Watch Your Girls: Hindu Right In Maharashtra Wants Parents To Keep Daughters In Sight Against ‘Love Jihad’
New Age
Islam News Bureau
08 August 2023
• Watch Your Girls: Hindu Right In Maharashtra
Wants Parents To Keep Daughters In Sight Against ‘Love Jihad’
• Supreme Court Begins Hearing Bilkis Bano
Against The Premature Release Of 11 Convicts
• 'This Is What It's Really Like To Exercise As A
Muslim Woman'
• Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office Disputes
Muslim Woman's Claim That Her Hijab Was Forcibly Removed In Custody
Compiled by New Age Islam News Bureau
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/hindu-right-maharashtra-love-jihad/d/130410
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Watch
Your Girls: Hindu Right In Maharashtra Wants Parents To Keep Daughters In Sight
Against ‘Love Jihad’
People in a rally against love jihad. At least 50 such rallies have been
organised in Maharashtra Getty Images
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08 AUG
2023
Madhuri
Kotasthane is a stressed parent. She has been trying to constantly monitor the
movements of her 19-year-old college-going daughter.
Kotasthane
also has a 22-year-old son who is pursuing higher studies at a university
abroad, but she is not too concerned with his daily schedule. She was not
always like this. Her obsession with her daughter’s itinerary started some
months ago when an activist of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) visited Hindu
households in their housing society and introduced them to the idea of ‘love
jihad’.
For
Kotasthane, a homemaker, who neither reads the newspapers nor watches any TV
news channel, the idea of ‘love jihad’ was frightening. When the activist told
her about the Shraddha Walkar murder case, wherein the live-in partner had
murdered Walkar, chopped her body into several pieces and threw them at
multiple places in Delhi, she googled the story and read it. She was horrified
and since then has been living in fear that her daughter can become a victim of
‘love jihad’.
Kotasthane’s
daughter says she has started to lose friends because of her mother’s
“paranoia”.
The
daughter says, “My mother’s paranoia is making my life miserable. She is now
also converting my father to think like her. She wants to know all that I do
through the day. My friends laugh at me and I have lost friends too. My mother
thinks that some Muslim man will trap me, marry me, and convert me. It has
become too stifling now.”
Activists
of Hindutva organisations, including the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS),
have started campaigns to sensitise Hindu households to the perils of
‘unsupervised freedom’ for their daughters. These parents are told to keep
watch on the movements of the girls in the households. If there is any
deviation from the ‘normal’ daily schedule, the parents can contact the
activists, who will then track the movements and help the parents take
corrective steps, says another parent. With their movements being tracked to
avoid getting into love marriages, many of the girls are angry at the behaviour
of their parents.
“People
will come and say anything. Shouldn’t our parents use their own intelligence?
My friend’s parents are also indulging in the same thing. Our lives are getting
stifled,” says another college-going girl.
Since
November 20, 2022, when the first Hindu Jan Akrosh rally was held by fringe
Hindu organisations in Parbhani in eastern Maharashtra, over 50 such rallies
have been organised across the Maharashtra to combat ‘love jihad’. Attended by
ministers and top leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Shiv
Sena (Eknath Shinde group), these rallies are succeeding in polarising the
Hindus and Muslims and making both parties aggressive. Held in each of the 36
districts of the state, those who are part of these rallies say they will stop
when the Maharashtra government enacts a law against ‘love jihad’.
For miles
visible to the eyes, it is a sea of saffron in these reallies. There is saffron
in the flags, caps, saris, stoles, shirts and much more. Even the festoons and
the podium are in saffron colour. Whether the rally is in Mumbai, its suburban
areas, or the districts across Maharashtra, every speaker reiterates the need
for an economic boycott of the Muslims.
The
large attendance of women at these right-wing rallies is a new phenomenon,
pointed out Shankar Gaikar, General Secretary, Vishva Hindu Parishad (Maharashtra
Unit).
“Love
jihad resonates with women. There is also that fear that they will be a target
of love jihad. This is the reason for them attending the rallies in such big
numbers,” says Gaikar.
