Question 1: When Muslims in India insist on having a separate Muslim Personal Law for them, why don’t they also insist to implement the Islamic Criminal Law for the Muslims i.e. the hands should be chopped off when they rob or killed 'point blank' when they murder?

A.1. Muslim Personal Law is a law concerning an individual person and the persons closely related to him, e.g. laws relating to marriage, divorce, inheritance, etc. It includes laws which are mutually agreed upon by a group of people. This law does not include any crime or an act that will harm the society directly. In any country, the Personal Law may differ for different groups of people and for different communities. Since India is a secular and democratic country it allows different groups of people to follow their own personal law if they wish. Muslims believe that compared to all the different types of personal laws available in the world, the best and the most result oriented is the Islamic Personal Law. Muslims of India prefer following the Muslim personal law also because of their own belief in Islam. Criminal law is that law which is associated with a crime or an act which directly affects the society e.g. robbing, raping, murdering, etc. In any country, the criminal law unlike the Personal Law cannot be different for different groups of people. It has to be same for all people of different groups and different religions e.g. In Islam if a person robs, his hands are chopped off. This punishment is not prescribed in Hinduism. If a Hindu robs a Muslim, what would be the robber’s punishment? The Muslim would want the hands of the robber to be chopped, while the Hindu Law would not agree. The Muslims in India alone cannot separately follow the Islamic Criminal Law without involving the Non-Muslims. Even if a Muslim agrees, that as far as he commits a crime he should be given the punishment according to Islamic Criminal Law, it would not be practical. In case an allegation is made against a Muslim for robbery and if the witnesses are Non-Muslims, and if each one follows his own Criminal Law, the punishment in Islam for bearing false witness is 80 lashes, whereas in the Indian Criminal Law, a person giving false witness can very easily escape. Thus, for a non-Muslim to falsely accuse a Muslim of any crime is very easy, if both follow their own criminal law. However, if both follow the Indian Law where the punishment is lenient for false witnesses and robbers, it will encourage both the robber to rob as well as encourage the witnesses to give false witness for their own benefit. We Muslims would prefer that in India the Islamic Criminal Law be implemented on all the Indians, since, chopping the hands of a thief will surely reduce the rate of robbery in India. Similarly, 80 lashes for giving false testimony will prevent a person from giving false witness. Islamic Criminal Law is Most Practical. It's main benefit over all others is that besides pointing out a crime, it also gives you a solution showing how to prevent the crime in the future e.g. chopping the hands of a robber, death penalty for the rapist. The punishment is so severe that it is a deterrent for the criminal to commit the crime. A person will be forced to think a hundred times before committing a crime. Thus if crime has to be reduced or stopped in India the best solution is to implement ‘The Common Islamic Criminal Law’. Yes! If all the parties involved in the Crime are Muslims, then even that case can be treated according to Shariah and if any Muslims have any problems with that, they will be pure hypocrites.

Question 2:  Even hundreds of years after the major 'jihads' that took the lives of many Muslim martyrs, we still find Muslims believing in the practice of polygamy. Have such people's fellow Muslim brothers neglected to remind them that there is no longer a "shortage" of males in this world, that in fact the female world population is higher than that of males, and that such laws were not brought about to promote promiscuity and perverted behavior? If you are a Muslim woman who just found out she's getting a "souten" (second wife) for Christmas (bad example, I know) then I think it's a pretty PRESSING issue for you Muslim girls, not to mention the demographic changes being brought about by such practise which has seen diminishing population amongst Hindus and an exponential increase in the population of Muslims by one Muslim man marrying four women.

A2: SOME of the Western writers, either out of ignorance of teachings of the Quran and the Hadith or out of malice, have criticized Islam for not giving enough protection to the rights of women. I have discussed concept of Polygamy in Islam at length in another article. It should be an eye opener.

