Zeenews Bureau
Deoband (UP): Terming the recitation of ‘Vande Mataram’ as against Islam, the Jamiat-e-Ulema Hind (JEU) has passed a resolution against the national song.
According to a resolution passed at the Deoband national convention meet on Tuesday, Muslims should not sing 'Vande Matram' as some verses of the patriotic song are against the tenets of Islam.
Incidentally, the controversy comes on a day when Home Minister P Chidambaram is to address the convention at the Deoband seminary, today.
Many leaders of the Jamiat-e-Ulema Hind, the organiser of the event, are said to be against ‘Vande Matram’.
Another prominent Islamic leader and Rajya Sabha MP Mehmood Madani has also objected to some lines in the national song.
The Muslim Law Board has justified the decision saying that (Muslims) can’t offer prayers to anyone but Allah. Kamal Farooqui, a prominent leader of the Board said, “We love the nation but can’t worship it."
According to sources, there was a clamour among a section of the scholars attending the conference, which opened yesterday, that a formal religious decree or a ‘fatwa’ should be issued against ‘Vande Matram’.
In an apparent attempt to pacify this section, the conference passed a resolution to this effect. Apart from it, 25 other resolutions were also passed which included a resolution denouncing terrorism.
The conference, which opened yesterday at the Islamic institute in Deoband, was to be attended by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi also but sources yesterday confirmed that two will not travel to the western UP city.
The gathering, organised by Jamiat-e-Ulema Hind, is the first annual meeting of the organisation being held at Deoband. Nearly 10,000 clerics and Islamic scholars are expected to attend the event while the turnout of Muslims likely to cross the five-lakh marks.
The Jamiat meet is taking place in the backdrop of a series of conferences of Islamic scholars of different schools and activists explaining why Islam and terror of the jihadi brand were mutually exclusive.
First Published: Tuesday, November 03, 2009, 15:48