Ladeeda Sakhaloon, the face of the Jamia Millia Islamia University protests, has been revealed to be a rabid Islamic extremist who gave a call for Jihad on social media. Not merely that, she glorified the genocidal maniacs who perpetrated the Moplah massacre of Hindus. Thus, it’s quite clear now that the Jamia protests cannot be disassociated from the mob violence that has gripped the national capital.
Furthermore, we see a nexus of Islamic fundamentalist organizations, foreign-funded NGOs and NGOs linked extensively to Maoists and ‘Urban Naxals’ combating hard to nullify the Citizenship Amendment Act. Simultaneously, the Congress party has been involved in instigating protests across Universities as OpIndia exposed in a recent report. Thus, what we see here is a well-oiled machine that is working to nullify the Citizenship Amendment Act using mob violence in addition to legal and political means.
In addition to these three options, country-wide protests by one specific community are being used to draw leverage against the government. In all of this, extremely dubious organizations are involved as well as Islamic fundamentalist organizations. We may choose to ignore the obvious but this is verily the Khilafat 2.0, the movement which led to creation of Pakistan.
Great efforts have been made to whitewash the Khilafat Movement but it’s a fact that widespread sections of the Muslim community supported it. It is also a fact that the Khilafat Movement owes its heritage to the Aligarh Muslim University. It was the founder of the said University that first gave the ‘Two-Nation Theory’. It is in this light that we need to see the role of Jamia Milia Islamia University and the Aligarh Muslim University in these protests.
There is a great nexus at work in these violent protests. Once again, in this report, we shall shed more light on this nexus. It’s important to note that the media has worked extensively to provide cover fire to these protests. These protests reeked of Islamic extremism from the very beginning and yet, the media worked greatly to portray it as a ‘movement’ to ‘Save the Constitution’. Barkha Dutt even called the rabid fundamentalists ‘Sheroes’. And as it turns out, she is not the only person in the media to blame.
The Outlook published a report lionizing the jihadis of Jamia. FirstPost even published a column by Ladeeda Sakhaloon. In the column, she said, “I would like to make two statements in this regard. Firstly, the solidarity and protests should recognise the sentiments of the community which is targeted through this Act. I’m a Muslim woman. A large proportion of protesters are Muslims. So, all those supporting the fight against CAA and NRC should respect the political stand and slogans that reflect their dignity and pride. Secondly, it is clear that the Sangh Parivar is imposing this Act to overturn the Indian Constitution. I believe that all groups who come together to protect the Constitution are basically part of the struggle to preserve the existence of Muslims in India. This is because of the fact that constitutional values are being destroyed by a fascist government, largely on Muslim issues.” She was careful not to make a call for Jihad in the said column or glorify the Moplah massacre of Hindus.
Clearly, the ‘Secular Media’ was hoodwinked by Islamic fundamentalists into peddling their narrative. Or, the ‘Secular Media’ was always sympathetic and supportive of Islamic fundamentalists. One individual who likely played a pivotal part in all of this is Afsal Rahman CA. He is the husband of Aysha Renna, another Jamia Jihadi who called India ‘fascist’ for executing the Mumbai Blast terrorist Yakub Memon.
Afsal Rahman CA has great links within the media fraternity. He is a contributor for the Outlook, Manorama Online and Asianet News. He is a contributor at Maktoob Media, where Shaheen, the ‘journalist’ the two girls ‘saved’ from police in that viral video. He has been a former associate producer for Zee Hindustan. Rahman has worked for a variety of news organizations as per his Linked.in profile. It’s pertinent to mention here that Outlook had published a fawning report on Aysha Renna and her ilk, a media outlet her husband contributed to. The IANS further reported on Tuesday that Aysha Renna is associated with the Fraternity Youth Movement which happens to be the youth organization of the Welfare Party of India, the political wing of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind.
The hijab-clad woman protestor whose picture and video have gone viral on #socialmedia since the violent protests against the #CAA is associated with #FraternityYouthMovement, which is a youth organisation of #WelfarePartyofIndia, a political wing of Jamaat-e-Islami-Hind (#JeI). pic.twitter.com/XDGlT51pyT
— IANS Tweets (@ians_india) December 17, 2019
Interestingly, the Jamaat-e-Islami which is part of the United Against Hate that is attempting to involve the NHRC into the CAA debate with help from foreign-funded NGOs and those with links to ‘Urban Naxals’. Thus, Aysha Renna provides a clear link between the Jamia protests, the move to get the NHRC involved and through her friend, who gave a call for Jihad, with the mob violence that was unleashed in the national capital.
The media does have a lot to answer for the manner in which these dubious individuals have been lionized and even defended by the media. Dhanya Rajendran of The News Minute, for example, provided an opportunity for the girls to clear their names and did not ask a single tough question about the extremely problematic worldview of the individuals concerned.
On her call for Jihad, Ladeeda said, “Sabr means patience and jihad in its truest sense means a fight against injustice. But these people are trying to portray it as extremist viewpoint.” We, at OpIndia, reported clearly why it cannot be portrayed as merely a call for struggle against injustice or a non-violent struggle or anything of that sort. In the same Facebook post, Ladeeda mentions the Hudaybiyyah, which is a peace treaty. She also mentions the battles of Badr, Uhud and Karbala. She clearly drew an analogy between breaking a peace treaty and going to war for Islam and yet, Dhanya did not bother to press her on the matter at all.
