A Muslim youth organisation in Hyderabad, A.P. Tehrik Muslim Shabban has imposed a ban on entry of burqa-clad women in local cinema theaters and its volunteers have tried to enforce the ban with mixed results. The Tehrik has every right to propagate its views and persuade its targets but it cannot coerce anyone or disturb public peace.

However, one fails to understand why the Tehrik has selected only "burqa-clad women", and not all Muslim women, nor all Muslims, men or women. If viewing movies in cinema halls against Islamic morality, it is so for all Muslims, not for Muslim women only and certainly not for only burqa clad women!

Secondly, viewing movies would be equally so, even within the privacy of the home. It is not clear whether the Tehrik plans to stop private viewing, at least of films which cannot even be screened in public.

Thirdly, there are many patently immoral acts - such as consumption of alcohol and illicit sexual relations in which some Muslim indulge. Is the Tehrik going to enforce Islamic morality in all respects? If so, the Tehrik has taken more on its plate than it can chew.

On the other hand, the social menace of unrestricted polygamy, unregulated divorce, demand for dowry, non-maintenance of parents, wives and children, wasteful expenditure on rituals connected with birth, marriage and death and beggary are rampant in the Muslim Indian society, not only in Hyderabad but all over the country. The school enrollment rate of Muslim children is much lower and the drop-out rate is much higher than the national average. Literacy rate in Muslim community is also much lower. I appeal to the leaders of the Tehrik not to dissipate their energy in token acts which will make no impact, though it, may gain them some notoriety but to launch a movement for social reform and universal education.