‘Independent journalist’ and former senior executive editor of Kapil Sibal’s Tiranga TV, Seemi Pasha, has decided that the best course of action in light of the malicious actions of the Tablighi Jamaat is to spread conspiracy theories against the Central and State governments. If Seemi Pasha is to be believed, it is unthinkable that people who spat on doctors in order to infect them with the Wuhan Coronavirus would have a disproportionate number of infected individuals within its ranks.
On the 1st of April, Seemi Pasha said on Twitter that it ‘feels’ like the governments were scapegoating Tablighi Jamaat to “release data about positive cases that it had been holding back”. She declared that she refused to believe all the positive cases linked to Tablighi Jamaat were actually linked to Tablighi Jamaat.
Seemi Pasha’s conspiracy theory is, of course, just that. And unlike a few conspiracy theories, which are based on a solid body of facts, this one is just a poor attempt to deflect attention from the malicious conduct of the Tablighi Jamaat. In order for us to believe that Coronavirus positive cases were being withheld by the central and state governments, then we must also believe that all the doctors in all the hospitals across all the states of India are part of this giant coverup. We must also believe that non-BJP governments including certain Congress and ‘secular governments’ are part of this giant coverup as well.
Furthermore, we are also expected to believe that Tablighi Jamaat itself is also part of this conspiracy to frame itself as the Islamic Missionary organization at no point has attempted to contest the fact that its members are infected with the Wuhan Coronavirus. Also, the speed and ease with which the virus spreads from person to person, it is only natural that people a huge number of people who were part of the same Islamic event and staying within the same building got infected with the virus. It would have required only a single infected individual to infect all others with the virus.
Also, it is not just in India that the Tablighi Jamaat has become a super-spreader in. Members of the Islamic missionary organization has spread the virus across the entire South Asian region including the Indian subcontinent. Pakistan, Malaysia, Thailand and other countries have registered cases of the Wuhan Coronavirus after the infected people attended on the events of Tablighi Jamaat. Even in Palestine, which is at quite a distance from India, to put it mildly, recorded the first cases of Coronavirus after two people traveled there after attending a Tablighi Jamaat event in Pakistan.
The conspiracy theory conjured by Seemi Pasha is the perfect demonstration of the convoluted mental gymnastics one has to engage in to absolve the Tablighi Jamaat of all sins and find some way to blame the Central and State governments of India for the fiasco that has unfolded. Furthermore, it also demonstrates that individuals of a secular bent, like Seemi Pasha, will leave no stones unturned in order to shield Islamists from fair criticism.
