Propuesta para la mejora de la eficacia del sistema de distribución

The Awami (People’s) League is one of the two most powerful political parties in bangladesh,

together with its rival, the Bangladesh National Party (BNP). It is an important example of the secular currents in modern Muslim politics. The league was founded in 1949 by Husayn Shaheed Suhrawardy (1892–1963) and other members of the Bengali branch of the all-india mUslim

leagUe in what was then called East Bengal (after

1955 it was called East Pakistan), a province of

pakistan created as a result of the partition of

india in 1947. Earlier, Suhrawardy and his col-

leagues had been active in the Indian nationalist movement against British colonial rule. Created after partition, the East Pakistan Awami Mus- lim League (later renamed the Awami League) gave voice to Bengali Muslims opposed to West Pakistan’s domination of the new country. Bengali nationalists wanted greater self-rule in a loosely knit federation, inclusion of Hindus and Sikhs in the national polity, and recognition of Bangla, their national language, as an official state lan- guage. The West Pakistani leadership, however, wanted to preserve its privileged position, retain Pakistan’s distinct Muslim identity, and keep Urdu as its only official language.

Suhrawardy was eclipsed in the 1960s by the charismatic Sheikh Mujibur (Mujib) Rahman (1920–75), who expanded the Awami League’s appeal to the Bengali masses with his “Six Point Program” for more equality in Pakistani affairs. Advocating a secular parliamentary democracy, the Awami League won a landslide victory in the 1970 national elections. Its triumph was short- lived, however, because the Pakistani military intervened in 1971 to declare martial law, and it imprisoned Mujib for treason, which precipitated a war for independence from Pakistan. With the assistance of Indian troops, East Pakistan thus became Bangladesh in 1971, and Mujib, released from prison, became its first prime minister. The new government’s constitution was based on “four pillars” advocated by Mujib and the Awami League: democracy, socialism, secular- ism, and nationalism. The league’s popularity soon declined, however, in the face of a famine in 1974 and political and economic failures that resulted in a series of coups after Mujib’s death in 1975. It regained its parliamentary majority in the 1996 elections, and Mujib’s daughter, Shaikh Hasina Wajid, became Bangladesh’s prime min- ister (1996–2001). The league remains strongly secular in outlook. As one observer has noted, the Awami League upholds the idea that “Bangla- K  76  Averroës

deshis are Bengalis who happen to be Muslims,” while its rival, the BNP (created in 1978), consid- ers “Bangladeshis to be Muslims who happen to be Bengalis” (Baxter, p. xiii).

See also democracy; Jinnah, mUhammad ali;

hindUismand islam; secUlarism.

Further reading: Craig Baxter, Bangladesh: From a

Nation to a State (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press,

1997); Charles P. O’Donnell, Bangladesh: Biography of a

Muslim Nation (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1984).

aya

Aya is the Arabic word for a verse in the qUran

or more generally a “sign” or “wonder.” In both senses, Muslims believe that an aya contains a message from God for human beings to heed. The verses, or phrases and sentences of different lengths and styles, are grouped into chapters in the Quran, called suras. Of the more than 6,000 verses in the Quran, the shorter ones tend to be poetic and occur in chapters in the second half of the book, most of which are associated with mUhammad’s years as a prophet in mecca

(610–622). Verses in the first half, which date to the years Muhammad lived in medina (622–632),

tend to be longer and lack both rhyme and rhythm. In handwritten copies of the Quran, a floret or some other decorative marking is often inserted at the end of each verse to facilitate reading, since punctuation such as periods and question marks is not used in old Arabic script. In modern printed copies, the decorative inserts usually contain the verse number, thus reflecting the influence of printed Bibles in the West. Muslim commentators distinguish between two kinds of verses: those that are clear and unambiguous (muhkamat) and those that are obscure or mysterious (mutashabi- hat). The former are generally those to which the

Ulama turn when making religious law (fiqh),

while the latter, including the mysterious letters that begin a number of chapters, have attracted the attention of speculative thinkers and mystics.

In addition to denoting verses of scripture, the Quran uses the word aya to denote “signs” and “wonders” revealed by God in nature and in narratives of sacred history associated with the lives of prophets who lived before Muhammad’s time. The signs in nature include the creation

of heaven and Earth, the alternation of day and night, rainfall, sea wind, the beginning and end- ing of life, the growth of plants, and the benefits

animals provide to humans (for examples, see Q

36:33–45; 41:37–39; 42:29, 33). In sacred history, the destruction of unbelievers and the rescue of believers from peril are included among God’s signs, as exemplified by the story of Noah’s ark (Q 54:9–15). Other prophets who performed signs and wonders according to the Quran are moses

(Q 20:17–24) and JesUs (Q 3:49). Muhammad’s

opponents in Mecca challenged him to produce similar signs (Q 6:37), for which his response was the recitation of Quranic verse (Q 31:7; 45:6), which brings the two meanings of aya together, both as a verse and a miraculous sign.

