Short term Muslim marriages boom in India

Suffering from abject poverty, Indian parents are putting their daughters in short-term marriages with wealthy Muslim tourists for money.

“In India the girls are coming for a cheaper rate and they are beautiful,” Inspector Vijay Kumar told The Telegraph.

“Even if they are only staying for a few days they are doing this kind of illegal marriages for sex.”

Many Indian families are putting their daughters in contracted marriages for short periods with wealthy Muslim travelers.

One of girls engaged in this kind of marriages was Nausheen Tobassum, a 17-year-old girl from Hyderabad in southern India.

Tobassum escaped a one-month marriage arranged by her family with a wealthy Sudanese tourist.

“I had to show courage to go to police against my parents,” she told The Telegraph.

“I don’t want to go back to my home, I am scared.”

The 44-year-old groom, married with two children in Khartoum, had paid around £1,200 for his would-be Indian wife for four weeks.

The story began when the young Indian girl was accompanied by her aunt to a hotel to be introduced with three other girls to the Sudanese man.

The man had paid 100,000 Rupees (around £1,200) to the girl’s aunt, who in turn paid 70,000 Rupees to her parents, 5,000 Rupees to the imam who conducted the marriage, 5,000 Rupees to an Urdu translator and kept 20,000 Rupees for herself.

Haram

A wedding certificate was prepared with fixed terms of divorce at the end of the groom’s holiday.

“I didn’t know what was happening and I agreed in ignorance. They forced me,” Tobassum said.

“They changed my date of birth certificate and made a fake one, where I was shown as 24 years old.”

Terrified by the situation, the would-be wife escaped and went to the police to report the incident.

“They exploit girls and that’s why I went to police,” she said.

The police arrested the groom, the victim’s aunt and the imam and issued a warrant for her parents’ arrest.

Shiraz Amina Khan of Hyderabad’s Women and Child Welfare Society, said there were up to 15 contract marriages in the city every month and that the number is rising.

“They come to Hyderabad because it has maximum downtrodden families,” she said.

“Thirty to forty percent of families are going for the option of contract marriages to relieve their poverty. It has to be stopped.”

Marriage in Islam is of utmost importance as it is upon the lawful union of a man and a woman that society grows strong and that moral is preserved.

The majority of the Prophet’s Companions hold the view that after the completion of the Islamic legislation, mut`ah marriage was made absolutely haram.

Delhi Muslims protest against killing of Rohingyas

Indian Muslim organizations and human rights bodies protested against the atrocities and cruel activities being meted out against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.

The protest organized by All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat condemned the Myanmar government for its inaction to stop violence against Rohingya Muslims in the Rakhine (Arakan) state.

The protest was to be staged in front of Myanmar Embassy in Nyay Marg, but Delhi police stopped the protesters at Teen Morti Marg near Chankyapuri police station.

The persecution of Rohingyas started way back in the 1960s. In 1982, under a strange law, they were stripped of their Burmese citizenship, as they had to prove that their ancestors lived in Burma way back in 1832.

“No such law exists anywhere in the world and most Burmese will lose their citizenship if applied on all people in the country,” said one protester.

Rohingyas have lived in that part of Burma continuously for around a thousand years and have ruled the area for centuries. As a result of this persecution and maintaining curfew-like situation in Rohingya towns and villages, close to a million have fled to the neighboring countries especially Bangladesh.

The current wave of persecution and ethnic cleansing spearheaded by Buddhist monks started in February last year when murder, destruction and torching of thousands of houses and community facilities and expulsion of Rohingyas from their villages started with the connivance of the Burmese government.

An estimated 150,000 Rohingyas have since fled their country taking refuge in Bangladesh, India, Thailand and Malaysia where they live in pitiful conditions. Many have died while attempting to flee in small boats.

“We find it highly disappointing that supporters of the on-going democracy process in Myanmar, led by the Nobel Laureate Ang San SuuKyi, have refused to stand for these hapless citizens of Burma. We condemn the inaction by the Myanmar government and ask our own government as well as the international community to stand by the Rohingya people in their hour of need and pressure the Myanmar junta to mend its ways and apply to the Rohingyas same principles which are applied to other citizens,” said Mohammad Ahmad, secretary-general of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind.

