Untold Facts

Hanging Portrait in Madarasahs: Encroaching Religious Freedom

There are already protests against the present Government order and press for it to implement hanging of the portrait of the noted person who they consider founding father of the country. The protests and abhorrence are in all likely going to go on, I am afraid, unending.

Apart from no unanimity about the noted person for his acceptance as the founding father by all and sundry in Bangladesh clearly manifested in the hard fact that to many people of the country the figure remains as ever a controversial person that divided the nation, at least, into two divisions, the ‘secular’ Bengali nationalists and the nationalist (Muslim) Bangladeshis, the point, in addition, that came up as the insurmountable stumbling block is that the hanging of portrait concerned went against the cultural tradition of the Madarasahs, in particular. The Tradition is nothing spurious or unstable or a temporary one but a historic one firmly rooted in the past one and a half millennium. The tradition developed from the very inception of the Medinan Khilaphat in the early seventh century A.D. along with the very education system based at the Mosque of Medina right then. Otherwise, the Muslims would have first of anybody the portrait of the Prophet of Islam in that historic mosque.

If one would dispassionately look back, any portrait of the prophet is not only available anywhere in the Muslim world but if there is any imaginary elsewhere, Muslims rise in protest for any bit of the question of such imaginary portrait. Why?

It is only the Muslims all over the world and no other religious believers who maintain despise for culture of portrait. In fact, religious groups other than Muslims have all love and almost cram for portrait of their religious leaders. That is how they developed a tradition of portrait culture.

Why could not the Muslims accept the portrait culture? It is not because of anything but for the TAWHEED or the unadulterated belief in the ABSOLUTE ALLAH that the fortunate Muslims alone pursue as a single group of human race. Madrasahs being the nerve center of the Islamic learning and culture building it maintains the tradition with all earnestness. It is not only the practice in Bangladesh but also all over the Muslim world and in the community elsewhere.

The Bangladesh Government by trying to force hanging of the portrait has not only waged a unholy war against the long tradition of the Muslims but also stepped on to interfere into the religious freedom of the Muslims that the Bangladesh Constitution and the UN Human Rights Charter have made mandatory for the government not to interfere with.

Author: M .T. Hussain