres of Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi disputed land be also referred to a larger bench.
Senior advocate Rajeev Dhavan, representing one of the original plaintiffs, M Siddiq, now replaced by his legal heir after his death, said the entire case should be referred to a Constitution bench. “Why should only one part and not the entire case be referred to a Constitution bench,” he asked. Lawyers appearing for those who have claimed the Ayodhya site for construction of a Ram temple objected to reopening of the ‘Ismail Faruqui case’ of 1994 and said there was no need to refer any issue to a larger bench.
Dhavan: Mosques don’t lose significance even if demolished
The present three-judge bench should proceed with the Ayodhya dispute case, they contended.
However, the bench said it was necessary to examine the plea raised by the Muslim community contending mosque as a place of worship was a fundamental feature of Islam. “First, we must put the controversy (over whether mosque is essential to Islam) to an end,” said the bench, which had earlier referred to the decades-old legal battle as a mere “land dispute.”
The SC had said in its ‘Ismail Faruqui case’ of 1994, “A mosque is not an essential part of the practice of the religion of Islam and namaz (prayer) by Muslims can be offered anywhere, even in the open. Accordingly, its acquisition is not prohibited by the provisions in the Constitution of India.”
Dhavan, in his two-hourlong argument, contended that the Faruqui case was wrongly decided by the apex court and the verdict contradicted an earlier SC judgment. “A mosque is forever. It does not lose its significance and it remains a place of worship even if it is demolished,” Dhavan said.
A 2018 explanation of the 2014 remark
‘Observation Need Not Be Read Broadly, No Need For Controversy’
A three-judge Supreme Court bench by 2-1 majority said an unnecessary controversy was being sought to be created by broadly interpreting the 1994 Ismail Faruqui judgment which had remarked that “a mosque is not an essential part of the practice of religion of Islam and namaz by Muslims can be offered anywhere, even in the open”.
While rejecting strenuous pleas for reference of this controversial, off-the-cuff remark in the Faruqui case for re-adjudication by a five-judge bench, CJI Misra and Justice Ashok Bhushan said the SC in 1994 had made the comment to dispel the argument that mosques enjoyed immunity from acquisition of land by the government.
Justice Bhushan, writing the majority judgment, said no religious structure, be it temple, mosque or church, enjoyed immunity from acquisition under the sovereign power of the government, which was exercised in 1993 to acquire the disputed land following demolition of the disputed structure on December 6, 1992. He said the observation in Faruqui case came while upholding acquisition of the disputed land by the central government.
The majority judgment said that the the Faruqui verdict was considering whether mosque was an essential part of Islam and whether acquisition of a mosque violated the fundamental right to religion. “Thus, the statement that a mosque is not an essential part of the practice of religion of Islam is in the context of the issue whether the mosque, which was acquired under Acquisition of Certain Areas at Ayodhya Act, 1993, had immunity from acquisition,” CJI Misra and Justice Bhushan said.
“The court held (in Faruqui case) that if the place where offering of namaz is a place of particular significance, acquisition of which may lead to the extinction of the right to practice of the religion, only in that condition the acquisition is not permissible and, subject to this condition, the power of acquisition is available for a mosque like any other place of worship of any religion. Thus, the observation... was made in reference to the argument of the petitioners regarding immunity of mosque from acquisition,” the bench said.
“No arguments having been raised before the constitution bench that Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid is a mosque of a particular significance, acquisition of which shall extinct the right of practice of the religion, the court had come to the conclusion that by acquisition of the mosque, rights under Articles 25 and 26 are not infringed,” Justice Bhushan said.
“The observation (in Faruqui case) need not be read broadly to hold that a mosque can never be an essential part of the practice of the religion of Islam,” the court said.
Justice Bhushan said, “The HC has held that judgment in Ismail Faruqui case does not decide any of the issues which are subject matter of the suit...”
A The Times of India editorial
In Faruqui’s Shade, September 28, 2018: The Times of India
Ayodhya title dispute and the Ismail Faruqui verdict need closure
Supreme Court has dismissed the 1994 Ismail Faruqui judgment’s observation that “a mosque is not an essential part of the practice of Islam and namaz” as having no bearing on the Babri Masjid-Ramjanmabhoomi title suit. The order paves way for hearings in the title dispute to resume by interpreting the observations in Faruqui in the specific context of government acquiring 67 acres in and around the disputed mosque, which it said “need not be read broadly”. But beyond Ayodhya, this observation in Faruqui is at variance with a secular republic’s mandate to preserve the sanctity of religious places.
Ideally, a seven-judge constitutional bench should review the Faruqui judgment because it gives political oxygen to other historical disputes related to religious structures and raises the possibility of more Ayodhya-like cleavages. Justice Bharucha’s minority view in Faruqui had termed the Ayodhya land acquisition on grounds of preserving public order as constitutionally impermissible. He noted that when adherents of the majority religion used force of numbers to assail the place of worship of another religion and disrupt public order, it was the duty of the state to protect the place of worship, not acquire it to preserve public order.