Meanwhile, JIH expressed concern over conviction of Bangladesh Jamaat leaders for alleged 1971 war crimes without giving them full opportunity to defend.

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had withdrawn all the cases against them by declaring general amnesty.

Jamaat appealed to international organizations including the Non-Aligned Movement, SAARC and Organization of Islamic Cooperation to pressure Bangladesh government to stop its oppressive practices against Jamaat leaders.

India Muslims rebuff lavish marriages

CAIRO – A leading Islamic organization has called on Indian parents to keep low-key marriages, warning against the menace posed by high dowries to the society.

“People should know that only the income which is earned through rightful measures give peace,” Dr T Ansari, National Coordinator of All India Milli Tanzeem Al-Faiz (AIMTAF), told Daily Bhaskar on Monday, January 21.

Organizing a welfare conference in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh, senior members of AIMTAF urged people not to make marriage an ostentatious function.

They urged Muslim parents to educate their daughters and help them become financially independent.

“Educated girls will be able to provide education to their children,” Ansari said.

Mustafa Dehlavi, President of AIMTAF, shares a similar opinion.

“There should be ban on DJs, fire woks, display of arms and celebratory firing,” he said.

There are some 140 million Muslims in Hindu-majority India, the world’s third-largest Muslim population after those of Indonesia and Pakistan.

In Indian society, the family of the bride pays the dowry.

As a result of high dowries tradition, several young girls were obliged to discontinue education because the parents have the responsibility of getting them married off.

Several parents were also forced to take loans from banks to pay dowry to the groom.

As a result of rising poverty, many activists have warned that the sale of brides has become prevalent in India’s rural areas in the past decade.

Parents in some rural areas were also selling their kidneys to pay for dowry.

National Campaign

Highlighting the dangers of the phenomenon, the AIMTAF has urged nation-wide campaigns to spread their call.

“Campaigns need to be organized in localities as only when people get aware about the dowry menace it can be eradicated from the society,” Dehlavi, the AIMTAF president, said.

Similar calls for rebuffing lavish marriages were sponsored by Indian activists last year.

Youth Against Dowry (YAD), a platform of Muslim youth, started its movement in April to make the community free from the dowry threats through a signature campaign.

At their launch, nearly 100 youth from the community have already signed for the YAD campaign at Puttur town in the Dakshina Kannada district n south-western India.

In India, divorce and marriage issues are dominated by All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), the single largest religious body consisting of scholars of different schools of thought.

The AIMPLB was formed in 1973 to protect and apply Muslim Personal Law in marriage, divorce, succession and inheritance.

In 2005, Shiites and women seceded to form their own separate Boards, the All India Shiite Personal Law Board & the All India Muslim Women’s Personal Law Board.

India lifts Kashmir curfew

A curfew imposed on most of Indian-controlled Kashmir has been lifted, despite clashes between demonstrators and security forces in the summer capital of Srinagar.

Separatists called a general strike on Sunday to protest against Indian rule of the predominantly Muslim region and civilian deaths during confrontations with authorities.

Thousands of security forces patrolled some residential areas in the capital, asking people to stay indoors, witnesses said.

Shops and businesses remained shut and some restrictions were imposed in some areas of the city. The region’s nearly 60 newspapers were unable to publish for a third day.

“There are prohibitory orders in some parts of the city [Srinagar] as well as in some other districts, but curfew has been lifted from the valley,” Muzaffar Ahmad, a police official, told the Reuters news agency.

“The situation generally remained peaceful across Kashmir valley, barring a few incidents of stone pelting.”

The Indian government originally introduced the curfew on Wednesday.

‘We want freedom’

During a 24-hour suspension of the curfew on Saturday, called to allow residents to celebrate the annual Miraj-un-Nabi festival, which commemorates the Prophet Muhammad’s night journey to the heavens, clashes broke out in three areas of Srinagar.

Indian forces used tear gas and batons to disperse rock-throwing protesters.