See also allah; basmala; tafsir.

Further reading: Farid Esack, Quran: A Short Introduc-

tion (Oxford, U.K.: Oneworld, 2001); W. Montgomery

Watt and Richard Bell, Introduction to the Quran (Edin- burgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1970).

Pilgrimage mural showing Quran verses and other reli- gious sayings, Qurna, Egypt (Juan E. Campo)

ayatollah

Ayatollah is a title bestowed on the most highly esteemed religious scholars in tWelve-imam shi- ism since the 19th century. It is held by experts

of Islamic law, especially members of the UsUli

school based in iran and iraq. Religious educa-

tion in the Shii madrasa system and expertise in

the practice of legal reasoning (ijtihad) are mini-

mum qualifications for becoming an ayatollah, but there are no other formal requirements. The madrasas of Qum (Iran), Mashhad (Iran), and Najaf (Iraq) are where ayatollahs have received their training and where many of them have taught. Ayatollahs gain their status by popular acclamation, which is demonstrated by their abil- ity to collect religious taxes. They claim that they are representatives of the Hidden imam, and the

highest ranking among them are called “sources of emulation,” meaning that other Shia should fol- low their rulings. These supreme leaders can also be called a “grand ayatollahs.” Ayatollahs have become especially powerful since the iranian

revolUtionoF 1978–79.

See also aUthority; khomeini, rUhollah; muj- tahid; Ulama.

Further reading: Moojan Momen, An Introduction to

Shii Islam (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,

1985); Michael M. J. Fischer, Iran, from Religious Dis-

pute to Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer-

sity Press, 1980).

Ayodhya

A Hindu pilgrimage center in Uttar Pradesh, north india on the river Sarayu, Ayodhya is now most

famous as the home of a site contested by Hindus and Muslims as the birthplace of the Hindu god Rama or the location of an early 16th-century

mosqUe known as the Babri Masjid. Modern day

Ayodhya is closely linked with the mythical city of the epic Ramayana, the capital of the god-king Rama, an incarnation of Vishnu from an earlier epoch of Hindu history. Historical and archaeo-

logical evidence indicates that the two cities are not the same, but a vast number of the more than 800 million Hindus in India do not make this distinction. It is clear that Ayodhya has been an important pilgrimage city for centuries, noted in particular as a base for several orders of Hindu ascetic sadhus (holy men) and for its exception- ally powerful Hanuman temple. The popularity of Ayodhya as a pilgrimage destination grew under Mughal patronage in the 16th and 17th centuries, and until the 19th century the religious conflict in the town was limited to struggles between rival orders of Hindus. The Babri Masjid was inau- gurated in 1528 under the sponsorship of Mir Baqi, a general in the service of the first Mughal emperor, Babur (r. 1526–30). In 1859, the British government erected a fence following several inci- dents, and it was determined that Hindus would no longer be allowed to freely enter the mosque as had been the custom. Then in 1949, idols of Rama appeared in the mosque, and it was claimed that a security guard had had a vision of Rama himself. From that time until 1992, the shrine was closed for all worship except for an annual Hindu ceremony to maintain the idols that had been installed. Dereliction in the courts and on the part of the government allowed the situation to fester until in the 1980s the issue was raised by several Hindu nationalist organizations, in particular the World Hindu Council (VHP) and the political party Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). On December 6, 1992, this movement was successful in draw- ing an enormous crowd of activists who destroyed the mosque, triggering Hindu-Muslim riots across India in which more than 3,000 were killed. After 1992, there was little change in the situation as the courts failed to rule decisively, and the BJP, which came to power in 1998, allowed the instigators of the violence to take up cabinet-level positions in the government. The question of the temple has continued to be a triggering issue for Hindu-Mus- lim violence, most recently setting off a series of riots in the western state of Gujarat in spring 2002 resulting in more than 2,000 deaths and more than K  78  ayatollah

100,000 people displaced from their homes. In both 1992 and 2002, the victims were overwhelm- ingly Muslim, making the identity of the site one of the most critical, yet intransigent, challenges to India’s multireligious polity. In 2003, the Indian Supreme Court ordered the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to conduct excavations of the site, but the results have proved too indefinite to bring about any resolution.

See also hindUismand islam; mUghaldynasty.

Anna Bigelow Further reading: Sarvepalli Gopal, ed., Anatomy of a

Confrontation: The Rise of Communal Politics in India

(London: Zed Books, 1993); Sushil, Srivastava, The Dis-

puted Mosque: A Historical Inquiry (New Delhi: Vistaar

Publications, 1991); Peter Van der Veer, Gods on Earth:

Religious Experience and Identity in Ayodhya (Delhi:

Oxford University Press, 1997).

Azad, Abu al-Kalam