Tag: Islamophobia

Modi’s BJP wants the votes of India’s ‘Pasmanda’ Muslims. Will they bite? | India Election 2024 News

Patna and Naihati, India – Earlier this month, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke of the country’s Muslims in a televised interview, denying that he had made hate speeches against the minority community in his campaign rallies.

In several rallies Modi addressed as India holds its mammoth general election, he referred to Muslims as “infiltrators” and “those with many children” – familiar dog whistles that his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its far-right allies have been using against the country’s largest minority for decades.

But in the interview, Modi said he was “shocked” by the criticism of his speeches – which had even prompted a warning from the Election Commission of India to the BJP president.

“Who told you that whenever one talks of people with more children, the inference is they are Muslims? Why are you so unjust towards the Muslims?” Modi instead asked the television reporter, herself a Muslim.

“This is the situation in poor families too. Where there is poverty, there are more children, irrespective of their social circle. I didn’t mention either Hindu or Muslim. I have said that one should have as many children as you can take care of. Don’t let a situation arise where the government has to take care of your children.”

Modi is not known to backtrack on his comments but his emphasis on “poor families” and the suggestion that others were “unjust” to Muslims underscores an often ignored facet of the BJP’s political campaign. Even as its politics is driven by a Hindu majoritarian ideology, it has tried to make inroads with the largest section of India’s 200 million Muslims – the “Pasmandas”.

‘Secularisation of social justice’

First used in the 1990s by Ali Anwar, a former parliamentarian from the eastern state of Bihar, the term in the Urdu language means “those who are left behind”. Anwar, a two-time MP from the Janata Dal (United) party, was expelled from the party in 2017 after he opposed its alliance with the BJP.

In 1998, Anwar founded his organisation, the All India Pasmanda Muslim Mahaz, to push a radical and, among privileged Muslims, fairly unpopular idea: that the community followed a caste system, much like the majority Hindus and other religions in South Asia did, and unlike Muslims in other parts of the world.

“The Quran does not mention caste. But it is a South Asian phenomenon and a lot of injustice has been meted out to backward caste Muslims by upper-caste Muslims,” Anwar told Al Jazeera at his residence in Patna, the capital of Bihar.

Pasmanda politician Ali Anwar at his residence in Patna, Bihar state [Ishadrita Lahiri/Al Jazeera]

Anwar said the so-called “backward castes” among the Hindus had converted to a “casteless” Islam through the centuries only to find themselves restricted to their caste identities or professions.

For example, he said, a Hindu washerman (dhobi) who converted to Islam remained a “low caste” washerman even after changing his religion. The “upper caste” Muslims, on the other hand, trace their origins to the Middle East or Central Asia, with some even claiming to be the direct descendants of Prophet Muhammad’s family, he added.

According to Pasmanda theorists, there are three main castes among India’s Muslims. At the top of the hierarchy are the Ashrafs: the Syeds, Sheikhs, Mughals and Pathans. Then there are the Ajlaf (the backwards) and the Arzal (the untouchables). The last two groups make up the Pasmandas. These castes include the ansaris (weavers), qureshis (butchers), kunjda (vegetable sellers), darzi (tailors), and mansoori (cotton farmers) among several others.

Pasmanda India
Cab driver in Patna, Mohammad Kallu, says inter-caste marriage is still a taboo among Muslims [Ishadrita Lahiri/Al Jazeera]

In his 2001 book, Masawat Ki Jung (Battle For Equality), Anwar wrote that practices rooted in the caste system, such as endogamy, untouchability and separate burial grounds, soon became a part of the Muslim lives in South Asia. He said in the book that the Ashrafs enjoy hegemony over Muslim politics and organisations, including state-run institutions for the minorities.

Out of 27 Muslims elected to the Indian parliament in 2019, only three were Pasmanda, he told Al Jazeera.

“We want a secularisation of social justice. Why should there be a difference between one marginalised and another marginalised? Secular parties see Muslims as a homogeneous voting block and Muslim parties want only Muslims to come together. Then there is the BJP that is ideologically an anti-Muslim, upper-caste party. We are against both Hindu and Muslim fundamentalists,” said Anwar.

BJP’s outreach

Since 2022, the BJP – sensing an opportunity in this apparent rift among India’s Muslims – has tried to woo the Pasmanda section of the community. Its assertion: that privileged Muslims had cornered influential political, administrative, social and religious positions, leaving the Pasmandas with no representation or resources.

The push came right from the top. Addressing a high-level meeting of his party workers that year, Modi ordered them to reach out to the minorities “like the Pasmanda Muslims”.

Muslim men smoke a hookah, a traditional water pipe, during a 2010 protest under the banner of All India Pasmanda Muslim Mahaz, in New Delhi, to demand the government end discrimination against ‘lower castes’ among Muslims and Christians [File: Adnan Abidi/Reuters]

Later that year, as the BJP returned to power in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state with nearly 39 million Muslims, the party made Danish Azad Ansari, a Pasmanda Muslim, the state’s minister for minority welfare and Waqf, which refers to endowments made by a Muslim individual or group for religious, educational or charitable purposes.

In the same year, the BJP gave tickets to six Muslims – four of them Pasmanda – for the civic body polls in the national capital of Delhi. All four of them were the first runners up in an election that sees dozens of candidates in each seat.

Meanwhile, Modi began to make public statements advocating for the upliftment of the Pasmandas. Addressing a rally in Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh state in June 2023, he said the less privileged Muslims had been “subjected to oppression” but there was no discussion about it in the country.

“They still do not receive equal rights and are considered untouchables… However, the BJP is working with the spirit of ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas’ [Inclusivity and welfare for all]. When BJP workers visit Muslim brothers and sisters with these facts and arguments, they will explain it to them in a better way and dispel their misconceptions as well,” he said.

In another speech at an election rally in Uttar Pradesh last month, he attacked the opposition parties for “using Muslims as a vote bank and doing nothing to empower them”.

