India’s Muslims assaulted and kicked out of their homes after being accused of spreading coronavirus

Indian officials are blaming an Islamic group for spreading the virus, and Muslims have been targeted in a wave of violence.

 

Indian officials are blaming an Islamic group for spreading the virus, and Muslims have been targeted in a wave of violence.

After India’s health ministry repeatedly blamed an Islamic seminary for spreading the coronavirus — and governing party officials spoke of “human bombs” and “corona jihad” — a spree of anti-Muslim attacks has broken out across the country.

Young Muslim men who were passing out food to the poor were assaulted with cricket bats.  Other Muslims have been beaten up, nearly lynched, run out of their neighborhoods or attacked in mosques, branded as virus spreaders. In Punjab State, loudspeakers at Sikh temples broadcast messages telling people not to buy milk from Muslim dairy farmers because it was infected with coronavirus.

Hateful messages have bloomed online. And a wave of apparently fake videos has popped up telling Muslims not to wear masks, not to practice social distancing, not to worry about the virus at all, as if the makers of the videos wanted Muslims to get sick.

From the crackdown on Kashmir, a Muslim majority area, to a new citizenship law that blatantly discriminates against Muslims, this past year has been one low point after another for Indian Muslims living under an increasingly bold Hindu nationalist government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and propelled by majoritarian policies.

A single Muslim religious movement has been identified as being responsible for a large share of India’s 8,000-plus coronavirus cases. Indian officials estimated last week that more than a third of the country’s cases were connected to the group, Tablighi Jamaat, which held a huge gathering of preachers in India in March. Similar meetings in Malaysia and Pakistan also led to outbreaks.

“The government was compelled to call out this congregation,” said Vikas Swarup, a senior official at India’s foreign ministry.

He said that the gathering in March “had a significant impact on the containment methods” but denied that the government’s frequent blaming of the group had “anything to do with a particular community.”