Tag: Religion

Why is India’s Ram temple in Ayodhya controversial? | Politics News

India’s stock market is shut for the day. Central government offices are only open for half the day. Neighbourhood watch parties have been organised across the country. And tens of millions of Indians are tuned into one event: the consecration of a temple to the Hindu god Ram in the city of Ayodhya.

On Monday, just past noon local time, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will join priests to inaugurate the temple, whose launch in many ways also serves as the start of his campaign to be re-elected for a third term in office in national elections due to be held between March and May.

The trust in charge of the temple, whose construction is still under way, has invited an estimated 7,000 people — politicians, leading industrialists, sports stars and other public figures.

But while Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has pitched the event as a national celebration, the temple’s history is grounded in what many have dubbed one of modern India’s darkest chapters — one that has shaped the country’s politics and that cracked open deep religious fault lines in its society.

Here’s a look at the tortured history of the spot where the temple is being built — and the controversies surrounding it.

What is the controversy behind the Ram temple?

The temple is being built on a contentious piece of land in the northern Indian city of Ayodhya, at a spot that many Hindus believe was the birthplace of Ram, a much-worshipped god who in the religion epitomises the victory of good over evil.

But until the morning of December 6, 1992, it was the Babri Masjid, a mosque built in 1528 and named after the Mughal king Babur, that stood at that place. A mob of Hindu nationalists pulled down the mosque, chanting religious slogans, after more than a decade of an angry, and at times violent, campaign.

After years of being closed to the public, in November 2019, India’s Supreme Court ruled that the site must be handed over to a trust that would be specially set up to oversee the construction of a Hindu temple.

A separate piece of land in Dhannipur village on the outskirts of Ayodhya, was allocated to Muslims for a mosque that may serve as a replacement for the Babri Masjid. Its construction is yet to begin.

“Through the highest court now, we have established a principle of creating an unbreakable divide between Hindus and Muslims, that they cannot live side by side,” said writer and academic Apoorvanand on the “five-acre justice,” a term Indians have penned over the size of the reallocated land.

While some segments of India’s population cheered on the judgement, others criticised it for lacking a sound legal basis and compromising on India’s secular and democratic constitutional ethics.

Locals have also pointed to the history of harmonious co-existence between the two communities in Ayodhya, even at places of worship. The ruling also sparked fears that it was emboldening right-wing Hindus across the country to launch similar efforts to raze other mosques.

Although the Ram Temple controversy goes back decades, Apoorvanand says that Monday’s event is “also a final announcement of, in a way, Hindus handing over their religion to the will of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.” The RSS is the Hindu-nationalist mothership of the BJP and its far-right partner organisations.

The temple’s inauguration seals the site as a place of Hindu worship, and comes after years of legal tussles and even violent riots over the land and its legacy.

Babri Mosque in 1990, two years before it was destroyed [File: Robert Nickelsberg/Liaison)

Major events in the divide over the Ram temple

The first recorded instance of conflict over the site was in 1853, when a Hindu sect asserted that a temple had been demolished during Babur’s era to make way for the mosque.

Tensions especially started to take a turn in 1859 when British colonial rulers partitioned the building into separate sections – the inside for Muslims, and the outer court for Hindus.

In 1949, just two years after the subcontinent won independence, the mosque turned into disputed property. Police reports show that Hindu idols were brought into the mosque and its gates were closed. No Muslim prayers were offered at the mosque after that. In 1950, several civil suits were filed with both communities laying claim to the site.

But it was outside the courts that the fate of the Babri Masjid was ultimately decided.

In the 1980s, the BJP that now dominates Indian politics was largely a fringe party. But it built political momentum around a nationwide campaign to build a temple in the place of the mosque, led by then party chief Lal Krishna Advani, who would later serve as India’s deputy prime minister (1998-2004).

Under pressure from the BJP and its Hindu majoritarian allies and the support they were galvanising, the government of then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, of the Indian National Congress, allowed a court decision to open the locks of the Babri Masjid site to go unchallenged in 1986.

That, however, only emboldened the BJP-led agitation. In 1990, Advani led a long rally over more than a month through the heart of India, building support for the Ram temple. Modi, then a young and rising party worker in the western state of Gujarat, helped organise the rally.

Then, on December 6, 1992, Hindu mobs tore down the Babri Masjid. Ensuing riots across the country killed about 2,000 people.

Following years of back and forth in court, the Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling in 2019.

The court acknowledged that both the surreptitious manner in which idols were brought into the mosque in 1949 and the demolition in 1949 were crimes. Still, by essentially ordering no consequences for those offences, the court created a scenario where Indian Muslims are “disappointed to see no remorse”, and feel there is little recourse for their concerns, says Apoorvanand.

Where exactly is the contested site?

The Ram temple is being built near the banks of the Sarayu River, which runs past Ayodhya and is mentioned in ancient Hindu scriptures. Ayodhya is in India’s northern and most populous state, Uttar Pradesh.

Officially known as Shree Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir, it has been constructed in the Nagara style of architecture, which is common in northern India and features tall steeples and a stone platform with steps leading up to the temple.

Interactive_RamTemple_Ayodhya_Jan21_2024

When will the Ram temple consecration take place?

The consecration is scheduled for just after 12pm local time (06:30 GMT) on Monday, January 22.

Many of the wings of the temple are still under construction, and some of Hinduism’s foremost seers, the four Shankaracharyas, have objected to the opening, saying that consecrating an incomplete temple goes against Hindu scriptures.

Nonetheless, the government, and the trust in charge of the temple, have insisted that the consecration does not violate any tenets of the faith.

Monday’s event will include a grand procession of idols to be taken into the building, and a four-foot statue of a child Ram being placed in the inner sanctum. Priests will join Modi for the actual ceremony, expected to last for half an hour.

Modi’s government has also planned live screenings of the event across the country. Some Indian embassies have also invited members of the Indian diaspora to screenings.

As Hindus across Ayodhya decorate streets and join celebratory rallies, messages are circulating among Muslims to remain at home as a precaution for their safety.

The constructed portion of the temple will be open to devotees and the public starting January 23. And as the temple’s doors open to them, so does a path to an economic boost for Ayodhya.

About 100 private jets are expected to touch down in Ayodhya ahead of the inauguration and retailers say they have run out of gold and gold-plated statues of Ram.

Property prices in Ayodhya have also skyrocketed as the city is set to become a pilgrimage and tourism hotspot.

How are Modi and India’s 2024 elections linked to the Ram temple?

Building the Ram temple at the spot where the Babri Masjid once stood has been one of the BJP’s three foundational promises — the end of Jammu and Kashmir’s semi-autonomous status, which was scrapped in 2019, and a uniform civil code for personal laws are the others.

Modi’s consecration of the temple fulfils that decades-long pledge, and comes just weeks before national elections.

The Ram temple movement has already paid rich dividends to the BJP’s political fortunes. The party won just two seats out of 543 in the lower house of parliament in 1984. A little more than a decade later, in the first national elections after the Babri Masjid’s demolition, it surged to become India’s single-largest party, winning 161 seats.

Its first stint in office lasted just 13 days — because of its association with the mosque demolition, most other parties were unwilling to form alliances that the BJP needed to get to the majority mark of 272 seats in parliament.

But as its brand of Hindu nationalism slowly gained acceptability, it came to power again in 1998, and ruled with allies until 2004. After a decade out of power, it stormed back into office under Modi, the most unapologetically Hindu nationalist leader the party has had.