Also, it is a fact that the Holy Qur'an permits polygamy only in special circumstances for the upkeep of a healthy society. Marriage in Islam is a form of mutual contract based upon the principle of faith, love and honor for each other. 'Nikahnama' or marriage contract empowers a Muslim girl to add a clause during the time of the marriage ceremony, reserving her right of 'unilateral divorce' or 'to be the ONLY wife of her husband' until her death. But I am also aware of the people who break these laws and in turn incur the wrath from God and sin on themselves. There is never an excuse for law breakers for either they will get punished here or the hereafter. I know of this polygamy being exploited by people of various other faiths. Notably the cine stars like Dharmendra, Shekhar Kapoor and Mahesh Bhatt from Indian subcontinent are just the few to name. But these, does not warrant a change in the 'Divine laws'. Almost all prophets of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, e.g. Abraham, Moses, David and Solomon (pbut) were polygamous. Only exception was Jesus(pbuh). As Jesus was single and his mother Mary was virgin; Christianity deprecates the institution of marriage and promotes celibacy. 

Also, you are not correct when you talk about the abundance of men over women. There is only a shortage of women in countries like India (due to large scale female infanticide and extreme poverty) and China. America and Europe have excess of females over male. The latest Census of 2001 has revealed that the sex ratio of the girl child population which was 945 in 1991, decreased to 927, a decrease of 18 points and further down to 917 per 1000 males in 2001 in the state of Maharashtra alone.  The ratio has thus gone over 6:1. Demographically the 0-6 sex ratio does not augur well for the future of any country. Because of the genocide committed against Muslims in Kashmir, Bosnia and Chechnya there are more Muslim women then men- the fact that there are more men than women in countries like India and China is irrelevant since Muslims do not generally marry Hindus or Buddhists or vice-versa. The Quranic verse permitting polygamy was revealed in the Holy Qur'an out of necessity and due to the demands of the circumstances. After the battle of Uhud in 3rd Hijrah, large number of Muslim men were killed leaving many widows and orphans. The verse came as follows: “If you fear that you won’t be able to deal justly with the orphans, marry the woman of your choice, two, three or four; but if you fear that you will not be able to deal justly (with wives), then (marry) only one” (Qur'an 4:3).

In the article that I had mentioned above, I have shown that polygamy amongst Muslims is very rare and practiced far less than most of the other communities of the world. Your argument about demographic imbalance in the form of decrease in the percentage of Hindus holds relevance when seen in the light of mass female infanticide as shown in this report. In your argument, you forgot to mention that the women are the child bearing half of the human race, and of every cultural group, whether it be Hindu, Muslim or Sikh. And this biological reality is ignored by those Hindus amongst us, who wish to save dowry by foeticide or infanticide but it, however, remains and the reality is that "only women reproduce." According to the report, neither as many Muslims nor Christians kill female embryos and their growth holds steady as a result.

A simple case of mathematics renders your other argument illogical. The point of Muslim's exponential increase in population when compared to Hindus, will fail to find any credence when someone will ask an explanation, as to " How does one man marrying one woman and having 2-3 kids from her, increases a community's population as a whole when compared to four different men marrying four different women and each women giving birth to 2-3 kids?". The net average of community remains same and we are dealing with a case of polygamy in Islam here, not polyandry, which is prohibited amongst Muslims.

Also, why is the example of finding a 'souten' at your doorstep worse than finding out that your husband has been having an affair or has been regularly visiting someone else?
How about, if you're a girl and you just discovered that you're going to have a baby from a guy who claimed to have been unmarried and promising to marry you all along and NOW after this news of becoming a father, he says that he had lied to you about his marital status - so the child must be aborted as the law prohibits him from marrying again thus he shrugs off his misdeeds and responsibilities? or you are a young women with both material and emotional needs and your husband dies when you're 23 or 24, thus you cannot marry for the rest of your life because bachelor boys( no matter, which religion they belong to) usually prefer never married females and so do most of the widowers?