Gaikar,
a regular speaker at these rallies, feels they reflect the mood of the Hindus
and it is an indicator that they will not take the “harassment” meted out by
the Muslims.
He tells
Outlook, “The activists of the VHP, Bajrang Dal, Durga Vahini, and the other
affiliates attend all the big Hindu functions and create awareness about love
jihad and land jihad. We make sure that our girls are not converted through
love jihad. Their target is to make everyone a Muslim. We will continue the
Hindu Jan Akrosh rallies till the government does not bring in a law against
love jihad.”
The
vibrations of the Hindu Jan Akrosh rallies resonated in the Maharashtra
Legislature, forcing Devendra Fadnavis —Deputy Chief Minister in charge of the
Home portfolio— to make a statement in the Legislative Council during the
budget session in March this year. He informed the legislators that the state
government was actively considering a new law against ‘love jihad’. He said
this law will be within the Constitutional framework. He had also informed that
the director general of police will be instructed to sensitise the police
force. In addition, a standard operating procedure will be issued for taking
quick action in cases where the parents complain that their daughters have been
cheated through ‘love jihad’ and cannot be contacted.
Source: outlookindia.com
https://www.outlookindia.com/national/watch-your-girls-hindu-right-in-maharashtra-wants-parents-to-keep-daughters-in-sight-in-campaign-against-love-jihad-news-308906
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Supreme
Court Begins Hearing Bilkis Bano Against The Premature Release Of 11 Convicts
Bilkis
Bano
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The
Gujarat government had raised preliminary objections with regard to the
petitions filed in the matter other than the one by Bilkis Bano
August
07, 2023
Cold-blooded
brutality and blood-thirst marked the murders and gangrape of at least seven
persons, said Bilkis Bano, speaking through her lawyer on Monday in the Supreme
Court. She recounted the deaths of at least seven persons, including her
three-year-old child, at the hands of rioters in Gujarat in 2002.
“Parts
of their bodies were smashed in. Heads and chests…” advocate Shobha Gupta, for
Ms. Bano, submitted before a Bench led by Justice B.V. Nagarathna.
She
recounted that of the 14 killed on March 3 at Pannivel village, the bodies of
only seven were found. “The other bodies went missing,” Ms. Gupta told the
Bench on the opening day of the hearing.
The
court is hearing a series of petitions, including one by Ms. Bano, challenging
the premature release of 11 men who were sentenced to life imprisonment for the
crime.
The case
had come up before multiple Benches of the apex court but stubbornly remained a
non-starter.
The
case, at one point, had seen the Supreme Court even wonder whether some of the
released convicts were making a “mockery” of or even “playing” with the court
by either going incognito to hamper the service of notice of the case or
seeking time to file counter affidavits.
In one
of the hearings, advocate Shobha Gupta, for Ms. Bano, had mapped the long
trajectory of the case in the apex court.
She said
her petition was filed in November 2022. It came up for hearing before a Bench
of Justices Ajay Rastogi and Bela Trivedi on December 13. But Justice Trivedi
had recused. There was a hiatus of over three months during which Ms. Gupta
said she had repeatedly mentioned the case before the Chief Justice of India
for a listing.
The case
was finally referred to a Bench of Justices K.M. Joseph and Nagarathna, who was
Associate Judge on the Bench. However, Justice Joseph retired before long and
the case followed Justice Nagarathna, who started heading her own Bench
accompanied by Justice Ujjal Bhuyan as Associate Judge.
The
petitioners, other than Ms. Bano, include Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra,
who said the release “completely fails to bolster either social or human
justice”; CPI(M) leader Subhashini Ali; independent journalist and filmmaker
Revati Laul; and former philosophy professor and activist Roop Rekh Varma.
The
Gujarat government had relied on its remission policy of 1992 to approve the
convicts’ applications for remission of the sentence and not the current policy
of 2014. The men were released in August last year.
