. 'Caste and caste based discriminations Among Indian Muslims’ ≅ ≅ Dr.Masood Alam Falahi Asst. Professor Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Lucknow Campus. 504/131, Tagore Marg, Daliganj, Lucknow U.P. -206020. E-mail:
[email protected] Mob.09559840136 Fax.0522-2740240 Caste system pre-Islamic Arabian society: Before the advent of Islam, the Arabs considered the non-Arabs, inferior (‘Ajmi) to them. Even Arab people pride on their own tribes. The Quraish tribe was servant of K’abah, so prided on them. But their attitude was not like Indian caste system. They were marrying with different tribes. They used to do all kind of works. We can find such evidences in pre- Islamic era. Till now they use job titles with their names, like Haddad, (blacksmith/ ironsmith) Zayyat (oil presser), Najjar (carpenter), Hazza (shoes maker), Khayyat (tailor) etc. There were two classes in pre-Islamic Arabic society i.e. free and slave. The free man could take benifits (physical relations) with slave woman but revers was not allowed. By this example we can say that pre-Islamic Arabian society was divided into a society of upper and lower class, in other word it was based on class not caste. A famous antheropologist Dr. Ghaus Ansari writes: “The pre-Islamic Arabian society was devided into tribes and clans; social grades within the clan or tribe were unknown. Although rivaliries between different clans of the same tribe or between different tribes were quite common, and although inter-clan or inter-tribal fueds were also frequent, yet the the conception of superiority or inferiority of one clan or tribe in comparision to another clan or tribe 1 was unknown in the sense it has come to acquire in existing plural socities.”P0F Caste and Islam: Islam is an egalitarian religion.