The Ministry of Islamic Affairs Saudi Affairs recently asked the preachers of the mosques to use Friday sermons towards cautioning its citizens against the Tablighi and Da’wah groups, adding that the Tablighi Jamaat group is a gate to terrorism.
Minister of Islamic Affairs, Dr Abdullatif Al_Alsheikh had instructed the mosques in Saudi Arabia to reserve the Friday sermon for warning the people against the partisan groups of Tablighi Jamat and Da’wah existing in the country.
Ministry of Islamic Affairs said, “His Excellency the Minister of Islamic Affairs, Dr.#Abdullatif Al_Alsheikh directed the mosques’ preachers and the mosques that held Friday prayer temporary to allocate the next Friday sermon 5/6/1443 H to warn against (the Tablighi and Da’wah group) which is called (Al Ahbab).”
The Saudi Ministry also asserted that they had instructed mosques to use Friday sermons to declare the misguidance given by Tablighi groups and call them threats to society and one of the gates that lead to terrorism.
It is noteworthy to mention that the crackdown against Tablighi Jamaat came long after the group had already been banned by Saudi Arabia
The instructions issued by the Saudi Ministry came long after the Islamic country had banned Tablighi Jamaat for its extremist tendencies. And even as Saudi, widely hailed as the leader of the Muslim world, clamps down on Tablighi Jamaat, there are some ‘Muslim journalists’ in India, who took up the cudgel for the extremist group after a religious congregation organised by them had turned out to be a coronavirus superspreader during the initial phase of COVID-19 outbreak in India.
Rana Ayyub, Arfa Khanum defend Tablighi Jamaat after they were accused of spreading coronavirus outbreak
Rana Ayyub, a scribe who was hailed as a “Muslim journalist” by Pakistan after she illegally smuggled a foreign journalist in Kashmir following the abrogation of Article 370, felt sorry for Tablighi Jamaat because she thought they had been “demonised”. “Not just the govt, our media including ‘well meaning’ liberals need to hang their heads in shame,” Ayyub tweeted after Tablighi Jamaat was credited for powering the initial bout of COVID-19 in India.
At a time when reports of Tablighi Jamaat members molesting and misbehaving with the frontline workers, doctors and nurses started doing the rounds on the internet, another ‘Muslim Journalist’, Arfa Khanum Sherwani, who works for the far-left organisation The Wire, and is often accused of shielding Islamists, had tweeted that she could not accept that Tablighi members could harass or molest women.
“I know them as selfless individuals who leave the materialistic world, even their families in service of religion/society. Stop the propaganda now,” Arfa had tweeted. For the left journalist, it was impossible that Tablighi Jamaat members were accused of serious misdemeanours after they were dispatched to quarantine centres after testing positive for COVID-19.
And not just Rana and Arfa, but the Islamists who organised anti-CAA ‘protests’ also stood in solidarity with Tablighi Jamaat super-spreaders. Jamia Coordination Committee and ‘Muslim Students of JNU’- a Facebook page once operated by the mastermind of Shaheen Bagh protest, Sharjeel Imam, also defended the Jamaat as it faced the wrath of the authorities for organising a large gathering and providing a breeding ground for the virus to spawn.
There were ample reports published by several news publications that exposed the perverse behaviour exhibited by Tablighi Jamaat members at various quarantine centres. Reports said they spat at the doctors, molested nurses and assaulted ward boys at the quarantine facilities. One report even claimed that some Tablighi Jamaat members even defecated in open in one of the quarantine centres.
Tablighi Jamaat event in Hazrat Nizamuddin and Coronavirus super-spreader
The Tablighi Jamaat congregation, which took place in Nizamuddin Markaz in the first half of March last year, became a mega-spreader of coronavirus in India, with members hiding from authorities and carrying the infection to almost all states in India. The persons who had attended the event, and their family members and those who came into contact with them tested positive regularly, contributing to the increase in the number of coronavirus cases in the country.