“Whenever I talk about the problems of the Pasmanda Muslims, they [opposition] get agitated,” said Modi. “It’s because the people at the top have taken all the goodies and have forced the Pasmanda Muslims to survive in their present condition.”

BJP insiders say their Pasmanda outreach is guided by two factors. One, to prove that caste, often used to highlight divisions within Hindu society, is also a Muslim phenomenon. And two, to take Pasmanda votes away from the opposition. They, however, admit that the concept of casteism is often difficult to explain to an average Muslim.

“Pasmandas are Indian Muslims who fell into the Indian caste structure,” stressed Jamal Siddiqui, the president of the BJP’s national minority cell.

“They are 85 percent of the Muslim population. Opposition parties like the Congress, the Samajwadi Party and others have only used them as a vote bank. They strengthened upper-caste Muslims who oppressed the backward Muslims. They were given seats in mosque boards, personal law boards and other such institutions,” he told Al Jazeera.

“Prime Minister Modi says he will work for the welfare of the poor and when we work for the welfare of the poor – no matter which scheme you talk about – the Muslims are its largest beneficiaries because they are economically backward,” he added.

In the run-up to the national election, Siddiqui said his party identified 65 out of a total of 543 parliamentary constituencies in the country where the Muslim population is more than 30 percent. Thirteen of those seats are in West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh each, while four are in Bihar. These are the three major states where the staggered election is ongoing.

In 2023, the BJP prepared a four-month outreach programme, which included identifying 5,000 Muslim beneficiaries of the government’s welfare schemes in each of the 65 identified constituencies and making them a part of the “Sneh Yatras” (Affection Marches) launched by the party ahead of the election. Another campaign in those constituencies aimed at making Muslims a “Modi Mitra” (Friends of Modi).

Among the Pasmanda section specifically targeted by the BJP were Muslim women, who were made a part of a BJP programme called “Shukriya Modi bhaijaan” (Thank you brother Modi). The programme was meant to thank the prime minister for schemes such as the distribution of free cooking gas cylinders, housing loans for the poor, and free health insurance. The BJP claims about a million Muslim women participated in the campaign.

But the main objective of the Muslim women-centric campaign, according to the BJP, was to “thank” Modi for passing a law criminalising “triple talaq” or instant divorce, a practice under which a Muslim man could divorce his wife by simply uttering “talaq” three times. The practice, frowned upon by Islamic scholars who insist on a longer divorce process laid out by the Quran, is prevalent among a section of Muslims.

“The Muslims have been told the BJP is their enemy. But we went to show them that we are helping the poor and the needy. We wanted them to experience the Modi government,” explained the BJP’s Siddiqui.

‘Horse making friends with grass’

So, has the BJP’s Pasmanda strategy worked?

“Appealing to the poor among the Muslims has helped the BJP in regional elections. It helped them in the state elections in Gujarat and Karnataka where their vote share among Muslims went up,” Sandeep Shastri, the national coordinator of the Lokniti Network, a research programme at the New Delhi-based Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, told Al Jazeera.

“The last phases of the elections are in larger states. The focus will be on cornering some part of the Muslim vote from the opposition by advertising Modi’s pro-poor welfare schemes,” he added.

But several Muslims Al Jazeera talked to in the states of Bihar and West Bengal held a different opinion.

Mohammad Maqbool, a 53-year-old daily wage labourer in Patna’s Dargah Karbala area, told Al Jazeera he first heard of Pasmanda as a term only after the BJP began its recent outreach to them. But he insisted he disagreed with the right-wing party’s claims.

“These things used to happen earlier, but not any more. Today an Ashraf’s daughter is marrying an Ansari. Everybody sits and eats together. There is no jaat-paat [casteism] in Islam,” he said.

Maqbool says he first heard of the term Pasmanda after BJP began its outreach [Ishadrita Lahiri/Al Jazeera]

A little away from Maqbool, carpenter Mohammad Naushad, 35, sat next to the gate of a Muslim burial ground.

“I have never heard the word Pasmanda. Syeds, Ashrafs, Ansaris, Qureshis, everyone lives in this neighbourhood. We don’t have a system of segregation like in Hinduism. Everybody buries their dead in this burial ground,” he told Al Jazeera.

In neighbouring West Bengal, Ibrar Sagar Mansoori, a municipal worker and part-time journalist, said he was not convinced with Modi’s Pasmanda outreach either.

“He said a few things in favour of Pasmanda Muslims but if we look at his tenure, we don’t see anything he has done,” he said at his residence in Naihati town, about 50km (31 miles) from state capital, Kolkata. “It is a strategy to consolidate votes, but Muslims are not convinced.”

Ibrar Sagar Mansoori, left, and Mohammad Makhboor Izhar in Naihati town [Ishadrita Lahiri/Al Jazeera]

Seated next to Ibrar was Mohammad Makhboor Izhar, a 29-year-old shopkeeper, who denied caste rigidity being as prevalent among Muslims as it is among the Hindus.

“I don’t know much about the term Pasmanda, but I don’t think that Islam is as much of a caste-based society as Hinduism is,” he said.

“We see violence and atrocities against Muslims on the news every day and the BJP supports it. I don’t think they can convince me that other Muslims have done more harm to me than the BJP has.”

Some, however, differ with such sentiments and feel more strongly about casteism in the community.

Mohammad Kallu, 34, drives tourist cars in Patna. As he chatted while driving around the bustling city, he said inter-caste marriage was still a big taboo among Muslims.

“I have seen Ashrafs refusing to eat with the Ansaris, them refusing to marry their daughters off to us. They think we are lower in the social order than them. But it’s not like the Hindus. We don’t see much violence around caste. We see more Muslims face attacks for their religion. If the BJP is thinking about Muslims, that’s what they must address,” Kallu told Al Jazeera.

The BJP’s Siddiqui rejected the charges, instead claiming theirs is the only party with a plan to uplift the less privileged Muslims.