Source: thehindu.com
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/bilkis-bano-case-convicts-driven-by-blood-thirsty-approach-to-hunt-and-kill-muslims-supreme-court-told/article67168173.ece
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'This is
what it's really like to exercise as a Muslim woman'
08
AUGUST 2023
The earliest
memories sisters Husnaa Mota, 21, and Tayyibah Mota, 27, have of exercise are
sports days and PE classes in their Coventry primary school. At this point,
they had no inhibitions; being Muslim wasn’t a concern of theirs, nor was
'wearing a hijab - something which wasn’t common within our friends'.
But over
time, they became increasingly aware of the barriers to exercise they, as young
Muslim women, faced.
Their
bodies changed as they became curvier, and they both found it difficult to
marry Islam’s religious principles around modesty - women are encouraged to
cover their bodies with loose garments, leaving only their face and feet
exposed - and their love of exercise.
‘It was
a struggle finding appropriate clothing that you felt both comfortable and modest
in at the same time,’ says Tayyibah. ‘Women’s clothing is made to fit your
shape and didn’t follow the way we dressed.’
Although
Islam doesn’t restrict women from exercising in public, many Muslim women like
Tayyibah and Husnaa face challenges like a lack of representation in sport,
exercising in co-ed spaces as working out around men is often discouraged for
the sake of modesty, and the practicalities of choosing clothes that cover
their hair, chests, legs, and arms, and do not accentuate their bodies’ shapes.
In the
last year, Husnaa started going to a co-ed gym, but she didn’t make the
decision lightly, weighing up whether exercising in a co-ed gym would
contradict her faith.
‘It took
some time for me to decide that I would go to a mixed gym,’ Husnaa says, but
she decided her health was her priority, and she signed up. For a while, she
trained there wearing leggings and a baggy hoodie dress - an outfit she was
comfortable in at the time, but after reading the Koran - the sacred Scripture
of Islam - in greater depth, her appreciation for modesty as ‘protection' for
Muslim women (women are told to cover their heads with a veil, as a garment
protects them from harm by covering her beauty) increased, and she felt the
need to adhere to this value more acutely.
‘Now I
wear trousers and a baggy hoodie when I go to the gym,’ she says. ‘I literally
have one outfit I wear. I wash and dry it every single day. It’s the only thing
I feel comfortable in.’
Another
barrier the pair faced was grappling with how they were seen in their
community.
In
lockdown, when the only way to see each other was on socially distant bike
rides, Husnaa remembers feeling self-conscious cycling through Coventry to meet
Tayyibah.
‘On the
roads, everyone could see me, and it felt a bit awkward,’ Husnaa says,
explaining that they have never once seen another woman wearing a hijab while
cycling.
'You
just know you're getting judged'
‘When we
started cycling, people were looking,’ Tayyibah recalls. ‘You just know you’re
getting judged. Sometimes, people laughed. But you have to get past that point.
During lockdown, cycling was the only way we could see each other, so we were
forced to get over how we felt, and the more we did it, the more comfortable we
became.’
Cycling
is something they now do frequently (Husnaa cycles to work daily and Tayyibah
for an occasional ride), but the sisters are most passionate about hiking.
After their father passed away from injuries sustained in a car accident when
Husnaa was 11 and Tayyibah 17, hiking gave them peace and healing even in the
midst of tragedy. Their brother encouraged them to hike as a way to raise money
for charities. Initially, they were raising money for Water Wells Charity with
Islamic Relief in memory of their father, but they went on to raise money for
different Muslim charities like Human Appeal and Islamic Relief.
‘As
Muslims, we’re taught that charitable acts bring you rewards in the afterlife,’
Tayyibah explains.
Finding
modest and comfortable clothes to hike in proved difficult. ‘It was a struggle
to find appropriate hiking clothing,’ Tayyibah remembers. ‘I didn’t own any
hiking gear or clothing. You needed to be wearing the right gear like
waterproof jackets, waterproof overalls, and base layers. They’re all
tight-fitting, so I literally lived in all of my brother’s clothes. They were
bigger and baggier.’
