Opportunity to drag Muslims into another controversy

IT NEVER ceases to amaze me how Islamophobic opportunists seek to involve Muslims and Islam in controversies irrelevant to both.

The Jewish, atheist and Hindu business community and the ANC are in a close financial-political relationship. The question should rather be: would the ANC serve pork at a state funeral for a Jew? If it did, would any Jew even object?

As regards Islam, firstly, a Muslim funeral cannot legitimately be conducted by any non-Muslim entity.

Secondly, the Islamic view is that any requirement from a bereaved family (who may even have just lost a breadwinner), to provide meals for mourners is a cruel, insensitive and unjust practice.

When a Muslim dies, the bereaved family are not required to provide meals for the mourners. Instead their neighbours are required to provide material support, including meals, for the household.

This practice is testimony to the beauty, love, justice and mercy of the Islamic social and economic system.

Should a non-Muslim state wish to hold a state funeral for a Muslim, the committed Muslim family should simply exercise its right to decline.

If the state wishes to hold a ceremony anyway, what it does, how it chooses to do it and what meals it serves have nothing to do with Muslims or Islam, as the non-Muslim state is in any case not a legitimate custodian of Muslim funeral rites.

Any Muslim served any non-permissible food or drink, including pork and alcohol, at any public or private function is in any event required to abstain.

No self-respecting South African citizen should attend a state funeral by the corrupt for the corrupt.

Our gravy train political rulers are well-known for squandering public funds. The available evidence is that said Hindu politician was the loyal servant of the fatally corrupt ruling class ANC.

Furthermore, most Hindus of my acquaintance consume meat. If the Hindu community was less focused on the financial, political and publicity gains from the pomp and ceremony of a state funeral and more concerned with their own Hindu practices, they would have taken care to inform their ANC patrons of Hindu funeral protocol restrictions.

Pilgrims

As a South African, I respect the sovereignty of other nations. I suggest that the letter writer Sugen Pillay resolve the issues he has about his home country with the Indian government.

Regarding the issue he raised of his Indian government choosing to sponsor Muslims for the Hajj, India’s government has long been and still is a major sponsor of Hindu pilgrimages for political gain.

When objections arose that this practice was inconsistent with the tenets of a secular constitution, it chose to sponsor some Muslims to the Hajj so that it could divert the objections of equal rights activists rather than deal with the political repercussions of mass Hindu fury should it have stopped being the major sponsor of Hindu pilgrimages.

India is, of course, host to the largest population of poor Hindus in the world.

The Indian government has also banned the longestablished traditional Hindu practices of sathi, the Hindu caste class system, and dowry killing, and has legislated equal rights for Harijans and criminal prosecution for dowry killings and sathi.

I presume the writer has communicated his dissatisfaction with his government on this disrespectful stance regarding Hindus’ rights to their traditional rites and practices in his home country.

I look forward to seeing his open letter to the Indian government, regarding the disrespect shown by his government to Hindus for criminalising these fundamental Hindu cultural rites, published in your newspaper soon.