Elsewhere in the city, thousands of demonstrators shouting “We want freedom” and “Blood for blood,” followed Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, a separatist leader, through the streets.

“Our civil disobedience and peaceful marches will continue until India withdraws its military and paramilitary soldiers from populated areas,” Farooq, the chairman of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, said, according to The Associated Press news agency.

Residents said security forces have killed 15 people during recent rallies, and the government sent in the army to quell the protests last week.

The Indian army had not been used for crowd control since major street demonstrations two decades ago.

Divided region

The tension in the Himalayan region – divided between Indian and Pakistani control – was reminiscent of the late 1980s, when protests against Indian rule sparked an armed conflict that eventually killed more than 68,000 people, mostly civilians.

Recent strikes and the curfew have badly affected tourism in India’s Kashmir.

Many  tourists have left the valley and the ones who remain face shortages of food and other basic amenities.

At present, tourist hubs like the Dal Lake are completely deserted.

“In the days to come, no tourist will come to Srinagar,” Muhammad Asif, a travel agent, said.

“The kind of unrest we have here, there will be no tourism left in Srinagar. Not only this year, even in the coming years nobody will come here if such a situation persists.

India and Pakistan have fought two wars over Kashmir.

India regularly accuses Pakistan of sending separatist fighters over the heavily militarised frontier to stir up trouble and has blamed the current protests on Pakistan-based groups bent on destabilising India, a charge Islamabad denies.

Indian Muslims pose as Hindus to get jobs

She ducks into a toilet stall on the platform and remerges a few moments later, transformed in a sari with vermillion powder on her forehead, and red and white conch bangles on her wrists – the symbols of a traditional, married Hindu woman.

Ms Begum is one of a number of India’s 150 million Muslims who adopt Hindu identities to avoid discrimination in the workplace.

“For the the whole day I shall maintain this Hindu appearance. My name is Laxmi, you know it’s also the name of the Hindu goddess,” she says.

“Before leaving home I took off my armband on which ‘Allah’ is embossed and put on whatever a Hindu woman usually wears. I live in a Muslim village. Villagers will feel bad to see me with the symbols of a Hindu woman.”

Ms Begum says she tried unsuccessfully to find a job for many years before deciding to hide her Muslim identity. Posing as a Hindu woman, she got her current job as an ayah (nursemaid) in a private hospital.

“Recently my hospital asked me to look for some girls to work there, but they asked me not to bring any Muslim candidate for the interview. If by chance they get to know that I am Muslim, I am sure I will be fired.”

Secret recruitment policies

Muslims who adopt fake Hindu identities mostly work in menial jobs in sectors where identity documents are not usually sought.

Barin Ghosh managed a domestic help and ayah supply agency in Kolkata until recently and says many recruitment agencies help Muslims find jobs by introducing them as Hindu.

“Almost 95 percent of the clients in my agency were Hindu and while seeking domestic helps, as much as 80 per centof the Hindu clients informed us that they would not employ any Muslims,” Mr Ghosh says.

“Muslims being poorer, more than half of the jobseekers coming to our agency were from this minority community. Sometimes we introduced Muslim jobseekers as Hindus to our Hindu clients and they got the jobs. I am sure many placement agencies on mutual interest maintain such secret policies to help Muslims get jobs.”

Anti-Muslim bias

Muslims make up 13 percent of India’s population and are the country’s largest minority.

However, community leaders have long alleged that an anti-Muslim bias exists in different levels of society.

In 2005, the government appointed the Sachar Commission to investigate suggestions that Muslims were disadvantaged in social, economic and educational terms.

It concluded that the socioeconomic condition of most Muslims was worse than that of the dalits, or ‘untouchables’, the lowest of the Hindu castes.

Ayesha Pervez, a minority rights activist, says widespread workplace discrimination means Muslims are unable to upgrade their standard of living.

“It’s not just in the unorganised sector where Muslim jobseekers face the hurdle of discrimination. Even in the government sector anti-Muslim discriminatory processes are thriving,” she says.

