On Thursday, June 22, Indian PM Narendra Modi addressed a joint press conference with US President Joe Biden during his state visit to the United States. During the press conference, a journalist tried to insinuate that rights of Muslims and other minorities are under threat in India and consequently the democratic values. The journalist got a befitting response from PM Modi as he reminded everyone of the history of Indian democracy, which is rooted in valuing human rights and non-discrimination.
For the uninitiated, the journalist who went on to pose the cleverly manufactured question echoing the claims of Islamists and left-liberals; alleging persecution of Muslims in India, was none other than Sabrina Siddiqui.
Sabrina Siddiqui is a Muslim American journalist working for The Wall Street Journal. She is a White House reporter in Washington, D.C., where she covers the Biden presidency. She has also covered the White House and the 2016 presidential election while working at The Guardian before 2019.
Previously, she covered the Obama administration and Congress at The Huffington Post and also worked with the White House team at Bloomberg.
Siddiqui, the daughter of Pakistani parents, is a graduate of Northwestern University and lives in Washington with her husband. According to reports, her father was born in India but was raised in Pakistan. Her mother was a Pakistani, however, Siddiqui was born in America.
Asking the question, Sabrina Siddiqui said, “World leaders have made commitments to protecting democracy. What steps are you and your government willing to take to protect the rights of Muslims and other minorities and to uphold free speech?”
In response, PM Modi said, “I am surprised that you are saying that ‘people say’ India is a democracy. It is not about what people say, India is a democracy. And as President Biden said, both India and America have democracy in their DNA. Democracy is our spirit, democracy flows in our veins. We live in a democracy and our ancestors have put that into words in the shape of the Constitution and our government runs on the basis of the Constitution which is based on the basic democratic values.”
The question posed to PM Modi by ‘journalist’ Sabrina Siddiqui jibes perfectly well with the hackneyed liberal propaganda portraying the Modi government as the enemy of the Muslims. It also fits with the ‘rising Muslim intolerance’ narrative that the Western media has been pushing to sully Modi’s reputation in India and around the world ever since he came to power in 2014.
Sabrina Siddiqui’s attempt to disparage the Indian government on a global stage is, however, unsurprising, given that she has a history of demonstrating an unseemly eagerness to vilify India and the Indian government led by PM Modi. The social media accounts of Sabrina Siddiqui are littered with posts aimed at destroying PM Modi’s reputation and portraying him as a leader who has given the country’s Hindu nationalists carte blanche to act as per their whims and fancies.
The ‘journalist’ has also never shied away from claiming that the Modi administration is to blame for the rise of intolerance in the nation.
Motivated by her pathological hatred for PM Modi and India, ‘journalist’ Sabrina Siddiqui has regularly shared fabricated articles from Western liberal bastions like The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Reuters, and several other news outlets, which are always eager to give space to Modi’s criticism without critically evaluating its legitimacy; to meticulously paint a grim picture of Narendra Modi.
The Modi govt certainly takes great pride in its cultural identity and historical traditions, something that the previous UPA regimes and the Congress party had always scorned and despised. The only thing that the Modi govt has perhaps stopped is the appeasement of radical elements of the Muslim community that Congress did unabashedly. The Modi government has stopped the minority appeasement and called out the threat posed by the menace of Islamic radicalism. This has proliferated the ire of the left-leaning liberals and Islamists both in India and the West and prompted the likes of Sabrina Siddiqui to work overtime to project Modi as anti-Muslim.
Leftist liberals and Islamists are busy singing accolades for the WSJ journalist
Nevertheless, ever since Sabrina Siddiqui questioned the Indian Prime Minister about the steps taken by his government to improve the rights of minorities in India, insinuating that the rights of Muslims and other minorities are under threat in India, she is being hailed as a hero by the left-leaning liberal brigade.
Social media is replete with tweets from loyal members of this avid Modi-hater gang, who are lauding The Wall Street Journal ‘journalist’ for posing, what they are regarding as a gutsy question to India’s PM that left him speechless on a global stage.
One such ‘esteemed’ member of this liberal bastion going euphoric about the so-called ‘heroism’ exhibited by Sabrina Siddiqui is none other than AltNews’ Mohammed Zubair, the man responsible for unleashing the wave of Islamist violence in India that resulted in the death of at least 6 Hindus, including Kanhaiya Lal in Udaipur and Umesh Kolhe in Amravati.
Zubair inferred that PM Modi was caught off guard and started ‘beating around the bush’ when Sabrina Sidduiqui posed that question to him.
Questions from @SabrinaSiddiqui was specifically about "steps you are willing to take to improve the rights of Muslims & other minorities in India to uphold free speech."