On Monday, Modi will look to cement that legacy still further.

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‘Might get worse’: As Modi unveils Ram temple, Indian Muslims fear future | Politics

Ayodhya/Lucknow, India – Wearing her hijab, Yusra Hussain stood in the queue to enter a makeshift temple to the Hindu god Ram in Ayodhya, the northern Indian city believed to be his birthplace. What followed is etched in her mind.

“I was jeered [at] and taunted,” the 32-year-old said. “And people started chanting Jai Shree Ram [victory to Lord Ram]. I got a sense of aggressive triumphalism.”

That was eight years ago. On Monday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate an incomplete Ram temple built in place of the makeshift shrine Hussain had visited, amid a nationwide frenzy over the consecration that has brought the country of 1.4 billion people, and a nearly $4 trillion economy, to a virtual standstill.

The stock market is shut, government offices are working only half the day and movie halls are offering live screenings of the religious ceremony that Modi’s opponents say he has hijacked ahead of national elections that are expected to begin in March.

Major public hospitals announced reduced services for the day to allow staff to soak in the celebrations, though some have since retracted those announcements.

Missing from news channels and popular discourse is any reference to the fact that the temple is coming up at the very spot where the 16th-century Babri Masjid was torn down by a Hindu nationalist mob on a grey winter morning in December 1992.

Hussain, a freelance journalist based in the city of Lucknow, 120 km (75 miles) east of Ayodhya, said she fears that the “triumphalism” she witnessed on what was her first visit to the temple town “might just get worse in the coming days”.

“In fact, after Ayodhya, there might be a snowballing effect on other disputed places like Mathura and Kashi,” she said. Mathura and Varanasi – Modi’s parliamentary constituency also known locally as Kashi – are also home to historic mosques that the prime minister’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its Hindu majoritarian allies say were built on demolished temples.

For many among India’s 200 million Muslims, the state-sponsored pomp and ceremony around the temple’s launch is the latest in a series of painful realisations that – especially since Modi took office in 2014 – the democracy they call home no longer appears to care about them.

Increased religious polarisation in the country affects not just their safety and security but also their political influence in the upcoming national vote. Muslims constitute more than 20 percent of the population in 101 of India’s 543 directly elected parliamentary constituencies. Indian secularism has been premised on Hindus and Muslims – the country’s two-largest communities – voting primarily on economic or non-religious issues.

That has meant that while Indian Muslims are no homogenous voting bloc, the community has had the limited but definite ability to affect electoral outcomes for the best part of independent India’s 77-year journey. This has especially been true in the northern states of Uttar Pradesh – home to Ayodhya, Varanasi, Mathura and Lucknow – and Bihar as well as the eastern states of West Bengal and Assam, home to some of India’s largest Muslim populations.

With religious sentiments running high and if the majority Hindu vote consolidates behind a party like the BJP, as it often has in recent elections, this equation no longer holds.

“The 2024 elections could be a one-sided affair in favour of BJP,” said Hussain Afsar, Yusra’s father and also a Lucknow-based journalist.

At the centre of Modi’s religious pitch is the Ram temple, which is being unveiled while it is still under construction, despite opposition from some of Hinduism’s senior-most seers who have accused the prime minister of timing its consecration to maximise electoral gains.

“Hindus and Muslims have coexisted with each other for hundreds of years along with mosques and temples in India. Both places of worship are culturally and historically important for all Indians,” Lucknow-based social activist Tahira Hasan said. “I don’t think any Muslim has a problem with a temple, the problem arises when religion and places of worship are used to polarise society, create animosity and use religion to create tensions.”

Since January 12, Modi has been keeping a fast and visiting a series of temples dressed in saffron robes, blurring the lines between prime minister and monk. On Monday, Modi will join priests and selected dignitaries in a 30-minute ceremony at the temple. The country’s biggest opposition party, the Congress, is skipping the event.

“Using religion in politics is what people are concerned about,” Hasan said.

The temple is being built at the estimated cost of 11.8 billion Indian rupees ($142 million). “This will be the new Vatican for the Hindus,” said Vijay Mishra, an astrologer and priest who shuttles between Ayodhya and Lucknow.

But it is only the centrepiece of a broader revival and enlargement of the city of Ayodhya, where Modi inaugurated a new airport and railway station in December. The city is increasingly extending into the neighbouring city of Faizabad, which is named after a Muslim courtier.

Also, next to Ayodhya is Dhannipur village, where India’s Supreme Court, in a 2019 judgement, asked the government to give land to the Muslim community to build a mosque. It was the same judgement that awarded 2.7 acres (1 hectare) of disputed land to a trust to build the Ram temple where the Babri Masjid mosque once stood.

Athar Hussain, who is a coordinator of the trust tasked with building a mosque in Dhannipur, said that “our plan is to build a hospital and mosque”.

“We may not have the funds yet but we will eventually collect them,” he said. Hussain, who is unrelated to Yumna and her father, conceded that the Supreme Court verdict, and the subsequent, rapid construction of the Ram temple, had left many Muslims despondent. But, he added, “There is not much we can do about it.”

That sense of resignation extends to many Muslims and some, like Yumna, also hold the community’s leaders responsible.

“We had reconciled to the construction of a Hindu temple in Ayodhya but the Muslim leadership began to raise hopes that a secular Constitution will look after the interests of the minorities and return the disputed land,” she said.

Expectations peaked, she said, when, in 2018, the Supreme Court attempted arbitration between representatives of the communities. Those efforts failed.

Still, Hussain, the coordinator of the Dhannipur mosque project, continues to hope that India’s judiciary will not allow a repeat of Ayodhya’s example in Mathura and Varanasi.

Last week, the Supreme Court put on hold a High Court judgement ordering a study of the 17th-century Shahi Idgah Mosque in Mathura to see if it was built over the remains of a temple.

“We hope it will remain that way,” Hussain said.

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In India’s Ayodhya, the Ram temple means ‘land is costlier than gold’ | Business and Economy

Ayodhya, India: Ram Surat Verma regrets his decision to sell his land in 2019.

A farmer in Takpura village in the Ayodhya district of the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, about 155km (96 miles) from Lucknow, the state capital, he received 25 million rupees ($300,000) when he sold his 1.55 acre (0.6 hectares) patch of land to a local property dealer four years ago.

The 65-year-old believes that he could have gotten at least 10 times that amount had he delayed his decision to now.

“Land is costlier than the gold here, with prices surging since the verdict for building a Ram temple was announced by the Supreme Court in 2019. I made the mistake of selling my land before the judgement. Had I delayed the land deal, it could have fetched me a far better price than what I had received then,” Verma told Al Jazeera.

Verma, whose land holding is 7km (4.3 miles) from the temple, is yet to decide on selling his remaining 4.65 acres (1.88 hectares) of land. “The property brokers and customers are making a beeline outside my house every day, offering me lucrative prices for the land but I will not repeat the same mistake again. A delay would certainly fetch me a higher price,” he said.

Verma is not alone in adopting a wait-and-watch policy on selling his land. Several thousand farmers and landholders in the Ayodhya district and its neighbouring areas are doing the same, expecting exponential prices for their land which is in massive demand mainly to build commercial properties there.

The boom in real estate began after India’s apex court in its verdict on November 9, 2019, ruled in favour of the construction of a temple to the Hindu god Ram at the 2.77-acre (1.12-hectare) disputed site in Ayodhya. The court also allocated a separate 5 acres (2 hectares) of land to Muslims near Ayodhya to build a mosque.