“What Muslims have figured after 10 years of BJP governance is that this is the only party that thinks of Pasmandas and Muslim women. In fact, they are saying they were in search of a party like this that does not indulge in divisive politics,” he told Al Jazeera.

“Hindus and Muslims have a very deep connection. The way the PM [Modi] has given them [Muslims] welfare benefits and thus given them equality is something that has had an impact on Muslim minds. We will most definitely see that impact in this election.”

Pasmanda leader Anwar disagreed, calling the BJP’s outreach an “eyewash” and accusing the party of promoting religious hatred.

“It is said that if the horse makes friends with the grass, he will die. If the BJP does not engage in communalism, then their party will be finished. This is their inherent nature. This was a bait for the Muslim community and I think they know that the community will not fall for it,” he told Al Jazeera.

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Why Biden’s White House iftar unravelled amid Gaza war | Israel War on Gaza News

Washington, DC – The White House has cancelled a Ramadan iftar meal after several Muslim Americans declined the invitation in protest of President Joe Biden’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The sources, who spoke to Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity, said the cancellation on Tuesday came after Muslim community members warned leaders against attending the White House meal.

Edward Ahmed Mitchell, the deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), also said the event was nixed because so many people chose not to attend, including invitees who had initially agreed to go.

“The American Muslim community said very early on that it would be completely unacceptable for us to break bread with the very same White House that is enabling the Israeli government to starve and slaughter the Palestinian people in Gaza,” Mitchell told Al Jazeera.

Both CNN and NPR had reported on Monday that the White House was preparing a small community iftar.

But hours later, on Tuesday, the White House announced instead that it would be hosting a meal for Muslim government staffers only and holding a separate meeting with a few Muslim American community figures.

The cancelled iftar underscores Biden’s struggle to stem growing anger in US Arab and Muslim communities over his unconditional support for Israel.

Critics warn the outrage could translate into peril for Biden at the ballot box during November’s presidential election.

‘We listened,’ White House says

Over the past two decades, US presidents have hosted iftars with dozens of prominent Muslim Americans. Mirroring other religious and cultural events at the White House, Ramadan meals have served as a celebration of the Muslim community and are traditionally open to the press.

White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre confirmed that Biden and his Vice President Kamala Harris will meet with Muslim “community leaders” on Tuesday.

Asked why the “community leaders” will not attend the iftar, Jean-Pierre said that they requested a meeting instead of a meal.

“They wanted to make sure that there was an opportunity to discuss the issues at hand,” she told reporters.

“They thought it would be important to do that. And so, we listened, we heard, and we adjusted the format to be responsive.”

Several Muslim American activists said the meeting will be another futile “photo-op”, arguing that the Muslim community has made its position known over the past six months.

“No matter how many meetings we have, no matter how many people have gone in, no matter how many conversations are being held, the White House has refused to change,” said Mohamad Habehh, the director of development at American Muslims for Palestine.

Habehh stressed that Biden cannot claim to care for the Muslim American community if he does not end his backing of Israel.

“These photo-ops that they’re doing — these discussions that they’re doing to somehow show they still have the Muslim community’s support — are just pathetic attempts to make themselves look good at a time where their true colours have been seen,” Habehh told Al Jazeera.

The Biden administration has held several off-the-record meetings with some Arabs and Muslims across the country since the start of the war in Gaza.

‘Selected by the White House’

A key issue with such talks, activists say, is that the administration has been handpicking whom to meet with.

A Muslim advocate close to the administration presented a list of credible Palestinian American leaders to invite for a meeting at the White House last year, but the government rejected the suggested individuals, one source told Al Jazeera.

Emgage, a Muslim political advocacy group that endorsed Biden in 2020, said it received an invitation to Tuesday’s meeting but declined to attend, citing the US’s unconditional support for Israel and the mounting death toll in Gaza.

“In this moment of tremendous pain and suffering, we have asked the White House to postpone this gathering and to convene a proper policy meeting with representatives of the community’s choosing, rather than those selected by the White House,” Emgage CEO Wa’el Alzayat said in a statement.

Emgage outlined a list of demands for Biden, including an “immediate and permanent” ceasefire, the resumption of funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) and a “legitimate political track” for a Palestinian state.

“Emgage is ready to support efforts that engage in a substantive manner on the above priorities. However, without more Palestinian voices and policy experts in the room, we do not believe today’s meeting will provide for such an opportunity,” Alzayat said.

Hebah Kassem, a Palestinian American political strategist, echoed that concern.

“The administration is strategically selecting who should be at the table, and they’re picking people who likely won’t be critical of their actions and policies,” Kassem told Al Jazeera.

“Why are we allowing them to choose who represents us? These meetings haven’t led to any change. If anything, Biden has doubled down his support for Israel and increased the supply of weapons to Israel.”

US support for Israel

The Biden administration has ruled out conditioning or stopping the flow of weapons to Israel despite mounting Israeli atrocities.

The Israeli offensive has killed close to 33,000 Palestinians, destroyed large parts of Gaza and pushed the territory to the verge of famine.

While the Biden administration has occasionally expressed concern about the actions of the Israeli government, it has regularly asserted its commitment to the alliance with Israel.

On Tuesday, for example, the White House expressed outrage over the Israeli attack that killed seven World Central Kitchen humanitarian workers.

Still, White House National Security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters that the US will not hold a “sort of condition over their [Israel’s] neck”.

“We’re still going to make sure that they can defend themselves,” he said.

Abed Ayoub, the executive director of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), said Biden’s unwavering support for Israel shows that meetings with administration officials over Gaza have not worked.

“You’ve got to measure the effectiveness of these meetings through results and actions by the administration,” he told Al Jazeera. “The administration knows where we stand; they don’t need to hear it again.”

But Salima Suswell, the leader of the Black Muslim Leadership Council, said it is important for Biden to hear the perspective of Muslim Americans directly. She is attending Tuesday’s meeting at the White House.

