BeyondHeadlines Staff Reporter
New Delhi: A day after he urged Muslims to stay away from Anna Hazare’s anti corruption campaign, the Shahi Imam of Delhi’s Jama Masjid, Syed Ahmed Bukhari has drawn flak from community leaders.
Imam Bukhari had accused Anna Hazare of working on RSS and BJP’s behest and described his slogans as “anti-Islamic.”
Reacting to his appeal to the Muslims, the All India Ulema Council general secretary Maulana Mehmood Daryabadi said that these might be Bukhari’s personal view and need not be taken as the view of the whole community.
Taking a dig at Bukhari, Daryabadi described him as a ‘Royal Imam’ of mosque built by an emperor and said that he doesn’t represent the views of a common Muslim.
According to newspaper reports, Bukhari failed to garner any support for his views even outside the Jama Masjid. A local hawker Mohammad Irfan insisted that he supports Anna wholeheartedly for ‘at least someone is standing-up for the country’.
Though, some voices differed also. Another hawker Rehman dismissed the whole movement as meagre drama opining that, “He wants BJP to rule.”
Anna’s movement is gaining steam among Muslims in Mumbai also where NGO representatives and clerics are exploring the idea of a rally from Crawford Market to Azad Maidan on Tuesday.
Bukhari’s views were also condemned by the Maharashtra Urdu Writer’s Guild that called his statement as ‘misleading’.
On Bukhari’s objections on Vande Matram and Bharat Mata Ki Jai slogans, the guild opined that these are the ways of expressing love for the country and should be taken in right context.
Guild president Salam Bin Razzak further said, “Muslims may not worship the motherland but their love for it is second to none. Bukhari is needlessly communalizing the movement against corruption.”
