Media and the Muslims

I am a regular reader of your website and a well wisher too.

With great interest I read one of the lead pieces which praises the efforts of Hindustan Times in profiling the New Muslims. Indeed an effort which requires to be highlighted.

However, just for the record (quite obviously because it may not have ben highlighted before), Mumbai¿s Inquilaab daily newspaper (an Urdu paper since  1938 and part of the MiD DAY group) has in the past few months started a weekend English newspaper called Qaum. This paper, an eight page pull out goes free with the Urdu paper.

There are scores of Muslim families in India , and many of them are Inquilaab readers. The younger generation among these families are gradually leaning towards English but, many of these families cannot afford a second paper. It is to keep pace with this trend and make English newspaper an affordable commodity in their homes.

I am not saying its one of the finest newspaper products available in the market right now. But, what I wish to highlight is, in an era where we are constantly talking of crass competition, there is this newspaper group which has initiated a real time effort in reaching out to the progressive Muslim.

My thoughts would be seconded by Shahid Latif, who is the Editor of Inquilaab and coordinates the content for Qaum as well.

(Must share with you that Shah Rukh Khan, actor, was recently at the MiD DAY office and spent a considerable amount of time going through the initiations of Inquilaab and Qaum.)

Shishir Joshi

Group Editorial Director

MiD DAY Multimedia Ltd.

Mumbai

November 2, 2007