By Dr. Muhammad Sameer Shafi Siddiqui
Peaceful solidarity rallies were held throughout the Muslim world to commemorate the assassination of Syed Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut. Nasrallah, the chief of Lebanon’s Hezbollah had over time been perceived as one of the strongest non-state voices against Zionist hegemony in the Middle East and had been actively engaged in supporting the Palestinian cause, more so after the recent ongoing Israeli aggression against the hapless people of Gaza. As a matter of fact, Nasrallah’s assassination has become a catalyst to broaden the contours of global support for the Palestinian nationhood, as he had been seen as the central point in the axis of resistance against the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
Cutting across nationalities, people have voiced their serious concerns over the worst sort of humanitarian crisis being unfolded by Israel’s relentless and brutal bombardment of the civilian locales in Gaza, with majority of the victims being women and children. Understandably, there has been a furore in the Muslim world against these wartime atrocities and the genocide being committed against the innocent people of Gaza.
In the backdrop of the entire foregoing, it is easy to comprehend why Indian Muslims too have been vocal in lending moral support to their Palestinian brethren by way of conducting peaceful rallies and seminars to vent their dissent against the unprecedented aggression of Israel. Similarly, the assassination of Syed Hassan Nasrallah provided a spurt in this show of support for Palestinians across the globe. He was looked upon as one of the prominent faces of resistance against Israel’s illegitimate policies vis a vis Palestine and the Middle East. Hence, Indian Muslims too could not remain aloof by way of manifesting their catharsis for the unfolding events.
Yet, unfortunately, certain media outlets in our country have tried to sensationalise this show of moral support emerging from India for Palestinian people as communal and detrimental to the secular fabric of our society. For them it was, albeit wrongly portrayed and that too with malafide intentions, a sort of a clarion call by the Indian Muslims to unite as if for some ultra communal purposes.
In order to increase its TRP ratings, a specific news channel even levelled wild accusations upon the Muslim Ulema in India that they were using the Palestinian as well as the Nasrallah sentiment to warm up Indian Muslims for some imaginary communal flare up. How can legitimate and globally endorsed sentiments for the people of Gaza be constructed as vicious? Indian Muslims have always been a part and parcel of the syncretic and composite culture of the Indian society. Indian Muslims never misconstrued India’s call to the Bangladeshi authorities to protect the life and honour of our Hindu brethren during the recent political turmoil there or the allocation of domicile certificates to the non-Muslim subjects of Pakistan, Afghanistan or Bangladesh to settle down in India as communal. Then why should Indian Muslim’s moral support for their Palestinian Muslim brethren be seen as rabidly communal by these corporate media houses?
It is also pertinent to mention and set the record straight that since the assassination of Hizbollah chief Syed Hassan Nasrallah, there have been joint Sunni-Shia rallies held to commemorate his martyrdom in Kashmir and elsewhere in India. The rationale behind this being that Nasrallah was a Shiite Muslim who is understood to have sacrificed his life for the Palestinians with the majority of them being Sunni Muslims. Therefore, this general sentiment of the Muslim Ummah to rise against the petty sectarian diatribe of Shia and Sunni in wake of the pan Zionist tendencies of the Israeli state to dislodge Palestinian Muslims from their home and hearth and in the aftermath of Nasrallah’s assassination, got mirrored in the collective consciousness of Indian Muslims on the same lines as it did elsewhere across the world.
Therefore, the general sentiment of the Indian Muslims in wake of Nasrallah’s assassination and the worst human catastrophe unfolding in Palestine, has more to do with the global influence of social media to affect the opinions worldwide. Moreover, with the sense of belongingness of Indian Muslims to the extended Muslim Ummah this sentiment is unsurprising. It does not have to do anything with any sort of a localised communal build up detrimental to national unity and security, as has been wrongly projected by the aforementioned sensationalists.
In fact, it was this fellow feeling of the Indian Muslims for their Muslim brothers across the globe which had earlier got culminated in to the Khilafat movement; a movement whose charm and force was used by the great freedom fighters like Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and nonetheless by Mahatma Gandhi in service of India’s national struggle for independence. This historical fact must therefore always be kept in view that the religious sense of Indian Muslims’ belongingness to global Muslim civilisation never ever makes them oblivious of their responsibilities and of their duties towards the nation.
I was personally shocked when I found my own video being tailored out of context by a specific media channel to get it fitted to its communal diatribe and to its favourite pastime of Muslim bashing. The video pertains to a specific congregation which was held in Srinagar, nonetheless with the permission of authorities and wherein many religious and social figures had gathered to express their moral solidarity with the victims of Israeli air strikes in Gaza and Lebanon. It was a mixed gathering of Shia and Sunni Muslims and like other speakers I too urged upon the listeners to rise above the narrow sectarian divides and pray for the deprived people of Palestine irrespective of their sectarian or religious affiliations. So as to foster a sense of unity among the Shia and Sunni communities I raised the slogan: “Shia Sunni bhai bhai” meaning Shias and Sunnis are brothers. This gesture of fostering a sense of brotherhood amongst the communities, was mischievously interpreted and portrayed by a private news channel as some sort of clarion call to the Muslims to unify for some ulterior communal agenda. In fact, it is the context of the gathering which always decides our choice of words and till the time our expression is not unparliamentary and till the time we don’t use our freedoms of expression to hurt others’ sentiments, constitutionally speaking nobody can snatch our rights of expression as such. If it would have been an occasion to address a pluralistic audience, then it would not have been out of place to raise slogans like “Hindu Muslim Sikh Isai. Aapas main hain bhai bhai.” But the context of the aforesaid event demanded a speech and a slogan that could depict the brotherhood and love between the members of the two communities, Shia and Sunni who were present there during the occasion.
The media outlets wrongly portraying the sympathy of the Indian Muslims with their Muslim brethren in Palestine, Lebanon and elsewhere as anti national or communal presents a stark reminder of the mistrust with which certain fringe elements in the corporate media often see Muslims in India. If the terminology of Vasudeva Kutumbakam signifies a global society and still doesn’t offend our sense of belongingness to our country of origin, then why should an Indian Muslim’s empathy for the Millat (the global Muslim Civilisation) be looked down with suspicion by these fringe media outlets breeding hatred amongst the communities?
If the lofty ideals of Santana Dharma have the tendency of binding the diverse groups of Hindu society for good into a common bond of fellow feeling, then how do certain fringe but powerful elements in the media portray the invocations of certain Muslim Ulema to the diverse schools of thought in Islam to be bound by the fellow feelings of brotherhood and compassion for each other as some sort of a battle cry? In fact these acts of sensationalism and post truth tendencies mostly in the corporate media have of late been a prime factor in lowering the standards of professional ethics in journalism, which at times takes the shape of artificially created communal flare ups and mistrust in the society. This approach further leads to the exclusivist tendencies among the communities which often overrides our sense of ‘Unity in Diversity.’ In order to safeguard the core values of our composite culture, we must therefore be empathetic towards each other rather than being judgmental. If being judgmental is our compulsion, then at least we must be judging everyone judiciously.
Views expressed in the article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the editorial stance of Kashmir Observer
- The author is a freelance writer
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