The Rohingya Muslims.

By Nurul Islam President Arakan Rohingya National Organisation (ARNO) Arakan, formerly called Rohang, lies in the north–western part of Burma with 360 miles coastal belt from the Bay of Bengal. It borders 167 miles with Bangladesh both by land and sea. Rohingyas have been living in Arakan from time immemorial. They are a people with distinct culture and civilization of their own. They trace their ancestry to Arabs, Moors, Pathans, Moghuls, Bengalis and some Indo-Mongoloid people. Early Muslim settlements in Arakan date back to 7th century AD. Burma is a home to numerous ethnic groups and about 60% of the area is inhabited by nearly 140 ethnic races and Rohingya is one of them. Burma has a population of about 50 million of which nearly 8 millions are Muslims. Of the Muslim population about 3.5 millions (both at home and at the places of refuge) are Rohingyas of Arakan. The Rohingyas are a majority community in Arakan. Due to large scale persecution through ethnic cleansing and genocidal action against them, about 1.5 million Rohingyas were forced to leave their hearth and home since Burmese independence in 1948. These unfortunate uprooted people are mostly found in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia; also in UAE, Thailand and Malaysia. Present distribution of the Rohingya population is given below: Inside Burma: 2 million* Bangladesh: 600,000 * Pakistan: 350,000* Saudi Arabia 400,000* Others (U.A.E., Thailand, Malaysia.) : 100,000* * Approximation 1. Occupation: The Rohingyas are living on agriculture. Arakan state’s agricultural output is mainly contributed by Rohingyas. Small percentage of them are engaged in fishing and trade & business. Besides there are Rohingya artisans, blacksmiths and carpenters. Due to discrimination against them, the Rohingyas have become landless and homeless. Their farm lands are being grabbed by the new Buddhist settlers being invited from within and outside the country. Over and above, high taxation on agricultural produce, continued forced labour and confiscation of farm lands and various restrictions on farming, conspire them to abandon their lands, live below poverty line or face starvation. At present, the number of Rohingya traders and businessmen sharply declined. They are not allowed to do trade and business freely. Sometimes, they require to share their business with the Buddhists giving them lion shares without investment. Ther military regime has prohibited the Rohingyas of their right to freedom of movement within the country, nay within the same locality seriously affecting the socio-cultural, economic, educational activities and daily life of the Rohingyas. The regime has stopped recruitment of Rohingyas even in civil services since 1970s. No Rohingyas are allowed to enter into defense services. 2. Religion, Culture and Civilization of Rohingyas: Rohingyas are staunch followers of Islam. Most of the elderly Rohingya grow beards and the women wear hijab. All Rohingya houses are surrounded by high bamboo walls. There are mosques and Madrassahs (religious schools) in every quarter and village. The men pray in congregation, where as the female pray at home. There is still in existence of a social bond in every village called ”Samaj”. All social welfare activities like Adhahi meat distribution, helping the poor, widows, orphans and needy, marriage and funereal functions are done collectingly by the Samaj. The Ulema play a very prominent role particularly in matters relating to persoanal laws, like family affairs of the Rohingyas. Unfortunately, today the cultural problem becomes one of the most important problems of the Rohingyas in Burma. The Muslims have to encounter strong pressure of the Buddhist culture. Particularly the Rohingyas have to confront ideological assault from all directions. The Rohingyas are considered practicing the foreign way of life having no origin in Burma. According to the ruling military the Rohingyas are to adopt and entertain no ideas but those of Burman race and culture and Buddhism. The Muslims or Rohingyas are told to discard Islamic names and adopt Burman names. Everywhere Muslims’ or Islamic are razed to the ground. Hundreds of mosques have been demolished. Construction of new mosques or repairs to the old ones are prohibited. Pagodas, monasteries and Buddhist temples have been erected in every nook and cranny of the Rohingya homeland. Muslim students have been brainwashed in schools where anti-Islamic materials are being taught to them. Islam and Islamic culture are always projected or presented inhumiliating, derogatory, degrading and distorted forms. 3. Education of Rohingya: Before 1962 military take over Rohingya Muslims did not lag behind their Buddhist sister community .Due to poverty, serious discrimination and continued persecution against them, the number of Rohingya students have declined much. To get admission in colleges and universities for higher studies is a problematic matter for the Rohingyas. Severe restrictions have been imposed on their pursuing professional courses for citizenship question. There are a number of voluntary religious schools educating a good percentage of Rohingya students. However, because of various restrictions, lack of funds and facilities these institutions are unable to modernize the teaching methods thus failing to produce efficient students or manpower for the society. Most of the Rohingyas living in exile have little means to educate their children. 4. Political status of Rohingya: Prior to 1962 the Rohingya community has been recognized as an indigenous ethnic nationality of Burma. They have their representatives in Burmese parliament and some of them have bean appointed as ministers, parliamentary secretaries and in high government positions. After the military take over they have been systematically deprived of their political rights. With the promulgation of the most controversial and discriminatory citizenship law of 1982 they are declared as “non-national” or “foreign residents”. Very much contradictory to their declaration, the military could not disallow the Rohingyas to participate in multi-party elections held in 1990, the result of which was not implemented by the military junta. Today the Rohingyas are living in sub-human condition with uncertain future. They are declared a people fit to be exterminated. 5. Junta’s policy towards the Muslims of Burma: the ruling military junta practices two pronged de-Islamisation policy in Burma: -- physical extermination through genocide and ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims of Arakan and cultural assimilation of Muslims living in other parts of Burma -- Their main objective is to turn strategic Muslim Arakan into a Burmanised Buddhist region by reducing the Muslims into insignificant or manageable minorities. 6 Crimes committed against Rohingyas and present situation: Arbitrary arrests, torture, summary execution, custodial killings are rampant. The Rohingyas are engaged in forced unpaid slave labor days in, days out. Confiscation of farm lands, uprooting of Muslim settlements, eviction of inmates, establishment of new Buddhist settlements on evacuated Muslim land. Demolishing of mosques, religious schools and erection of pagodas, Buddhist temples with a view to changing the landscape of Arakan. Rape and dishonouring of women, forced marriage of Muslim women by Buddhists, banning hijab wearing and forced use of contraceptives and imposition of restriction on marriage of Rohingya couples. Restriction on movement, even from one village to another within the same locality, on socio-cultural and religious activities, trade and business. Revocation of citizenship depriving the Rohingya of citizenship rights including the right to seek higher and professional education. Unbearable taxation on all agricultural produces and even on domestic livestocks like cattle, goats, fowls etc. Uprooting of villages and eviction of inmates creating internal refugees or making them to wander from place to place while causing refugee exoduses off and on in to the neighbouring countries. 9. Refugee exodus: As a result of physical extermination, ethnic cleansing operations, large scale persecution and uprooting of villages and eviction of inmates, there were unprecedented refugee influxes into Bangladesh once in 1978 and the other in 1991-1992 with constant trickle of refugee exodus all along.. About 1.5 million Rohingyas have so far been evicted from Arakan since the year of Burmese independence in 1948.

