Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran recently invoked Islamic Ummah to peddle the false narrative of victimhood of Muslims in India. Clubbing India with Gaza while claiming to lend his voice to the sufferings of Muslims around the world, Khamenei urged for unity within the “Islamic Ummah”. However, while urging unity among the Muslim Ummah, Khamenei forgot to introspect as to how he is treating his co-religionists— Afghan refugees—in Iran.
Calling India and some other countries ‘Enemies of Islam’, Khamenei said: “The enemies of Islam have always tried to make us indifferent about our shared identity as an Islamic Ummah. We cannot consider ourselves to be Muslims if we are oblivious to the suffering that a Muslim is enduring in #Myanmar, #Gaza, #India, or any other place.”
Khamenei’s audacity to lecture India where the Muslim population has skyrocketed over the decades, with access to all welfare schemes and freedoms other communities enjoy, is amusing. On one hand, he advocates for Khamenei he blames the ‘enemies of Islam’ for the lack of unity within the Islamic Ummah on the other, he himself behaves like the ‘enemy of Islam’ and the ‘Ummah’.
Just last week, the Iranian authorities said that over 2 million Afghan refugees [all Muslims] will be deported from Iran. In an interview, Iranian police chief Ahmad-Reza Radan said that measures are being undertaken to deport ‘illegal foreigners’ which implies migrants from Afghanistan. While these Afghans must have arrived in Iran hoping that Iran is another home for them since they are all one ‘Islamic Ummah’, however, Khamenei’s administration instead of considering them their own, dismissed the Afghan refugees as “illegal foreigners”.
Moreover, in May this year, Iran’s Interior Ministry announced that they have deported over 1.3 million irregular migrants had been deported to Afghanistan in the last 12 months. Given the similarities in culture and language, numerous undocumented Afghan refugees have blended into the local population and offer cheap labour. Totally, ignoring the duty as a champion of Muslim Ummah, the Iranian authorities and citizens deem Afghan refugees as a “burden” on the local labour market.
In addition to this, even the activists and journalists who raise concerns over the deplorable condition of Afghan refugees in Iran are hated and targeted by the Iranians. One such women’s rights activist and journalist, Jila Baniyaghoob said: “I constantly receive hateful messages and even death threats. They want to silence me [for extending solidarity to Afghan migrants].”
There have also been incidents wherein the Iranians attacked the Afghan refugees, especially after a massive influx of Afghan nationals to Iran after the Taliban’s violent takeover of Afghanistan in 2021. The UNHCR estimates say that there are over 4.5 million Afghan refugees in Iran, the local authorities estimate their numbers to be over 6 to 8 million.
In July this year, banners were put up in Tehran calling on Afghan refugees to leave Iran after a local Iranian man was allegedly stabbed to death by his Afghan neighbour. In the same month, the houses of Afghan refugees in Khur city were set on fire after an Afghan refugee allegedly killed an Iranian man. Speaking to DW, Nazar Mohammad Nazari, an Afgan refugee said: “Tempers are flaring. a few months ago, Iranians and Afghans got into a fight after a wedding and one Iranian was killed. Afterwards, there were arbitrary attacks on Afghan individuals. I didn’t feel safe anymore”, adding that he had hoped for a better life in Iran.
According to a report by the Danish Refugee Council, roughly 485,000 Afghans were deported from Iran in 2022. In 2023, this figure is expected to rise to at least 651,000 Afghans, a 36% increase. “Since January 2024, IOM has already recorded close to 400,000 Afghans who crossed the border back to Afghanistan, in a context of shrinking protection space in its neighbouring country,” the DRC report reads.
Khamenei’s concern for the Muslim Ummah is farcical. While on social media, he laments the alleged ‘mistreatment’ of Muslims in India, his government is planning on building a 74-kilometre-long concrete wall, 4 meters (13 feet) high and topped with barbed wire. For what? To prevent Afghan Muslim refugees from entering Iran.
As the Indian Foreign Ministry rightly said: “Countries commenting on minorities are advised to look at their own record before making any observations about others”, Iran should fix its own house and refrain from straining ties with a key strategic ally like India over imaginary mistreatment of Muslims in India.
While Khamenei criticises India, his own administration has deported a massive number of Afghan refugees. These refugees, who fled an even more Islamic, stringent Sharia-compliant Taliban rule, suffered severe circumstances after being driven back into Afghanistan by Iran, in a clear contradiction to Khamenei’s idea of Muslim unity. The blatant contradiction in Khamenei’s lectures to India and Iran’s conduct against Afghan Muslims reflects the selective application of the concept of “Ummah”. Rather than protecting vulnerable Afghan Muslims within their borders, Iran’s actions indicate a nationalistic, rather than religious, approach to policy; however, when India does the same, Khamenei labels India as an ‘enemy of Islam,’ intending to stoke communal tensions in the Hindu majority nation.
In the broader geopolitical context, India and Iran usually have strong ties, such as through partnerships like the Chabahar port, tensions have risen as Khamenei uses religious rhetoric to bolster his position as the leader of the Ummah among Muslims around the world while remaining oblivious to the mistreatment of Afghan Muslims in Iran.
While Iran, in no manner has any authority to comment on India’s internal matters, its apathy towards Afghan Muslims who escaped their Taliban-ruled nation to Iran in the search of a better life, it loses even the ‘moral’ authority to lecture India.
India with a population of more than 20 crore Muslims does not need lectures from Islamic countries like Iran wherein forget non-Muslims even Muslim women don’t have any rights. Iran with a population of over 8 crore has been purging secular, modern, and dissenting Muslims, particularly women in the name of moral policing for ‘unIslamic practices’ like freedom to not wear a Hijab which triggered the anti-Hijab protests in the spirit of reclaiming Zan, Zendagi, Azadi.
