PAGES FROM MAULANA'S DIARY

The following is a selection from the diary of Maulana Wahiduddin Khan. January 1, 1986

Today Advocate Daniyal Latifi came to my office (Nizamuddin, New Delhi). During our conversation, I found out some very interesting legal anecdotes. He said that even the best of lawyers cannot manipulate an honest witness, provided he says only what he has seen without adding or deleting a single word. He reported some incidents in this regard.

Then he told a funny incident. A UK court decided to hand death sentence to a criminal. The words of the court were: He shall be hanged. When the magistrate saw the verdict, he said, “I can’t hang him. The verdict only says that he should be hanged, but it is not said how. Now I am not sure whether I should hang him from neck or feet.” Such incidents took place in courts of different countries. So the words of the law were made more comprehensive. I asked Mr Daniyal to write this incident in my diary.

I gifted him an audio cassette of my Urdu Book Jadeed Imkanat. The same evening, he telephoned me saying he had heard the cassette twice and liked it. I also presented to him my latest Urdu book Hal Yahan Hai.

January 2, 1986
Abu al-Tayyib Ahmad ibn al-Husayn al-Mutanabbi (d. 965) is a famous Arabic poet. His verses are famous for wisdom and philosophy of life. I met an elder in Delhi today. I said to him that a thriving nation possesses the quality of acknowledgement, and a nation on the decline lacks this quality of acknowledgement. I gave some examples in this regard. He listened silently. He then read a couplet of al-Mutanabbi:

If you honour a gentleman, you will make him your servant, And if you honour a degenerate man, he will rebel against you January 4, 1986 A Muslim leader came to Delhi and met me. He had prepared a memorandum in English. He gave me a copy of it. He wanted to present this memorandum to the Indian Prime Minister. The memorandum mentioned the economic backwardness of Muslims. The government was then asked to provide special concessions to Muslims until they become equal to the majority community in the economic field.

I already knew the leader. I knew he had his own business and rented houses. These earned him at least 10,000 rupees per month. On the other hand, his brother barely earned five hundred rupees a month. I said to the leader, "Your brother is way behind you in terms of making his livelihood. Therefore, you should keep giving half of your income to your brother every month until he becomes economically equal to you."

When he heard this, he started laughing. With a heavy heart, I said: I am surprised that you cannot offer the same concession to your own brother that you are asking the Hindu Prime Minister to offer.

What the Muslim leadership is unaware of today is that this world is not a world of concessions but a world of competition. The one who searches for concessions can find nothing for himself in this world. We must not entangle Muslims in the above kinds of false slogans, but tell them that they are living in the world of competition. Here you can gain something only when you prove your ability. If you cannot prove your ability, you will not find anything here.

January 5, 1986
Mr Shah Wasif Imam came to Delhi for some work. He came to my office (Nizamuddin, New Delhi) to meet me today. He has been studying Al-Risala monthly (Urdu version of Spirit of Islam) for two years. He is also a distributor of both Urdu and English magazines. I gave him two Urdu books “Haqeeqat ki Talash” and “Hal Yahan Hai”.

I asked him what his learnings from Al-Risala were. His reply in his own words is reproduced here:

“Before I was introduced to Al-Risala, I would see a city, I would think about its glory and the people who created it. After reading Al-Risala, I am lost in the greatness of the Creator who gifted human beings with the ability to build such awe-inspiring cities.” He added, “Earlier I thought I was Shah Wasif Imam. Now I think I am a servant of God.”

It is the grace of God that there are thousands of people today within whom this kind of thinking has been created after reading Al-Risala. May God spread the voice of Al-Risala further and make arrangements to convey it to the world through every language!

We receive letters almost every day and meet people who express similar sentiments. Muslim leaders, however, have not yet given importance to the voice of Al-Risala. In contrast, leaders of other faiths have appreciated the message of Al-Risala. This turn of events is no surprise. This is always the case with the unadulterated and pure call towards the truth.

January 6, 1986
A Muslim elder came to meet me. As he sat down, he said: “The judgement given by the Court of India concerning the provision of a divorced woman is an aggressive interference in the Islamic jurisprudence. Why don’t you write against it.” He was referring to the case of Shah Bano Begum v. Muhammad Ahmad Khan.

I asked him to first correct his sentence. This sentence is not correct as per my knowledge. The real thing that has happened is that a Muslim woman (Shah Bano Begum) went to an Indian court. She claimed that she should be given maintenance from her husband under one specific law of the country. The court accepted the claim of the Muslim woman after hearing the matter in detail and ruled that the defendant should pay her Rs 180 per month as per her demand.

You cannot call it the aggression of the court, because the aggressor is the one who takes the initiative. Here, the court did not take any action on its own in the matter. And it could not take any action in this regard of itself. If there is aggression in this case, it is from the Muslim woman. It was the Muslim woman (Shah Bano Begum) who went to court herself and presented the case. It was she who asked the court to get her the said money under the law of the country.

The fact is that in this case, calling the court aggressive is to blame others for your mistake. If you are pained to see Islamic law being interfered with, then reform Muslim men and Muslim women. Train them not to take their disputes to court. When the hypocrites of Madinah took their disputes to the Court of the Jews, the Quran accused these hypocrites, not the Jewish courts.