The verdict turbocharged the political and religious movement that for decades had been campaigning to build a temple at a spot that many Hindus believe was the birthplace of Ram. But it also opened new business avenues for entrepreneurs who began to tap investment opportunities in Ayodhya in anticipation of the millions of tourists expected to visit the temple after its inauguration on Monday, by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Vinay Kumar Verma, 33, a property dealer in Ayodhya, told Al Jazeera that his phone has not stopped ringing for the past six months, with people inquiring about the availability of land for building hotels.

“Earlier, I used to receive one to two calls every month asking for land for commercial use. But now I am getting eight to nine calls per day for this,” he said.

Some of those calls are from people in other states who are interested in building hotels and guest houses to cash in on the huge influx of pilgrims that are expected to visit the holy city, pushing up prices from 16 million rupees ($190,000) per acre of land in 2019 to about 64 million rupees ($770,000) now.

“And still, people are ready to pay more, expecting huge returns after investing in commercial properties like hotels and guest houses,” Verma said. “The land here is even costlier by four to five times than that in the state capital, Lucknow.”

Vinay Kumar Verma, a property dealer in Ayodhya, said he has been inundated with calls from potential buyers seeking commercial land [Gurvinder Singh/Al Jazeera]

The days leading up to the January 22 consecration of the temple have seen an explosion in demand for hotel rooms from visiting tourists and pilgrims – buttressing the business logic of real estate firms looking to build more hotels in Ayodhya.

Most hotels are booked out and have hiked up rates for rooms even when they are available after the temple launch.

Jitendra Pandey, 41, who has been a real estate agent in Ayodhya for the past 12 years, said he has never witnessed such an increase in land prices. “The prices of commercial property have increased by four to five times because of the deep pockets of buyers who are willing to pay any price for the land. Even the prices of residential property have gone up by 2.5 times. The commercial rates are high because outsiders are not interested to settle here but want to make much of the business opportunity,” he told Al Jazeera.

Farmers, he said, are the main beneficiaries because they are not only getting exorbitant prices for the land but some buyers are also connecting directly with them in order to avoid real estate agents commissions.

Real-estate majors have jumped in too. Mumbai-based House of Abhinandan Lodha (HOABL) has acquired 25 acres (10 hectares) of land and plans to invest 12 billion rupees ($1.4m) in Ayodhya to develop a seven-star mixed-use enclave that would host luxurious facilities for buyers including a swimming pool, gym and banquet halls, among other amenities.

Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan has booked a piece of land of about 10,000sq feet (929sq metres) in this upcoming project for 145 million rupees ($17.43m), according to local media reports.

HOABL did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for information about the new project.

The city is also witnessing a wave of modernising with star hotels like the Park Inn by the Radisson Group, as well as malls and showrooms of multinational companies that have set up their outlets in recent weeks, including Tata Group’s high-end jewellery store Tanishq which opened its showroom in the city in December.

A new township

Realising the potential of Ayodhya on its way to becoming the spiritual hub for millions of Hindus globally, the state government has since 2020 acquired 1,407 acres (569 hectares) of land to build Navya Ayodhya, or the new township of Ayodhya, on the outskirts of the city.

Om Prakash Pandey, an executive engineer with the Uttar Pradesh Housing and Development Board, told Al Jazeera that the total township would be spread across 1,857 acres (751.5 hectares) of land for which another 450 acres (182 hectares) would soon be acquired from farmers.

“It would be an eco-friendly township with all modern facilities and both residential and commercial complexes,” he said.

The state government, he added, had bought the land from 1,200 farmers for which it paid 67.6 million rupees ($814,000) for 2.47 acres (1 hectare) of land. That, he said, was four times the circle rate or the minimum base price of property set by the state government.

The state has allocated land within that to the states of Uttarakhand and Gujarat, both run by the BJP, to build guest houses in the township, Pandey told Al Jazeera.

“The entire township will be built at a cost of 65 billion rupees ($78.23m) and likely to be completed by 2032 and the first phase is likely to be ready by 2028 at an investment of 21.8 billion rupees ($26.22m),” he said.

Jhapsi Yadav said farmers are forced to sell their land to the government even though private buyers are willing to pay more [Gurvinder Singh/Al Jazeera]

Despite the government’s claims of offering four times the base price of the land, farmers are still not happy with it.

Jhapsi Yadav, 40, a farmer and a resident of Kallupurwa village, whose land falls in the proposed township area, told Al Jazeera that the private buyers are willing to pay far more than the government rate.

“The private buyers are ready to buy land at six to seven times the circle price of the state government and even more if the land is close to the highway. But we have no option but to sell off the land to the state government that has been chosen for the township. We are dejected but can do nothing about it.”

The astronomical rise in the prices of the land has even bewildered the officials of the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust, which is in charge of the construction of the Ram temple. “It is really unthinkable that prices have gone so high in such a short period.

The local farmers should be cautious in land deals and should only dispose of the land when they get good prices for it. But the investment would definitely help people in generating livelihood locally,” said Sharad Sharma, the media officer in charge of the trust.

Allegations of encroachment

The letter sent by Md Qadri to senior district officials complaining about land encroachment [Gurvinder Singh/Al Jazeera]

But the skyrocketing in the prices of land has also led to allegations of encroachments by the Muslim community.

Md Azam Qadri, the sub-committee president (Ayodhya) of the Sunni Central Waqf board, said more than 200 properties belonging to the Waqf board, including cemeteries, mosques and idgahs (places of public prayer) have already been encroached on by the land mafia – realtors who have moved into the area in the past decade – for commercial purposes, mainly for the building of guest houses and hotels.

“There were minor cases of encroachment in our properties, mainly cemeteries and Idgahs since 1992 when the Babri mosque was demolished in Ayodhya. But the encroachments have increased in the past five years since the verdict of the Supreme Court that allowed the construction of the temple over the disputed land … mostly by outsiders trying to establish their business here.”

Qadri said he had written to senior district officials, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Prime Minister Modi, complaining about the issue and seeking their intervention but no action has been taken yet. “The chief minister had promised strict action against land grabbers but the officials have done nothing in this matter.”

Vishal Singh, the vice-chairman of Ayodhya Development Authority (ADA), said he had not received any complaints on the matter.

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Popcorn and curfew: India gets ready for Ram temple with frenzy and fear | Politics

Yavatmal/Mumbai, India – For a month now, mini-trucks have been snaking their way on labyrinth roads cutting across villages in Yavatmal district in central India.

Yavatmal has been in the grip of agrarian distress so deep that more than 5,800 farmers have taken their own lives here in the last two decades, according to data provided by the local divisional collectorate.

But these trucks haven’t been carrying any relief for distressed farmers. Instead, with a photo of the Hindu god Ram on posters stuck on their sides, the trucks have been foraying deep inside the district, exhorting farmers to donate grains.

The grains are headed to Ayodhya to feed hundreds of thousands of devotees visiting the city where Prime Minister Narendra Modi will consecrate a temple to Ram on January 22, over three decades after a mob led by Hindu nationalists tore down a mosque that stood on the spot.