“The President needs to understand that Black Muslims and Black Americans are devastated by the ongoing tragedy in Gaza, the loss of so many lives, and the Administration’s support of the onslaught,” Suswell told Al Jazeera in an email.

“The President has an election coming up, and Black voters and Muslims will be pivotal. I want to make clear to him what is at stake should he not take action.”

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Foreign students attacked over Muslim prayers at Indian university | Government

NewsFeed

More than a dozen men have attacked international students who were performing Ramadan prayers at their Gujarat University accommodation. Police say they are investigating.

Published On 17 Mar 2024

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Foreign students attacked in India over Ramadan prayer at university hostel | Islamophobia News

At least four foreign students have been injured after a Hindu far-right mob allegedly stormed a university hostel in India’s western Gujarat state and attacked the group of students for offering prayers during the holy month of Ramadan, local media has reported.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs on Sunday pledged to take “strict actions against the perpetrators”, as the local police in the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi said an investigation was under way in connection with the attack at the Gujarat University.

The students told local media that a small group had gathered on Saturday night inside the boys’ hostel premises for the Ramadan tarawih prayer as there is no mosque on the university campus based in Ahmedabad. Soon after, a mob armed with sticks and knives stormed the hostel, attacked them and vandalised their rooms, they said.

“A group of 15 students were offering prayers when three people came and started shouting ‘Jai Shri Ram’ [Hail lord Ram]. They objected to us praying here,” local media quoted a student as saying.

“After some time, about 250 people came and shouted ‘Jai Shri Ram’. They pelted stones and vandalised hostel properties.”

A student from Afghanistan told local NDTV network: “They attacked us inside the rooms too. They broke laptops, phones and damaged bikes,” adding that the AC and sound system were destroyed as well.

Videos posted on X showed ransacked student dorms and a mob destroying the students’ motorbikes with long tools.

“We cannot survive like this,” one African student said in his video filmed from the hostel. In the background, loud shouting and sounds of items being demolished, broken and smashed by the mob are heard.

“We came to India to study and now we’re being attacked just because it’s time for Ramadan and Muslims were praying. Now they’re breaking down the bikes, everything is being demolished down[stairs],” he said.

The Indian Express news website reported two of the students were severely injured and are recovering at a hospital after students from Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and several African countries were attacked.

‘Strict action against the perpetrators’

“Yesterday, at around 10:30pm a group of students were praying. Around 20-25 people came and asked them why they were praying here and should instead go the mosque,” Ahmedabad Police Commissioner GS Malik told reporters at a briefing on Sunday.

“An argument broke out between them, stones were pelted and their rooms were vandalised by the people who came from outside.”

He added that a complaint has been received against 20-25 people and one of the accused has been identified. Nine teams have been formed to investigate the incident, he said.

India’s External Affairs Ministry said on X that the state government is “taking strict action against the perpetrators”.

“Two foreign students were injured in the clash. One of them has been discharged from hospital after receiving medical attention,” spokesman Randhit Jaiswal said.

Asaduddin Owaisi, a member of parliament from the southern city of Hyderabad, called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah to “intervene to send a strong message?”

“What a shame. When your devotion and religious slogans only come out when Muslims peacefully practice their religion,” he posted on X.

“Domestic anti-Muslim hatred is destroying India’s goodwill,” he wrote tagging S Jaishankar, India’s external affairs minister.

Gujarat University Vice-Chancellor Dr Neerja A Gupta told local media that the international students need to be trained in “cultural sensitivity”.

“These are foreign students and when you go abroad, you must learn cultural sensitivity. These students need an orientation. We will sit with them, provide cultural orientation and discuss how to strengthen their security,” NDTV quoted Gupta as saying.



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‘Dark day’: India on edge over religion-based citizenship law before polls | India Election 2024 News

New Delhi, India — Protests have erupted in parts of India over the Narendra Modi government’s implementation of a controversial citizenship law ahead of national elections, as security forces rushed to areas of the national capital that had previously been epicentres of large demonstrations against the legislation.

The notification of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) on Monday introduces the country’s first religion-based citizenship test after decades of a constitutional setup that swears — at least officially — by secularism. Critics say the law discriminates against Muslim asylum seekers.

The amendment expedites citizenship for refugees from India’s neighbouring nations who are Hindu, Sikh, Christian or from other religious minorities — but not if they are Muslim. As a result, the benefits do not extend to the Rohingya from Myanmar, persecuted Ahmadiyya from Pakistan, or the Hazara from Afghanistan, for instance.

“The CAA has always been about creating two tiers of citizenships in India: non-Muslims and Muslims,” said Yogendra Yadav, a political scientist and activist who was closely associated with the anti-CAA protests. “It is voter polarisation [by the BJP] before elections but are we surprised?”

Parliament passed the CAA in 2019, but Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has since delayed its implementation. Months-long protests against the law brought parts of New Delhi to a standstill, as the capital was hit by sectarian violence in early 2020. More than 100 people were killed in the violence, mostly Muslims.

On Monday, after the government announced the notification of the law, protests broke out at the Jamia Millia Islamia university in New Delhi, students told Al Jazeera. Soon, police forces arrived as tensions rose.

Police were also rushed to northeast Delhi, which had witnessed some of the worst violence after the passage of the 2019 law. Security forces also conducted flag marches in areas near Shaheen Bagh, which became a hub of protests against the CAA in 2019 and 2020.

Separately, in the northeastern state of Assam, activists from several organisations, including the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU), burned copies of the law and called for a statewide shutdown on Tuesday. Similar protests are also lined up in other regional states, including Meghalaya and Tripura, by various student groups. Many of these groups are critical of the law not because of allegations that it discriminates against Muslims — but because they oppose any influx of refugees from other nations.

‘Timed to polarise’

Lawyers and critics of the government have also questioned the timing of the implementation of the law — on the eve of Ramadan, which began in India on Tuesday, and weeks before national elections, which are expected to be held in April and May.

