When senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor put out a tweet that one should be cautious of all forms of extremism, including that of Islamic, he received a lot of backlash on the social media.
Bengaluru: The protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act have been going on for quite sometime now. Protesters claim that the law differentiates against Muslims by leaving them out and offers a luxury to non-Muslims by granting them citizenship in a jiffy.
While the Congress and its cohort are crying foul over it, there was one interesting development that gave its senior leader Shashi Tharoor some uneasy moments.
The context was this: In the name of protests the chant ‘La ilaha illallah’ was being used. So senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor put out a tweet, condemning it.
Our fight against Hindutva extremism should give no comfort to Islamist extremism either. We who’re raising our voice in the #CAA_NRCProtests are fighting to defend an #InclusiveIndia. We will not allow pluralism&diversity to be supplanted by any kind of religious fundamentalism. https://t.co/C9GVtB9gIa
— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) December 29, 2019
The chant La ilaha illallah means “There is no god but God”. The word ‘God’ with a capital G refers to Allah. It is followed by another chant “muḥammadun rasulu llah, which means “Muhammad is the messenger of God”.
The moment Shashi Tharoor put up this tweet, he received a lot of backlash.
Who says that la illaha ilallah is extremism? At least try to find out what ordinary Muslims say. It just means God is great nothing to do with extremism or extremist values
— Ayesha Siddiqa (@iamthedrifter) December 29, 2019
Uncle ji Laa Ilaaha Illallah means there's is no god but ALLAH, it's our faith it's our imaan it's our identity it's our pride, it's mean not extremism or pluralism.
— Waqar Khan وقار خان (@WAKhan339) December 29, 2019
In fact, some of the users also drew his attention to the fact that many Hindus too chant slogans like Jai Bajrang Bali every day and there should be no qualms about using such slogans.
But one should note the difference. None of the other slogans establish the supremacy of one god over another. Hinduism believes in the validity of all religions.
Back to the issue of CAA, while the protesters keep pointing fingers at the Modi government for bringing in such a rule, none of them have paid sufficient attention to the plight of non-Muslim’s subjugation.
In Pakistan alone, many Hindus are not given their due dignity. One of them who fled to India feels joyous that he has come to his motherland, and he could live with dignity. He also said that the voting rights of these minorities had been taken away and they were subjugated beyond anyone’s imagination.
Last Updated Dec 30, 2019, 2:57 PM IST