The trucks are being operated by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), a part of the Hindu nationalist network Sangh Parivar led by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) that includes Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

At Yavatmal’s Samvidhan Chowk, workers hurriedly load a large container truck with sacks of grains. “We have managed to fill three container trucks with these donations, and this is the fourth one,” says VHP Vidarbha Prant President Raju Niwal. The idea, VHP volunteers on the spot say, is to mobilise farmers and make them “feel involved” in the celebrations.

It’s a sentiment that the Modi government and its ideological allies have successfully managed to evoke across the country.

For over seven decades, the movement to build the Ram temple in Ayodhya, at the spot where he is believed to have been born according to Hindu scriptures, had been shrouded in violence and bitter contestation. Close to 2,500 people (PDF), according to a research paper by the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, were killed during the violence that broke out around the BJP-led agitation demanding a Ram temple in the early 1990s.

But as Modi gets set to inaugurate the Ram temple, the country has been flooded by popular culture acts and symbols that ignore that troubled past, giving the Ram temple movement a benign image, and creating a lasting legacy for Modi among Hindus, say analysts.

Labourers stand on top of the illuminated grand temple of the god Ram ahead of its opening in Ayodhya in India, January 19, 2024 [Adnan Abidi/Reuters]

Pop songs and popcorn

From social media timelines to schools, the temple’s inauguration is everywhere. Music platforms are filled with a glut of new songs exhorting citizens to celebrate the occasion, insisting that Ram was “coming back”. New TV shows have come up around Ram’s life. Reality TV shows have dedicated entire episodes to songs hailing Ram, with a makeshift temple built in the studio. News television channel vehicles are sporting huge Ram stickers, while news studios feature large cutouts of Ram as the backdrop for news debates. India’s largest domestic airline, Indigo, got its cabin crew to dress up as Ram, wife Sita and brother Lakshman, in its inaugural flight to Ayodhya from Ahmedabad.

On Friday, PVR Cinemas, one of India’s largest cinema chains, announced that they were, in association with a top Hindi news channel Aaj Tak, going to broadcast live visuals of the temple’s inauguration ceremony in cinema halls across the country, with “a complimentary popcorn combo” for attendees.

On WhatsApp and Instagram, reels and videos are honouring the temple’s inauguration with vivid imagery – one image, viral across platforms, shows Modi, towering over Ram, and walking him into the temple.

Modi has approved most of this – an analysis of his Twitter timeline reveals that he has tweeted out at least 16 songs around Ram this month. He even created a playlist of 62 such songs that he tweeted out on Friday. On his WhatsApp channel, of the 14 posts since January 1, at least five are around the Ram temple’s inauguration.

Buoyed, several high-profile singers have come out with songs around the event in the recent few weeks – from Sonu Nigam, Jubin Nautiyal, Shaan, Udit Narayan, Alka Yagnik and Kailash Kher, to music composers Amit Trivedi and Anu Malik. Many of these music videos feature visuals of Modi. These songs have been repurposed for crowd-created reels and videos, amplifying their reach multiple times over.

But many say what is missing amid the euphoria is an acknowledgement of the bloodied past of the movement around the temple.

1947 all over again?

Author Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, who reported on the agitation that led to the demolition of the 16th-century Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, says the celebrations carry an echo of the events of August 15, 1947. India celebrated its independence from British colonial rule at the same time that large parts of the country were drowning in inter-religious hate, and the subcontinent was being carved into two.

“There are striking parallels that can be drawn between January 22 and August 15, 1947, not with the celebrations around India’s independence, but with the tragedies surrounding its partition [into India and Pakistan],” says Mukhopadhyay, author of the 1994 book, The Demolition: India at the Crossroads.

Mukhopadhyay recalls a recent conversation with a Muslim friend, who told him how Muslims were exchanging messages warning each other not to travel in public transport on January 22, or to not showcase their Muslim identity on the day.

“On the other hand, the triumphant Hindu is relishing this fear. There is a sense of collective triumphalism in many,” he says.

None of this fear and disappointment, though, is reflected in the popular discourse around the inauguration.

People wait to buy tickets at an INOX movie theatre in Mumbai, India, March 29, 2022. Movie theatres are planning to broadcast the temple consecration ceremony live, with complementary popcorn [Francis Mascarenhas/Reuters]

The young identity

What is reflected is the triumphalism that Mukhopadhyay mentions – in some cities, pregnant women have reportedly asked for their deliveries to be timed with the inauguration. The Bar Council of India has written to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Justice DY Chandrachud, asking for all courts across the country to be shut on January 22, in order for lawyers and legal staff to participate in the celebrations around the temple. The stock market will stay shut on Monday and is instead working on January 20, a Saturday, to make up trading hours.

Many believe such celebrations are designed for India’s young population – half the country is under 25 years of age and was born nearly a decade after the violence and deaths surrounding the agitation and the demolition of the Babri Mosque.

“The young today don’t know anything about the Babri Mosque. They were never told about the history of this issue, and hence, the demolition is not part of their imagination at all,” says sociologist Nandini Sardesai. Pointing at the plethora of songs and television content around the event, Sardesai says, “Religion is no longer an institution, it has become a part of popular culture. Hence, everything – from music to dance to films – has an element of religion in it now.”

In Mumbai, BJP minister Mangal Prabhat Lodha asked public school students to write essays, poetry, dramas, as well as sketch paintings on Ram, according to a news report. The Modi government, through the state broadcaster, Doordarshan, is running a special series of stories around Ram in the run-up to the inauguration, apart from other programming around the event. In fact, the Modi administration has even given all central government employees a half-day holiday on the day of the inauguration. Five regional governments, all controlled by the BJP, have declared a public holiday on Monday, with some even banning the sale of liquor on the day.

Residents pass water buckets to put out fires after riots in Mumbai – then called Bombay – on Wednesday, January 13, 1993. Four people were stabbed in violence that left hundreds dead and erupted in the aftermath of the demolition of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, India [File: Ajit Kumar/AP Photo]

A lingering hurt

For Mumbai-based Abdul Wahid Shaikh, 44, all of this celebration is jarring and is a reminder of a pain that lives on.

Around him in Mumbai, many streets are decked up with saffron flags and large cutouts of Ram. Billboards display new year greetings with images of Ram.

Shaikh, a resident of eastern Mumbai, was just 13 when he witnessed the embers of hate engulf his locality after the Babri Mosque was demolished. In the days after, rioters from Hindu right-wing parties attacked Muslim homes in his neighbourhood. “Muslims would live in self-imposed curfews in those days,” he said.

The violence, Shaikh said, seems to have deliberately been forgotten without any attempts to grant closure. “When the government is on your side, even a crime becomes a celebration,” he said.

The fear he felt those days hasn’t gone away. “As January 22 approaches, many Muslims are talking to each other about staying home that day and refusing to get drawn into any provocations by Hindu nationalists,” he added.

For many Muslims like Shaikh, January 22 will be a self-imposed curfew, all over again.

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‘Better future’: India’s Ayodhya sees business boom with Ram temple launch | Business and Economy News

Ayodhya, India – A 13-kilometre stretch around the controversial Ram temple in the northern Indian city of Ayodhya is lit up with sparkling lights, the walls in the area covered in murals as the city prepares for the January 22 inauguration ceremony by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

But Rajesh Majhi has no time to enjoy the beauty of the city as he is working overtime to print banners to be used for roadside advertisements for the consecration ceremony. He is also behind on huge orders of wooden carved miniature replicas of the Ram temple, which is currently under construction.