— Mohammed Zubair (@zoo_bear) June 22, 2023
PM was beating around the bush and his response was in generic about how Indian is a Democratic Country,… https://t.co/v7Jnpgzr7C
‘Journalist’ Arfa Khanum Sherwani, who has never held back from promoting false claims to portray Muslims as victims in Modi’s India and thereby displaying her blatant hatred for Modi, also praised The Wall Street Journal ‘journalist’ by inferring that WSJ journalist left Modi tongue-tied with her ‘hard hitting’ question.
Tweeting the question Sabrina Siddiqui posed to Modi at the joint press conference with US President Joe Biden during his state visit to the US, she said, “The Prime Minister of the world’s largest democracy standing on a global stage can not answer a simple question on how he plans to make things better for India’s Muslims.”
“steps you are willing to take to improve the rights of Muslims and other minorities in India ?”
— Arfa Khanum Sherwani (@khanumarfa) June 22, 2023
The Prime Minister of the world’s largest democracy standing on a global stage can not answer a simple question on how he plans to make things better for India’s Muslims.
‘Journalist’ Swati Chaturvedi also retweeted a post by Jacqui Heinrich currently serving as a White House Correspondent for FOX News channel, to laud Sabrina Siddiqui for calling out Modi by raising ‘human rights’ issues.
Modi, called out on human rights record by WSJ’s @SabrinaSiddiqui, bizarrely claims there is “no discrimination in India’s democracy”, vehemently defends human rights record
— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) June 22, 2023
Modi had been asked what he steps he is taking to improve rights of Muslims and uphold free speech
The adulation being showered on Sabrina Siddiqui by this coterie of leftist liberals and Islamists is evidently because she, too, is a loyal member of this anti-Modi, anti-Hindu and anti-India brigade. Several of Sabrina Siddiqui’s old tweets clearly display her pathological hatred towards PM Modi, India and Hindus in general.
When Sabrina Siddiqui used the Covid-19 pandemic to spread fake news against Modi govt
In 2020-2021, when India, like every other country in the world, was dealing with the scourge of Covid-19, Sabrina Siddiqui reaped the opportunity to spread canards against Modi by questioning India’s preparedness in handling the crisis.
"At the beginning of March, the Hindu nationalist government of Narendra Modi claimed the country was in Covid-19’s 'endgame'. India is now in a living hell." https://t.co/OHiNjkdHMA
— Sabrina Siddiqui (@SabrinaSiddiqui) April 24, 2021
In another tweet, the WSJ journalist chose to use one of the several articles Reuters had published then, milking the humanitarian crisis to peddle lies, misinformation and propaganda against Modi.
On April 20th 2021, Reuters wrote about Prime Minister Modi being “scorned” over “reckless rallies, religious gatherings”. Sabrina Siddiqui shared the article and tweeted, “You hold rallies as people head to funerals,” in an obvious attempt to paint Modi as insensitive.
"You hold rallies as people head to funerals."
— Sabrina Siddiqui (@SabrinaSiddiqui) April 20, 2021
India’s Narendra Modi scorned over reckless rallies amid virus mayhem: https://t.co/rb5gtVcmqw
Likewise, when India was grappling with a formidable second wave of the Coronavirus outbreak, several leftist media outlets tried to fearmonger by spreading fake news about the shortage of oxygen and how the Modi government was doing nothing to resolve the issue. Sabrina Siddiqui had maliciously used an article published by the leftist website Scroll, titled: India is running out of oxygen, Covid-19 patients are dying – because the government wasted time, which squarely blamed the Modi government for the shortage of oxygen in the country.
Narendra Modi's government waited until Oct 2020, eight months after the pandemic began, to invite bids for a contract to place oxygen generation systems inside more than 150 district hospitals. Six months later, most still aren’t up and running. https://t.co/e39JcG4MI8
— Sabrina Siddiqui (@SabrinaSiddiqui) April 23, 2021
The article published by Scroll on April 18, 2021, read that the Narendra Modi government took eight months to invite bids for new oxygen generation plants which caused the scarcity of oxygen at a crucial time when the deadly second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic was sweeping through the country.
The truth was, however, that amidst the second wave of infection, the government of India had worked extensively to increase the production of oxygen in the country. According to the government’s data, the production of medical oxygen had risen by 500% since February 2021.
Additionally, to meet the very high demand for medical oxygen due to the then surging Covid-19 cases, the union government had taken proactive action in the first week of April 2020, before oxygen shortages started to appear in several hospitals mostly in Delhi and granted permission to industrial oxygen manufacturers to manufacture oxygen for medical use.