These are the urgent issues- which must be discussed - not fault finding amongst the virtues of Islamic principles. Remember, Polygamy in Islam is an 'option', not an 'obligation' upon Muslims.

Question 3: Islam not only encourages but advises it’s followers to a deviant practice of marrying amongst one’s own family members, namely first cousins etc. thus over looking not only the moral and ethical consequences of such a union, but also the medical and especially genetic disorders which would come after procreation. Why is Islam different? What is the reason behind such a rule? I view all my male cousins as my brothers or sisters. I wonder, if I was a Muslim, how would it feel to look at my cousins as prospective lovers or husbands?

A 3: As you already know, Islam doesn’t allow to get married with blood relations such as your own brothers, sisters etc., lest it might be accused of incest, which is all so prevalent these days in the ‘deviant’ western society. You call this allowed practice of marriage amongst the first cousins in Islam as 'deviant' but probably you don’t know that, to some extent, the definition of deviant also varies from culture to culture and religion to religion. For example, in Islam, the person who worships anyone's image or an idol is the greatest deviant, amongst Hindus, he is most Holy. In Islam someone who doesn’t believe that all humans are born equal and only attain a higher degree of spirituality through piety and good action, is a deviant. Amongst the Hindus, a person born of a Brahmin, attains that degree by birth. One of the reasons Gandhi was killed, was that he supported the idea of equality of the downtrodden amongst the Hindus and was thus considered a ‘deviant’.

Coming to the point of genetic disorders. It’s known that over 700 million people across the world practice consanguinity - marriages between close relatives such as uncles and nieces or between cousins. Prof N Appaji Rao, head of the department of biochemistry at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, reported in a seminar on this subject that, India where consanguinity is prevalent in 33 per cent of Hindu families, 28 per cent in Muslim families and 18.6 per cent in Christian families, more than 30 per cent of the 1,20,000 children studied were born to consanguineous couples, while 62.3 per cent were born to non-consanguineous couples, disproving that the incidence of genetic disorders is higher in consanguineous communities. IISc studies have also shown that the third theory that changing family structure, urbanization and industrialization has resulted in a large decrease and elimination of close kinship marriages, is also incorrect. Finally, on the issue of looking at your cousins as prospective lovers or husbands, then I would like to point out that according to Islam, each and every woman and man, whether married or unmarried, Muslim or Non-Muslim, should neither be teased nor glanced upon with lust. Allah (swt) has commanded the Muslim men to lower their gaze and guard their sexual parts. "Tell the believing men that they should lower their gazes and guard their sexual organs; that is purer for them. Indeed Allah is well-acquainted with what they do" (24:30). Here "lowering of the gazes" means to avert the eyes from the faces of the passersby and not to caress the attractive features of women with the eyes. Same hold good for women too. They are advised to guard their modesty and chastity, be they their first cousins...until and unless they get married to them.

The Prophet (saw) considered hungry and lustful looks at any person of the opposite gender as "the sin of the eye," according to his saying, "The eyes also commit sin (arabic:zina), and their sin is the lustful look" (Al-Bukhari).

Question 4 : While it is sad to see the way women are treated in Saudi Arabia, it is also sad to see the infighting amongst our own people in India based on north-south, languages etc....
When will Indian Muslims wake up to realize life? When will Indian Muslims realize they are far better off in India than anywhere in Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia or Pakistan ?  If those countries are better or even the region of Persia where Muslims originally came from, migration is also an option.