Justice Abdul Nazeer’s dissenting verdict on Thursday found that Faruqui influenced the 2010 Allahabad high court verdict portioning the land three ways. He asks whether an essential religious practice can be determined without detailed examination of religious tenets, as was the case in the 1994 verdict. In contrast to Faruqui, the Babri title suit must scrupulously strive to stay away from religious arguments and go strictly by property documents and civil laws. The title suit could also be heard by a larger bench, to benefit from more judicial minds applying themselves to the vexed dispute. Matters of religion must not distract from India’s great civilisational project of material and spiritual uplift. The ball is in SC’s court.
#VisitMyMosque
As in 2019, Jan
To counter hate crime, several masjids in the country are organising open-house gatherings so that visitors can have a better understanding of Islam
‘ Chalta kya hai masjid ke andar?” It was a question 28-year-old Vikas Gavali had thought of often, but never ended up asking even his closest Muslim friends. “There was always a fear. What if they felt bad,” he says. In December last year, Gavali confronted this apprehension of the unknown, when he visited a mosque for the first time in Pune’s Azam Campus locality. He asked questions about Islam, and wandered through the white corridors and long halls covered in blue carpets.
Gavali was among the 350 people who visited the mosque in a programme helmed by the Pune Islamic Information Centre (PIIC). For the first time in many years, the mosque at Azam Campus, an educational hub, opened its doors to men and women from other communities. The idea was to allay doubts and dispel misconceptions around the religion and its practices.
It is an initiative that is slowly gathering strength across the country. Apart from the Pune mosque, Al-Fukran in Mumbra (Mumbai), Masjid Umar Bin Khattab in Ahmedabad and three mosques in Hyderabad including the well-known Spanish Mosque have opened their doors for anyone interested in paying a visit.
The trend started abroad. Mosques in the UK have been holding open days for decades, but a concerted effort started in February 2015 when as part of #VisitMyMosque, 20 mosques held an open house on the same day. Since then, 200 mosques have joined the UK initiative. Similar campaigns are running in Canada and the US.
Karimuddin Sheikh of PIIC, who helped organise the weekend open house, knows the challenge he is up against. It is a toxic atmosphere stoked by fake social media forwards that allege mosques spread violence and hatred, and madrassas breed terrorists. The organisers tackled rumours spread through social media head-on with placards depicting the consequences of spreading unverified news.
Sheikh, who owns a sportswear manufacturing business, noticed the change in people’s attitude some years earlier when he went looking for a home to rent and was refused repeatedly. “Over the last six years we have organised inter-faith dialogues and seminars on festive occasions hoping to begin conversations. But the hatred spewed by social media has just taken over young people’s minds,” he says. People would ask him, “Why aren’t mosques open for everyone? What are you hiding?” “We felt that we had to take a more drastic step,” he says.
Moinuddin Nasrullah, trustee of the Umar Bin Khattab mosque in Ahmedabad, has encountered the ugly face of prejudice often. He recounts how an elderly man walked away from him at a book fair saying, “ Tum logon se jitni doori banai jaye utni achchi hai (It’s best to keep a distance from people like you).” The comment stung but also left Nasrullah reflecting about what to do. It took a year but the mosque hosted its ‘Visit My Mosque’ programme last month.
This is not all. Nasrullah is also trying to bring his community closer to the people. The mosque is active on Facebook and Twitter, using these to post pictures and videos of the open house and teachings of the Quran. Nasrullah hopes to inspire other mosques to use social media and increase public interaction.
“It was an eye-opener,’’ says Jignesh Dhanak, a 35-year-old cloth merchant who lives in Ahmedabad and visited the masjid with some friends. Many who had never been inside a mosque or read about Islam were surprised to find that namaz was read facing a wall and not in front of an idol. Arabic teacher Kubra Naik says that despite living together for so many years, awareness levels are still low. “People don’t really know each other. When I tell people my name or they see me in a hijab, I know they have reservations about what I am going to say. But when I speak about how it is important for us to live in peace their attitude changes,” she says.
Naik is a volunteer with the NGO A Little Kindness Trust, that has so far conducted open days in three Hyderabad mosques. The most successful gathering was at the Spanish Mosque in August 2018, when over 2,000 people turned up.
Harsh Mander, who started the Karvaan-e-Mohabbat project as an outreach for Muslim victims of lynchings and riots, says the effort is touching but it must be the majority community that reaches out to others. “The worrying part is that the present climate has legitimised bigotry. The more educated, more privileged Indians are far more prejudiced than those who are less educated,” he says.
However small, the organisers are hoping their efforts will have an impact. Pune’s Karimuddin has plans to hold another open house in February while Nasrullah has been getting calls from other mosques in Gujarat for advice. “ Mahol ko badalna hoga, aur humme hi kuch karna hoga (Things have to change and we have to take the initiative),” Nasrullah says
