Munawar Faruqui was arrested for insulting Hindu Gods in Madhya Pradesh following one of his new year performances. In their efforts to defend the comedian, liberals have now turned themselves into a joke. They are now dragging Charlie Hebdo and France in order to defend Faruqui, which does not appear to make any sense.
A senior Youth Congress leader, who only a few days ago was celebrating the Jio tower vandals in Punjab and inciting such vandalism across the country, claimed that ‘Bhakts’ are bigots who change stands to suit themselves. He clearly doesn’t see the irony here.
For Bhakts,
— Srivatsa (@srivatsayb) January 3, 2021
🇫🇷 Charlie Hebdo deserves full FoE
🇮🇳 Munawar Faruqui deserves no FoE
🇺🇲 No Discrimination, All are Equal
🇮🇳 Hindutva Rules, No Secularism
BJP Bhakts have never cared about Freedom or Equality. They are bigots who change stands to suit themselves.
A co-founder of AltNews too jumped in to accused people of hypocrisy over the matter.
Right wing champions of Charlie Hebdo’s freedom of expression are offended by a comedian #MunawarFaruqui 🤷🏻♀️
— SamSays (@samjawed65) January 3, 2021
First of all, comparisons to Charlie Hebdo is absurd. Munawar Faruqui is no revolutionary who has committed himself to promoting freedom of expression. We will start taking him seriously on that front, and his supporters, when they draw a few cartoons on the prophet of Islam and share it with others.
Furthermore, Faruqui has only been arrested as per the law of the land. He has not been killed for speech, like Kamlesh Tiwari was, or Charlie Hebdo which suffered a terrorist attack for exercising their right to freedom of expression.
Munawar Faruqui is well and alive and only legal procedures have been initiated against him for violating the law of the land. Equating supporters of Indian laws to violent Islamic terrorists is absurd and outrageous. But surely, the comedian’s defenders are well aware of it. That they are still indulging in such false equivalences anyway only reveals their sinister agenda.
The larger objective here is to trivialize the brutal murder of Kamlesh Tiwari, Charlie Hebdo cartoonists and Samuel Paty in recent times. The objective is to whitewash the severity of Islamic fundamentalism and the grave threat that radical Islam poses to world stability. By equating such incidents to the Faruqui incident only reveals that such people are not bothered by freedom of expression at all, their only concern is whitewashing the threat of Islamic extremism.
It also needs to be remembered that none of these elements came forward to defend Kamlesh Tiwari for his controversial speech. When he was killed by Islamic extremists, liberals were more concerned about the mythical backlash that ordinary Muslims might have to face.
In the aftermath of Tiwari’s murder, such people were busy trending ‘prophet of compassion‘ on social media and ranting against supposed Hindutva intolerance. Some of them were also urging Muslims to organize themselves and not for peaceful purposes. And this was right after Tiwari was murdered.
Now the same brand of people are busy claiming that ‘Bhakts’ are apparently intolerant. It is important to note here that they were more than comfortable with the arrest of Kamlesh Tiwari for his speech. In fact, they are always comfortable when someone is arrested for some speech against Islam. It’s only when people are arrested for insulting Hindu Gods that their allegiance towards freedom of expression surfaces.
A Congress leader is defending Munawar Faruqui in the Court as it so happens. But then again, it is no surprise considering the fact that leaders of the same party slaughtered a calf in Kerala on the street and cooked it and ate it to insult Hindu sentiments.
The core matter, however, is the fact that legal action against an individual for violating the law of the land cannot be equated with the killing of people for insulting the prophet of Islam. Those who do make such false equivalences do so with the explicit objective of whitewashing the threat posed by Islamic extremism and not because they have any love in their heart for freedom of expression.