“Everyone has their opinions and share their opinions. I have shared my opinion, but to portray those as extremist is a fascist tactic. When someone uses an Arabic word, the Sangh has many times been successful in creating doubts among people that this is extremist,” Ladeeda said before attempting to paint her Facebook post as non-extremist. Unfortunately for her, it’s because we are aware of the historical context she has drawn in her Facebook post that we can presume safely that it was definitely not a call for struggle against injustice.
Furthermore, Ladeeda made a post on Facebook that glorified Ali Musliyar and Variyanuannathu who were the main antagonists in the Moplah massacre of Hindus in Kerala in 1921. Thus, we have a call for Jihad, the glorification of those who committed genocide of Hindus and violent protests in Delhi to boost. At what point do we stop pretending that the Jamia protesters had absolutely nothing to do with the protests at all?
The FIR filed by the Delhi Police in the matter also states that some ‘students’ did join the ‘miscreants’ in pelting stones from inside the University on Sunday. Furthermore, people associated with political parties have been named in the FIR as well. Former Congress MLA Asif Khan and Kasif Usmani, who is associated with CYSS, the student wing of Delhi’s ruling Aam Aadmi Party, were named as accused in the FIR.
AISA member Chandan Kumar and SIO member Asif Tanha, a member of the Students Islamic Organisation of India (SIO), were also named as accused in the matter. We are aware of the AISA but the SIO is an important institution here. Shiyas Perumathura, the husband of Ladeeda Sakhaloon, is a secretary at the SIO.
Ladeeda’s husband is no less- he’s secretary of SIO and Ladeeda started giving religious speeches at SIO. Its a media management group! pic.twitter.com/555URSNXG0
— Be’Havin! (@WrongDoc) December 16, 2019
The SIO was founded by Jamaat-e-Islami in 1982 after the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) broke away from it in 1981. A Livemint report from 2008 puts the relationship between the two organizations in this manner, “Blood brothers they may be, but the groups have charted conflicting courses, both in principle and actions. While SIMI is largely underground after the government crackdown, SIO is a gradually swelling student revolution in the making, taking Islam beyond the parodied stereotypes of fundamentalism and violence. Its mission: to prepare students, Muslims and non-Muslims, for reconstruction of a peaceful India on the basis of Islamic principles.”
Regardless of what the report may say, the people associated with SIO have clearly demonstrated that they have a tendency to gravitate towards violence as well. The mainstream media through its ignorance has given a pass to extremely toxic individuals. Due to their inherent ‘secular’ biases, journalists have taken dubious individuals at face value and have made no effort to throw hard questions at them. Even when their bigotry stood exposed, the media has attempted to provide them with an opportunity to clear their names. After all of this is said and done, the mainstream media will have to take a long and hard look at the manner in which it has conducted itself in these turbulent times and if they have a shred of shame, they will make a formal apology to the people of this country.
The Jamaat-e-Islami itself has an extremely turbulent past. After the partition of the country, the organization split itself into independent organizations in the newly created states. It has been described as having undergone an “ideological transformation” and said to have abandoned its goal of transforming India into an Islamic State. But given everything that has occurred in recent times, we will have to revisit this question.
We have to remember here that Muslim politicians from mainstream political parties have contributed to the violence as well. Amanatullah Khan, a prominent leader of the Aam Aadmi Party, was reportedly spotted leading the protests in Delhi that turned violent. His role in the escalation of events will have to be investigated as well.
The conduct of the Congress party during the entire series of events has been most shameful. OpIndia has exposed the manner in which the NSUI, the students’ wing of the Congress, instigated protests across several Universities while simultaneously, working hard to maintain the pretense that these protests were spontaneous. Even the protests by ‘students’ at the University of Madras were actually headed by the SFI, another expose that OpIndia made.
Thus, we see a network of dubious individuals at Jamia Milia Islamia University, who are associated with an organization that is considered the ‘Blood Brother’ of a banned Radical Islamic outfit, giving calls for Jihad following which violence erupted at the national capital. The said individuals were well connected with the mainstream media which soon turned them into ‘Sheroes’. The ‘Blood Brother’ of SIMI, the SIO, has Jamaat-e-Islami Hind that splintered off after the partition of the country.
In the protests, even the Aligarh Muslim University, the founder of which gave the two-nation theory that led to the partition of the country, witnessed great violence and even the protesters of this University were portrayed as victims by the mainstream media. Thus, we witness an elaborate network of Islamic fundamentalist organizations whose people spread across the media and Universities attempted to foment discord within the country. The violence that shook Delhi cannot be disassociated from this network by any means.
The violence, of course, was not limited to the national capital. There was violence all across the country, especially in West Bengal and Assam. The violence in Assam, of course, has a different historical context but the violence in every other corner of the country had a similar background. In West Bengal, public property was damaged, buses were set on fire, trains were burnt and communal strife was created. Meanwhile, the ruling ‘secular’ dispensation watched as mute spectators because they did not wish to hurt their Muslim vote-bank.
We should also remember the slogans that were raised in Jamia. ‘Hinduon se Azadi‘ cannot be wished away in any manner. Glorifying people who committed the genocide of Hindus cannot be wished away in any manner. We cannot afford to ignore the graffiti and slogans that erupted in the Jamia protests. There is an insidious design at work here and we have to confront it. And the country will have to wake up to this sad reality at some point in time and the most opportune time is this.
This is the Khilafat 2.0 and the nation cannot afford to maintain wishful blindness any longer. The ‘Secular’ parties will be judged by history extremely harshly for their deplorable conduct. The Useful Idiots in Universities and the Media ought to understand the role it is playing in encouraging evil designs that seek to wreck the country once again.
