It is time we stop Al Jazeera’s foul propaganda against India and the Indian Army. It is nothing but a biased narrative to serve the Islamic Supremacist narrative of Mostefa Souag.
The recent Delhi riots have sent the international media into an anti-India frenzy! They have all labelled this as an anti-Muslim pogrom. These are all a part of a bigger conspiracy to portray India as an anti-Muslim country. Al Jazeera particularly has a history of writing grossly misleading and often instigating articles against India with forged information to manufacture fear among our own citizens. Their malicious intentions of tarnishing India’s image globally are now clearer than ever!
For the recent Delhi riots, Al Jazeera has claimed that the riots in Delhi were specifically against the Muslims. In their rant against the Indian government, they failed to even mention once about the death of so many Hindus, the death of 2 government servants and the numerous attacks on the police or the paramilitary! They even reported, “Mosque in Indian capital set ablaze as police accused of helping Hindu mob target Muslims and their properties.” However, this coming from Al Jazeera is nothing new.
In 2015, the Indian government had banned Al Jazeera for five days for displaying a wrong map of India repeatedly. As per the Surveyor General of India, some of the maps displayed by Al Jazeera had potions of Jammu and Kashmir, particularly Pakistan Occupied Kashmir and Aksai Chin, not shown as parts of India. If this was not enough, they even failed to show Lakshadweep and Andaman Islands as parts of India in some of their maps. The news channel failed to adhere to the Survey of India copyright map and went against India’s National Map Policy of 2005 and the Map Restriction Policy issued time to time by the ministry of defence. The ministry of external affairs found the channel guilty of violating the provisions of the programme code and prohibited transmission or re-transmission of the channel throughout India for five days.
Al Jazeera has also been involved in spreading fake news against India. On November 6, 2017, Al Jazeera posted an article titled “The forgotten massacre that ignited the Kashmir dispute”. They claimed that “thousands of Muslims were killed in Jammu by paramilitaries led by the army of Dogra ruler Hari Singh”. However, the picture used in this article was actually an image of a family from Amritsar relocating to Lahore. It was not even remotely related to Jammu and Kashmir.
Al Jazeera is hell-bent on selling a story of India which is untrue. They generally want to show India as a country which is oppressive to its citizens and whose Army and paramilitary troops use unjust force to curb its resenting citizens. They even have a page on Kashmir where they try to show India as a villain and make funny comparisons to the Palestinian crisis.
Let us not forget the agenda which led to the formation of Al Jazeera. Its sole purpose was always to counter the Israel stance on Palestine. However, it also had agendas of disrupting the Arab world. In the past, we saw its Beirut correspondent Ali Hashem resign over its biased coverage of Syria. We have also seen them refuse to cover the protests in Bahrain, but they did not miss covering Libya and Egypt.
In all the terror attacks which have killed thousands in India, they have failed to call the people who carried them out as terrorists. Rather, they labelled them as Armed men. When the whole world is aware of who is the mastermind behind all these terror attacks, Al Jazeera’s eyes seem to be glued shut. They have an entire page on Kashmir but not a word against Balochistan. Let us not forget who is the director general and editor in chief for Al Jazeera is. Moustefa Souhag has a history for favouring Islamic Radicalisation and he has now turned Al Jazeera as its perfect radicalisation arm. Al Jazeera has also time and again supported Islamist Supremacists and anti-Semitism of the Ikhwan. So, let us not fall into this trap and let one side gain traction. We need to deliberately counter these false narratives. I am sure my fellow Indians will surely see through this biased channel soon.
About Abhinav Khare
Abhinav Khare is the CEO of Asianet News Network and also the host of a daily show named Deep Dive with AK. He has a lifetime collection of books and gadgets and has already pinged more than hundred cities around the globe.
He is a tech entrepreneur, who is passionate about policy, technology, economy and philosophy from ancient India. He earned an MS Engineering from the ETH Zurich and an MBA Finance from the London Business School.
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