Different groups have filed more than 200 petitions challenging the law that are still pending before courts.

“The CAA is unconstitutional and discriminatory on several grounds, including exclusion based on religion,” said Prashant Bhushan, a senior Supreme Court lawyer. “The timing of the notification is meant to polarise the electorate upon the Hindu-Muslim divide.”

The Modi government has previously linked the CAA to another controversial initiative, the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC) that could lead to the deportation of millions who have lived in India for generations but do not have identity papers proving the legal status of their ancestors. Muslim groups and rights activists say the combination of the CAA and the NRC could be used to target members of India’s 200 million-strong Muslim population. “You will use NRC to exclude people, then use CAA to only selectively include people,” said Bhushan.

Asaduddin Owaisi, a member of parliament from Hyderabad and leader of the opposition All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen party, said the “divisive” law is “meant to target only Muslims”, adding that people will have no choice but to oppose it again.

The Indian government has repeatedly denied these accusations, saying the CAA is meant to grant citizenship, not to take it away from anyone. It called the earlier protests politically motivated.

‘Divide and distract’

The introduction of the CAA law comes at a time when the Modi government is facing scrutiny over an electoral bonds scheme that allowed corporate groups to donate millions of dollars to political parties without any transparency over who was giving whom how much. In February, India’s Supreme Court struck down the scheme, calling it unconstitutional, and ordering the public sector State Bank of India (SBI) — which implemented the electoral bonds initiative — to reveal details of donors.

The top court told the SBI to release the details by Tuesday, in a setback for the government, which had attempted to shield that information from public scrutiny. Hours later, the Modi administration announced the CAA implementation.

“It is a diabolic attempt to divide and distract,” said Yadav. “Divide along the communal lines and distract from the issue of electoral bonds.”

The publication of the notification on Monday evening “appears to be an attempt to manage the headlines after the Supreme Court’s severe strictures on the Electoral Bonds Scandal”, said Jairam Ramesh, a senior leader of the opposition Congress party.

For millions of Muslims in India, though, the moment brings back memories of a tumultuous period four years ago.

‘Fight for identity’

Ahad was 18 when he skipped his college in New Delhi to join hundreds of women in Shaheen Bagh, a Muslim working-class neighbourhood, to block a crucial road between the capital and Noida, a suburb, as part of anti-CAA protests. “It was a fight for our identity, our existence,” recalled Ahad, who requested he only be identified by his first name.

Four years later, the law was notified at a time when he and his friends were busy with Ramadan preparations. “The government timed it like an ace,” he said, heading out of home for tarawih prayers. “Everyone around us is busy planning for Ramadan, and the news came out of nowhere.”

After the violence broke out in New Delhi in February 2020, the government clamped down on the activists and student leaders organising protests. Nearly 750 cases were filed in connection with the violence – mostly notably “FIR 59”, which features 18 people accused of conspiring to instigate the violence and charged under sections of the law that relate to terrorism. The accused include student leaders Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam and Gulfisha Fatima.

For Safoora Zargar, one of the co-accused in FIR 59, the implementation of CAA marks a “dark day for Indian democracy”.

“The anti-CAA protests had given Muslims the voice and space that we needed and contributed significantly in shaping many important narratives with rest to citizenship in the country.”

Zargar was three months pregnant when she was arrested by the police and imprisoned in New Delhi’s overcrowded Tihar Central Jail in the middle of the pandemic. She was released more than two months later on orders of the Delhi High Court on humanitarian grounds.

Yadav, who was also part of the demonstrations in part of the country, said the Shaheen Bagh blockade came under the spotlight but the movement at large “was a glorious chapter in the history of India, where citizens stood up against an attempt to divide the country”.

“More than anti-CAA protest, it was an Equal Citizenship Movement,” he said, adding that the protests did not fail. “Historians will look at independent India and they would remember anti-CAA as we today remember the first revolt of 1857 that led India’s independence movement.”

Nadeem Khan, civil rights activist and co-founder of a campaign called United Against Hate, said the CAA seeks to fundamentally alter the character of the Indian republic. “We believe that the CAA is a dishonest attempt on the part of the government to further its Hindutva agenda under the garb of providing assistance to refugees.” Hindutva is the Hindu majoritarian political ideology of the BJP and many of its allied groups.

Still, say activists who opposed the CAA in 2019, they will continue to fight against what they argue are discriminatory policies — even with friends and colleagues still behind bars.

“I can say for sure that this does not break the spirit or resolve [of the political prisoners],” said Zargar. “The anti-CAA movement is not just about one law, it is about justice and equality for all. No citizen of this country should settle for anything less.”

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‘No empty words’: Muslim Canadians use Ramadan to urge Gaza action | Israel War on Gaza News

Montreal, Canada – Ramadan is a time of self-reflection, family and joy for more than 1.8 billion Muslims around the world.

But with Israel’s war on Gaza dragging on, killing more than 31,000 Palestinians and plunging the tiny coastal enclave deeper into a humanitarian crisis, this year’s Islamic holy month – which began on Sunday night – has a different feeling.

In Canada, the Muslim community’s pain over the situation in Gaza – and a widely held belief that Canadian politicians are not doing enough to stem the crisis – has spurred an unprecedented campaign this Ramadan.

“We’re seeing our brothers and sisters in Palestine die every single day. We’re seeing a number of horrific images flooding in,” said Fatema Abdalla, advocacy officer with the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM).

“So this Ramadan is definitely going to be much harder for everyone.”

NCCM is among more than 300 Muslim groups in the North American country that delivered an ultimatum to Canadian politicians: Act to end the war and defend Palestinian rights, or you will not get to speak to congregants during community gatherings this month.

The organisations, which include advocacy groups as well as mosques and cultural centres, demanded five things from lawmakers, from condemning Israeli war crimes to opposing Canada’s arms transfers to Israel and supporting an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

“If MPs cannot publicly commit to all of these asks, then we can unfortunately not provide them a platform to address our congregations,” Abdalla said.

