Inside the fatwa lab

“We get some 600 questions each month by e-mail,40 per cent of which are in English,” Muhammadullah says. Earlier,the website would allow users to send questions 24×7,now it accepts questions only four days a week. “Otherwise,the waiting time for an answer would be two months,” he says.

The four men are intermediaries between the audience and the “darul-ifta”,an eight-member mufti council that issues the fatwas. They copy-paste each English question on to a document in Inpage (a software),type its translation in Urdu,print it and send it to the darul-ifta. The council takes a week to give an answer,which they translate into English and upload on the website.

Some questions deal with serious issues such as triple talaq but most are bizarre. Sample these: “Is it a sin to wear trousers and shirts?”,“Can a necktie be worn while offering namaz?’,“Can Muslims celebrate birthdays”? The answers,if you were wondering,are a no,in each case.
Muhammadullah disagrees that the questions are too trivial. “If a Muslim wants to lead a lifestyle in a pure way,what’s wrong with that? We have an answer to every question,” he says.

Irony is not a strongly developed sense in Darul Uloom. Ties and trousers are written off as ways of the “debauched Westerners” but the computer is a “born Muslim”; photography is unlawful but video-chatting is “perfectly fine”,and while fatwas are doled out against unveiled Muslim working women who interact with men,clerics interact with this correspondent,an unveiled Muslim working woman,with ease.

The internet team also maintains and writes the content of http://www.darululoom-deoband.com,which is in English,Hindi,Urdu and Arabic. It was designed by Jitender Kumar,owner of a local cyber café,and has pieces about the seminary’s history,its founders’ bios,a photo-gallery (no human images,only the seminary’s building) and Islamic articles in Urdu. The team writes the articles and uploads them. “None of us are into programming. We write content,maintain websites and fix hardware,” says Salahuddin. So,are they maintenance engineers-cum-content writers? “We keep away from fancy designations,” he says.

They keep away from being photographed too. They had uploaded a fatwa some time back which called for “burning all photographs”. But we notice a webcam on Muhammadullah’s desk. “Yes,I chat with my friends on Yahoo!,MSN and GTalk,” he says. But doesn’t that involve human images? “They are moving,live images,which are temporary. It’s like looking at yourself in the mirror. Human photographs can be stored,that’s why they are prohibited,” he says.

Muhammadullah also has an account on Facebook (he has no female friends) and runs a blog. Are any of the websites blocked,like Youtube or Orkut? “No,not a single website is blocked,not even the pornographic ones,” says the head of the internet and computer department,Maulana Abdussalam Qasmi. “We only discourage our staff and students to surf immoral content. They have been mentally conditioned not to go near such websites. When we have blocked their minds against them,why block websites?” he says.

The seminary’s leading authority,deputy vice-chancellor Maulana Abdul Khalique Madrasi,discourages his students from “unnecessary surfing”. “I know how to use the computer and e-mail. But I don’t like the advertisements that pop up and have images. I’ve even stopped watching cricket after it has introduced cheerleaders in its tradition,” he says. Students may be careful in the use of the computer but they have no option when it comes to watching cricket. Television is prohibited on the campus.

But the computer is a “born Muslim” unlike television or other Western things,such as trousers,ties and birthday parties—denounced as the “ways of the debauched Jews and Christians”. “The computer doesn’t understand a third thing,besides 0 and 1. A true Muslim believes that there is no god (0) but Allah (1). That way,computer ek paidaishi mussalman hai,” says Qasmi,with a laugh. There’s nothing wrong in adopting “Western inventions which can be put to good use”,he says.

Qasmi learned how to use the computer at an American company in Riyadh,Saudi Arabia,where he worked for 20 years before joining Darul Uloom in 1996. When computers were installed at his company in 1980,he learned how to use them and later began teaching trainees on AutoCad,Word and Excel. In 1990,he,along with an Indian and a Pakistani,created an Urdu pagemaking software called Sadaf and exported it to US,Canada,UK and Iran. When the business wound up,Qasmi saw Darul Uloom’s vacancy for computer teachers in an Urdu newspaper. “I felt I was the best person fit for the job. I was educated in Darul Uloom,had knowledge of computers,and wore a kurta,pajama and beard,” says Qasmi. He says he left his job of Rs 80,000 a month for his current position as the only computer teacher at the seminary,which offered him Rs 4,000 monthly pay in 1996,and since then,has increased it by five per cent every year.

There’s a lot of demand for computer courses among madarsa students,he says. “In 1996,there were only three computers. We needed 10 students for our one-year diploma and got 250 applications,” he says. “Today,there are about 30 students,and 12 computers,” he says.

Inside the lab,boys,in their late teens and early twenties,are busy Photoshopping covers of Urdu books or making newspaper pages on Inpage,as part of their one-year diploma. Where would they go from here? “We’ll teach computers at a madarsa or if our parents can afford to,we’ll study computers further,” says Mohammed Qasim. Would he work in a company,if it offers him a better salary than a madarsa? “Only if they let me wear what I am wearing,” he says. “In any case,it’s the madarsas where we want to teach,a lot of them are setting up computer classes and they’d need teachers. Teaching in a madarsa will benefit Muslims.”

The four internet workers,who earn Rs 7,000 a month,agree. “The computer for us is just a tool to spread our message to Muslims,” says Muhammadullah,who after passing out from Darul Uloom,enrolled in a two-year English course. Hadi worked as a maintenance engineer in Aligarh,Salahuddin did an MA in Islamic Studies and Ahmed worked as a TV journalist in Mumbai. All returned to “help in its mission with the help of new technology”.