Sabrina Siddiqui used Aryan Khan’s arrest in drug case to peddle her anti-Modi rhetorics
Such is her hate for Modi that in 2021, when Bollywood actor Shahrukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan was arrested in the cruise ship drug case, she quickly went on to use the news to peddle her anti-Modi rhetorics. She tweeted, “This is not just about Shah Rukh Khan, but about anyone the government resents for not prostrating before Modi and his nationalist vision. This moment in India should be a reckoning — unite and fight, or perish in fear.”
"This is not just about Shah Rukh Khan, but about anyone the government resents for not prostrating before Modi and his nationalist vision. This moment in India should be a reckoning — unite and fight, or perish in fear." – @RanaAyyub https://t.co/Mz23aZY4dk
— Sabrina Siddiqui (@SabrinaSiddiqui) October 13, 2021
To peddle her anti-Modi rhetorics, Sabrina Siddiqui shared a vicious article penned by Islamist Rana Ayyub in Washington Post, wherein the latter raked Shahrukh Khan’s Muslim identity to insinuate that he and his son were being victimised by the ‘anti-Muslim’ Modi government for their religious identity.
Sabrina Siddiqui milked the farmers protest in India to berate Modi
Similarly, in February 2021, the WSJ journalist did not forget to capitalise on the farmers’ protest against the Modi government over new farm laws. It is not hidden how the farmer’s protest which was started under the guise of a peaceful demonstration against the three farm laws, took no time to devolve into a breeding ground of sorts for all kinds of criminal activities. The 12-month-long protests were overwhelmingly punctuated by incidents of chaos, rapes, murders, riots, vandalism and arson, as restless protesters unleashed their criminal tendencies.
Various Khalistani organisations such as Poetic Justice Foundation, Khalsa Aid and others actively partook in the protests, providing monetary and emotional support to the protesters in their demands against the Centre. It cannot be discounted that the central aim of these organisations was to stoke Khalistani sentiments among the people and characterise the Centre as against the interests of Sikhs. Even banned foreign-based organisations such as Sikhs For Justice, a Khalistani outpost based out of the United States, voiced their support to the farmers, spurring them to continue stirring anarchy under the pretext of carrying out peaceful protests against the three farm laws.
On November 19, 2021, PM Modi announced that his government would take back the three farms after failing in their endeavour to convince a section of protesting farmers about its benefits. The announcement should have led farmer unions to call off the protests. Instead, they came up with a fresh set of demands, warning the government that if they don’t fulfil it, the protests would continue unabated.
Despite all the information being available on the public platform, Sabrina Siddiqui went on to accuse the Modi Govt of not handling the farmers’ protest prudently. She tweeted, “Modi has drawn immense scrutiny for his handling of #FarmersProtests, Kashmir, treatment of religious minorities & crackdown on free speech. No specific mention of those issues in WH readout, but looks like some general prodding from Biden on democratc values and norms.”
Modi has drawn immense scrutiny for his handling of #FarmersProtests, Kashmir, treatment of religious minorities & crackdown on free speech. No specific mention of those issues in WH readout, but looks like some general prodding from Biden on democratc values and norms. https://t.co/99Vi0zUjE9
— Sabrina Siddiqui (@SabrinaSiddiqui) February 8, 2021
These are just a few of the countless anti-Modi tweets that we found on Sabrina Siddiqui’s Twitter timeline as we scrolled down, clearly showcasing her profound hate for Modi.
"Mr. Modi’s reputation among Muslims could broadly be compared to that of a Southern segregationist from the 1950s." https://t.co/dSJLI4AJSJ
— Sabrina Siddiqui (@SabrinaSiddiqui) June 7, 2016
India's rape problem is so systemic it'll take generations to resolve. But it's up to Modi to make it a priority: http://t.co/b7E5qIEP2o
— Sabrina Siddiqui (@SabrinaSiddiqui) May 30, 2014
VP Kamala Harris spoke of the need to protect "democracy at home" and to "defend democratic principles and institutions" while meeting with Indian PM Narendra Modi, whose policies have cracked down on human rights and free speech. pic.twitter.com/pMM2e0QpOk
— Sabrina Siddiqui (@SabrinaSiddiqui) September 23, 2021
Well, if one goes through Sabrina Siddiqui’s social media accounts carefully, one would know that her political bias quite evidently reflects her cultural and religious bias. Siddiqui has many times in the past clearly reflected her anti-India and anti-Hindu sentiments through her posts. So going by her past antecedents, it is plausible that Sabrina Siddiqui’s question to PM Modi during the joint press conference in the United States was not based on any actual information but rather driven by a sinister agenda to berate Modi and India on a global platform.
