Indian Muslim women don’t need male ‘saviours’ – Hindu or Muslim

 

Living under a Hindu nationalist regime for almost a decade, the traditional perception of men as protectors and women as preservers of cultural traditions is increasingly getting reinforced in shaping people’s identities in contemporary India – among both Hindus and Muslims.

The recurring calls for genocide, rising hate crimes and everyday humiliation of Muslims at the hands of Hindu nationalists pose an existential crisis for the entire Muslim community. A few men, however, are internalising this crisis as a personal failing on account of their traditional gender role as protectors of their community and are adopting exaggerated and superficial masculine traits as a defence mechanism.

The trolling of Fatima, a non-hijabi woman, was centred around her Muslim name and the validity of her faith. In the case of Nabiya, meanwhile, accounts with large followings on the internet circulated images of her showing her sitting with male non-Muslim friends – an act that, according to those targeting her, brought disrespect to the hijab.

The Muslim trolls ironically attacked her through the exact same stereotypical beliefs that the Hindu right-wing associates with Muslim women, according to which the hijab worn by her is not a representation of her faith but rather a symbol of her subjugation to the men of her community.

The nature of the trolling that these women were subjected to was based on the belief that liberal or feminist thought within Muslim women has influenced them to go against the men of the community, misuse their names or their religious symbols (in this case, the hijab) while jeopardising the honour of the Muslim community. A troubling culture of victim blaming is breeding, where the Islamophobic violence directed towards Muslims is being blamed on the weakest of all within the community.

Despite putting their safety at risk to speak against the rising Islamophobia in India, women like Fatima and Nabiya are being labelled by some as traitors to the community. This has nothing to do with genuine morality and everything to do with the display of policing. A display of male supremacy, cloaked in the age-old guise of traditional morality.

While the online attack on Nabiya and Fatima is vile and harsh, they are urban, relatively privileged women – a status that affords them at least some level of protection. Women who come from marginalised sections have little to no support, once they have become subjects of public humiliation. This in turn can lead to social ostracisation and even physical violence, all of which is bound to have a profound negative impact on their psychological wellbeing.

It is difficult to speak up against the implications of these attacks. There already exists in India and many other parts of the world an unfair, made-up narrative that frames all Muslim men as oppressive, violent and predatory. Being aware of how her own oppression will be weaponised against her community and will embolden a system that is constantly on the lookout for excuses to put stamps on these stereotypes, the Muslim woman is under pressure to submit silently to this new, rising threat.

This double silencing not only limits her capacity to protect herself against violence but also denies her any political agency, reducing her to either a spectator, a supporter or a battleground.

She is forced to choose from a pre-written binary – one where she can either be “saved” by the Hindu man or “protected” by the Muslim man.

Full article 

Huge fire at Rohingya refugee camp leaves thousands without shelter

 

An estimated 12,000 Rohingya have been left without shelter after a fire tore through part of a cramped refugee camp in southern Bangladesh on Sunday, destroying health centres, learning facilities and mosques.

The fire broke out at Camp 11 of Cox’s Bazar refugee camp, which is home to more than 1 million Rohingya refugees, including 700,000 who fled their home country, Myanmar, after a brutal military crackdown in 2017.

Tin Lwin, whose home was destroyed in the blaze, said the fire began at about 2.40pm on Sunday afternoon. His two young children were out playing at the time, he said, adding that it was two hours before the family was reunited. “There was a huge crowd. I was also busy trying to save my house,” he said. “It was a very bad time.”

The family spent Monday morning cleaning the burned debris that was once their shelter, and fixing a temporary roof. “We are still in fear, honestly, that this might set fire again. There is no safety or security here,” he said.

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India: Why Muslim women are at risk of losing it all

 

Amid the desk-thumping cheers of the lower house of the Indian parliament, detrimental decisions were rattled off as part of the 2023 budget process this month, marking yet another step towards disempowering Muslims in the country. This is the same house where the ruling right-wing government often fashions itself as the messiah of Muslim women, even as they endure a potentially devastating assault on their social, economic and political rights.

Amongst myriad cuts to budgets affecting minorities and women, the government has cut funding to help students from minority communities pass preliminary exams, while slashing the budget for madrassas.