“In West Bengal where Muslims constitute 27 percent of the population, their representation in government jobs is as low as four percent. Muslim participation is also extremely low in the private sector.”

Muslims as untouchables

According to Prasenjit Biswas, a professor of philosophy at the North Eastern Hill University in Meghalaya, many Hindus count Muslims as untouchables.

He says that is at the root of the anti-Muslim discrimination in India.

“The anti-Muslim bias arises out of caste Hindu mindset of untouchability that considers Muslims as lesser than even the untouchables,” he says.

“The specific reason in eastern India is the deep-seated fear that the proximity of Muslims in the interior household will not only pollute the household but would bring in bad omen.”

Prof Biswas says although discriminating against Muslims is illegal, it is almost impossible for those affected to provide proof.

“So, they are forced to bear with this repressive system- in many cases by disguising themselves as Hindus, in attempt to seek work and live as equals in the society.”

Indian court rules in favor of mythology

First they created a dispute about the origin of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, India, then they installed idols of Hindu mythological gods and then they demolished the Mosque and finally they decided to partition the Mosque into three units, with one part offered to Muslims and the other two to Brahmans. In this process that spans over a few centuries, the Brahman politicians, religious leaders, fanatics and law enforcement agencies as well as judges acted within a framework that can easily be seen as prejudiced and biased.

Yet, the verdict on the Babri Masjid given by India’s Allahabad High Court has not settled the issue. With the exception of Brahman led fanatic and extremist groups, every group including several prominent Brahman intellectuals and lawyers in India feel that justice was not served on on September 30, 2010 when the Court decided to divide the Mosque into three portions with the main one going to Hindus.

With this judgment, a Judicial court for the first time in Indian history has given legitimacy to a myth that is based on fiction rather than facts.

Rama is a mythological king of Ayodhya in ancient Hindu religious texts. No respectable Brahman scholar accepts the story as true that was narrated by Valmiki, the poet harbinger in Sanskrit literature. Particularly the story that deals with the killing of a so called untouchable by Rama is widely accepted as mythology. Valmiki writes in the Ramayana that a Brahmin’s son died in a young age. In a Vedic (of Hindu religion) ruled country it was believed that everyone had a 100 year life. The Brahman went and complained to Ram about why his son died early. Ram thought that some un-Vedic things must have happened to cause this disruption in life span. He found out that Sambuk, a dalit (untouchable) was chanting Vedas. A person of the untouchable class was considered unclean and had thus defiled the Vedas, the Hindu religious text. So he killed Sambuk and the Brahman child became alive.

The writer of Ramayana, Valmiki according to Brahmin sources was a highway robber, robbing the people after killing them. After chopping their fingers he used to create and wear the Maala (necklace) of fingers of the victims, because of this his name was Angolimaal. Once, the robber tried to rob the divine sage Narada for the benefit of his family. Narada asked him if his family would share the sin he was incurring due to the robbery. The robber replied positively, but Narada told him to confirm this with his family. The robber asked his family, but none agreed to bear the burden of sin. Dejected, the robber finally understood the truth of life and asked for Narada’s forgiveness. Narada taught the robber to worship god. The robber meditated for many years, so much so that ant-hills grew around his body. Finally, a divine voice declared his penance successful, bestowing him with the name “Valmiki”: “one born out of ant-hills”. The Ramayana, originally written by Valmiki, consists of 24,000 verses in six cantos (some say seven i.e. including the Uttara Ramayana). The Valmiki Ramayana is dated variously from 500 BC to 100 BC. As with many traditional epics, it has gone through a long process of interpolations and redactions, making it impossible to date accurately.

It is this version of history that a judicial court has upheld, raising questions about the impartiality of the judiciary in India. Yet, a final verdict on India’s judiciary system is yet to be given. The Supreme Court will give the final verdict on the case that Muslims have appealed.

Doubtlessly, India’s youth deserve to be applauded for not falling into the propaganda of fanatics and zealots as they responded to the verdict in a civil manner unprecedented in India in similar situations.

The Allahbad High Court Judgment is biased. It is more like a religious and political statement than a judicial verdict. It ignores the rules of justice and defies the facts even the court upheld to be facts.

