Islamophobia seems a greater threat to human consciousness now then does the corona fear. So much so that the videos going viral show Muslims deliberately sneezing on others and coughing to spread the virus (obviously baseless) the others include hashtags going viral like, #CoronaJihad, #NizamuddinIdiots, #Covid-786 (Islamic importance) and Islamophobic memes portraying China as the ‘producer’ and Muslims as the ‘distributor’ of the virus.
We’ll get through corona but blowing air to the already smokey fire of communal disharmony in the society will be hard to put off. The media played the monumental role of catalyst with the controversial and malevolent headlines like “Save the country from Corona Jihad” and hosting shows on the traditional formats of Maulana and Pandit debates while we are in the middle of a global ordeal. The blasting noise of religious zealots and fundamentals deafened the threat corona posed on us.
The effects of the same run rampant in Gujarat, triggering accusations of ‘apartheid’. It’s said to be expected from the state, being the hot-spot of hatred against a particular minority community leaded by the far far right national party BJP. While the blame-game of who commanded the segregation of patients on religious lines still goes on, the Muslim stigmatization is running deeper even during lock-down as WhatsApp University waale Chacha doesn’t back out from sharing important syllabus notes to others that contain the salient points of why we should hate Islam.
By tagging the exacerbate of the virus to a particular religion lead every believer to think that the sole reason they are in lock-down is because of ‘them’ and ‘we’ are the do-gooders. The practicality however of the situation being that no one community deserves to be backl
ashed, if we calculate this on divisive grounds. There are three sides of a story while one is quite evident considering the constant headline flashes and bickering by the media channels, an example being “Who is the villain of Nizamuddin?”, the other side of the story and the truth got subtly kicked out into the ocean. The other side was that they did explain the situation of how they evacuated ahead of lockdown but once it was levied it was not possible for them to move out. While we are in no position to
say that the explanation is absolute, the point remains of whether they brought to us this piece of information.
The same ocean also has other kicked boxes, boxes that have news where the accusers stand accused, like Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh state, attended a busy Hindu celebration a day into the lockdown. As reported by BBC, 40,000 people in 20 villages were quarantined in Punjab state after a Covid-19 outbreak was linked to a Sikh preacher who had returned from a trip to Italy and Germany. The man avoided self-quarantine and visited a large religious festival. And hundreds of thousands celebrated a 10-day temple festival in Kerala state around the same time the congregation in Delhi was happening.
In the plethora of Jihads that Muslims are accused of by the media and trolls like Love Jihad, Corona Jihad is the most spiteful. While we were yet to recover from the dent the attacks in Delhi caused us; media, politicians and trolls went ahead and scratched open the wound by alleging the Jamaat incident to be a “Talibani Crime”. The hatred against harmony has an intent, we shall not let it fulfill.