It
frustrated her that there wasn’t more appropriate hiking clothing for Muslim
women, but Tayyibah came to accept it as the norm, and continued to hike in her
brother’s loose fitting clothing.
‘I
didn’t care how I looked in men’s clothes,’ she says. ‘It’s about being modest
- that my hair is covered and secure, that my hijab isn’t going to fall off,
and that I feel my clothes aren’t going to fall off.’
The
sisters now share their hiking journey on Instagram, where they call themselves
the Junglee Joggers (‘junglee in our language means crazy, we’ve always been
crazy,’ they tell me), and they receive messages ‘all the time’ from other
Muslim women, thanking them for representing female Muslim hikers.
‘Being
Muslim in Britain – you’re just portrayed negatively,’ says Tayyibah. ‘People
think that because you wear a hijab that you can’t speak the language, or that
you’re oppressed, or that you’re timid and don’t have a voice. When you put
yourself out there, you are breaking a stereotype.’
Both
sisters agree that when you see people ‘like you’ in the outdoors, you’re more
inclined to follow suit and do the same – a fact proven by the number of Muslim
women who have tried hiking since scrolling through Tayyibah and Husnaa’s IG
feed. One woman recently messaged the sisters for advice on starting her own
hiking group for Muslim women in her local area. Another got in touch to ask
what hikes were going on, sharing that the sisters’ IG had been the catalyst
for her committing to regular hikes. Several have simply said how much pleasure
it has been to see two Muslim women outside having fun.
‘We
never intended to influence or shape anything with our Instagram account,’ says
Tayyibah. ‘We just wanted to share what we do. We didn’t think about the
impact.’
If their
followers aren't thanking Tayyibah and Husnaa for representing female Muslim
hikers, they’re asking practical questions about clothes to wear and how to pee
outside.
‘The
issue with peeing outdoors is about being seen and keeping clean,’ Tayyibah
says. ‘In order to pray five times a day, we have to be in a state of
cleanliness all the time. If you’ve been for a wild wee, it’s about cleaning
yourself. We always have water bottles or foldable silicone cups with us, do
our business in a safe space away from the path, and wash clean.’
Turns
out, they’re inspiring other religious beliefs to explore nature, too.
During
lockdown, Husnaa and Tayyibah noticed several ethnic minority outdoor groups
emerging, like Muslim Hikers, Merrell Hiking Club, and Black Girls Hike.
‘Hiking
groups are a great platform for minority groups to meet and start hiking,’
Tayyibah says. ‘They allow Muslim women and other ethnic groups to take part
and feel comfortable, and they open up a conversation about the lack of
diversity in outdoor sports like hiking, especially in Muslim communities and
for Muslim women.
‘It’s
more secure and safe to hike as a Muslim woman in a group, especially when it’s
their first time,’ she continues. ‘The groups create a space for women to feel
they are part of something.’
Now,
both sisters feel that hiking supports their faith, as opposed to contradicting
it.
‘We were
taught that our Prophet would go to Mecca, over the valley and mountains, to
contemplate and meditate,’ says Tayyibah. ‘It’s where he received revelation.’
By
getting outside, they feel they enter into the contemplation modelled for them
by the Prophet.
‘Whenever
we see the sky, the trees, the mountains, and the earth, we recognise that God
created it and for us to appreciate it,’ says Tayyibah. ‘It brings you peace.’
‘Taking
care of our bodies is worship,’ Husnaa says. ‘You’re being grateful for your
body, which is a gift, and increasing your strength. It’s showing thankfulness
to God for giving that to you. Me going on a hike is a form of worship, because
I’m following in the footsteps of our Prophet.’
Recently,
Tayyibah and Husnaa have noticed a number of activewear brands are also
becoming more inclusive.
Husnaa
swears by Puma’s Modest Wide Leg Track Pants, while Puma also stock a Modest
Activewear Training Hoodie that Husnaa uses for both hiking and the gym as it’s
both loose and long.
‘If you
roll the track pants up, they’ve got material underneath so they’re not
see-through, but they’re still breathable,’ Husnaa says. ‘They’re flared and
the material is really nice.’