The 38-year-old says his business has increased nearly 30 percent in the past six months. “I have been in the business for the past 12 years, but have never witnessed such a huge demand for banners. There is a surge in the visits of VIPs and religious activities in the city in the past few months,” he told Al Jazeera.

His monthly orders for banners have doubled to 60,000 now from a year ago, and he’s opened a manufacturing unit to make replicas of the Ram temple, a new business line for him, he said.

“We are making 4,000-5,000 pieces every month but the demand is more than the supply. Traders are ready to pay any price and buy them because of that gap between demand and supply,” he said.

Kamal Kaushal, 62, who sells utensils in the city, around seven kilometres from the temple, is also happy with the rapid growth of his business.

“I have been running my shop since 1978 but have never come across such a massive demand for utensils used in religious activities. Earlier, it was even difficult to sell one lakh rupees [$1,206] worth of utensils in a year. But now I have done three lakh rupees [$3,618] sales in the past year. We hope to witness more hikes once the Ram temple opens up for the public.”

The duo are not alone as several thousand traders in the region have been doing brisk business ever since construction for the temple started in 2020, months after the Supreme Court of India handed control of the disputed religious site of 2.77 acres to Hindus. The burst in economic activity is expected to solidify support for Modi among the local traders in the upcoming national elections.

Infrastructure boost

With the temple construction under way, the district with a population of around 2.5 million has seen a series of activities by the central and the state governments, both led by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which are leaving no stone unturned to give a grand look to the city and turn it into a big spiritual hub in the country ahead of national elections later this year.

Around 178 projects worth around 305 billion rupees ($3.6bn) have been initiated, including a railway station modelled on the Ram temple, an international airport, a modern township – the area for which has been demarcated – widened roads and decorative street lights.

Tourist influx has increased in Ayodhya [Gurvinder Singh/Al Jazeera]

Traders are ready for the jump in business expected from the increase in tourists.

“We have suffered a lot in the past three decades since the movement for building the Ram temple intensified in the 1980s as there were frequent strikes and shutdowns called by different outfits [over] constructing the temple,” said Sushil Jaiswal, convener of a local business forum that includes 15,000 traders in Ayodhya district.

“Even after the Supreme Court verdict, the development work that began involving road widening and building of sewage system has affected our business for the past three years,” he added. “But now we are hoping for a better future as… it is becoming the business hub of the state due to the temple.”

The government has also granted a Geographical Indication (GI) tag to the besan laddus or gram flour sweets that are offered as prasad to the god.

There are around 500 shops located in just one-kilometre area of the temple selling the gram flour sweet to the devotees.

Shakti Jaiswal, 38, who runs a sweet shop around 400 metres away from the Ram temple, is hopeful that the tag would help him enhance his business.

“The counter sales will definitely improve with the influx of tourists that would see a surge post the consecration ceremony. The GI tag will help us to take our business online and reach new markets and create more income opportunities,” he said.

Vishal Singh, vice chairman of Ayodhya Development Authority (ADA), involved in the development of infrastructure told Al Jazeera that the government aims to create a massive livelihood with the temple.

“The growth in the hospitality sector is witnessing reverse migration as people working in other cities or states are returning here … and 50 new hotels have been sanctioned,” he said.

Tourism to be the biggest benefactor

There’s brisk demand for replicas of the Ram temple [Gurvinder Singh/Al Jazeera]

Tourism is considered to be the most profitable sector from the Ram temple as footfall is expected to rise manifold in the city, especially with a new airport and daily flights to the Indian capital and other places being added at a fast pace.

To cater to the expected influx of tourists the state government sanctioned one billion rupees ($12.05m) in the last financial year, money that is being spent on renovating several temples and other recreational places in the city, said Rajendra Prasad Yadav, deputy director of tourism of the Ayodhya division.

The number of visitors has risen ever since the judgement of the Supreme Court in 2019 and last year around 20 million people visited Ayodhya which is likely to double this year, he added.

There are already 175 small and big hotels in the city, and 500 new guest houses with a  maximum of five rooms have been approved by the state government and these are expected to be a source of income for the locals, Yadav said.

While serving meat or alcohol within a 5km (3 miles) radius of the temple – which is soon expected to be expanded to 15km (9 miles) – is banned, hotels are optimistic that the tourist numbers will make up for the drop in revenue from those lucrative offerings.

In addition, the government is providing a 25 percent subsidy to those constructing hotels, restaurants and recreational places with an aim to attract more tourism, he said.

Arvind Awasthi, pro-vice chancellor at the University of Lucknow, told Al Jazeera that the state economy grew 14.3 percent in the last financial year ending March 2023 and is expected to rise to 19 percent in the current fiscal year partly on the back of the economic boom in Ayodhya.

“The spillover effect of the business boom in Ayodhya would be visible in other parts of the state, too. The wages and economic migration will increase as people will consider the holy city as one of the major places of employment generation,” he said.

Major infrastructure spending, including on a railway station as a replica of the temple, is under way in the city  [Gurvinder Singh/Al Jazeera]

But business is not good for everyone. Large sections of traders have complained that around 1,000 shops in a 5km area of the temple were demolished as the administration undertook a road widening project and the compensation they were paid was much lower than the current real estate prices.

Vaibhav Gupta, 34, a sweet seller, said two of his four sweet shops were demolished as city officials tried to widen the road leading to the temple and his sales have halved because of that loss of location.

“We were paid [1.8 million rupees; $21,735] compensation for both the shops, but the administration is now demanding [two million rupees; $24,149] for allotting us a single shop in another location which is too much for the poor traders like us to afford.”

Dismissing the allegations, Ayodhya Development Authority’s Singh said that proper compensation as per the government norms was paid to the traders whose shops were razed for development works.

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Kenya cult leader charged with ‘terrorism’ over starvation deaths | Crime News

Paul Mackenzie and 94 others charged over deaths of followers whose bodies have been exhumed from the Shakahola forest.

A Kenyan court has charged cult leader Paul Mackenzie with “terrorism”-related crimes over the deaths of 429 of his followers.

The self-proclaimed pastor was charged along with 94 others on Thursday over the deaths of followers whose bodies have been exhumed from the Shakahola forest near the Indian Ocean.

Mackenzie was arrested last April after the bodies began being discovered.

The charges, announced during an appearance before a court in the southeastern city of Mombasa, are the first to be brought against him.

Mackenzie and his co-defendants denied the charges during their appearance before the judge, Joe Omido. They are due back in court on February 8 for a bond hearing.

Authorities allege that Mackenzie, the head of the Good News International Church, incited his acolytes in southeastern Kenya to starve themselves and their children to death so they could go to heaven before the world ended.

The bodies of the victims were uncovered over months of exhumations across tens of thousands of acres of forest.

Autopsies revealed that the majority had died of hunger. But others, including children, appeared to have been strangled, beaten or suffocated.

‘Organised criminal group’

Court documents cited by the APF news agency described Good News International Ministries as “an organised criminal group (which) engaged in organised criminal activities thereby endangering lives and leading to the death of 429 members and followers”.

Mackenzie was also charged with “organised criminal activity”, AFP reported, and he and the other suspects pleaded “not guilty” to charges of radicalisation.

Mackenzie’s pre-trial detention in Mombasa was extended on several occasions as the prosecution asked for more time to probe the case.

But last week a court warned the authorities that it would release the former taxi driver unless charges were filed within 14 days.