‘Very disappointed’

Like other countries around the world, Canada has for months seen major protests demanding an end to the Gaza war, which began in early October.

Israel’s attacks on the besieged Palestinian territory have caused widespread devastation and displacement, and the Israeli government also continues to block much-needed aid deliveries.

The United Nations has warned of widespread starvation and disease while the International Court of Justice ruled in late January that there is a plausible risk of genocide in the enclave — and ordered Israel to prevent genocidal acts from taking place.

“We’re very disappointed in the response of our elected officials [in Canada] to the catastrophic destruction in Gaza,” said Nawaz Tahir, a spokesperson for Hikma Public Affairs Council, an advocacy group for Muslims in and around the city of London, Ontario, which signed the letter.

“Historically, we have invited political officials to our events, to our mosques, to celebrate the concept of community during Ramadan. It’s hard to do that when there has been such a lack of response to really the mass murder of our brothers and sisters in Palestine,” he told Al Jazeera.

Canada has maintained close ties to Israel for decades, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government remains a staunch ally of the country.

For the first two months of the Gaza war, Ottawa resisted public pressure to call for a lasting ceasefire, instead backing a push for “humanitarian pauses”. In December, Canada changed course and backed a ceasefire motion at the UN General Assembly.

But Trudeau’s government faces continued calls to do more, including suspending the transfer of military goods to Israel over fears they could be used in rights abuses against Palestinians in Gaza.

The prime minister wished Muslim Canadians a happy Ramadan in a statement on Sunday, acknowledging that the holy month comes at a “particularly challenging time” due to the situation unfolding in Gaza. “Canada reaffirms our call for a sustainable ceasefire in Gaza and the safe, unimpeded access to humanitarian relief for civilians,” he said.

Abd Alfatah Twakkal, a board member with the Canadian Council of Imams, a group that signed the Ramadan letter, stressed that Muslim Canadians want concrete action. “We don’t want tokenism. We don’t want empty words,” he told Al Jazeera.

Twakkal said the letter also goes beyond members of the Canadian government alone. “This is not a partisan issue. This is for any MP that sees the travesty and the catastrophe of what has unfolded and continues to unfold [in Gaza],” he said.

“We can’t just sit back and say nothing,” he added. “This is at the very least something that we need to do, to speak out and say, ‘Look, we have to take whatever steps within our means … to be able to put an end to the genocide that is taking place.’”

A man holds prayer beads as Muslim Canadians pray on the first night of Ramadan at the Anatolia Islamic Centre in Mississauga, Ontario, on March 10, 2024 [Mert Alper Dervış/Anadolu Agency]

Growing political power

Political analysts said the community’s letter reflects its growing political power.

According to the 2021 census, nearly 1.8 million people identified themselves as Muslim. The percentage of Muslims in the Canadian population more than doubled from 2001 to 2021 from 2 percent to 4.9 percent.

Muslims have been in Canada since the mid-1800s, but Naved Bakali, an assistant professor of anti-racism education at the University of Windsor in Ontario, explained that “the bulk of the immigration to Canada from Muslim-majority nations came in the ’60s and ’70s.”

As a result, Bakali said this “relatively young community” has typically been content with “performative and service-level engagement and basic representation”, such as visits by politicians to their places of worship.

While the community is home to a wide range of political views, Muslim Canadians have traditionally been supportive of Trudeau’s Liberal Party, according to Bakali.

The Liberals have long presented themselves as defenders of multiculturalism and immigration in Canada, and Trudeau came to power in 2015 in part by denouncing Conservative Party policies that critics said were Islamophobic.

Against that backdrop, Bakali told Al Jazeera that the Ramadan letter is a signal that “if the [Muslim] community doesn’t feel that it’s seen by a political party, I don’t think that that political party can rely on that unconditional support.”

He added: “There’s a lack of trust … and they don’t want to be used as a political piece in all of this. They want to feel that they’re heard and that they are being respected as a community.”

Demonstrators rally in Montreal, Canada, to demand a Gaza ceasefire on November 18, 2023 [File: Alexis Aubin/AFP]

‘Showing humanity’

That was echoed by Tahir. “There has been a political awakening in the Muslim community” in Canada as a result of the Gaza war, he said, “and I think that that is leading towards stronger engagement in politics by Muslims.”

Tahir explained that while some Canadian lawmakers immediately asked to sign on to the demands put forward in the Ramadan letter, others are taking time to consider the situation. But he said he believes MPs are taking note of the community’s position.

“We had one member of parliament tell us that their office received 10,000 letters about Palestine since October,” he told Al Jazeera.

Tahir also drew a connection between what is happening in the Gaza Strip and anti-Muslim hate incidents in Canada, which community groups said have increased sharply since the war began.

“We have seen the very real impact of Islamophobia in Canada,” Tahir said, pointing to a 2021 attack that killed four members of a Muslim family. Authorities described it as an act of anti-Muslim “terrorism”, and a judge recently sentenced the attacker to life in prison.

Ultimately, Tahir stressed that Canada’s elected officials need to act – both at home and abroad.

“We want them to be more conscious of taking action as opposed to coming to our mosques, getting a few pictures, sending out a few tweets. We’re past that now,” he said. “We want to see a true and sincere commitment to fighting Islamophobia and showing humanity in our foreign policy.”

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UK ‘terror’ attack survivors warn against equating Muslims with ‘extremism’ | Islamophobia News

Group of survivors says such language fuels anti-Muslim sentiments in the United Kingdom.

Dozens of “terror” attack survivors have urged politicians to stop equating British Muslims with “extremism”.

In an open letter published Saturday, a group of 58 survivors said such language would fuel anti-Muslim sentiments in the United Kingdom, and said using it was the “height of irresponsibility”.

The signatories included survivors of several “terror” attacks in the UK, such as the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing and the July 7, 2005 London bombing, and survivors of attacks in other countries.

