Ziya Us Salam – författare

Anyone who follows the news knows that the Muslims of India are under siege. They face what author Ziya Us Salam calls the gravest challenge to the community, and to the definition of a secular India enshrined in India’s Constitution, since independence. To be a Muslim in India today is to live with the reality of daily stigmatization and ever-increasing threats of violence. In several places, Muslims are expected to abide by the preferences of the majority community. At others, they might be killed on mere suspicion of cow slaughter, or much worse, just because they ‘look’ Muslim. There are attacks on their attire, language and culture.

Within weeks of India gaining independence, Kashmir resembled a battlefield because of Pakistan's repeated incursions to capture the Muslim-dominated princely state. Towering among the soldiers who fought with grit and gumption to foil Pakistan's designs was Brigadier Mohammed Usman, who chose to remain in pluralist India. Sadly, he lost his life twelve days shy of his thirty-sixth birthday, fighting Pakistani forces. The newly born nation saluted the fearless warrior conferring on him the sobriquet 'the Lion of Naushera' for his bravery.

Why do we not see Muslim women heading to a mosque for prayers on Fridays? Why don''t they participate in funeral prayers in the Indian subcontinent? Men and women pray at al-Masjid al-Haram in Mecca. They pray in Al Masjid al Nabavi in Medina. Why cannot they pray in their neighbourhood mosques in India? Islam does not discriminate between men and women. The Quran promises as much reward for a roza (fast), a Hajj or an act of charity for a woman as a man. At nearly 60 places, it asks both men and women to establish prayer, as opposed to merely offering prayer. Establishing prayer, scholars agree, is done through congregation. Men do it by praying in mosques. But what about women? They are denied the right to enter mosques across the Indian subcontinent. Women in Masjid: A Quest for Justice aims to give voice to those women who have been denied their due by our patriarchal society. It tells the reader that Prophet Muhammad clearly permitted women to enter a mosque. It is a permission well respected in mosques across West Asia, Europe and America. Yet, in an overwhelming majority of mosques across India, women are virtually barred from entry. No explicit ban, just a tacit one. Drawing its arguments from the Quran and Hadiths, the book exposes the hypocrisy of men who deny women their right to pray in mosques in the name of religion, thus revealing entrenched patriarchal beliefs masquerading as faith. It also tells the stories of those brave women who are fighting for their space in mosques across the world. From Nizamuddin and Haji Ali Dargah to mosques in lanes and bylanes of India, the fight is on. Women in Masjid is all about righting a historical wrong.

Muslim society in India remains in a state of denial when it comes to nikah halala. The Quran allows divorce twice. After that the spouses either live together happily or divorce gracefully. Nowhere does it allow marriage with a pre-arranged date of divorce to a new man only to go back to the former husband. Nikah Halala: Sleeping with a Stranger is a probing exercise that exposes the cycle of instant triple talaq followed by a fake marriage, which too ends with another instant triple talaq that allows the woman to marry the former husband. While the holy book does not mention instant triple talaq, this tradition is unique to the Indian subcontinent that claims to bring squabbling couples together but ends up making a mockery of the faith and punishes women for the crimes of men. The first ever book to talk of the subject, Nikah Halala presents the sordid reality of mock marriages against the background of Quranic injunction on the subject and exposes the departure in practice from the teachings of the holy book that gives divorced women complete freedom to follow their path.

From Delhi to Chennai, a million Shaheen Baghs. A copy of the Constitution in one hand, the tricolour in the other, Shaheen Bagh became a symbol of a vibrant democracy and secular pilgrimage. But who were these women who braved it all?Shaheen Bagh: From a Protest to a Movement is a moving tale of the brave women of Shaheen Bagh-patient, persevering and unbelievable peaceniks-who raised their voice for the deprived and the discriminated. Initially starting out as a cry of anguish against the allegedly discriminatory laws of the Citizenship Amendment Act and National Register of Citizens, it soon became a modern-day Gandhian movement for equal rights for all citizens. The book is a result of the authors'' abiding focus on the movement, including spending time with the brave hearts almost every day of the protest from dawn to dusk and beyond. The authors slept in the open near the protest site to understand what it takes for a ninety-year-old woman to leave the comfort of her bed during a chilly winter night and stand up for the future of each one of us as equal citizens of the country. The book recounts how the women did not abjure ahimsa even when their opponents stooped to barbs and bullets. It recaptures for the reader the riveting cry for democracy that was Shaheen Bagh.Authors Ziya Us Salam and Uzma Ausaf take us on this glorious journey of the making of Shaheen Bagh and how it became a metaphor for resistance, spawning a hundred Shaheen Baghs across the country in a bid to restore the sanctity of the Constitution, the national flag and the national anthem.

We live in an age when most Muslims take pride in singing Saare Jahan Se Achcha, penned by Muhammad Iqbal. Many though have forgotten that the same poet-philosopher called Ram as Imam-e-Hind. The Hindutva forces, meanwhile, have forgotten the unifying Saare Jahan Se Achcha in their pursuit of divisive nationalism. Their exclusionary politics stems from a mindset of self-limiting segregation: a world of ‘we’ and ‘they’, a world where a Muslim man is lynched for refusing to say ‘Vande Mataram’.Of Saffron Flags and Skullcaps attempts to trace the growth of the Hindutva ideology from the time of V.D. Savarkar and M.S. Golwalkar to the contemporary age, and how it precedes any talk of Muslim appeasement. Faced with these existential challenges, the Muslim community is involved in simultaneous churning within where the words of Islamic scholar and teacher Farhat Hashmi are bringing about a silent change at the grassroots level. Amidst all the challenges, the idea of India, often challenged, continues to show the way to a nation looking for direction.

Mohammed Akhlaq and Rakbar lynched in the name of cow protection.Chimma, a Dalit, lynched by the mob for entering a Hindu temple.In the recent years, the cases of mob lynching of Muslims and Dalits have increased to an alarming extent. These cases are discarded and forgotten without any justice served to the victims. The emergence of mobocracy from the roots of Hindutva and gau rakshaks has put India’s secularity and democratic constitution to test.Lynch Files pieces together the tragic stories of the people at the receiving end of mob violence and looks inside the mind of the lynchers who flout laws with impunity. Further, the book discusses the Supreme Court judgement against lynching and tries to restore faith in the court’s capacity to curb this violence.