While it accepts the fact that no temple was demolished in the 16th century by Muslims to build the mosque, it describes the Babri Mosque a disputed land between two parties Hindus and Muslims. Paradoxically, it divides the mosque land into three parties Hindu, Muslims and Hindu Nirmohi Akhara.

While the court fails to identify the actual place of the birth of Rama, described as god, it gives the main portion of the Mosque to Hindus on the basis of the claim the Hindus made first in 1949 when they placed the idols of Rama inside the Mosque under the central dome. Ironically, the court acknowledges the conspiracy of placing the idols by a groups of Brahmans inside the Mosque without using the word conspiracy.

The court fails to record the fact that one of the parties was in contempt of the country by demolishing the Mosque and pitching its tent there while the case was being discussed in the country.

Based on a verbal narration of events in 1848 when parts of the premises were used by a section of Hindus as a place for Ram Alkhara and Sita Rasoi, the court allocates one third of the inside Mosque premises to Nirmohi Akhara while acknowledging the fact that the mosque was present since 16th century denies the mosque the actual location to rebuild itself. In fact, it echoes the Vishwa Hindu Parishad position that the mosque should be build in the adjoining land.

The Court verdict is not a unanimous verdict. Thus it is understood that honorable judges did not agree unanimously on the verdict. The minority of judges had doubts and questions about the validity and authenticity of the premises on which the verdict was based.

Obviously, justice has not been served in the case. The court by and large upheld the position of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bhartiya Janta Party and many other Brahman led organizations ignoring the historical facts that were established centuries ago. The court verdict sets a dangerous precedence because based on it, every historical Muslim monument and Mosque in India can be challenged and divided between parties who dispute their ownership.

The court decision is a set back to Indian judiciary and an alarming sign for minorities.

Under the circumstance, the Muslim community should defer the matter to the Supreme Court and if the judgment is upheld there, it should respect the decision believing the that ultimate justice will be served by the Judge of all judges. There is no need to defy the law and order and violate the sanctity of human life as was done by those who demolished the Mosque in 1992.

What is at stake in India is not a piece of land but the whole concept of justice. The court, unfortunately upheld historical fabrications, distortion and lies as the basis of its verdict and ignored the facts while acknowledging their existence.

The judgment is a sad precedence in the history of Indian judiciary. Perhaps Indian Muslims will learn a lesson from this by empowering themselves through education and economic self sufficiency.

Deadly blasts hit India’s Hyderabad

At least 11 people have been killed  and 47 people injured after three bomb blasts struck the southern Indian city of  Hyderabad.

The blasts on Thursday were about 10 minutes apart and occurred near a movie theater and a bus station.

Local reports indicate that as many as fifteen people might have been killed and that the injured are being rushed to nearby hospitals.

“The devastation is pretty widespread. This part of the city is a very popular bazar area, very popular with young people when they’re going out in the evening,” sources said.

Police say they are trying to determine the cause of the explosions.

The situation in India has been tense, with trade union strikes entering their second day and the arrest of several members of the militant Islamist group, Lashkar-e-Taiba in recent days

Hyderabad bombings raise specter of Hindu-Muslim violence

NEW DELHI, India — Almost as soon as the bombs ripped through a crowded Hyderabad street last Thursday, fingers started pointing at Pakistan.

Given the recent execution by Indian authorities of Kashmiri militant Mohammed Afzal Guru, many assumed a Pakistan-based terror outfit like Lashkar e Toiba was seeking revenge. Many braced for heightened cross-border tensions.

But, some say, the real fallout may be new conflict between Hindus and Muslims within India, rather than a further deterioration of New Delhi’s relations with Islamabad, especially with 2014 national elections looming.

“Investigations have just begun,” said Hashmi, “but the media is already saying it is the [Lashkar e Toiba-backed] Indian Mujahideen, and taking all these names.”

“There’s almost an atmosphere of terror where Muslims live together. Nobody knows whose son will be picked up for this.”