On Wednesday, a judge in a different court in the coastal town of Malindi ordered that Mackenzie and 30 of his associates be taken for mental health evaluations before being charged with murder in connection with 191 deaths.

Prosecutors in Mombasa and Malindi say they will also charge the 95 people on counts of manslaughter and torture.

The grisly case, dubbed the “Shakahola forest massacre”, prompted Kenya’s government to flag up the need for tighter control of fringe denominations.

The cult leader had been arrested before in 2019, also in relation to the deaths of children, but was released on bond. The cases are still in court.

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With controversial temple launch, Modi to start 2024 India re-election bid | Politics

Ayodhya, India – For hundreds of years, a journey to Ayodhya for many Hindu pilgrims meant a walk down narrow lanes to the Hanuman Garhi Mandir, a temple honouring Hanuman, the monkey god. Now a wide street leads to the shrine, with shops on both sides selling sweetmeats as offerings to the deity. Hanuman Garhi has a brooding dark dome, and the temple has a new coat of red and saffron paint. Its young priests are sprightly and quick.

But the 10th-century temple in the northern Uttar Pradesh state is no longer the main attraction here. Some 500 metres (547 yards) away, a brand new, as yet incomplete, construction has taken hold of India’s attention.

Long queues of young men and women chant “Jai Shri Ram” (Victory to Lord Ram) as they try to enter the complex, guarded zealously by police officers. One policeman helpfully tells them to deposit their mobile phones in a safe. Inside, craftsmen work on large horizontal prefab structures. Others chisel away painstakingly at pillars and rock features. It is not noisy, but there is a buzz of construction activity everywhere.

The queue leads to a statue of Ram, which will give way to a new one that has been selected in a nationwide competition and will be moved to the venue on January 17. Meanwhile, workers race against time, repairing the steps of a nearby baoli or step-well, and building accommodation for pilgrims.

They have a deadline to meet – January 22 – by when they must build enough of the Ram Mandir for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to inaugurate it, amid nationwide frenzy around the project fed and fuelled by the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allied Hindu majoritarian outfits.

Built on the ruins of a mosque of the 16th century, Babri Masjid, which Hindu activists demolished in December 1992, the temple is close to the site that is believed by many Hindus to be the birthplace of Lord Ram, a personification of the victory of good over evil. In 1990, the BJP and quasi-religious bodies like Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) launched a massive campaign demanding that a temple be built where the mosque stood, culminating in the physical assault on the existing shrine two years later. The movement catapulted the BJP, which had won only two out of the 543 seats in the lower house of India’s parliament, to national centre stage.

Now, the semi-constructed temple is poised to serve as the backdrop for what many analysts and opposition leaders say is effectively the launch of Modi’s campaign for re-election in the 2024 national polls, expected to be held between March and May.

‘No one disputes the importance of the temple’

To many Ayodhya residents, and those visiting the temple town, it is a moment to cherish.

“We are very happy with the temple,” said Daudas, the chief priest at Hanuman Garhi, adding that it would be good for the economy of the city too. Deepak Gupta, a shopkeeper near Hanuman Garhi, agreed and said many tourists were already visiting the city to see the construction that has been under way. More pilgrims would come, he said, after the January 22 consecration.

At a petrol station on his way from Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh, to Ayodhya, businessman Dalip Chopra acknowledged that political reasons might be driving the project. But, he added, “No one disputes the importance of the temple and the fact that it has to be built.” Had he ever prayed to Ram before? “We will do it now,” he said, defiantly.

Vijay Mishra, an astrologer and priest who divides his time between Lucknow and Ayodhya, said a brand new international airport and a railway station, both inaugurated by Modi on December 30, “could make many bigger cities envious” of Ayodhya.

Politics or religion?

Across Ayodhya, flags of the governing party lazily flutter alongside banners of a victorious Ram and an angry Hanuman, reinforcing the idea that the temple is a gift to India’s Hindu majority from the BJP.

Only 6,000 specially chosen invitees will be allowed in on January 22, and the security blanket, it appears, is aimed at preparing for the possibility of excited crowds trying to enter. On October 30, 1990, the state police had fired on devotees and religious workers, known as karsevaks, as they tried to force their way to the site. At least 50 people were killed. The party in power then in Uttar Pradesh is now in opposition. And a BJP government in the state will not want even the possibility of a repeat. “What would happen if thousands come to Ayodhya,” wondered Shyambabu, owner of a sweetmeat shop in front of the Hanuman Garhi temple.

Besides Modi, others who will be part of the consecration include Mohan Bhagwat, chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the BJP’s ideological parent; Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and a priest chosen to perform the ceremony.

That the inauguration is taking place before the temple is complete, and that it focuses on Modi — who is not from the Brahmin or priestly community — has upset some Hindu gurus. Four of the most prominent seers, called the Shankaracharyas, are boycotting the event.

Also skipping the event is the opposition Congress party, which described the inauguration as a political show rather than one meant to honour Ram. India’s mostly pro-government mainstream media has savaged the Congress over its decision — the BJP and its allies portray India’s Grand Old Party as anti-Hindu and focused on the interests of Muslims.

But political analyst Harish Khare said the Congress decision was a reflection of the leadership of the party’s current president, veteran leader Mallikarjun Kharge, who in 2022 took over from the Nehru-Gandhi family that has controlled the Congress for much of the past 75 years.

“Unlike the Gandhis, the new Congress president will not allow himself to be on the backfoot on this matter,” Khare said. “Mr Kharge has brought in new clarity that the new president would not be part of any congregation in which the RSS chief would be a major presence.”

The Congress is the hub around which the opposition alliance, called INDIA, has been built. With elections coming up, Congress cannot be seen as complicit in a ceremony orchestrated by the party it wants to replace.

For the BJP, meanwhile, the Congress decision is a chance to reinforce its narrative that it alone cares about the country’s Hindus. On January 22, as the Ram Mandir is consecrated, a re-election campaign too, will in effect be inaugurated.

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‘Outraged’: Brazilian Muslims face growing Islamophobia over Gaza war | Islamophobia News

Sao Paulo, Brazil – It wasn’t unusual for patients to arrive in a foul temper at the hospital emergency room in São Paulo, Brazil, where physician Batull Sleiman worked.

After all, every day brought new medical crises, new requests for urgent care. Sleiman had seen it all. But she was not expecting the level of anger she received several weeks ago.

A patient had arrived in her examination room frustrated over the time he spent waiting for a doctor’s care. Sleiman recalled his issue was “not urgent”. Still, as she treated him, he accused her of being impolite.

“You’re being rude with me because you’re not from Brazil,” Sleiman remembers him saying. “If you were in your country…”

Batull Sleiman believes one of her patients lashed out after seeing her hijab [Courtesy of Batull Sleiman]

Sleiman said she turned away rather than hear the rest. The daughter of Lebanese immigrants, she believes the man reacted the way he did because of one thing: her hijab.

“I was surprised and outraged,” Sleiman told Al Jazeera. But, she added, the atmosphere in Brazil had grown more tense since the war in Gaza had erupted. “I’ve been noticing that people have been staring more at me on the street since October.”

But Sleiman is not alone in feeling singled out. As the war in Gaza grinds on, Brazil is one of many countries facing increased fears about religious discrimination, particularly towards its Muslim community.

A survey released last month from the Anthropology Group on Islamic and Arab Contexts — an organisation based at the University of São Paulo — found that reports of harassment among Muslim Brazilians have been widespread since the war began.