http://www.rohingya.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=14&Itemid=27

Wa'laykum Salam.

John Muhammad Butt.

Al Salamu 'Alaykum.

I found this beautiful real life story of a revert on cambridgekhutbas. Alhamdulillah, a really heartwarming story of a brother's reversion and then his study in the greatest Islamic Seminary in the world, Dar al 'Uloom Deoband and his subsequent life. Short and sweet.

By Nadene Ghouri Deoband, India

Forty years after following the hippie trail to South Asia, John Butt is still living in the region, and still spreading a message of peace and love - though now as an Islamic scholar.
As our car turned around the bumpy Indian road, a gleaming white marble minaret came into view. My fellow passenger, John Mohammed Butt, could barely contain his excitement.
"Can you see it?" he asks. "It's like the Oxford University of Islamic learning. For me these minarets and domes are just like the spires and towers of Oxford.

John Butt is the only Westerner to have graduated from Darul-Uloom Deoband

"It's been almost 30 years since I was last here and I am still getting the same thrill. This is my alma mater."
The alma mater in question is Darul-Uloom Deoband, South Asia's largest madrassa, or Islamic school.
Driving through the madrassa gates, we entered a world rarely seen by Western eyes.
Deoband was built in 1866 by Indian Muslims opposed to the then British rule. Little has changed since - winding streets and tiny courtyards lined with stalls selling fragrant chai, bubbling pots of rice and paintings of Mecca.
Everywhere are the Talibs, religious students, young men with dark-eyed fervent expressions carrying books or quietly reciting the Koran.
And in another scene reminiscent of Oxford, students riding bicycles.
A chai seller recognises John and runs towards him. "John Sahib, John Sahib."
The two had not seen each other in decades, yet the man remembers him instantly. "John Sahib was the only student I ever saw who used to go jogging.
"There was only one John Mohammed - unique," he laughs.
That is perhaps not so surprising, when you learn that John Butt remains the first and only Western man ever to have graduated from Deoband.
He showed me his old dormitory room, a windowless cell where he spent eight years in a life of virtual seclusion, living under a regime of prayer and Koranic study.