From the right to choose what to wear, to the right to education and work, Indian Muslim women are at risk of losing it all

From the right to choose what to wear, to the right to education and work, Indian Muslim women are at risk of losing it all. Yet, despite this urgency, the public outcry is not nearly as pronounced as it should be.

Ongoing global debates around the right to education (in the context of Afghanistan) and the freedom to choose how to dress (in the context of Iran) have comfortably ignored Indian Muslim women - and this is hardly a new phenomenon.

Backlash against the Taliban, one would like to believe, stems from their clear negation of women’s rights. Yet, much of the international outcry actually stems from the legacy of US military intervention in Afghanistan and the Orientalist inclination to “save” Muslim women.

Along the same lines, the leader of India’s right-wing government, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, insists that he has “freed” Muslim women. But Muslim women - fearless and with their fists raised - would disagree.

She stood alone, fearless and veiled head-to-toe, heckled by men in saffron scarves. This is how Muskan Khan, the “poster girl” for last year’s hijab-ban protests in the Indian state of Karnataka, subverted the stereotypical representation of a Muslim woman in the Indian imagination.

She was educated and indomitable, a subversion of the essentialised label of victimhood accorded to Indian Muslim women that is often incorrectly blamed exclusively on Muslim men. A year later, women like Muskan are facing the brunt of the Indian state’s harmful legislation, as well as a climate of violence and intimidation.

Minority Affairs Minister Smriti Irani was among many admirers of the newly released budget, which she praised for its focus on “inclusive development”. Ironically, the government has significantly slashed the budget of the ministry she heads - and the scale of these cuts is hard to ignore.

For minority educational empowerment, the budget allocation has been reduced from Rs 2,515 crores ($304m) to Rs 1,689 crores ($204.5m). The allocation for skills development and livelihoods was cut by 99 percent, while incentives for free coaching and other allied schemes were reduced by around 60 percent.

Indian Muslims have been fashioned within the Indian nation-state through a legacy and language of violence

This follows a trend that started last year. In December, the government discontinued the Maulana Azad National Fellowship, a scholarship for students from minority communities pursuing higher education. The fellowship was initially implemented more than a decade ago upon the recommendations of the Sachar committee, which highlighted the abysmal state of social, economic and educational conditions for Muslims in India.

Such steps are incongruous with government data. Indian Muslims continue to have relatively low access to education, particularly with regards to higher education, where enrolment numbers for Muslim students have been on the decline. Muslim students also tend to rely more on government institutions than non-Muslims. With little-to-no government support, students from Muslim communities will find it increasingly difficult to access education.

Interestingly, the enrolment of Muslim women in higher education has been growing in proportion to that of Muslim men. But this discouraging package of legislation is set to undo these strides, compounding the disadvantageous position that Muslim women in India occupy within the matrix of their religious, gender and class identities.

The ruling government insists that Muslim women “feel safe” under the BJP, and in justifying the hijab ban, it asserted that “misguided” Muslim women need to be brought into the “mainstream of education”.

If this is the case, why are Muslim women dropping out of colleges in Karnataka? A recent report by the Karnataka branch of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties found that more than 1,000 female Muslim students dropped out of schools in five districts during the hijab row.

The fallout of anti-Muslim legislation is not restricted to Muslims from economically underprivileged backgrounds; there is also an ongoing exodus of urban Muslims. Many young Muslims, especially women, are finding that safe public spaces are disappearing for them. Muslim women have been targeted through sexist mock “auctions”, while also facing significant hiring biases.

This wholesale assault is a recipe to intimidate and disempower Muslim women in India, buttressed by a culture of communalised rhetoric, in which convicted rapists are prematurely released and go on to receive a hero’s welcome. A language of intimidation, along with open calls for violence against Muslim women, are being normalised by mainstream news media, popular culture and vigilante internet trolls. Hate is being manufactured here.

The tepid reactions to this urgent crisis show that the foundations from which this project draws its strength are not new. Indian Muslims have been fashioned within the Indian nation-state through a legacy and language of violence, wherein Muslim women exist only as victims who need to be saved from violent Muslim men, or as sexualised objects on which wars of religious nationalism are to be played out.