An estimated 70 percent of respondents said they knew someone who experienced religious intolerance since October 7, when the Palestinian group Hamas launched an attack on southern Israel, killing 1,140 people.

Israel has since led a military offensive against Gaza, a Palestinian enclave, killing more than 21,000 people. That response has raised human rights concerns, with United Nations experts warning of a “grave risk of genocide”.

While Palestinians are an ethnic group — and not a religious one — the University of São Paulo’s Professor Francirosy Barbosa found that the events of October 7 resulted in incidents of religious intolerance in Brazil, as Palestinian identity was conflated with Muslim identity.

She led November’s survey of 310 Muslim Brazilians. Respondents, she explained, reported receiving insults that reflected tensions in the Gaza war.

“Many Muslim women told us they are now called things like ‘Hamas daughter’ or ‘Hamas terrorist’,” she told Al Jazeera.

The survey, conducted online, also found that many of the respondents also had firsthand experience with religious intolerance.

“About 60 percent of the respondents affirmed that they suffered some kind of offence, either on social media or in their daily lives at work, at home or in public spaces,” Barbosa said.

Women in particular, the study noted, reported slightly higher rates of religious intolerance.

A Palestinian Brazilian woman holds up a sign at a protest in Brasilia on October 20 that reads, ‘Muslim women of Brazil: anti-Zionism, anti-militarism, anti-extremism’ [File: Eraldo Peres/AP Photo]

The question of Islamophobia was catapulted into the national spotlight this month when a video spread on social media appearing to show a resident of Mogi das Cruzes, a suburb of São Paulo, rushing towards a Muslim woman and grabbing at her headscarf. The video was even broadcast on news outlets like CNN Brasil.

One of the women involved, Karen Gimenez Oubidi, who goes by Khadija, had married a Moroccan man and converted to Islam eight years ago. She told Al Jazeera that the altercation involved one of her neighbours: She was upset after their children had argued.

“She came down with her brother and was very aggressive. She called me a ‘cloth-wrapped bitch’. I soon realised it was not only about the kids’ fight,” Gimenez Oubidi said.

Neighbours attempted to separate the two women. One man in the video, however, grabbed Gimenez Oubidi from behind, wrapping an arm around her throat to hold her down. Gimenez Oubidi identified him to Al Jazeera as her neighbour’s brother.

Karen Gimenez Oubidi, known as Khadija, was the subject of a viral video that raised questions about Islamophobia [Courtesy of Karen Gimenez Oubidi]

“He said a few times to me, ‘What are you doing now, terrorist?’ He didn’t say it loudly: It was just for me to hear. He knew what he was doing,” Gimenez Oubidi said. She added that the fight her son had had with the neighbour’s child was also over her hijab.

The woman who attacked Oubidi, Fernanda — she said she did not want her full name revealed for fear of a public backlash — disputed this account.

Fernanda said her son had been hit by Oubidi’s son in the playground, and while she had physically attacked Fernanda, she had not referenced her religion. “I never insulted her for her religion. That simply didn’t happen. I’d never do something like that,” she said.

A government report from July noted that religious intolerance “occurs most intensely against those of African origin, but it also affects Indigenous, Roma, immigrant and converted individuals, including Muslims and Jews, as well as atheist, agnostic and non-religious people”.

Brazil is predominantly Christian, home to an estimated 123 million Catholics — more than any other country in the world.

But it has a long-standing, if smaller, Muslim population. Academics believe Islam arrived in the country with the transatlantic slave trade, as kidnapped African Muslims continued to practice their religion in their new surroundings.

One group of enslaved Muslim Brazilians even launched a rebellion against the government in 1835, called the Malê uprising — a term derived from the Yoruba word for Muslim.

Brazil’s Muslim population grew with waves of immigration in the late 19th and 20th centuries, particularly after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Arab immigrants, particularly from Lebanon, Syria and Palestine, came to know Brazil as their home.

The exact number of Muslims in Brazil today is unknown. The 2010 census counted 35,167 people identified as Muslim, but in the years since, other estimates have come out, setting the population as high as 1.5 million.

Some advocates, however, point to other demographic and political trends as setting the stage for tensions to rise between Muslim and non-Muslim groups.

Evangelical Christians make up the fastest-growing religious segment in Brazil today, comprising about a third of the population. Their numbers have turned them into a significant political force.

Evangelical voters were credited with helping to elect far-right President Jair Bolsonaro in 2016, with polls showing 70 percent supporting him.

During his failed 2022 re-election bid, Bolsonaro repeatedly invoked Christian imagery in his appeals to voters, framing the race as a “fight of good against evil”.

Mahmoud Ibrahim, who heads a mosque in Porto Alegre, believes that the us-versus-them mentality has translated into antagonism against his community.

A man marches in a religious freedom demonstration in 2022, holding a sign that reads, ‘I am a Muslim man. Ask me a question!!’ [File: Bruna Prado/AP Photo]

At recent protests against the war in Gaza, he said onlookers called him a “terrorist” and “child rapist”.

“Evangelicals and Bolsonarists insult us all the time. They even chased a person who was going to our demonstration the other day,” he said.

Ibrahim added that he had heard of at least one woman who was left bleeding after attackers attempted to tear her hijab off, causing the pins in the scarf to dig into her skin.

Girrad Sammour heads the National Association of Muslim Jurists (ANAJI), a group that offers legal support in cases of Islamophobia. He said the number of reports to ANAJI has always been high, but since the start of the war on October 7, it has exploded.

“There was a rise of 1,000 percent in the denunciations that we received,” he told Al Jazeera, crediting some to inflammatory remarks from far-right evangelical pastors.

But Barbosa, the survey leader, believes there are ways to lessen the hatred and suspicion directed at Muslim Brazilians. She pointed to a lack of media representation as an example.

“Few Palestinian leaders and experts in the Middle East with a pro-Palestine view have been invited by TV shows, for instance, to comment on the conflict in Gaza,” Barbosa said.

But she also encouraged Muslim Brazilians to speak up about their experiences, in order to raise awareness.

“What is not denounced doesn’t exist for the government,” she said. “Only if the authorities know what is happening will they be able to take adequate measures, like investing in education against religious intolerance.”

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When death metal becomes one of 84,000 ways to practise Buddhism | Music

Taipei, Taiwan – In the past few years, many of Taiwan’s largest music festivals have seen the unlikely ensemble of a shaven Buddhist nun introducing a band of five black-clad musicians whose faces are smeared blood red.

When the first riffs break through the sound system, their hard yet atmospheric music immediately sounds like death metal – an extreme sub-genre of heavy metal that emerged in the United States in the mid-1980s and is characterised by guttural vocals, abrupt tempo and relentless, discording guitar riffs.

But the beastly growl of the band’s Canadian singer is not conveying the genre’s typical lyrics of sickness. He is actually chanting genuine Buddhist mantras, blessing everyone in the audience.

Taiwan’s Dharma are probably the first band in the world to combine ancient Buddhist sutras in Sanskrit or Mandarin Chinese with the contemporary sound of death metal. Since their beginnings in 2018, they have stood out from thousands of other heavy metal bands around the world with their distinctive style, and have even had two Buddhist nuns, Master Song and Master Miao-ben join them on stage.

Last month, the band played its first overseas show – at the International Indie Music Festival in Kerala – and is ready to bring Buddha’s message further afield after receiving offers of interest from North America and Europe.

