Humra Quraishi
The World Human Rights Day is soon to arrive – December 10, but are we able to even think in terms of observing the day, when a full-fledged genocide has been on in Gaza…where thousands of Palestinian men and women and children were brutally killed for weeks at a stretch. The survivors are not left in a condition to survive. Their homes are pounded and razed, their livelihoods ruined, their human forms tortured and bruised. Ruined and devastated and destroyed are the lives of thousands and thousands of the innocent Palestinians.
Perhaps, in today’s scenario human rights should remain a dead chapter tucked in the text books or a lie fitted in the stale rotten speeches of the political lot, the so called Who’s Who ruining this world and the world order.
Focusing on the happenings here, in our country, last week the Uttar Pradesh sarkar banned halal-certified edible items. Don’t ask me why! Perhaps, it has something or everything to do with the vote back politics. It’s yet another distracting tactic along the much expected communal format – thrusting ahead the communal poisoning along the strain that only and only Muslims consume meat. Haven’t we all been witness to the lynching of Muslim men and even teenaged boys along the alibi of beef consumption or storage or trading? Haven’t we seen meat shops sealed along the various other alibis? Haven’t we seen hundreds sitting without jobs and work because tanneries have been shut? Haven’t we heard communal speeches along the agenda that only and only Muslims consume fleshy chunks?
Former professor at IIT Mumbai, academic-author, Ram Puniyani, aptly writes on this halal ban, “Interestingly, the ban on halal-certified edible products applies only to the local market. Products meant for export have been excluded, though all meat exported to countries where halal meat is consumed requires halal certification. Halal, in Arabic, simply designates what is permissible as per Islamic religious practices. Halal certification of meat items guarantees that the animals, including poultry, were slaughtered in the prescribed Islamic way. India has no clear nationwide law or rule that requires halal meat to be sold—it has been left to individual preferences. Meat that is exported is, naturally, subject to proper checks for halal certification. …The halal trade is economically highly significant—a roughly $3.5 trillion industry—and India has benefitted vastly from the promotion of halal exports. Its significant trading partners are the Organization of Islamic Countries and South East Asian nations.”
He further elaborates, “The Uttar Pradesh government has justified the ban by saying that some companies had issued “forged” halal certificates for financial gain—meaning that they did not follow the prescribed rules, but claimed they did. Surprisingly, a communal angle has been inserted into the forgery allegation by claiming that these companies cause social animosity and violate public trust. If the issue is fake halal certificates, why impose a blanket ban on domestic sales? If it is about animosity, where is the evidence?”
He also states: “According to Mufti Habeeb Yusuf Qasmi, president of the Halal Council of India, the controversy over halal certification reflects the propensity to view every development from a myopic Hindu-Muslim lens. ‘Halal is about hygiene and purity. It is not a Hindu-Muslim matter but about food.”
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Ending this week’s column with this verse of the leading Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha, from the Literary Hub.
But before that, significant backgrounders on him …the latest on him. According to news reports Mosab Abu Toha was detained in a mass arrest by the Israeli Defence Forces on November 20, 2023. He was reportedly at a checkpoint in Gaza, travelling towards the Rafah border crossing, with his wife and children. Later, news reports stated that he was finally released by the IDF after being “interrogated and beaten.”
To quote from the Literary Hub, “On October 29, 2023, Abu Toha posted an Instagram video of his family home, now flattened and reduced to rubble, in Beit Lahiya, North Gaza. “That used to be my house,” he says, looking over his shoulder. “There is nothing, there is nothing over there. Not my books. Not my heirlooms. Not the kitchen. Nothing.”…Later that day, Abu Toha posted a screenshot of the poem “What Is Home?” from his debut poetry collection Things You May Find Hidden In My Ear published last year by City Lights. In the caption to the poem, he asks: “Please save this poem, recite to the people around you and tell them what happened to my home, and the homes of so many other people? Tell them some families were buried under the rubble?”
Mosab Abu Toha’s verse, from the Literary Hub:
‘What Is Home?
What is home:/
it is the shade of trees on my way to school before they were uprooted./
It is my grandparents’ black-and-white wedding photo before the walls
crumbled./
It is my uncle’s prayer rug, where dozens of ants slept on wintry nights, before it was looted and/
put in a museum./
It is the oven my mother used to bake bread and roast chicken before a bomb reduced our/
house to ashes./
It is the café where I watched football matches and played –/
My child stops me: Can a four-letter word hold all of these?/’
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