'The High Court has played a trick on us'

The legal committee of the All India Muslim Law Personal Board has decided to meet on the 9th of October and discuss the verdict in the Ayodhya case which was pronounced on Thursday by the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court. Dr S Q R Ilyas, convenor of the Babri Masjid Action Committee told rediff.com that this would be followed by a meeting of the executive committee of the Board which would take the final decision.

Professor Mohammad Sulaiman, senior member of the board and Dr Ilyas said that the decision to move the Supreme Court is final, but the two meetings would discuss the manner in which the Special Leave Petition is to be carried forward. Although the board has not met formally as yet, it is already decided that we will not even consider the decision to share the land and there is no way in which any Muslim in the country will be willing to compromise the inner portion of the Mosque in accordance with the Shariyat Law. The Shariyat Law is very clear that there are two portions to a Mosque- the inner and the outer portion. The law makes it clear that no Muslim should compromise the inner portion of a Mosque. The verdict of the High Court infact directs us to compromise on the inner portion of the Mosque and this is not acceptable to the Muslims. We have always maintained this position and even when we went in a delegation and met several Prime Ministers in the past we have maintained this position of ours. The other party has always been insisting on the inner portion of the Mosque and as per the Shariyat Law it is not possible to agree to such a demand and hence we will move the Supreme Court explaining our position. The Shariyat Law has been accepted by both the Privy Council and also various court in India, however we are aware that the Supreme Court can overturn it and we will abide by whatever it says.

The legal committee at present is studying the options and the same would be placed before the executive committee on October 16th. We are very sure that we want to move the highest court of the land since the High Court has played hide and seek with the title suit. Whatever the Supreme Court says will be the final decision and we are ready to abide by it. We however hope that there will be some clarity to the issue pertaining to the title suit since we are unable to understand what the High Court has meant when it passed this order. As of now we feel that the order of the High Court is not a workable one.

During the preliminary discussions that the Board has been holding it has been felt that the High Court has played a trick on us. We never demanded land around the Mosque and all we have been saying is that we want the inner portion of the Mosque. There appears to be no clear cut decision on the title suit and we still believe we have a case since all the High Court did was reject our demand on the basis of barred by limitation. We still believe that the case is open since if you look at the Supreme Court guidelines of 1993, it is clearly stated that the main issue can be decided only after a final decision is made to the title suit which in this case still remains hanging.

Post the Ayodhya verdict we have been speaking to a cross section of the Muslims across the country and the general feeling is that of shock. None of them are able to understand the logic of the verdict. There is large scale disappointment among the members of the community, but they do see hope in the Supreme Court. However there is no plan of taking the matter to the streets or issuing a fatwa against anyone responsible for this verdict. There is one thing that is decided and that there shall at no stage be any compromise as suggested by the special bench of the High Court.