“We believe that in the 21st century, both heavy metal and ancient religions need to change,” said Jack Tung, Dharma’s founding member and drummer, a pivotal figure in Taipei’s underground music scene.

Heavy with spiritual strokes

Dharma is unique because the group subverts most people’s understanding of metal music and its fans – an obnoxious, loud genre for degenerates.

Since the 1990s, heavy metal has been often associated with Satanism and delinquency – think of the second wave of Norwegian black metal, with bands like Mayhem, Emperor and Burzum, whose alienated teenage musicians shocked the world with their behaviour – from burning churches to murder – in the name of “musical authenticity”.

A Dharma fan crowd-surfs in the lotus position [Courtesy of Joe Henley/Dharma]

For heavy metal and its subgenres, these events constituted the climax of what British sociologist Stanley Cohen described as “moral panics” in his book Folk Devils and Moral Panics, a 1972 study on the then-emerging British subcultures of mods and rockers. Cohen argued that moral panics were characterised by an intense feeling of fear, largely exaggerated, about a specific subcultural group that a community perceives as tarnishing its core values.

Thirty years later, with heavy metal and its derivatives underpinning music scenes in countries from Botswana to Egypt and Iraq, Dharma believes the genre’s globalised tropes can be changed into an effective vehicle for Buddhist teachings.

Founding member Tung had his spiritual awakening back in 2000, when he was greatly surprised to hear the Lion’s Roar of Buddhism “as it was completely different from the Buddhist scriptures I had heard since childhood”, he told Al Jazeera. In the Mahayana school of Buddhism prevalent in East Asia, the “Lion’s Roar” is a metaphorical principle signifying the awe-inspiring power of Buddha and the Bodhisattvas when expounding the Dharma (which means, in a nutshell, the Buddha’s teachings and practice), bringing peace and auspiciousness.

At the time, Tung was already a metalhead and a drummer and sensed a connection between the chanting style of the Lion’s Roar and the driving rhythms of a metal band. For him, death metal’s stereotypical imagery and lyrics were just an outlet to release emotions and a form of representation not dissimilar to the way Buddhism spread from India to China and other places using Buddha statues with angry features.

“From my understanding, this angry appearance was used mainly to protect monks and believers, and we think that it is somewhat similar to how death metal musicians propose their messages,” said Tung. “We hope to use the tremendous energy of death metal music to increase the power of the spells and use music and costumes to manifest the anger or protection of Buddha and Bodhisattva. […] We have not changed the essence of Buddhist scripture mantras, but rather hope to strengthen them [with death metal].”

A special kind of dedication

It took Tung about a decade from conceiving Dharma’s concept to finding the right people to form his “enlightened” band because being a member also meant being highly involved with the teachings of Buddhism.

In 2018, Tung recruited a former bandmate, guitarist Andy Lin, to start working on Dharma’s first songs, and in 2019, welcomed Canadian singer Joe Henley, a freelance writer and long-term Taiwan resident, on vocals. Prior to making his live debut, Henley spent months studying the sutras he would sing on stage under the guidance of Master Song, a devout Buddhist nun, until he entered the Three Jewels, becoming a Buddhist himself and receiving Song’s ultimate blessing to perform the sutras in public.

Master Song, who due to health reasons can no longer perform on stage with Dharma, passed their duties to Master Miao-ben and discussed the issues extensively with Tung before endorsing the band.

She hopes they may play a subtle role in spreading Buddhist beliefs among young people on the self-ruled island and beyond.

“Through music, we hope to influence the younger generation, especially those who like different music genres, as we are born equal, and no one should be abandoned because of their preferences for any specific music style,” Master Song told Al Jazeera. “We believe that faith does not necessarily have to be Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, Catholicism or Islam, as it can also be the sheer belief in goodness and love for the world.”

Master Miao-ben and Joe Henley, right, on stage [Courtesy of Joe Henley/Dharma]

Given the general reluctance of heavy metal fans to accept bands that deviate from metal’s well-defined style, Dharma’s successful reception in Taiwan came as a huge surprise to Henley.

“It seems that from day one, and our very first show, opening for [Swedish black metal band] Marduk, we were welcomed with open arms and minds,” he said only a few weeks after Dharma was nominated for Taiwan’s Golden Indie Music Awards, one of the country’s top music honours, although ultimately they did not win.

“In many ways, metal is just repeating many of the same tropes over and over again,” Henley told Al Jazeera. “Now, those tropes exist because, by and large, humanity keeps repeating the same mistakes. […] In reaction to that, the ultimate message of our music, to me, is that in order to change the world for the better, you need to start with the individual, which is to say, yourself. And one of the core tenets of the Buddhist philosophy is that there really is no self.”

Henley explains that what we imagine to be the “self” is nothing more than an often flawed projection of our own thoughts. “Buddhist practice is, in a nutshell, letting go of the concept of ‘you’ as you know it, in relation to those thoughts, and the answers to this lie in the sutras that we transform into the type of music that we, as lifelong fans and devotees of metal music, as well as followers of the Noble Eightfold Path, can relate to in both the theistic and musical sense,” he told Al Jazeera.

“Let go of the self, let go of the ego. Embrace your being as part of a larger collective consciousness. If this can be achieved, I believe we would have a much more peaceful world.”

Spreading the blessings

At home at least, Dharma’s new style of metal has inspired thousands of Taiwanese fans.

“Our shows developed their own culture, with fans crowd-surfing in the lotus position, prostrating themselves in the mosh pit, and it all happened completely spontaneously,” Henley explained. “We didn’t guide or push them in any sort of direction whatsoever. They did it wholly on their own. I’m not sure if that would happen anywhere else but here.”

At the same time, Henley says Dharma tries not to preach.

“We are not here to force any system of belief on anyone nor to preach,” said Henley. “We provide the message based on the teachings of the Buddha. It’s up to the individual to choose whether that message is meant for them or not.”

Dharma’s 2021 lineup, from left to right: guitarist Andy Lin, bassist Bull Tsai, vocalist Joe Henley, rhythm guitarist Jon Chang, and drummer Jack Tung [Courtesy of Joe Henley/Dharma]

Physical copies of its most recent album, Three Thousand Realms in a Single Thought Moment, released at the end of 2022, were blessed by Buddhist monks to reflect positivity and good, and Master Song adds that, because Dharma’s lyrics are scriptures and mantras of Buddha and the Bodhisattvas, each time the band is paid to perform, 15 percent of their fee is donated to charitable organisations.

“Amitabha Buddha said that there are 84,000 ways to practice, and perhaps [death metal] is also one of them,” said Tung. “Therefore, we believe that Buddhism and death metal do not contradict each other, at least in our hearts – and everything starts from the heart.”

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Why do evangelical Christians support Israel? | Israel-Palestine conflict

Palestinian human rights activist Jonathan Kuttab explains how Christian Zionism affects US policy in the Middle East.

In the evangelical Christian worldview, the 1948 creation of Israel was a fulfilment of Biblical prophecy and the Palestinians are either “non-existent” or “the enemies of God, because they are the enemies of the State of Israel”, explains Palestinian human rights defender Jonathan Kuttab.

Kuttab tells host Steve Clemons that believers of this interpretation of holy scripture do not care about international law or catastrophic war in the region. “They say, ‘Bring it on. That’s the End Times. That’s the Second Coming. That’s wonderful.’”

And if 30 percent of Americans hold these beliefs, what is the impact on US policy on Palestine and Israel?

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