Zillurrahman Haider
NEW DELHI—Anti-Terrorism Squad(ATS) of the Uttar Pradesh police arrested Islamic scholar Maulana Kaleem Siddiqui and five of his associates as also his driver on allegations of mass conversion of non-Muslims to Islam through “illegal” means.
The arrest was made from Meerut on September 21 evening.
Maulana Siddiqui had gone to Meerut in connection with a religious function. He hails from the adjoining district of Muzaffarnagar but is settled in Delhi.
The arrest was confirmed by ATS.
A tweet by ATS said that Maulana Siddiqui was arrested in connection with running India’s “largest conversion syndicate”.
A statement issued by ATS, later on, said that the syndicate run by Maulana Siddiqui converted about 1000 non-Muslims to Islam in India.
The ATS accused the Maulana of bringing foreign funds through hawala racket for conversion.
According to police, Maulana Siddiqui had prepared a network of madrasas and funded them for the purpose of conversion.
ATS claimed that Maulana Siddiqui converted non-Muslims through fraudulent means and then engaged them also in “Dawah” (propagation of Islam) work. The police claimed that Maulana Siddiqui offered the temptation of paradise to his targets and then used them for Islamic Dawah work.
ATS claimed that Maulana Siddiqui, who ran Jamia Imam Waliullah Trust, held conversion programmes on the pretext of propagating the message of “insaniyat” (humanism).
According to a police statement, Maulana Siddiqui had prepared Dawah literature available online as also in the form of printed booklets. Through his Dawah literature, he propagated that justice was possible only under the Islamic “sharia” (Islamic constitutional laws). He always insisted people solve the issues like Triple Talaq through the provisions of Islamic laws.
The ATS claimed that the evidence available with it showed that Maulana Siddiqui’s trust got funding of Rs. 3 crore from foreign sources, including Rs. 1.5 crore from a single donor in Bahrain.
A resident of Phulat village in Muzaffarnagar district, Maulana Siddiqui received his primary education in his village. He did his intermediate schooling with science subjects from a college in Khatauli. Then he completed his BSc from Meerut University. According to ATS, he also cleared the medical entrance examination. But by that time, he had come under the influence of Islamic scholars and, instead of taking admission in MBBS, he took admission in Darul Uloom Nadwatul Ulema, Lucknow.
The ATS claimed that Maulana Siddiqui, Umar Gautam and many others involved in the syndicate had received Rs. 57 crores from Al Falah Trust in the United Kingdom but they failed to furnish details of the money spent by them. A charge sheet has already been filed in a court in Lucknow.
Besides Gautam, the Uttar Pradesh police had earlier arrested Salahuddin Sheikh from Vadodara, Gujarat, Rameshwar Kavade alias Adam from Nagpur, Kausar Alam from Dhanbad, Jharkhand, and Bhupriya bando alias Arsalan Mustafa from Nagpur, Maharashtra.
Former Delhi Minorities Commission chairman Dr Zafar-ul-Islam Khan, reacting to the arrest, said, “Maulana Kaleem Siddiqui is a respected community leader, a religious scholar who runs a madrasa in Phulat in UP. I know him for the last three decades, at least. He is a genuine and extremely polite and civilized person. The arrest of such a popular and genuine Muslim scholar is tantamount to arresting a Shankaracharya.”
Dr Khan described the arrest as “part of the BJP’s efforts at polarization in view of forthcoming UP assembly elections.”
“BJP is using the fake “conversion” claim as a means to instil fear in the Hindu community when the reality is that there is no such threat. If a few thousand people change their religion to embrace any other faith, out of their own choice, nothing is going to happen to the religious demography of the country,” Dr Khan pointed out.
“We continuously hear of Muslims embracing Hinduism and this is celebrated by the same BJP leaders. But the Muslim community is not making any hue and cry about it,” Dr Khan pointed out.
Does it amount to crime to help somebody in conversion under the Constitution? Dr Khan replies, “No, it is not. In fact, Article 25 of the Constitution says that all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right to freely profess, practice, and propagate religion subject to public order, morality and health.”
“Hence what Umar Gautam or Maulana Kaleem were doing, was perfectly legal,” he claimed.
To a question about foreign funding allegations, Dr Khan said, “It is not a crime. But the police claim is that foreign funds are used to propagate Islam. This is baseless. No Arab or Muslim country is interested in spreading Islam. This bogus claim is added to the police charge sheet so that a legal activity could be proved illegal. This bogus claim will fall in courts but by that time the innocent victims would have spent years and years in jails which will destroy their lives and careers and ruin their families while the police will go scot-free. Perhaps, some people in the current political dispensation derive sadistic pleasure out of it.”
Former DMC chairman said the arrest of Maulana Siddiqui is totally politically-motivated”.
“A gimmick to polarize society and create or consolidate the Hindu vote bank. This is especially needed since state assembly elections are around in a number of states, especially in UP. BJP remembers these issues whenever elections approach,” Dr Khan added.
Meanwhile, Aam Aadmi Party MLA Amanatullah Khan called his arrest a “political move”.
“Famous Islamic scholar Maulana Kaleem Siddiqui Sahab has been arrested ahead of the elections in Uttar Pradesh. The atrocities on Muslims are increasing. The silence of secular parties on these issues is giving more strength to the BJP. How much more will BJP fall to win the UP elections?” Amanatullah Khan asked on Twitter.
Interfaith Dialogue is not a crime, says SIO; Demands release of Maulana Kaleem
Students Islamic Organisation of India (SIO) has said that the interfaith dialogue conducted by Maulana Siddiqui was not a crime. “The arrest of Maulana Kaleem is yet another attempt to curb interfaith dialogues to fan communal hatred ahead of UP elections,” SIO said in a press release.
“We believe that Maulana Siddiqui has been made a convenient scapegoat by BJP-led UP government for electoral gains”, said SIO.
“We condemn his arrest and demand his immediate release,” SIO press release added.
“The right to practice and preach the religion of one’s choice has been enshrined in our Constitution. The UP anti-conversion law undermines these freedoms and has become a tool to harass common people,” SIO remarked.