“To defeat this threat the single most important thing we can do is to isolate the extremists and the terrorists from the vast majority of British Muslims who deplore such violence,” the letter, published by the advocacy group Survivors Against Terror, read.

“[But] in recent weeks there have been too many cases where politicians and others have failed to do this, in some cases equating being Muslim with being an extremist, facilitating anti-Muslim hate or failing to challenge it,” the missive added.

Saturday’s warning came after Conservative MP Lee Anderson was suspended in late February after he refused to apologise for comments that claimed London mayor Sadiq Khan and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer were “controlled by Islamists”.

Separately, former Home Secretary Suella Braverman wrote in a February 22 opinion piece in The Telegraph that “Islamists are bullying Britain into submission” and that “Islamist cranks and leftwing extremists” held influence “in our judiciary, our legal profession and our universities”.

Rising anti-Muslim sentiments

Reports of anti-Muslim incidents have risen since the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on October 7, according to Tell MAMA, which monitors hate crimes directed at Muslims.

The group said it recorded more than 2,000 anti-Muslim cases in the four months after the Gaza war broke out –  335 percent more than were registered at the same time in the previous year.

Most cases were online, but Tell MAMA also recorded cases of physical assault, abusive behaviour, threats and acts of vandalism. The largest number of incidents – 576 cases – were reported in London.

An estimated four million Muslims reside in the UK, making up about 6.5 percent of the population, according to the Muslim Council of Britain. Most live in Birmingham, Bradford, London and Manchester.



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Indian authorities demolish home of ‘heroic’ Muslim tunnel rescuer | Islamophobia

NewsFeed

Wakeel Hasan was labelled a national hero in India for saving dozens of workers trapped in a collapsed tunnel. Three months on, authorities have demolished his home. He says it’s because he is Muslim.

Published On 5 Mar 2024

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Why were Muslim prisoners in the US pepper-sprayed while praying? | Human Rights

On February 28, 2021, just after 9pm, nine Muslim men removed their shoes, lined up in single file, and knelt quietly for Isha, their faith’s mandatory night prayer, inside a Missouri state prison in the small city of Bonne Terre.

Their action was neither unusual nor provocative. The men had been praying together in the common space of their wing at Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center (ERDCC) for several months without incident, up to four times a day, after COVID restrictions put the prison’s chapel off-limits.

They lived in Housing Unit Four or 4-House’s B wing, which was known as the “honour dorm” and was reserved for prisoners with no recent infractions. In other wings of the men’s prison, prisoners were given limited time out of their cells. But in the honour dorm, the men could be out of their cells all day long in the wing’s ground floor common area, heating food that they had purchased at the commissary in the shared microwave, or gathering to talk or play cards or chess at tables bolted to the concrete floors.

The group of worshippers who gathered to pray at the back of the common area began with three prisoners and had grown to between nine and 14. Qadir (Reginald) Clemons, 52, who usually gave the call to prayer, says he had periodically checked in with the prison chaplain, and the “bubble officer” in the control room, which commanded a view of all four wings, to confirm that there would be no problem with the group praying. Christian prisoners also held communal prayer circles throughout ERDCC, including in the honour dorm.

The ERDCC prison in Missouri [Jen Marlowe/Al Jazeera]

On this night, however, the kneeling men would be charged at by prison guards. Five of them would be doused with pepper spray until they writhed in pain. Seven would be shackled and, most of them shoeless, marched about 50 metres through the winter mud of a recreation yard to another housing unit where they would be put into solitary confinement, also called administrative segregation, AdSeg, or simply – “the Hole”.

The group’s leader, Mustafa (Steven) Stafford, 58, a short, jovial man whom the others called “Sheikh” due to his commitment to Islam, would be assaulted en route to AdSeg and again once there. After their release from the Hole 10 days later, Stafford and others would face further retaliation.

None of the men – who dubbed themselves the “Bonne Terre Seven” after the incident – were accused of anything aside from disobeying a lieutenant’s orders to stop praying, which their faith dictates they cannot do, except in an emergency. According to the now-retired lieutenant, no prison official was disciplined over the incident.

This account of a peaceful prayer’s violent disruption and its aftermath is based on dozens of in-person and telephone interviews, including with six of the Bonne Terre Seven, eight other prisoners who witnessed the attack and several officers. It is bolstered by accounts from a lawsuit filed in 2022 by Clemons, now amended to include his eight fellow worshippers, who are petitioning the court to declare that the Missouri Department of Corrections (MODOC) cannot deny their religious rights and to award them damages for what they suffered. It also draws on interviews with human and prisoner rights advocates and the men’s lawyers from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

The picture that emerges is of a facility, and a larger prison system, that often treats Muslim prisoners, the majority of whom are Black, with suspicion, hostility and racism.

Even against this backdrop, the ERDCC attack stands out for its savagery. “I’ve never seen a case that involves this level of violence,” says Kimberly Noe-Lehenbauer, a CAIR lawyer representing the nine victims.

The prison

ERDCC is located on the outskirts of Bonne Terre in the low, rolling hills of the Ozark Plateau, 60 miles (96.6km) south of Missouri’s second-largest city, St Louis.

Bonne Terre is in St Francois County, which is nearly 93 percent white and squarely Republican; 73 percent of voters supported Donald Trump in the 2020 election. Trump signs still proliferate today, along with other markers of local beliefs; a “Jesus Loves You” billboard sits on the side of a state highway, followed soon after by a front door wrapped in the Confederate flag.

A Confederate flag covers the door of a house in Bonne Terre [Jen Marlowe/Al Jazeera]

ERDCC opened in 2003, bringing a new main industry to the former mining town, whose centre sits atop a large mine that was shuttered in 1962. The city has a population of under 7,000, including the prisoners, which as of July 2020 numbered nearly 2,600 men.

ERDCC is a sprawling D-shaped mixed-security encampment. It has the state’s largest prison population and encompasses 11 housing units, 10 of those with four wings and a control unit or “bubble” in the centre.

