Articles by Dr. Parvez

INDIA ’S ELUSIVE FREEDOM A Freedom that never was…. 15 th of August 1947 is remembered in history as the day India ostensibly won her freedom from Colonial Powers and became Independent. The sense of pride associated with this apocryphal statement notwithstanding, Indians have surely never been able to taste that promised freedom even after 71 years today; and nor was it offered to them then, that day when Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru gave his memorable speech heralding India’s change of guard. For, at that very moment when the fulfillment of the ‘Tryst with Destiny’ was being announced, thousands of Indians were being killed, looted and raped. India was burning at both- her Eastern and Western borders. Riots of apocalyptic proportions had erupted on either sides of these fences and millions were displaced to an uncertain and tumultuous future. Those riots have been followed up with thousands more over the years, raising their grotesque faces every now and then, reminding us of...

What is Back to Nature and Islam? A frican-American author, Alex Haley, in his epic 1976 biographical novel, ‘Roots’ traces down his family lineage to an African village from which one of his ancestors was abducted centuries back and sold out as a slave in America. Haley, travels back to his ancestral village in Africa and is moved to tears on his ‘homecoming’. This sense of belonging that a person has with his ‘roots’ is so ingrained in one’s nature and is so powerful an instinct that it has been cruelly exploited by some communal forces back home in the past one year under the garb of Ghar Waapsi. But if you dig deeper, this campaign of Ghar Waapsi , if implemented in true letter and spirit, should take a person somewhere else… it should take him ‘back’ to Islam. What exactly is Islam? Or should we ask, ‘What is Islam not’? Islam, for one, is NOT a religion invented or pioneered by Prophet Muhammad ﷺ some 1400 years back. It is not an ‘also’ religion in the long list o...

Reservations- An Ignominy, A Grave Injustice! Repercussions of a Faulted System and Alternate Solutions W e Indians have, of late, started competing with each other in proving who’s more backward than the other and in this regard we seem to stand out from the rest of the world’s population, who, in sharp contrast, compete to prove how developed they are as compared to other competitors! This has led to shameless (and at times violent) protests demanding reservations in education and jobs by almost every Indian community. Obtaining fake caste certificates in the urge to prove themselves backward is also not unheard of. With every community craving to get its share from the reservation pie, this disturbing trend speaks volumes of our low self-esteem and blatant disregard for justice as Indians in general and Muslims in particular. Allow me to explain how…. What started as a 20% reservation for Scheduled Caste and 2% for Scheduled Tribe has eventually snowballed into a ma...

Human Rights & Guiding Principles of an Islamic State M an is a social animal who is unique in Allah’s realm of creation by virtue of having been given the freedom to exercise his own free will. However, history is witness to the fact that this free will has often been misused by man to usurp the rights of other men causing untold disorder and misery. There thus arose a need to specify what rights man has and what is the scope of his freedom. The Indian Constitution, in the year 1950, laid down certain Fundamental Rights for every citizen of India . A year earlier, shocked by the enormous number of casualties in World War II, the Geneva Convention enlisted the rights of Prisoners of War and rules of Warfare to be followed by all signatory countries. Going still back, we have the French Revolution from 1789-1799 and the resultant ‘Declaration of Rights of Man’ which speaks of Sovereignty of Man, Liberty, Equality, Right to Vote, Trial by Jury etc. We may also add the ...