Prescription against Practice: The Muslim community in Mussoorie

For: Himalayan Geography module

This paper is my examination of the theological prescriptions versus grounded practice of the Islamic faith in Mussoorie, inspired by my visit to Jama Masjid in Mussoorie.

The interiors of Jama Masjid

Jama Masjid, which is where we typically hear the azans or call to prayer from – all the way at the CC. Yousef chuckles, “Some azans are really melodious if the person knows how to sing. Others are really just shouting.”

Yousef shared about the Five Pillars of Islam, juxtaposing theological prescriptions with realities on the ground. The first pillar of praying five times a day, Yousef says, “simply doesn't happen”. Yousef attributes it to various reasons – out of laziness or busy schedules. For the most devout, however, long prayer sessions coupled with meal preparation and consumption between prayers can take up the entire day! He gave the example of his mother who lost her worldly ambitions after his father passed on, spending her days from then on solely “in preparation for the next life”. Her prayers were 2-hour affairs, five times a day.

The second pillar is to make an annual donation of 2.5% of one’s assets to the widowed and orphaned, as the Prophet believes this will cleanse one’s money. However as this usually amounts to a large sum, most people do not keep faithful accounts and do not contribute. Yousef explains that he is already paying 30% income tax to the government, and so deems himself to be failing his religious duty but fulfilling his secular one. Nevertheless, Yousef acknowledges a societal-wide failure to alleviate poverty, particularly among the Muslim community. Constituting 14.2% of the population, Muslims are India’s largest and also poorest minority group. They occupy the bottom rungs of most socioeconomic indices, and one in four beggars in India is a Muslim. Household financial constraints keeps 28.8% of Muslim children out of school – statistics which are higher than even Dalits (22.8%) and Tribals (24.8%). This has led to the proliferation and popularity of Islamic schools. Attached to mosques, these schools take in orphaned or poor boys, whose parents sincerely believe that they are performing their religious duties and offering their son better prospects in a mosque. Due to a lack of funding, however, the boys are typically fed only two meals a day, having to go hungry the entire morning after the first prayer, which takes place before sunrise. “This is why they can be easily recruited into ISIS. They are so badly treated that they see any other situations as an improvement.” Additionally, the boys learn Arabic blindly and recite the Quran without sufficient intellectual understanding. They are merely imbued with false confidence that they will go to Heaven. Yousef laments that such false interpretations leaves them even more susceptible to terrorist recruitment. “They think that ISIS and Jihad can be a shortcut to Heaven. With jihad, it seems that it doesn’t matter if previously prayers were performed improperly, or if they didn’t donate their incomes.” Fearing such false instructions and narrow perspectives bordering on extremism, Yousef occasionally bars his children from attending some Sunday sermons at Jama Masjid if he distrusts the speaker’s credentials.

The third pillar encourages adherents to perform a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in their lifetime. Pilgrimages are conceptualised as religious endeavours undertaken when one has fulfilled his/her worldly duties, such as working and raising kids, and is renouncing worldly desires to focus on spiritual devotion. In Yousef’s family, because Yousef and his brother are now employed and earning incomes, the potential of going to Hajj has reinvigorated Yousef’s mother a great deal. Laughing a little, Yousef shares how she has started walking about more, and watches documentaries and reads guidebooks about Mecca, thus keeping herself engaged. However, India with the second largest Muslim population in the world is allocated a disproportionately smaller quota by the Saudi government. Meanwhile, countries like Malaysia, Indonesia and Pakistan get more slots due to their status as Muslim countries. Hence it was difficult for Yousef’s mother and her male chaperone to secure a spot, leaving his mother’s wish still unfulfilled.

The fourth pillar is that of fasting during the month of Ramadan. Yousef imagines that this is manageable in the cooler climes of Mussoorie but extremely exhausting for Muslims down in the plains, most of whom work in low-paying, labour-intensive jobs such as rickshaw pulling.

The final pillar is a declaration of faith that “There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God”. The seal of Muhammad, which reads “Muhammad, messenger of God”, has however been appropriated by ISIL for its flag. In the current atmosphere of anti-terrorism, Yousef shares that Indian Muslims live in fear of offending the Hindu majority and being branded as extremists. He says that he does not carry meat around when he’s in town, even if it isn’t beef. “It is impossible to prove otherwise!” He tells us of an incident in a rural village in Manipur where a Muslim cowherder was lynched under accusations of stealing cattle. Yousef also does not cook beef at home “even though technically [he] can”, out of consideration for his neighbours. “If I want beef I go into town. There are shops in Dehradun that serve good beef. But carrying meat on my motorbike… that can be life-threatening.”

After a moment of silence, Yousef shared, “I don't know why, but it is so difficult to be a Muslim these days… and my kids, they are learning. They used to run down the streets with their skullcaps and hijabs, but now I tell them not to wear them, until they enter the mosque. You never know, they can be hit maliciously by motorcycles or cars on the road. I also told my kids not to write ‘There is no god but God’ as freely as they used to in the past, on their notebooks and even their hands. I asked them, ‘Do you know what this may mean?’ and told them about ISIL. Recently on TV they learnt about the religious persecution of Muslim Rohingya people by the Buddhists. They ask, ‘why is this happening’, and you know… it’s hard to answer such questions, but the kids are picking up the cues. Two years ago my eldest son was due to get his passport in Dehradun. This meant a lot to him at 15 years old! He was excited, we drove into town, queued, but when the officer saw our names he said, ‘step this side sir’ and patted us down. My son asked why we went through that, and I shrugged it off as a random check. But I know… we know that it wasn't at all random. They saw our names and took us aside. My kids are learning, day by day, how difficult it is to be a Muslim.”

Final Thoughts

It was poignant hearing such a rendition of the practice and persecution, prejudice and politics of being an Indian Muslim. This was a perspective I had only heard from news or read online on blogs, as Singaporean Muslims generally face less overt and life-threatening discrimination. From my observation, though they sympathize with the suffering of Muslims abroad, they don't experience personal victimization on a widespread community-wide scale. And even though Partition in 1947 had been the only instance of communal violence in Mussoorie, it was evident from Yousef’s account that he senses the underground stirrings of communal suspicion and latent prejudices in his everyday life.

Before leaving, Yousef also briefly covered the other branches of the Islamic faith. Members of the Shia faith are welcome to pray alongside the Sunnis here. Yousef beams, “I think this may be one of the few mosques in the world that allows for that.” The Wahhabi faith is extremist, emanating from Saudi Arabian sponsorship, of which Osama bin Laden was a famous proponent. Sufi Islam dates back to the 14th century and to poets like Rumi, as Sufis seek a direct, loving relationship with God. Through dance, music and poetry, they ‘lose themselves’ and become one with the Ultimate Truth. Lastly, Yousef pointed at the bed hanging from the ceiling, near the washing area. This bed serves to transport the recently deceased from the mosque to the cemetery or the river on the final journey. It is a reminder of mortality to adherents –– that death could be just round the corner. And since in the Islamic faith this life is in preparation for the next, Yousef concludes, “We should do what we want with this life, and as much as we can… What will you fill your life with?”

~ End ~

I want to thank Mohammed Yousef for the extremely informative walking tour! 

Bibliographic note: All photos are my own.