Crackdowns on young Muslims in the wake of 2007 bombings that struck the Mecca Masjid mosque in Hyderabad have left the minority population angry and suspicious of the government.

Neither the November 2008 terrorist attacks on Mumbai nor subsequent incidents like the August 2012 bombings in a shopping center in Pune, Maharashtra, or the September 2011 bombing of the Delhi High Court have triggered Hindu-Muslim riots.

But some observers fear that such a backlash grows more likely as 2014 national elections get closer, since Indian politicians have long used interreligious violence to win votes. Most famously, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) first rose to national power in the wake of Hindu-Muslim violence over the destruction of the Babri mosque in 1992.

“None of those guilty of communal violence have ever been punished,” said Manisha Sethi, president of the Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Association (JTSA).

“There is a general systemic tolerance of crimes of communal violence and this impunity creates possibilities of further violence.”

In the leadup to Thursday’s blasts, Hyderabad had been aboil over hate speech by Muslim politicianAkbaruddin Owaisi of the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM). Released on bail on Friday, Owaisi allegedly sparked outrage by suggesting at a rally that Muslims should attack Hindus, though he has denied those charges.

Subsequently, Pravin Togadia of the far-right Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) retaliated with some inflammatory comments of his own, bringing the issue to national prominence and further alienating the Muslim population.

And there are countless disputes over religious sites in the offing in other locations like the Kamal Maula Masjid in Madhya Pradesh, where Hindu extremists claim that a Hindu center of learning once stood, and the Bhagyalakshmi temple, which is located in the Muslim area of Hyderabad and which some claim threatens the city’s most famous historical site, the (Muslim) Charminar.

Activists who work on behalf of India’s Muslims worry these developments could spell danger for the minority group in the leadup to polls — especially following the bombings in Hyderabad on Thursday.

“There have been several low intensity riots at least since last year across the country,” said Sethi.

“This will certainly only rise in the run up to 2014, as both BJP and Congress compete for the right wing space.”

Already, more lives were lost to interreligious riots in 2012 than in any year since 2004, when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh came to power, according to India’s Hindustan Times newspaper. Nearly 185 people were killed in so-called communal violence over the first 10 months of last year for which statistics are available.

Sethi, Hashmi and others suggest that most of these incidents are not spontaneous eruptions of anger, but orchestrated by right wing political groups like the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

Those charges have not been proven, and RSS national spokesman Ram Madhav categorically denied that the organization encourages violence of any kind.

“Allegations of Sangh groups trying to stir up communal tensions are false and [politically] motivated,” Madhav told GlobalPost via email. “We appeal for calm and we want [the government] to act tough with terrorists and their sponsors.”

But whether orchestrated or spontaneous, a series of terrorist incidents, violent altercations and police reprisals hints at a disturbing disintegration of religious harmony in India.

Over the past several months small-scale riots have flared up across India in Faizabad and Kosi in Uttar Pradesh, Gopalgarh in Rajasthan and Dhule in Maharashtra — with the last incident generating disturbing video evidence suggesting that police may have purposefully targeted Muslims when bullets were fired to disperse the rioters.

Meanwhile, from Delhi to Hyderabad, local Muslims and activist groups say police have arbitrarily rounded up, detained and even tortured young Muslims in the wake of bombings or terrorist threats, resulting in the further alienation and demonization of the community.

A report by Sethi’s JTSA, for instance, documented 16 cases in which the so-called Special Cell of the Delhipolice arrested young Muslims on charges related to terrorism, only to see the cases against them collapse for want of evidence — after the accused had spent as much as 14 years behind bars.

Similarly, doubts still linger about the killing of two young Muslims in a supposed shootout with police in the “Batla House encounter” following five serial bomb blasts in New Delhi in in 2008.

And in Hyderabad itself, blame for the 2007 Mecca mosque bombing, which killed 14 people, shifted from local Muslim boys allegedly affiliated with a foreign terrorist cell to members of a homegrown, Hindu nationalist group called Abhinav Bharat when a former RSS activist named Swami Asseemanand allegedly confessed to the crime. (He later recanted).

