CHENNAI, July 20: The Milad-un-Nabi procession taken out in Chennai on Friday has left a trail of controversy, with a section of the Muslim community openly denouncing it as `anti-Islam'.

The annual rally which is being organised since 1981, received the worst flak from the Prince of Arcot, Nawab Mohammed Abdul Ali. He told The Indian Express that the rally was the `starting point' of all communal trouble in Chennai and such processions had no sanction of the Holy Quran.

The governing committee of the Masjid-e-Mamoor, the mosque on Angappa Street in North Chennai, from where the rally begins every year, is also equally opposed to the processions. ``It is totally unnecessary and inimical to communal harmony', the committee's president A K Abdul Haleem said.

Abdul Ali feels that it was only after the Madras City Milad Committee (MCMC) began organising processions which passed through the communally sensitive areas in the city particularly Triplicane, that the Hindu outfits came up with Vinayaka Chathurthi processions in the city.

``In the pre-80s there was neither the Milad rally nor the Vinayaka Chathurthi procession'', he recalls.

``Did Allah ask for these processions which pose a threat to communal harmony?'' asks Haleem, the mosque committee chief. According to Abdul Ali, Islam allows only two rallies- Jehad (fight for the cause of Allah) and Janaza (funeral procession).

And slogan-shouting during the procession is an absolute taboo in Islam, he points out. ``Let them prove that the rally has the sanction of Quran or the Prophet?''

Haleem is furious with the organsiers of the rally for another reason too. Hours before the rally began, in fact in the pre-dawn hours, the loudspeakers blared out songs (only on Islam) in the entire area- from Angappan Street to Mannadi, causing disturbance to the daily prayers and the Quran memorising session for the young children at the Angappan mosque.

``Prophet was totally against all this cacaphony and glitz'', he says.Former Wakf Board chairman and Minister Mohammed Asif who says he has never taken part in the Milad rally opposes the ritual, but rather mildly. ``Islam does not allow such showy processions'. Ever since hotelier M Yousuf (his Lucky hotel was blasted in 1996) started the Milad rally 18 years ago, the mosque committee has opposed the rally tooth and nail, short of issuing a fatwa.

In fact, the Ishad Islam Sabha which used to organise a meeting on the Marina beach on Prophet's birthday, in which scholars and clergy of all religious faiths participated, shelved the programme after the Milad committee came onto the scene.

In 1983, when the Milad Committee decided to hold the rally two days after Milad-un-Nabi, to facilitate the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to participate in the procession, the mosque committee passed a resolution, disassociating itself from the procession, recalls Haleem. ``Since then we have decided to keep away from the rally which has begun to assume a political dimension ''. In 1992, the rally took a violent turn, claiming the wives of two innocent Muslims in the riots.

As an afterthought, the grey-haired Haleem adds, ``if we stop these rallies, the Hindus will also stop their Vinayaka Chathurthi processions. But who is going to listen to us. I know I will only receive a heap of letters condemning me. But I don't care." However, the rally organiser Yousuf claims that the rally's aim was to foster communal harmony and not otherwise.

But the government Chief Qazi Sallaudin refuses to be drawn into the controversy. ``Ask the Milad Committee. I have no comments'', is his terse reply. But will Haleem's words be heeded is the question.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.