The encampment also has a dining hall, a building housing educational programmes and a medical facility, three recreational yards, an intake area, and a small factory where some prisoners produce soap and other cleaning supplies. A visitation room lies in a building just past the prison entrance. That same building houses Missouri’s only execution chamber, though condemned prisoners are held in Potosi, 15 miles (24km) west, and brought to ERDCC shortly before their scheduled execution.

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Hamas to halal: How anti-Muslim hate speech is spreading in India | Islamophobia News

New Delhi, India – India averaged nearly two anti-Muslim hate speech events per day in 2023 and three in every four of those events – or 75 percent – took place in states ruled by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, revealed a report released Monday.

In 2023, the hate speech events peaked between August and November, the period of political campaigning and polling in four major states, according to a report released by India Hate Lab (IHL), a Washington, DC-based research group.

As India heads for a national vote in the upcoming months, a first-of-its-kind report by the IHL maps the spread of anti-Muslim hate speech across the country. The group documented a total of 668 hate speech events.

Last month, the website of India Hate Lab was rendered inaccessible in India after the government blocked it under the controversial Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000. The government also blocked the website of Hindutva Watch, an independent hate-crime tracker also run by the IHL’s founder.

The new report – the first time a research group has tracked hate speech events in India over a year – tracks how these events spread geographically across India, the triggers behind these events, and when they occur.

Which are India’s hate speech hotbeds?

The group documented a total of 668 hate speech events across 18 states and three federally governed territories. The top-ranking Indian states for these events were: Maharashtra in the west with 118 incidents, Uttar Pradesh in the north with 104 incidents, and Madhya Pradesh in central India with 65 incidents.

These three states are among the biggest voter bases, are currently ruled by the BJP, and collectively account for 43 percent of the total hate speech events recorded in 2023.

But relatively smaller states, like Haryana and Uttarakhand in northern India, weren’t immune either.

While Haryana witnessed 48 hate speech events, or about 7.2 percent, events in Uttarakhand made up 6 percent – both states are among the emerging hotbeds for anti-Muslim violence as well. Seven people died and over 70 were injured in violence in the Nuh region of Haryana in August 2023; earlier this month, five Muslims were killed in Haldwani, Uttarakhand, while protesting against the demolition of a mosque and a religious school in the town.

Prem Shukla, a national spokesperson of the BJP, told Al Jazeera that the party has been opposing the “Islamic fundamentalist forces” and alleged that the IHL data represented a “biased picture of the situation”.

“The other so-called secular states are targeting the Hindu majority community by hate speeches, but no one will talk about it,” Shukla said in a phone interview. He also dismissed the IHL report, alleging that those behind it “have sworn to destroy the BJP”.

Who rules states with the most hate speech?

As per the report, 498 hate speech events, which make up 75 percent, took place in the states ruled by the BJP or in territories that it effectively governs through the central government. Among the 10 states with the most hate speech events, six were ruled by the BJP throughout the year. The other three states, Rajasthan, Karnataka, and Chhattisgarh had legislative elections in 2023, in which power changed hands: Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh moved from the opposition Congress party to the BJP, and Karnataka from the BJP to the Congress. Bihar, the last of the 10 states with the most hate-speech events, was ruled by an opposition coalition until last month, when its chief minister switched sides to join a BJP-led alliance.

More than 77 percent of speeches that included a direct call of violence against Muslims were also delivered in states and territories governed by the BJP.

A third of all hate speech events documented by the IHL were organised by two far-right organisations, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Bajrang Dal, which are associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological mentor of the BJP. In 2018, the United States Central Intelligence Agency tagged the VHP and Bajrang Dal as “religious militant organisations”.

“Our analysis shows that anti-Muslim hate speech has been normalised and become part of India’s socio-political sphere,” said Raqib Hameed Naik, founder of the IHL. “We foresee rampant use of anti-Muslim hate during the upcoming general elections to polarise voters.”

What are the provocations used for hate speech events?

The report documented that 63 percent of the total 668 hate speech events referenced Islamophobic conspiracy theories.

The theories included “love jihad”, an alleged phenomenon where Muslim men lure Hindu women into marrying them and converting to Islam; “land jihad”, which alleges Muslims are occupying public lands by building religious structures or holding prayers; “halal jihad”, which views Islamic practices as the economic exclusion of non-Muslim traders; and “population jihad”, which alleges that Muslims reproduce with the intention of eventually outnumbering and dominating other populations.

All of these conspiracy theories have been debunked: The government’s own data, for instance, shows that Muslim fertility rates are dropping faster than those of any other major community in India.

Over 48 percent of the events occurred between August and November, a period that saw state elections in four major states.

Reacting to the IHL report, Amnesty International called on Indian authorities to put an end to the rise in speeches calling for violence and hatred against religious minorities.

“[The authorities] must take concrete measures to counter stereotypes, eradicate discrimination, and foster greater equality,” Aakar Patel, chair of the board at Amnesty International India, told Al Jazeera.

Activists from various leftist organisations shout slogans during a protest against hate speech in New Delhi on December 27, 2021. [Manish Swarup/AP Photo]

What’s the latest hate weapon being used against Indian Muslims?

Since October 7, Indian far-right groups have been weaponising the Hamas attack on southern Israel, and Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza to stoke anti-Indian Muslim fears and hate.

From October 7 to December 31, 2023, one in every five hate-speech events invoked Israel’s war, a phenomenon that peaked in November, according to the IHL report.

Pravin Togadia, founder and current president of the Antarrashtriya Hindu Parishad, said in an event in Haryana on November 20: “Today it is Israel’s turn. That same Palestine is rising in our villages and our streets. Saving our prosperity, our women, from them is a big challenge for us.”

In the same month, Kapil Mishra, a BJP leader, said: “What Israel faced is what we have been facing for 1,400 years.”

Other analysts have found that India has also emerged as an epicentre of disinformation on Israel’s war on Gaza, spreading through the internet.

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