“We consider the allegations as baseless,” said RSS spokesman Madhav. “All the cases are still at the investigation level. Initially more than 100 Muslim youths were arrested for the terror acts. They had confessed to their involvement too. But later the investigators started claiming that Hindu youths were responsible…. The RSS neither supports, nor sponsors violence and terrorism.”

But the idea that both Hindu and Muslim groups might gain from terrorist attacks — and from the associated intercommunity tensions and violence they engender — could bode ill for next year’s campaign.

“The point is that any such strike only allows the cementing of a jingoistic hardline ‘nationalism’,” said Sethi. “It’s anybody’s guess who this helps.”

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/india/130222/hyderabad-india-bombings-pakistan-hindu-muslim-tensions

Poor Indian Muslims selling daughters for marriage

Abject poverty is forcing poor Indian Muslim families to sell their young daughters to older men for marriage.

“They just wanted to pay less,” Gausia, an outspoken young woman now in her twenties, told the Guardian.

Living in abject poverty, Gausia’s family found it more lucrative for them to sell their daughter for an old stranger for marriage.

“My parents know I am unhappy and I hope they regret their action forever,” said Gausia, who comes from the southern city of Hyderabad.

In her community, the family of the bride pays the dowry.

Tying the knot, Gausia was taken by her new husband to live in India-ruled Kashmir valley.

There, her husband decided to change her name to Gulshan to sound more Kashmiri.

“He likes the sound of it more,” she said.

Since her marriage, Gausia never saw any of her family.

“I was told that once a girl gets married, she must live and die in her husband’s house.”

Gausia is not alone.

Sakina, a 22-year-old teenager, was also sold by her family to a 60-year-old Kashmiri man for marriage.

“Nobody helped me,” Sakina, a 22-year-old Kashmiri teenager, told the Guardian.

The Kashmiri girl, from Kolkata, was sold at the price of 1,200 rupees (£15). She was duped by her sister before the marriage ceremony.

After the wedding, she was taken by her husband to live in Pakharpora, a small village in the Budgam district of the Kashmir valley, where she found herself in an entirely different culture and climate.

“I have heard heartbreaking tales,” said Lubna Khan, a female doctor who makes a weekly visit to the rural outback.

Activists say that the sale of brides has become prevalent in India’s rural areas in the past decade because of the rising poverty.

“And this practice should be stopped,” said Khan.

Valley of Widows

For some Kashmiri men, it is cheaper to get brides from abroad than from inside the province.

“This is us with no money and little to hope for,” Maqboola Wani, a thin, middle-aged laborer, told the Guardian.

“We are the bottom.”

But the bride trade has sparked anger in Kashmir, where there are many young widows, who lost their husbands in the decades-long conflict.

“If there are so many young widows why aren’t Kashmiri men getting married to them?” asked Nighat Shafi Pandit, who founded the Help foundation to assist orphans and underprivileged women in Kashmir.

“If our Prophet got married to widows, why don’t our Muslim men follow that?”

Thousands of women in Kashmir have lost their husbands, brothers and sons to what rights activists call “forced disappearances”.

Up to 10,000 Kashmiris have gone missing since 1989, mostly after being detained by Indian security forces who have broad powers of arrest.

At least 2,000 of the disappeared people were young married males, according to the independent Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP).

“The name widow means ostracisation, which means all fault lies in the women,” said Pandit.

The Muslim-majority Himalayan region is divided into two parts and ruled by India and Pakistan, which have fought two of their three wars since independence in 1947 over the region.

Pakistan and the UN back the right of the Kashmir people for self-determination, an option opposed by New Delhi.

Shamima was thrown out by her in-laws after her husband was killed in clashes with Indian forces in 2004.

The penniless mother of two was approached by her late husband’s best friend.

“He offered to take care of the family if I would be his keep,” she said, her eyes welling up with tears.

“My husband respected him so much.”

Meet the ex-Hindu who converted 108,000 people to Islam

MATLI: Such are Deen Mohammad Shaikh’s powers of persuasion that he has converted 108,000 people to Islam since 1989, the year he left his birth religion Hinduism behind.