In videos about the Karnataka hijab controversy, while Muslim teachers had to remove their veils before entering schools and Muslim students who refused to do so were sent home, the only woman allowed to exist on her own terms was a teacher imposing “discipline”. She wore a sari and a bindi - the only acceptable image of an “Indian” woman in the populist imagination. 

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Is BJP to blame for reports of India's rising Islamophobia?

 

 Left homeless for protesting against hate speech in India.
That's what dozens of people whose houses have been demolished say is happening to them.
Most are Muslims.

But the demolitions took place as emotions were running high across India.
In the past week, people rallied in several cities, protesting against offensive comments that two members of the governing BJP made about the Prophet Muhammad.
Anti-Muslim violence has been growing since 2014 - the year Narendra Modi became prime minister.
What does growing religious intolerance mean for the future of India?

 

Pakistan: Hindu girl’s killing reignites forced conversion fears

 

A teenage Hindu girl was killed last week in Pakistan’s southeastern Sindh province after she resisted abduction for alleged forced marriage and conversion, prompting fear among the country’s minority community.

The family of Pooja Kumari, 18, described her as a girl full of life, often seen stitching traditional garments at their home in Rohri town in Sukkur district, some 470km (292 miles) north of the port city of Karachi, the provincial capital.
Kumari’s uncle Odh, whose first name Al Jazeera is not using due to security concerns, said she was often harassed by Wahid Bux Lashari, a member of the powerful Lashari tribe. Lashari, 24, had threatened Kumari with forced marriage earlier this month.

Her family said they approached the local police who “showed no interest” in helping the family against the powerful landowning tribe.

A week later on March 21, Lashari showed up again along with two associates and broke into the girl’s house. When Kumari resisted abduction, Lashari allegedly fired his gun.

“They shot her dead on the spot,” Odh told Al Jazeera. “She [Kumari] preferred resistance and death instead of marrying the abductor out of her faith.”

Police arrested Lashari and the two associates on the night of March 21 after the incident caused outrage on Pakistani social media.

“Mr Lashari and two others were arrested for their involvement in the murder,” local police official Bashir Ahmed told Al Jazeera. “The prime suspect has even confessed to the crime.”

Rights groups say Kumari is among nearly 1,000 minority girls forcibly married or converted to Islam – or both – every year in Muslim-majority Pakistan.

“Forced conversions are against the teachings of Islam and we are committed to ensure justice and peaceful environment for minorities. We will take serious action against the culprits and ensure protection to the family of [the] victim girl,” Hafiz Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi, special assistant to Prime Minister Imran Khan on religious harmony and Middle East affairs, told Al Jazeera.

According to the 2017 census, Muslims make up 97 percent of Pakistan’s population while Hindus are around 2 percent, an overwhelming majority of them – close to 90 percent – residing in Sindh province bordering Hindu-majority neighbour India.

Last year, the United States placed Pakistan on a list of “countries of particular concern” for religious freedom violations.

Activists say some victims of forced marriage or conversion are as young as 12.

In 2019, Khan’s government ordered an investigation into forced conversions after two Hindu sisters were allegedly kidnapped and forced to convert to Islam – a case that triggered a controversy with India.

A Pakistani court later ruled that the two sisters had converted voluntarily.

Activists say a lack of legislation aimed at safeguarding minority rights has made the situation difficult for Hindu and Christian girls.


In October last year, a parliamentary committee rejected an anti-forced conversion bill after the Ministry of Religious Affairs opposed the proposed law despite protests by legislators belonging to minority communities.

In 2016, Sindh province passed a law declaring forced conversion a punishable offence carrying a life sentence, but the region’s governor refused to ratify the legislation.

Meanwhile, minority groups in Pakistan have been protesting against forced marriage or conversion of girls belonging to their communities.

“Forced conversion is a very serious and becoming a chronic issue for the country, but unfortunately all the major political parties till now have failed to legislate on this important issue,” Kapil Dev, a rights activist belonging to the Hindu community, told Al Jazeera.

“She [Kumari] would have been another victim of forced conversion, if she had not resisted her kidnapping.”

Dev said the government should “think seriously on this issue” and bring a bill to stop the “heinous act sooner than later as these incidents not only bring a bad name to the country but also to the faith of the majority people”.

