Lucknow-based Maulana Mirza Mohammad Athar is President of All India Shia Personal Law Board (AISPLB). Born in 1936, he is the son of late Maulana Mirza Mohammad Tahir, a noted Shia Muslim scholar. He received a traditional Islamic education at the Sultan ul-Madaris in Lucknow, and then got a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Persian from Lucknow University. He served as Head of the Department of Persian, and, later as Principal, at the Shia Degree College, Lucknow. Yoginder Sikand of TwoCircles.net met him at the recently-held third annual convention of the AISPLB in New Delhi and interviewed him about the AISPLB and its activities.
The recently-held convention of the AISPLB hardly dealt with personal law issues at all, while the name of your organization suggests that Shia personal law should be its principal concern. Instead, the focus of the convention was on stressing a separate Shia identity, demands for reservation or representation of Shias in government services and legislative bodies and so on. This seems odd, doesn’t it?
Actually, our Board’s mandate is not limited only to personal law issues. It also deals with the social, educational, economic and political issues of the Shias of India. We are of the view that the 50 million Indian Shias have been heavily under-represented in all spheres of life, including even in Muslim organizations. We are a marginalized minority within another marginalized minority. Since at present Shia personal law is not a problem and faces no challenges, our convention focused mainly on other community-related issues. One such issue is that of lack of political representation of the Shias. There are hardly any Shias in the Lok Sabha, the Rajya Sabha and the state assemblies, because of which our voice does not receive any attention at all. The same is true for Shia representation in government services.
http://newageislam.com/indian-shias-seek-a-voice-of-their-own/interview/d/2089
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10:43 PM
Moderate Islamist here
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