Political iftar parties losing charm

PATNA: The month of Ramzan is nearing its closure, but no big political iftar party was organized to provide platform to the rival politicians to adorn their heads with different varieties of caps and hug each other for photo ops.
CM Jitan Ram Manjhi hosted the official iftar party at 1, Anne Marg, on Wednesday, maintaining the tradition of his predecessors.One iftar party was also held at Sadaqat Ashram, the Congress headquarters, but it only exposed the internal differences as three of its four MLAs, all Muslims, skipped it and most of the other Muslim leaders also did not turn up.
This year Ramzan came soon after the Lok Sabha elections and did not enthuse much the hosts of political iftar. Such parties are common when elections are round the corner and parties are eager to show their pro-Muslim face. Now, very few iftar parties of political nature are held. In recent times, clerics and scholars started criticizing the political gatherings in the name of breaking the fast while asking the rozedars (those keeping fast) to keep off from such events for the sanctity of their roza.
Roza, said Mohammad Alam Qasmi, is a religious ritual and its sanctity should be maintained. "This ritual should not be clouded by the politics and politicians," said Qasmi, imam of a mosque. Other Islamic scholars also questioned the big iftar parties thrown by the politicians and asked why such parties are not organized by them to mark other religious rituals like Chhath or other festivals.
Maulana Anisur Rahman Qasmi of Imarat Shariah, however, said iftar parties facilitate expanding mutual relations. He said religion allowed rozedars to attend iftar hosted by anyone provided it should be organized with the hard-earned money and there should not be any pomp and show. "There is no problem in attending such parties if they meet the guidelines," the cleric said.
The custom of hosting political iftar parties became so rampant that some years back an imam of a mosque, Maulana Ikramul Haq, had to issue a diktat that attending such parties was "un-Islamic" and even asked the Muslims who had attended iftar party hosted by an important politician to go for penance and observe one more day's roza as a punishment. A Muslim official said he found mostly non-Muslims at such iftar parties.
It is another matter that hardly anybody obeyed his decree, but the fact remains that there had been a little brake on such events. Delhi's Shahi Imam, too, once decried that iftar parties hosted by politicians had become a political tamasha and it hurt the religious sentiment because a religious ritual was being turned into a carnival. A politician sent invitation letters for iftar party in which he mentioned names of some leaders as being the ?chief guests'.
Recounting his experience, Hammad Qasim, secretary of a mosque managing committee, said, "To my dismay, I found organizers and other political workers rushing towards a VVIP to welcome him even when the azan was being intoned signalling the breaking of fast. They were least bothered about breaking fast, but more interested in greeting the political guest."