The Tablighis Were Indeed Made Scapegoats; But Will Muslims Condemn Maulana Saad’s Retrograde Speeches?
By
Arshad Alam, New Age Islam
28 December
2020
With the
release of Tabligh Jamaat (TJ) members by a Delhi court sometime back, there
has been a surfeit of condemnation of those who dared to criticise the Tabligh
Jamaat for holding its religious gathering during the onset of the corona
pandemic. It is being argued that all those who condemned the TJ must now
apologise as the courts have not found them guilty. However, amidst this
cacophony, there is a need to separate the vilification of TJ (which must be
called out) and the putrid speeches delivered by its chief vehemently negating
the dangers of the pandemic and putting many lives at risk.
Let us
start with the larger narrative spun around the Tabligh Jamaat which was deeply
disturbing. This narrative expressly targeted the TJ (and by extension all
Muslims) for spreading the virus. Let us not forget that the government and the
media targeted the Muslim community, scapegoating them in order to link the community
with the spread of the virus. Just like medieval Europe had blamed the Jews for
the plague, the Hindu Right weaponized a virus to target the Muslim community.
Whereas, the world over, the virus flattened any distinction of caste, creed
and colour; in India, it (the virus) was given an Islamic identity.
At many
levels therefore, the role of the media and the government was nothing sort of
criminal when it came to portraying the Tabligh Jamaat in a negative way. They
were accused of conducting ‘corona jihad’ by the media with fake images of Tabligh
Jamaat members flooding the internet conspiring to spread the virus in
different ways. On has not forgotten that the barrage of fake videos which
started doing the rounds on social media depicting Muslims deliberately
smearing vegetables and fruits with their saliva, spitting into food served in
restaurants, and coughing into the faces of other people, all with the
malevolent intent of infecting non-Muslims. One also remembers with alacrity
hashtags like #bioJihad and #tablighijamaatvirus that began to circulate on
social media with terrifying consequences. The media was directly responsible
for putting Muslim lives in danger as their communal reporting led to chilling
consequences for ordinary Muslims. One remembers how Muslim vegetable vendors
were not allowed to enter Hindu localities; one also remembers how a COVID ward
in a Gujarat hospital got separated between Hindus and Muslims.
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It must be
stressed that at the time when the Tabligh Jamaat was holding its’ program,
there was no lockdown in effect. In fact, even the parliament was functioning
as if everything was normal. Therefore we must be clear that there was no
illegality involved in the ongoing programs of the TJ. Rather, it was the
sudden announcement of lockdown which did not give any time to people to
prepare for this eventuality, which made the situation precarious for the
Tablighis. Since people from different parts of the world had gathered for the
religious program, the sudden lockdown made them stranded in a foreign country with
the government having no plan to help with their emigration.
It must be
said that being a transnational movement, the Tabligh Jamaat was in a better
position to know about the incoming pandemic. It could have been clairvoyant
and postponed the program much earlier and asked its delegates to return to
their home countries. At the same time, we must also remember that the TJ was
not the only religious organization to have gone with a planned program and as
such cannot be held uniquely responsible for not reading the situation. Other
religious organizations did pretty much the same thing in India and elsewhere.
However, unlike the TJ, they were hardly castigated for being responsible for
spreading the virus.
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Transgressions by other religious organizations were overlooked because the sole focus of the media and government was to shift the blame on Muslims. Despite the lockdown effective since March 24th, the Uttar Pradesh chief minister attended a Ram Navami event in Ayodhya the very next day on the 25th of March. Before the lockdown became effective, a Sikh preacher, Baldev Singh, who had returned from Italy and Germany, defied government stipulated self-quarantine measures and continued to freely preach in various religious assemblies. The guru died because of the virus and the Punjab government put nearly 40,000 people in isolation with whom the guru had come into contact. Despite such callous behaviour displayed by an elected chief minister and a religious guru, neither the government nor the media houses highlighted these issues. Rather, the sole focus remained on how Muslims were spreading the virus.
Normally,
one would have expected the government to intervene and stop this vilification.
But what we saw was the exact opposite: the health ministry in its bulletin
directly blamed the Tabligh Jamaat for spreading the virus in India. Other state
apparatus like the judiciary were hardly convinced of this narrative peddled by
the media and the government. In fact, in August, the Mumbai high court
castigated the Maharashtra government for making the TJ a ‘scapegoat’ in order
to hide its own failures in combating the virus. Those who are demanding that
the media and the government apologise to the TJ should not forget that these
institutions will never do so. This vilification of Muslims through the Tabligh
Jamaat was part of a design to increase hatred towards Muslims. Given the fact
that so many fake videos became viral, it seems that willing Hindus saw nothing
wrong in such vilification of a particular community.
Maulana Saad Kandhalvi
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However, we
should also not forget that the speeches of Maulana Saad, the chief of TJ, gave
much grist to those who wanted to make Muslims the ultimate villain. The
ignorant utterances of Maulana Saad perpetuated irrationality and blind faith
and should have been roundly condemned by all Muslims. However, over the past
many years, it has become incumbent on Muslims to defend all kinds of nonsense
which religious leaders indulge in. Instead of cautioning its followers and
asking them to desist from congregating in mosques, the chief, Saad Kandhalvi
did the very opposite. He stated that the virus was a punishment sent from God.
In speeches made between March 20 and 22, he told his followers: ‘this is the
time to bring the Ummah (Muslim community) to the mosques, not of leaving the
mosques….. This is the time you should organise visits and bring people to mosques
because the calamity that has struck us is due to our leaving the mosques…. It
is a false belief that the virus spreads through assembling in the mosque. Even
if you observe that a man dies after entering the mosque, then I will say that
there cannot be a better place to die. …. The government wants you to choose
remedial measures over fate…. only the Kuffar (unbelievers) rely on
remedial measures and resources, Muslims only rely on Amaal (religious
deeds) and prayers’.
Such
foolish utterances of an influential religious figure should not be glossed
over for the sake of political correctness. It was only in subsequent oration
on the 25th of March, under the active advice of the government, that the chief
of the Tabligh Jamaat toned down his religious rhetoric and asked his followers
to follow the social distancing guidelines. If one is condemning the actions of
the media and the government then one should also not desist from condemning
such speeches of Maulana Saad. It is a travesty of our times that even critical
Muslims have fallen for the idea that defending Maulana Saad is coterminous
with defending attacks on Muslims. This is simply wrong. There is no
contradiction between defending attacks on Muslims while at the same time
critiquing whatever is wrong within the community.
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Arshad
Alam is a columnist with NewAgeIslam.com
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-politics/the-tablighis-were-indeed-made/d/123901
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