Dev pointed out the “lack of interest from political parties” that he said cave in to right-wing groups when a bill to stop the practice is presented in a state or national assembly.

Legal experts also say there is no existing law to stop forced conversions in Pakistan.

“Despite the surge in forced conversions, federal and provincial governments have not shown appropriate resolve to tackle this grave constitutional violation. The government, despite having a parliamentary majority in the national assembly, did not take this bill to parliament,” lawyer Osama Malik told Al Jazeera.

“Similarly, the provincial government of Sindh refused to legislate on this matter twice.” 

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How dangerous is it to be Muslim in India?

Is India’s Hindu majority radicalized against Muslims?

 

“Hum unka murder bhi na karen “Can’t we even murder them (Muslims)?” These were the words of Suraj Pal Amu, president of an Indian far-right outfit Karni Sena, while addressing an audience of 50,000 at a Mahapanchayat (great council) in the north-Indian state of Haryana on May 30. The council was held in support of the accused arrested for lynching a Muslim man in Mewat, Haryana.

On May 16, a 25-year-old Muslim youth Asif Khan from Mewat’s Khalilpur Kheda village was lynched allegedly by a mob. Asif was returning home after buying medicines.

“Unhone bola ‘Mulleh, tum logo mein se ek ko bhi nahi chhodenge,’ aur ye bhi bola ‘tum sab se hum Jai Shri Ram bulvayenge’ (They said they will not leave any of us alive and also said they will make us chant Jai Sri Ram),” the Quint quoted Asif’s cousin Rashid, an eyewitness, as saying.

When the police arrested the accused in the ‘lynching case’, people from a certain section of the Hindu society opposed their arrest. This is not the first time when some sections of the Hindu majority community in India supported people accused of committing crimes against Muslims, India’s largest religious minority.

This incident, and similar incidents like this, illustrate that India is following the path of Nazi Germany where the majority of Germans were radicalized to the extent that they blindly supported the holocaust against the Jews. In Nazi Germany, Jews were dehumanized by Hitler’s propaganda machinery. They were called ‘cockroaches.’ Using such kind of genocidal terminology is the first step towards genocide. Holocaust didn’t start with gas chambers, it started with hate speeches.

When a section of the society is dehumanized, the other groups of the society become apathetic towards them. The perfect example of this was how German society supported Nazis and their actions, which killed millions of Jews.

I can see the same pattern being replicated in India. Muslims in India are being dehumanized and the majority of Hindu society has become mute spectators. The right-wing Hindu politicians and a large section of Indian Media continuously target Muslims. This leads to the dehumanizing of Muslims in the social sphere and they are, in turn, treated as the second class citizens of India.

The pattern of this dehumanization can be seen in various ways.

Since ultra-Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi came to power in 2014, several Muslims were lynched by Hindu extremist mobs in different incidents across the country. Following these incidents of violence against the Muslims, those Hindu extremists who were involved in these heinous crimes received support from certain section of the majority community, and in turn, exposing the deep-seated bigotry of the majority society.

Just a week after Modi took oath as Prime Minister of India in 2014, a Muslim techie named Mohsin Shaikh was lynched in Pune, Maharashtra by members of a far-right Hindu outfit called Hindu Rashtra Sena. The accused Dhananjay Desai was released on bail and received a heroic welcome from his supporters.

In 2017, a Muslim daily wage worker named Afrazul was brutally beaten up and burnt alive on live camera in Rajsamand, Rajasthan. A Hindu man Shambhu Lal Regar, who committed this heinous crime, was hailed as a hero. His supporters attacked a local court in Rajasthan and hoisted a saffron flag on top of it. Within three days, his supporters had collected Rs 2,75,000 ($3,767). Moreover, on the occasion of a Hindu festival, people made a tableau of Regar and used it in a parade.

In another incident, Alimuddin Ansari was lynched in Jharkhand on June 29, 2017. His killers got bail from the court and Modi’s ministerial colleague, Jayant Sinha garlanded them. In a BBC interview, Sinha even admitted that BJP leaders had provided legal expenses to the accused in the case.