A4: From where do you get the bright idea, that Indian Muslims want to be like Saudis or live in Saudi Arabia? Do you think when Martin Luther King was fighting for civil rights of blacks, Kennedy bros. should have told him, 'Aren't you black guys better off here than any of the African countries of Ghana, Iberia or Zambia or aren't you glad you LIVE in much better countries than African continent??!! As an Indian, please don't try to give us permission because we don't need any for staying in our own country. India is the land where millions of Muslims have existed for over 1350 years now. It is the place where our greatest art, culture, architecture and history is situated. Muslims belong to the land and the land (in an emotional sense) to the Muslims. The day when Aryans decide to go back to Asia minor, Anglo Saxon go back to England from America and so does blacks, Irish or Jewish Germans return back to Germany, Africa & where ever they came from only a few hundred years ago, you can start advocating your veiled ideas of genocide. The return/emigration of Indian Muslims who are residing there from the year 642 AD (Refer to this link ), makes no sense at all and to call them as those who came as invaders to India, forcing people to convert on the point of sword, is a blatant historical lie. The first Muslims who came in as invaders (as was the norm everywhere in the world of Medieval ages), was much later in the Year 1192 AD, when Muhammad of Gaur established his Kingdom in India after winning the second battle of Tarain. (source: Itihaas.com)

With respect to your claim that women are generally (more) oppressed in Arab/Islamic countries, please refer to my report : Women - oppressed in Arabia.

Question 5 : Why do Muslims condemn and abuse Hindu idols and their worship when they themselves worship Kaaba and it's black stone?

A 5:  First of all, those Muslims who abuse Hindu idols, acts contradictory to a verse of Quran and can be out rightly condemned for this deed as they are committing a form of sin by going against the diktats of Qur'an. A verse in Qur'an states: "And insult not those, whom they (non-Muslims) worship besides Allah, lest they insult Allah wrongfully, without knowledge. Thus we have made fair seeming to each people their own doings, then to their Lord is their return and He shall then inform them of all that they used to do." (Quran 6:208). Coming to the point of Muslims worshipping kaaba and to say that it is a form of an idol worship too, then I would like to state that, an idol is something people "idolize" in the sense of giving some of gods attributes and abilities to it - for instance the ability to answer prayers of bring them good etc- one might protest that Muslims worship the kaaba, Sikh the guru granth and Jews the wailing wall because they bow down to it - but in the Muslims 'sajda' (prostration) during their prayers when they face 'kaaba' in the city of Mecca ', is a sign of humbleness to god and unity amongst themselves in their act of worshipping - not worshipping the stone or the structure of Kaaba - this is seen by the fact that it is not obligatory to have the physical kaaba in front of you when you pray and a person can go his or whole life without praying in front of the kaaba and there prayers are still valid - the reason all Muslims pray facing the kaaba is to create a sense of unity (so Muslims do not have a physical representation of the kaaba in their homes and mosques - unlike statues ) - no Muslim worships the Kaaba, believes it to be a god or believes it can harm or benefit (otherwise they would not be a Muslim but an idolater!!) - I fear this is different from other faiths who feed statues, ask them for help etc. Bowing in front of something is not idolatry since one might bow down to kiss a child or out of love to kiss a black stone - believing that something other than God can harm or benefit (such as a statue or a stone or another person). The best thing to refute your charge of idolizing 'kaaba' is that during olden days, when there were no speakers or amplifiers, Muslims are known to have stood on the roof of the 'kaaba' to give a call for prayer 'azaan', which is meant for inviting and informing fellow Muslims of the vicinity about due prayer times.

Hence, The very concept of standing over something you're supposed to worship, makes the thing unworthy of your worship and this proves that Muslims are and were never supposed to worship Kaaba or it's black stone.

   Hope this answers your question - to summarise, the 'kaaba' stones are not an integral part of a Muslims worship as you are asking One true God alone for help. Circumambulating 'kaaba' during the process of Haj also depicts the same concept of 'Unity or Oneness') of God as every circle has ONLY one center.

Question 6: Why do Muslims practice burial of their dead instead of cremation and end up wasting precious lands for those who are still living in the society, by making tombs and cemented graves. Isn't God powerful enough to raise man from any place and from any state He wishes to?