Tayyibah
is also a fan of Berghaus’ waterproof rain jacket that ‘cinches you at the
waist’ so you ‘don’t feel frumpy.’ And Berghaus makes an activewear hijab that
the sisters love as it’s lightweight and stays in place.
Both of
the sisters also cite Imaan Active, a brand founded by Misbah Mogradia, a
Muslim woman who couldn’t find modest exercise clothing that felt good, as one
of their faves.
There’s
still a way to go, but if there’s one thing Tayyibah and Husnaa want you to
take from this, it’s that exercise is for everyone.
‘Barriers
are coming down, and it’s important for everyone to exercise,’ Tayyibah
concludes. ‘The outdoors is for everyone. There are no exclusions or
exceptions.’
Source: womenshealthmag.com
https://www.womenshealthmag.com/uk/fitness/a44751801/exercise-muslim-women/
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Santa
Clara County Sheriff's Office Disputes Muslim Woman's Claim That Her Hijab Was
Forcibly Removed In Custody
Mon, Aug
7, 2023
The San
Francisco Bay Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations this
week demanded a public apology and monetary settlement from the Santa Clara
County Sheriff's Office for allegedly forcibly removing a Muslim woman's
headscarf during processing at the jail.
CAIR
also asked the county Board of Supervisors to "take action" against
what it says was a violation of the woman's religious beliefs, constitutional
rights and dignity after her headscarf — or hajib — was allegedly
"violently yanked' off her head at the Elmwood Correctional Facility in
Milpitas.
The
Sheriff's Office said that it reviewed surveillance footage of the woman's
processing and that force was not used.
"In
fact the complainant was asked to remove it herself," said spokesperson
Deputy Felicia Segura in an email.
The
woman, Asia Aden, says she requested to keep her hajib on because it was
against her religious beliefs to remove it in the presence of men.
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"I
have always held law enforcement in high regard for the important work they
do," said Aden in a statement released by CAIR. "Unfortunately, that
has changed as this traumatic experience has broken me to my core."
Aden
said the alleged action left her humiliated and disgraced, especially after she
had to go without a head covering for nearly three days. She also said she
would have worn an alternative head covering and asked to either have her hajib
returned or to be given some sort of replacement.
CAIR
said this is the second time this has happened to someone in detention in the
county, and that the Sheriff's Office promised to implement policy changes and
training protocols in 2021.
"We
are now questioning their effectiveness," said CAIR senior civil rights
attorney Jeffrey Wang in the organization's statement.
"The
Sheriff's Office collaborated with the Council on American-Islamic Relations
(CAIR) after the past concern in 2021," said Segura. "Based on that
collaboration, the Sheriff's Office updated its Religious Practices policy to
ensure that anyone wearing a Hijab, Kufi, Turban or Yarmulke will be reasonably
accommodated, subject to the compelling interest for facility security or to
prevent self-harm. The booking staff was educated on the policy update."
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The
policy in question states that "Inmates that practice a religion that requires
particular modes of dress, garments, headgear, etc., other than standard-issue
clothing, will be accommodated subject to the compelling government interest in
maintaining facility security, including identifying inmates and detecting
contraband. Religious garments may only be denied when doing so would be the
least restrictive means of achieving those interests."
The
Sheriff's Office policy directly addresses how to carry out intake for women in
hajibs, stating that guards can ask head coverings to be removed, but that the
inmate must be offered the opportunity to have the search conducted in a
private space out of view of members of the opposite gender.
Jails
can keep a person's hajib, but "shall provide the inmate with a
jail-issued garment (e.g., jail-issued head scarf)," reads the policy.
Asked if
the jail honored its policy to remove the hajib out of the presence of men and
to give Aden a jail-issued head covering, Segura said she did not have that
information at this time, "but when it becomes available, I will let you
know."
Source: paloaltoonline.com
https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2023/08/07/sheriffs-office-disputes-muslim-womans-claim-that-her-hijab-was-forcibly-removed-in-custody
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URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/hindu-right-maharashtra-love-jihad/d/130410