In 2018, an 8-year-old nomadic Muslim girl was raped and brutally killed inside a temple in Kathua, Jammu and Kashmir. The culprits kept her in captivity for several days, sedated her and raped her multiple times and later killed her.

When police arrested some accused in the case, a Hindu Right Wing organization called Hindu Ekta Manch took out a march in support of the accused. The rally was attended by BJP ministers.

BJP leaders not only support these criminals but also deliver anti-Muslim hate speeches to fuel Islamophobia in the country.

For example, in 2016, Anant Kumar Hegde, a BJP leader had said “Islam should be wiped out from this world.”

In the Mahapanchayat (great council) held in Haryana on May 30 to support the alleged killers of a Muslim man Asif Khan, approximately 50,000 people attended the event and several local BJP leaders had also joined it. The council cannot be seen in isolation, as this was not the only event that took place in Mewat in support of the murder accused. Many such small panchayats were held in different villages of Mewat before this Mahapanchayat.

These incidents are enough to expose the deep-seated anti-Muslim hatred prevailing in the majority community of India. The radicalization of the Hindu majority has happened to such an extent that they are openly taking out rallies in support of the people accused of violence against Muslims, and which include rapists and murderers as well.

This radicalized lot is openly calling for the killing of Muslims because they are confident that the government will not take any action against them. These radicalized speakers are aware that the more hatred they will spew against Muslims, the more their popularity will grow among their supporters.

Hindu Nationalists in India understand the anti-Muslim psyche of the society. It is one of the main reason that they do not shy away from spewing hatred against Muslims. In India, many far-right Hindu leaders proudly accept their involvement in anti-Muslim criminal activities. Their hatred against Muslims makes them more popular in society.

Bhavesh Patel, a convict in Ajmer Dargah Blast 2007, was released on bail in 2018. When he reached his hometown Bharuch, he was a given heroic welcome by a large crowd that included office bearers of BJP and other far-right Hindu outfits.

Pragya Thakur is accused in the Malegaon Bomb blast of 2008. After being released from jail on bail, she contested parliamentary elections on a BJP ticket in 2019 and emerged as a winner by getting 8,66,482 votes. Thakur has confessed on camera that she was involved in Babri mosque demolition in 1992. Yet, this has not mattered for a society where hatred for Muslims is a populist tactic to win elections and wield power.

A year ago, when India was witnessing historical mass protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), a few BJP leaders including Kapil Mishra, and their supporters marched on the streets against Muslim protesters and shouted slogans like “Shoot the traitors”.

It is a fact that hate speeches in India always incite people to commit crimes against targeted groups, especially the Muslim minority community. In India, where the polarization of the political sphere has led to a divisive body politic, the otherization of Muslims is key to stay in power.

In another incident last year, a Hindu man Kapil Gujjar fired at Muslims who were protesting against CAA at Shaheen Bagh Delhi. Later on, Kapil was released on bail and joined BJP. Following the outrage, the BJP, however, expelled him.

Few weeks after the shooting incident, anti-Muslim riots took place in North East Delhi in February 2020, in which scores of Muslims were killed and dozens of properties belonging to Muslims were burnt down and many were arrested. However, the leaders who shouted hate-filled slogans and delivered incendiary speeches were never arrested. On the contrary, they became more popular among the masses.

In April 2021, a Hindu priest Narsinghanand organized a press conference where he abused the Prophet of Islam (PBUH). A case was registered against him but he was never arrested. Following the press conference, he became the apple of the eye for Hindu Nationalists. The BJP leader Kapil Mishra raised 4.8 million INR through crowdfunding for Narsinghanand.

Suraj Pal Amu who recently addressed a Mahapanchayat in support of murder accused, has been appointed as spokesperson of BJP. No action has been taken against him yet.

If murder and terror accused are being treated as heroes in a society, then that society can be anything but civilized. Right-wing leaders in India want to spread hated against Muslims because it helps them to gain popularity, and society by and large wants to elect hatemongers because they want to teach a lesson to Muslims.

In the present political landscape of India, the onus of reforming the Hindu society is on the shoulders of well-meaning Hindus who want to defeat this fascism. India needs a social reformer from the majority Hindu community who can deradicalize the Hindu society.

