Indian Express, 29 November 2011
The All India Muslim Personal Law Board has stepped up pressure on the government to push its three key demands pertaining to the proposed Direct Tax Bill, the Right to Education and the new Wakf Bill. The Board has declared that it will start an agitation in the country to create a momentum on these demands.
Speaking about its meeting in Delhi over the weekend, Board's spokesman S Q R Ilyas said, "We have written to Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee regarding our opposition to the proposed direct tax code plan to tax religious institutions. We support the Right to Education, but need more than assurances that minority institutions will be exempt, as specified in the Constitution, as also religious schools, be they madrasas or Vedic pathshalas. We have serious reservations on the Wakf Bill which have not been addressed. We will soon start a campaign on all these issues."
However, perhaps more important on the agenda is the emergence and that too in a forceful way of the All India Mashaikh Ulema Board, which, set up in 2007, has been publicly hitting out at ruling parties and established bodies seen so far as representative of Muslim demands. Chairman of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board Maulana Syed Mohammed Rabe Hasani has been "appealed to" by Board members at the meeting to make contact "with all those raising voices in the community and creating divisions and try and get those hoping to divide Muslims see some reason".
http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/881771/
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