Imposing figure
But that is just one facet of this man's extraordinary life.
Aside from his time at Deoband, he has spent most of the past 40 years living among the fierce Pashtun tribes, who inhabit the lawless hinterland between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
He went there in 1969, he says, as a dope-smoking young hippie and never came home.
He laughs. "When people call me an ageing ex-hippie, I always reply that I am ageing maybe, but I'm certainly not ex. I'm still a hippie."
John Butt cuts an imposing figure.
At 6ft 5ins (1.95m) tall, he sports a long white beard and alabaster skin that is almost translucent.
Dressed in flowing white ethnic robes, he reminds me of a Benedictine hermit monk or a Victorian explorer, swashbuckling straight out of the pages of an historical novel.
He tells me he adores the Queen, Stilton is his favourite cheese and that football is his passion.
Yet among the border tribes, he is regarded as a native Pashtun and revered as an Islamic scholar.

Home for him, until recently, was a tiny village in Pakistan's Swat valley.
Swat was once a popular tourist destination but is now the scene of regular battles between the Pakistani military and the Taliban.
But back in 1969, the young John was hooked from the moment he saw Swat, describing to me snow-capped mountains, rivers like flowing jewels, forests and alpine pastures.
It was, he says, "like Tolkien's Middle-earth, magical and other worldly" inhabited by tribal people who were "very pleasant, big-hearted, tolerant, easy-going and welcoming".
When his fellow hippies grew up and went home to become accountants and lawyers, John stayed on - becoming fluent in the Pashto language and studying Islam.
But John's world changed in the late 1980s, with the arrival of jihadists, who came to the border areas from all over the world to fight the war against the Russians in Afghanistan.
"I saw the rural, religious Pashtun way of life I had come to love so much being diluted, contaminated and poisoned, in particular by Arabs from the Middle East," he says.
"The way they practise Islam is very different to the tribal areas, but they used money and influence to impose their own set of values."
So he decided to fight for his adopted culture.

Peaceful Islam
In the early 1990s, he joined the BBC World Service Pashto service and helped to set up New Home New Life, a now iconic Afghan radio soap opera, known as The Archers of Afghanistan.

I've hired some of the best Islamic scholars in the region - pious, good and brave men

Six years ago, he set up a radio station which broadcasts across the Afghan-Pakistan border and which tries to promote tribal traditions along with peace and reconciliation.
More recently, John has switched his attentions back to Afghanistan and is spearheading the formation of a new Islamic university in the predominantly Pashtun city of Jalalabad.
"It makes perfect sense. There is currently nowhere in Afghanistan where a young man can do higher Islamic studies. They go to Pakistan, where as we know some of them have become radicalised," he says, emphasising that his university will give a platform to moderates.
But this promotion of peaceful Islam has set him on a collision course with militants. His beloved Pakistan has now become too unsafe for him.

 

"Swat is a militarised zone and people I see as foreigners there now treat me like I'm the foreigner, even though I lived there for 40 years.
"It's hard to work out who is who any more - who is Taliban, who is criminal. The waters are very muddy."
Last year, waters of another kind finally put paid to his idyll, when his house was washed away in the floods which devastated the area and killed thousands.
"It was a relief in some ways. When I lost the house, I knew I'd never go back there."
Afghanistan has also become increasingly perilous after Taliban death threats.
The Taliban have delivered so-called night letters - notes hand-delivered in secret and at night for maximum impact - warning students not to study at the university and denouncing John as a Christian missionary or an "orientalist".
Death threats have also been made to his teachers and staff.
"I've hired some of the best Islamic scholars in the region - pious, good and brave men," he says. "They know this is for the benefit of Afghanistan and they insist they will stay working with me despite the dangers."
As I said goodbye, he was planning to travel to Jalalabad on the local bus. We talked about the possibility of him being attacked and he admitted he could easily be killed.
But when I asked if he was scared, he brushed me off with a shrug. "You only die once. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow."
Wa'laykum Salam.

From Tajikistan to Tragickistan.

Al Salamu 'Alaykum.

The impoverished Tajik Government is trying some new tactics in order to become progressive.

These include banning men less than 18 years of age from the mosque, preventing parents from giving their children Arabic names(the Tajik President calls them scary names), forcibly closing hundreds of mosques, preventing long beards and calling back students studying in Madarsahs outside Tajikistan. Perhaps they feel that this game of repression that they are playing will be able to stem the tide of Islam in that country? If they do, then they are very, very wrong. The same people who are today banning our children from the mosque will dangle from street lamps at every corner of the Capital soon with their entrails hanging from their slit bellies, Inshallah.

See this: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/tajikistan/8594032/Tajik-ban-on-children-in-mosques-could-be-disastrous.html

Conclusion: Mr President, if you want to tangle, then get ready to dangle.

Wa'laykum Salam.