Ayesha Hareem reponds to Ziya Us Salam's review of Denied by Allah the book by Noor Zaheer

Debating Islam (26 May 2015 NewAgeIslam.Com)
Salam! Maulana Ziya Us Salam: Noor Zaheer's Book Linking Halala, Triple Talaq and Gender Injustice in Muslim Societies to Islamic Theology Creates Controversy

By Ayesha Hareem, New Age Islam

26 May, 2015

Since I landed in Delhi for pursuing education, on my teachers’ advice, I started seeing The Hindu newspaper. It is generally appreciated and liked by those who have got a good taste for issue based, unbiased and courageous articles, editorials, and reporting. All this while one has also been seeing the waxing and waning of the paper’s quality. Sometimes it goes one notch up, and in the next moment it slips down to its original position. The appointment of Siddharth Vardarajan as its editor was no doubt one of the glorious phases in the history of The Hindu. During the parliamentary election 2014, it was no brainer to get the point that this national daily got slanted towards right wing political agendas.

One of the people in the Hindu’s coterie that one usually likes and admires is Ziya Us Salam. His precise and incisive film critiques, features on cinema, and other write-ups are simply awesome. Of late one came across his review of Noor Zaheer’s book, ‘Denied by Allah’ (April 24, 2015). The treatment that the book has got is highly problematic at the first sight. Ziya’s piece has titled it ‘heresy by hearsay’! This is utterly disgusting. Any book can have flaws, factual as well as others. To err is, of course, human.

By reading the review one would ask Ziya—as he has asked to Noor— to stick to writing film critiques, and features on theatres. One gets an impression that he is also trying to enter into the uninitiated terrain. Here, it is the realm of social science, sir. And Noor’s book engages with the ideas of justice, freedom and rights that have been denied by society and its custodians to women. These struggles can never be understood and comprehended by those who are trying to find them in the scriptures of any religion. Given the sensitivity of the contemporary world one simply cannot deny the rights of oppressed and marginalised. I have not read the book but still one would trust Ziya’s credibility that Noor, the ‘impulsive fiction writer’, has contradicted herself in quoting the appropriate verses from the Quran. Does this mean that there is no predicament of Muslim women out there? Why do we not want these issues to slip in the public realm? The community’s image is at stake? [. . .]
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