A6: Yes! Allah(swt) is able to recollect the scattered elements of a person’s body from any place of earth which is only a very small part of His creation when compared to the vastness of the Universe. It is quite easy for Him. The Qur’an declares: “And they say: When we are bones and fragments, shall we forsooth, be raised up as a new creation? Say: Be you stones or iron or some created thing that is yet greater in your thoughts- (Yet shall you be raised up)! Then they will say: Who shall bring us back (to life)? Say He who created you the first time” (Quran 17:49-51)

   Islam has a unique style of building graves and cemeteries that is characterized by humility, simplicity and economy in costs and that avoids glorifying the dead with elaborate monuments. It can thus rightly be said that all the tombs and monuments that belong to the Mughal era in India, including the magnificent Taj Mahal, have nothing to do with the tenets of Islam and were purely matter of personal choice of those emperors. According to Islam, it is prohibited to build any form of construction on the grave, or decorate the grave. From the authentic traditions, it is clear that to erect domes over graves or build mausoleums or Mosques on graves is strictly forbidden. Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) said: " Do not build Mosques in the graveyard " (Muslim). It is prohibited to plaster the grave, whitewash the grave, or use cooked stones.  Jabir also reported: "Prophet Muhammad forbade the whitewashing of a grave, sitting on it, or erecting any type of structure on it " (Muslim). Hence, it can be deduced that a graveyard for Muslims can be re-used over and over again in the absence of any permanent graves.

   The fact that the dead bodies of saints and children amongst Hindus (in the case of a male child below 11 years old and a female who is 7 years and below), burial is practiced instead of being burnt. It probably means that those who are supposedly innocent are buried while the rest being sinners are burnt. Even Shri Jayendra Sarasvati, 69th Shankaracharya of the Kamakoti Peetham, Kanchipuram, highlights the 'Cremation of ordinary and burial of great men', as one of the basic tenets of Hinduism.

   There may be another reason of Hindus burning their dead, “agni’ in Sanskrit means ‘fire’. According to Panini, the highest ancient Sanskrit authority on Philology, the word is derived from ‘Agrini’ which means ‘the first’ or ‘ the foremost’. Agrini was previously used for One God and later its derivative Agni replaced it. Now the same word, Agni in the Vedas is used for God as well as for fire according to the context. The dead had to be surrendered to one God agrini. With the passage of time, the word was changed to Agni which also means fire. So, the people from the land of Sanskrit started surrendering their dead to fire. It may be noted that mention of burial can even today be found in Vedas;

“Let me not yet O Varuna, enter into the house of clay (the grave); Have mercy, spare me, Mighty Lord.. O Bright and Powerful God, through lack of strength I erred and went astray, have mercy, spare me Mighty Lord.” (Rigveda 7:89:1,3)

“Have thyself, Earth not press thee downward heavily (after the burial); Afford him easy access gently tending him; Cover him as mother wraps her skirt over her child, O Earth.. I stay on the earth from thee, while over thee I place this piece of earth. May I be free from injury. Here let the fathers keep this pillars firm for thee, and there let Yama (The Lord of death) make thee an abiding place.” (Rigveda 10:18:11,13)

It may be mentioned that a large number of Hindus in South India and Orissa, often bury their dead, instead of burning them, although the reasons for doing so are debatable.

The Muslims bury their dead because the prophet (Pbuh) guided them and as all the earlier prophets sent to all nations including India would have guided their people. All the prophets preached Islam, the religion of nature although every prophet would have used the word in the language of his nation, instead of the Arabic word ‘Islam’. It may be that ‘Svadharma’ (Nature’s religion) was used in place of Islam in India and ‘Sanatan Dharma’ (The Eternal Religion) in place of its Arabic synonym ‘Deen-e-Qayyim’. The true Sanatan Dharma or Svadharma preached burial of the dead as it is according to nature. The burning of millions of men requires a huge quantity of firewood which creates ecological imbalance. The fumes add to pollution. The electrical pyres also are not the solution, as they consume energy, much needed by the living. Burial is echo friendly, pollution-free and energy saving.