His multi-coloured business card describes the Matli dweller as the president of the Jamia Masjid Allah Wali and Madrassa Aisha Taleem-ul Quran – an institute for conversions to Islam.

The reedy 70-year-old brandishes an embellished cane. A red-and-white keffeiyah perched on his shoulder offers people a hint to his theological leanings.

As he speaks to The Express Tribune, his arm slices an invisible arc through the air. He is gesturing to a vast expanse of nine acres of donated land where converts are invited to pitch a tent and stay. “My heartfelt wish is that the entire world becomes Muslim,” comes his response, when asked about the en masse conversions. His piety is matched only by its ambition.

But contrary to the grandiose proclamation, this preacher isn’t a repository of rehearsed sound bites. It is only after he settles down on a charpoy that he deigns to embark on the journey of a Hindu named Jhangli who became an expert in evangelism.

“I always loved Islam,” he begins. “I read the Holy Quran and realised that 360 gods were not of any use to me.”

At first he had to study the Holy Quran in secret. There was the risk of being misunderstood if a Muslim caught him with the holy book. He started fasting and in fact he would begin a day before Ramazan started.

Shaikh’s mother grew alarmed at her son’s forays into another faith. She thought that if she married him off, he would not ‘leave’. Thus, he was barely 15 when his wedding took place, followed by a quick overtaking by nature – four girls and eight boys.

But despite this, he was drawn back to his curiosity and managed to find a teacher, Sain Mohammad Jagsi, who instructed him in the Holy Quran and Hadiths or sayings of the Prophet Mohammad (pbuh).

Fortunately, Shaikh’s uncle was of the same mind and the two men agreed that they would give each other the strength. Shaikh held off until his daughter was married to a Hindu as planned, since he had already “given his word”. Then there was no turning back.

After his conversion, Deen Mohammad Shaikh made it his mission to woo others. He began in his own backyard, preaching to family, before venturing beyond this comfort zone. Encounters with the rich and powerful helped pave the way. Retired Pakistan Army general Sikandar Hayat, who owns a sugar mill in Matli, offered Shaikh money, which he turned down. Instead, he urged Hayat to give jobs to some of the new converts. Hayat and his daughter proved extremely helpful in providing assistance.

Now, Shaikh says, his fame has spread and people come to him from as far as Balochistan, members of all religions and sects, who would like to convert. A small mosque has sprung up in his residential compound along with a number of rooms where children – mostly girls – are taught how to say their prayers and recite the Holy Quran.

One of the teachers is 14-year-old Sakina, who is just 15 days into the job. “Only a few students are difficult to teach,” she says while commenting on their ability to recite a text in an unknown language.

Shaikh is aware of the difficulties converts face while taking on what appear to be the initially daunting rigours of a brand new system. He makes life easy for the first 40 days. “They only have to pray farz!” he says while referring to the mandatory parts. This relaxed schedule ensures that they can ‘confirm their faith’. He understands that if he demanded they start out with praying five times a day to offer even the optional and ‘bonus’ parts, “They would run away!” as he puts it with a look of mock horror on his face.

Other than this, he is reluctant to actually explain how he influences the people. All he offers is a nugget of fire and brimstone: “I tell them that I was a Hindu too and that they would burn in Hell if they are not Muslim.”

More than saving a soul

There are other practical considerations that accompany conversions. In order to ‘save’ the converts from influential Hindus in other districts, Shaikh packs them off to Hub Chowk while the Kalima is still moist on their lips. “Their families would beat them up (for converting) otherwise,” he explains.

This trick of the ‘trade’ he learnt from personal experience. He alleges that he was kidnapped along with his daughter-in-law by influential Hindus who threatened him so that he would stop converting people. “They don’t want these poor Hindus to stand up to them when they become Muslims,” Shaikh maintains.

Despite 108,000 conversions, for which a record is kept, Shaikh still doesn’t feel his work is done. He wants everyone to be a Muslim and learn from his example. He also attends the Tablighi Jamaat’s annual congregation in Raiwind, although he doesn’t believe in sectarian divisions. “All groups are like brothers to me,” he declares.