A petitioner has just petitioned in the country’s Supreme Court that some 26 verses of the Quran be omitted or rendered illegal, so to say. Naturally such a petition or any other like measure must become a cause for grief for those who hold this Book scared, and believe it to be the Word of God. Yet the same Quran tells them to “Be patient on what they say ……” (Chapter 38, verse 17) when it notes at different places that the rejecters in all times have called the earlier Prophets of Allah (peace be upon them all), including Muhammad (peace n blessings be upon him) the ‘liars’, ‘sorcerers’ and ‘lunatics’.
Purposely I have omitted the proper name of the reported petitioner who ostensibly purports to be a Muslim. A Muslim is a person who chooses to follow Islam. His main belief is that Allah is the Creator and the Lord of the worlds, Muhammad (peace n blessings be upon him) is His Last Prophet, and Quran is the last Book of Allah revealed unto the Last Prophet. Incidental to this belief are other ancillaries which however are not supposed to be discussed here. Non-Muslims are those who do not agree with this belief system of Islam. Respectable are their views indeed, nevertheless.
A Muslim has no right to question any verse of the Quran – or for that matter, any other tenet of Islam, because he is supposed to have accepted their truthfulness before consciously adopting this religion. If he does want to question any verse, he should be bold enough to renounce Islam and remove from his person all that is Islamic in nature or even in hue. The mother of the great Bollywood singer Kishore Kumar Ganguly is said to have changed his name to Kishore Kumar from the initial name ‘Abhas’ Kumar because that used to be pronounced generally as a Muslim name ‘Abbas’ Kumar. Hats off to the oneness of the great lady, Gouri Devi.
The petition could not be seen on the Supreme Court website. The internet search only revealed that few days back a Bench of the Hon’ble Court has issued notice to the Central Government for its response in the matter. As a humble student of law, my curiosity is all about the probability of the Hon’ble Court agreeing to hear this petition (assuming, as reported in media, that it is about expunging some verse of the Holy Quran) in the face of the indispensable judicial principle of giving the other side a reasonable opportunity of being heard! Ideally the opportunity in this case ought to be given to God Who claims to be the author of the Book in question. But that is not done. Understandably because, one, majority of the people on earth do not accept this authorship; and, two, more importantly God is not ‘visible’ enough to be served with a court notice! (By the way, invisible doesn’t mean non-existent. If He were non-existent, we had nothing to deny! And as Naz-Khelvi has versified, our denial also proves His existence.)
Unavailability of God does not excuse an exception to the said principle of judicial propriety. To that Author the hearing is justifiably ruled out; but to the followers it can’t be – most probably. The subject matter of this petition is a Book that is not just believed to be divine, but also held absolutely dear and sacred by its followers who are scattered all over the world. The big question is how to hear them all?
About 25% of the world population is Muslim: more or less 1.9 billion souls. Even if half of them are liberally assumed to be minors who could be legitimately represented by their elders as de-facto guardians, hearing still more than half a billion people would be almost impossible. Even their representation, which courts nonetheless do not impose, won’t be so simple. The most convenient of the possible simplifications might be to divide Muslims into only two broad groups of Sunnis and Shias who in turn are recognized as broadly represented by the Saudi Sheikhdom and the Iranian Clergy. But then the problem would be that neither of these two so-called representative bodies is amenable to the jurisdiction of the Indian Court!
Another complication of the problem arises from the uniformity of the Quran worldwide, unlike some other sacred books (e.g., the Indian epic of Valmiki Ramayana and the Kashmiri one) in whose case the observations or judgements could be to some extent said to be territory- or sect- specific. In this case a judgement of the Supreme Court of India cannot be said to be restricted to the territorial confines of this country, more so now in our age of information technology that has villagized the globe!
We lift the questions. Hope they drop the answers!