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The curious case of ‘1,000 conversions’: Who is Umar Gautam?

 

For about a week now, TV news channels have run primetime shows on the Uttar Pradesh police busting an alleged “conversion racket” in Delhi. The tentacles of this network are spread across India, we are told. Angry anchors also tell us the racket was being funded by Pakistan’s spy agency ISI.

The police have arrested four people for running the alleged “racket”. While the mainstream media claims that over 1,000 people have fallen victim to it, so far no more than two families have alleged forceful conversion of their sons, both students of a school for the deaf in Noida.

So, what’s the “conversion racket” all about? Who are the people arrested for allegedly running it? What are they accused of exactly? Is there any truth behind the narratives playing out on TV screens?

Newslaundry went on the ground to find out.

On the fourth floor of a building in Delhi’s Batla House, a nameplate identifies the occupant, “Mohd Umar Gautam, Chairman, IDC.”

Umar is the leader of the “conversion racket”, according to the UP police’s Anti Terrorist Squad which arrested him on June 20 along with Mufti Kazi Jahangir Kasmi, an employee of the IDC, or Islamic Da’wah Centre.

A woman answered the doorbell. “We don’t want to talk to the media,” she said. “You are not showing the truth.”

She was Umar’s wife Razia, 51. It took some persuasion for her to agree to tell the family’s side of the story.

Razia has been married to Umar for over 30 years. They both originally come from Rajput families in Fatehpur district, UP.

“My husband was a disciple of Lord Hanuman and would visit the temple every Tuesday and Saturday,” Razia recalled, narrating the story of the couple’s conversion from Hinduism to Islam in the 1980s. “We were so religious that people would often call me Poojita, meaning one who worships. As is the custom for Hindu families in Uttar Pradesh, we would also go for ‘Maghi Snan’. Our marriage was arranged when we were still in our teens.”

Maghni Snan is an annual 30-day ritual that involves devotees taking a dip in the Ganga river.

The year was 1984. Umar was Shyam Pratap Singh Gautam and studying for a BSc at the Govind Ballabh Pant University, now in Uttarakhand. One of his rommmates at the university was a Muslim named Nasir Khan. “Nasir would take my husband on his cycle to the temple every week,” Razia said. “One day, Shyam asked him why he accompanied him to the temple so diligently. ‘To please my God,’ Nasir replied. ‘My religion teaches me to take care of those in my haqooq’. It was this incident that changed the course of Shyam’s life.”

By “those in my haqooq”, Nasir meant the people in his social circle whom his religion enjoined he had obligations towards.

Shyam spent a month reading the Bible, Gita and Quran, and then converted to Islam. He took a new name, Mohd Umar Gautam. His conversion wasn’t out of the ordinary. Several villages in and around Fatehpur have seen Rajputs converting to Islam.

Sometime in the 90s, Umar and Razia moved to Delhi. For over a decade, between 1995 and 2007, Umar was employed at Ajmal & Sons, a company owned by perfume baron and All India United Democratic Front leader Badruddin Ajmal with its head office in Assam’s Hojai. According to Razia, her husband oversaw schools run by Ajmal & Sons.

“My husband is a reputed man and a respected scholar. Because of this incident my entire family has been disturbed,” Razia said, wiping away tears with her headscarf. “You can ask around if we have converted anybody by force. There is our househelp from Nepal, check with him if we have ever tried to influence him to change his religion.”

Umar and Razia have two sons and a daughter. The older son is an engineer at an IT firm and the younger is preparing for MBA. Their daughter, Fatima, is an assistant professor at a deemed university in Delhi. She told Newslaundry that her father was cooperating with the investigation when he was arrested. “I remember him leaving that day. We thought since everything was transparent on our end, it should be fine. Else we would have informed a lawyer and local leaders,” she said, breaking down.

Fatima said they have records of all conversions which IDC helped formalise. “We can produce video clips of reverted Muslims who embraced Islam on their own,” she maintained, adding that her family were planning to launch an online campaign to garner support for Umar.

At this point, a couple of Umar’s neighbours joined the conversation. Anjum, a resident of Kanpur, said she had contacted Umar about a decade ago when she wanted to convert to Islam from Sikhism. “My husband is Muslim and I wanted to formalise the relationship legally,” she added. “I came from a Sikh family. We believed in the ideals of Brahmakumaris.”

