Blasphemy must be punished under Indian law: Darul Uloom

Darul Uloom’s wing that decrees on fatwas, the Darul Ifta, in a response to a question has decreed that “punishing a criminal or a guilty is the duty of a Government and not individuals like we and you. In India, though we do not have an Islamic Government, we should try our level best to get such a perpetrator punished according to the Indian Constitution”.

The fatwa also says that the punishment for such derogatory remarks under Islamic law is death, but in India, it makes a clear case for individuals staying off the business of punishing those who make such controversial statements against the Prophet. This particular fatwa is significant at a time when Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen is being hounded by several known and unknown Muslim groups for her controversial statements against Prophet Mohammed (claiming to act in accordance with Islamic law, by posing a threat to her life). Also, cartoons published in a Danish newspaper had drawn considerable ire from the community. There was a lot of tension when a minister in the UP Government under Mulayam Singh Yadav, Yaqoob Qureshi, went as far as to offer Rs 51 crore for the cartoonist’s head last year.

No one in the Saharanpur seminary wanted to come on record. But alims (scholars) when contacted said they thought the spirit behind the fatwa was very good and it established that the community, as it had democratic rights under the law of the land, believed in firmly adhering to the law. Some were also of the view that it should have come earlier, and should have been stated clearly when Iran had issued a death threat to author Salman Rushdie for Satanic Verses in 1987, that such a declaration was not valid in India.

Member of the Muslim Personal Law Board and Lucknow-based lawyer Zafaryab Jilani said, “I welcome this, as it reiterates that Muslims live by the law of the land. After the collapse of the Ottoman empire and the Caliphate, there is no one Islamic rule in the world. Muslims live under various regimes and work under respective legal systems. It is their duty to play by the rules in their respective countries.”

Recently, the Taslima issue had suddenly erupted in Hyderabad when she was attacked while attending a seminar and then when Muslim youth had emerged on the streets of Kolkata in large numbers, threatening violent consequences if she was not sent back. By now stating that it is not upto “individuals or Islamic organisations” but in accordance with the “Indian Constitution” that such acts have to be dealt with, the seminary has made it significantly easier for governments to deal with such situations.

Fatwas are issued by Darul Uloom, in response to specific queries, as answers in accordance with Islamic law or as solutions to certain disputes after consulting both parties to a domestic or civil dispute.