BetweenTheLines

  Sameer Arshad Khatlani Follow  on Facebook I t is now clear as daylight: having Indian Muslims at each other's throats is an aspect of the larger project against them. Much of it is done with a lot of subtlety including through hired guns for deniability. One such hired gun, claiming to be a Shia, released a book this month and in the process revealed the hand of his sponsors by making some incendiary and unpublishable comments against Islam and the Prophet amid usual open calls for violence against Muslims. He got an instant pat on the back from his patrons but in the process ended up exposing himself for a Shia is defined by her devotion to the prophet and his family. ALSO READ: Indian Muslim Invisiblisation & Curious Case Of Pakistani Shias The Prophet, for Shias, tops the group of sanctified Chahardah Masum (14 immaculate from sin, or infallible). It includes the Prophet's daughter, Fatima, son-in-law, Imam Ali, grandsons, Hasan and Hussain, and Hussain’s descendants

Sameer Arshad Khatlani Follow  on Facebook O n one of his trips to Srinagar, the capital of the Indian side of Kashmir, veteran BBC journalist Sir Mark Tully heard an unusual, rhythmically rising and falling chanting from a white marble mosque. The chanting at sunrise from the revered mosque on the banks of the Dal Lake in Hazratbal, which houses a relic of the Prophet Muhammad, he wrote, sounded 'not unlike Hindu bhajans'. Tully was not entirely off the mark. The chanting was that of Aurad-ul-Fatiha, an anthology of Quranic verses and the Prophet’s sayings  14th-century saint Mir Syed Ali Hamdani complied for converts to Islam to chant in mosques similar to how it was done in temples. ALSO READ: Once Scorned, How Peshawaris From 'Central Asia's Piccadilly' Ruled Bollywood The faithful have been chanting the anthology in mosques since then in a major departure from the otherwise Muslim practice of silent worship. Hamdani, who popularised Islam among the masses in Ka