The other neighbour, an elderly woman who lives on the floor below, said, “Food and religion can’t be forced down anyone’s throat.”

She claimed that a few days ago a TV channel’s staff came to her house asking what kind of a person Umar was. “They never aired it because I said nice things about him,” she added.

Razia passed her mobile to me, playing a video from a YouTube channel called Millat Times. It was an interview with Sujit Shukla, a doctor in Bengaluru. In the interview, posted two days after Umar’s arrest, Shukla said he had heard about Umar on a train journey years ago and contacted him when he wanted to convert to Islam in 2004. “Everything is documented and filed,” Shukla said when asked about the conversion process. Did he benefit materially from his conversion? Shukla laughed and said, “Well it’s a loss making venture financially since all family ties are cut soon after conversion.”

Addressing a press conference in Lucknow on June 21, Prashant Kumar, additional director general, law and order, claimed the police unearthed the “conversion racket” while investigating a case filed at Ghaziabad’s Masuri police station.

The case was filed on June 4 against Mohd Ramzan alias Vipul Vijayvargiya and his brother-in-law Mohd Kashif who had tried going into Ghaziabad’s Dasna temple by hiding their identities, Kumar alleged, with the aim of assassinating its priest.

The priest, Yati Narsighanand Saraswati, is a Hindutva extremist who routinely spews venom against Muslims and their faith. In April, speaking at Press Club of India, he hurled insults at Islam and Prophet Muhammed, leading to the Delhi police filing an FIR against him. The previous month, his followers had brutally assaulted a Muslim boy for entering the temple premises to drink water. Afterwards, the temple put up a poster barring Muslims from going in.

The investigation into Ramzan and Kashif, Kumar claimed, led the ATS to Umar who they allegedly found was involved in the “forced conversion” of about 1,000 Hindus.

Razia disputed these allegations. Ramzan and Kashif had gone to the Dasna temple to debate the priest after he insulted their religion and prophet. Umar knew Ramzan, a resident of Nagpur who converted to Islam after marrying a Muslim woman named Ayesha.

Shahabuddin has been living in the locality for seven years and knows Umar. He said “people would go to him only to legalise conversion”.

“It is all political,” another resident, who has lived in the colony for decades, added with a wry smile, referring to Umar’s arrest.

At Umar’s home, Razia also lashed out at the incumbent political dispensation. “So many people have died of Covid, so many have lost jobs, yet the focus of the government is conversion,” she said, suggesting the case may be a ploy to distract from “real issues”.

The doorbell rang. A few Delhi police personnel cops had arrived for identity verification. Umar’s wife and daughter panicked. Frantic calls were made to local legislator Amanatullah Khan. The women are ushered into another room as Gautam’s son answered the police’s questions at the door. The family was getting used to the new normal.

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Love Jihad in India’s Uttar Pradesh

Muslim Family Brutally Attacked By Hindutva Mob

 

Reports have surfaced that a Muslim family was brutally beaten up by a group of men after they barged into their home in Yamna Vihar locality in New Delhi on Friday night. According to an Urdu news portal Roznama Khabrein, 11 family members including children and women were injured in the attack by the gang led by certain Vipin. A delegation of Jamait Ulama-e-Hind met the victims and expressed their solidarity and support with the family of Yamin Khan.

 The report said that the family told the Jamiat delegation that they were attacked for their Muslim identity. Yamuna Vihar was one of the worst hit localities in the riots that shook the national capital last year leaving 53 dead, majority of them Muslims. The family said that even though the iron gate of the lane was shut, Vipin beat up the guard who attempted to resist their forced entry. He and his men then entered into Yamin Khan’s house, beat up family members and misbehaved with women folks.

 After the family dialed the police helpline the goons ran away. Jamiat delegation led by Maulana Hakimuddin Qasmi took up the matter with top police officials of the area including DCP. The police told the delegation that a case has been filed and gang leader Vipin has been nabbed. The police assured them that all the accused will face the law. 

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China’s Vanishing Muslims: Undercover In The Most Dystopian Place In The World