Date: July 7, 2022
The recent article [1] of Sanya Mansoor, published by TIME on July 1, 2022, contains many statements that qualify as disinformation and misinformation. Below, we reproduce those statements with our fact-based rebuttals.
Statement: The killing of a Hindu tailor by two Muslim men in Rajasthan, India has sparked chilling calls for revenge against the country’s already marginalized Muslim population.
Rebuttal:
- No, it is not the Hindus that are sending any organised chilling calls for revenge. It is the Muslims that are threatening Hindus with videos on social media and personal phone calls. The threats have followed several cases of throat slitting of Hindu men in various parts of the country. Thus, Time should get it right, these are not empty threats – Hindus are being killed in cold blood and in a well-planned manner by Muslims.
- Muslim population is not marginalised in India. On the contrary, it has been on a steady rise for the last 100 years. In 1905, undivided Bengal had 66% Hindu population and 33% Muslim population. Today, it is 33% Hindu population and 66% Muslim population. In India today, Hindus are in minority in 9 states (out of 28) and 100+ districts (out of 773). In at least 15 districts, Muslim population exceeds 70%. Today, 14.20% population of India is Muslim. Over the last 20 years, India has had one President who was Muslim and one Vice President who was Muslim. As of now, Governor of one of its 28 states is a Muslim. As per the Forbes 2021 list, 6 Muslims feature among the 51 richest people in India.
Statement: Lal appeared to have been targeted because he seemed to express support of derogatory remarks made about the Prophet by former BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma in May, which sparked international condemnation as well as a demand from India’s Supreme Court that she should apologise.
Rebuttal: It must be emphasized that not a single Muslim scholar has said that what Ms Nupur Sharma said was not true. Her impromptu remarks were made in a heated live television debate that took place in May 2022. The remarks were made after Muslims panellists provoked her by deriding Hindu Gods. In her remarks, she quoted facts about Islam that are mentioned in authentic Islamic texts. A few days after the debate, sensing that the Muslim sentiments had been hurt, Ms Nupur Sharma published an unconditional apology. Her apology also noted the extreme provocation that had elicited those remarks from her. She also invited Islamic scholars to enter a televised debate with her and prove that what she said was not true. But instead of accepting this challenge, the Muslim population, politicians, and media have continued to attack her personally. It should be noted that although Nupur Sharma has apologised (see [2]), the Muslim panellists and politicians are yet to render an apology for their derogatory remarks concerning Hindu Gods.
Statement: Muslim politicians and Islamic preachers swiftly condemned the killing.
Rebuttal: Again, factually wrong. As a matter of fact, on July 4, a video went viral on social media in which Ajmer Dargah’s Khadim (custodian) Salman Chishti threatened to kill Ms Nupur Sharma and offered his own house as bounty to anyone who decapitates her [3]. On live television, Masood Madani, a brother of Jamiat-Ulema-e-Hind’s general secretary Maulana Mahmood Madani, defended Salman Chishti by saying that Chishti was probably inebriated and hence did not mean what he said. In a televised interview, Chisti’s uncle Sarwar Chishti, who is the secretary of the influential Anjuman Committee of Ajmer Sharif dargah, refused to stage a protest against the beheading call issued by Salman Chishti.
Statement: “Just because two members of that community commit this type of crime you cannot paint the entire community with the same brush,” says Dhirendra Jha, a political journalist in India and author of Shadow Armies: Fringe Organizations and Foot Soldiers of Hindutva. “This is not good for Indian democracy.”
Rebuttal: This was not a random act by two members of the Muslim community (see Illustration 1). These are two separate instances of cold-blooded premeditated murders that were planned by dozens of members of that community out of purely religious bigotry. Several Islamic preachers, such as Maulana Mufti Nadeem, had given hate speeches asking people to cut off the hands and tongue, and gouge out the eyes of those who insult the Prophet (see [4]) — in India, countless Hindus have been killed in this manner by Muslims over the last millennium in the name of Islam. India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) has found out that the Popular Front of India (PFI), a Muslim organization that has been involved in several riots across India, is possibly involved in these murders [5].
Statement: Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party government has bulldozed Muslim homes and businesses, propagated the “love jihad” conspiracy theory that Muslim men are trying to convert Hindu women to Islam, and chipped away at the political autonomy of India’s only Muslim-majority state, Jammu and Kashmir.
Rebuttal: Illegal homes and businesses have been bulldozed of those who have been found to engage in instigating riots and violent protests. Muslim community is not the only community that has faced such action. Illegal homes and businesses of the Hindus found guilty have also been bulldozed. Love jihad is a reality and not a fiction. Politically, Jammu & Kashmir is stable and has never been in a better shape than now — contrary to what the statement from the TIME article indicates, it is the Muslim population that is creating the law and order issues over there through targeted killings of innocent Hindus (see [9]). The well-documented film ‘Kashmir Files’ shows the facts about Muslims raping, killing, and prompting an exodus of Hindus in Kashmir.
Statement: “The thing with a message like Hindu Lives Matter, is that it has to be read within this broader infrastructure of messages that are calling for Muslim genocide,” says Mohan Dutta, professor at Massey University in New Zealand, who has researched anti-Muslim hate in India.
Rebuttal: No Hindu organisation has called for Muslim genocide even though (1) the Gyanvapi Masjid caretakers have knowingly physically defiled what millions of Hindus believe to be a most sacred idol (see [6]) and (2) Muslim panellists, politicians, and preachers verbally abused that idol on television (see [7], [8]). On the contrary, claiming that their religious sensitivities were hurt by the impromptu verbal remarks of Ms Nupur Sharma, Muslims not only issued death threats to Hindus but have also carried out those, as these two murders illustrate. The well-known battle cry used by Muslim organizations in Jammu & Kashmir is “Ralive-Tsalive-ya Galive”, i.e., “either convert to Islam or leave or die”.
Statement: BJP’s Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Yogi Adityanath has frequently made violent remarks about Muslims, saying in 2017 “if they kill even one Hindu, we will kill 100.”
Rebuttal: This is likely a fake news item – there is no official record that shows Yogi Adityanath making that statement.
Statement: “Systemic violence by state institutions and Hindu vigilante groups against Muslims are bound to commence cycles of violence,” she says. ‘‘Hindu Lives Matter’ presumes those lives have been overlooked. Hindu lives have not been overlooked in a Hindu majoritarian state,” Chatterji says. “This is a revisionist fabrication of history and the present.”
Rebuttal: This is an opinion of one person. The fact is that Hindus have not even reacted violently to these recent murders let alone resorting to a systemic violence against Muslims. In a stark contrast, Muslims have unleashed systemic violence and cold-blooded killings of Hindus using Ms Nupur Sharma’s remarks as a valid excuse for these killings. Does TIME support this violence and systemic brainwashing?
REFERENCES
[1] Sanya Mansoor, “‘Hindu Lives Matter’ Emerges as Dangerous Slogan After Horrific Killing in India”. Time, July 1, 2022. URL: https://time.com/6193304/hindu-lives-matter-india-killing/ .
[2] Nupur Sharma, https://twitter.com/NupurSharmaBJP/status/1533422867458629632?s=20&t=srzIAeVrc9T4uSlPgEC6tg .
Note: The cover photo is taken from https://www.firstpost.com/india/udaipur-killing-kanhaiya-lals-family-wants-death-penalty-for-his-murderers-10850481.html .
