Financial fraud accused Washington Post columnist Rana Ayyub has deleted her August 12 tweet praying for Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie’s recovery after he was stabbed on Friday evening in New York. The suspect Hadi Matar has been charged with attempt to murder and he has pled not guilty for the same. While motivation has not yet been concluded, it is believed it was owing to Rushdie’s allegedly blasphemous book The Satanic Verses which is believed to be a satire on life of Prophet Muhammad.
After the attack on Rushdie, Rana Ayyub tweeted how she was praying for his recovery.
However, after the Muslim community on Twitter condemned her, she has since deleted her tweet. Many Islamists took to Twitter to school Ayyub that while they respect her, they cannot follow or support someone who wishes well upon someone who had ‘blasphemed’ about Prophet Muhammad. After that, he had unfollowed Ayyub.
Many Islamists had also voiced their views that Ayyub is speaking what the West would like to hear. Ayyub is now a ‘favourite’ amongst the Western elite liberals since she has been very vocally anti-Modi and plays the minority, Muslim under attack card quite well.
One Muslim Twitter user also said how while he initially was drawn to Rana Ayyub for voicing Muslim issues, after seeing her pictures on Instagram, where Ayyub is often seen sporting clothes without non-Islamic outfits like hijab, he realised that she was just building her career.
In fact, Rana had also ‘liked’ a tweet by another author Suketu Mehta, referring to Rushdie as ‘Lion of Bombay’, but eventually ‘unliked’ it too after it was pointed out in Muslim Twitter circles that Rana had ‘liked’ a tweet wishing well upon Salman Rushdie.
The Muslim Twitter users have since appreciated her move of her deleting her tweet wishing well upon Salman Rushdie, the ‘blasphemer’ and cheered that she has ‘corrected herself’.
Alhamdulillah! She corrected herself! May Allah S.W.T give her AND us all Hidaya to never support anyone who has ever insulted our Prophet A.S! Ameen! I am glad she deleted her tweet!
— Omar Abbas Hyat | عمر عباس حیات (@OmarAbbasHyat) August 13, 2022
Many Muslim Twitter users appreciated the Islamist for getting Rana to ‘correct herself’.
After this, Rana only kept her ‘no words’ tweet which has zero reference to Salman Rushdie stabbing by Islamist.
No words
— Rana Ayyub (@RanaAyyub) August 12, 2022
In fact, to please the community and her fellow Islamist brethren, she also put up another tweet mocking the non-Islamists for condemning attack on Rushdie and reminded them of Rushdie being a Modi hater.
All the holier than thou must remember how they hauled Salman Rushdie over the coals when he stood in solidarity against rising religious intolerance in Modi’s India. He was derided as a member of the ‘award wapsi gang’. Extremism needs to be nipped in the bud around the world.
— Rana Ayyub (@RanaAyyub) August 13, 2022
Rana fails to see that perhaps one can condemn Rushdie and also the attempt to murder on him by religious fanatics. That is basic decency. Especially in times when radical Islam is fast becoming a threat to humanity.
But then this is not the first time Rana has deleted her tweets to stand in solidarity with ummah. In July 2020 when Turkey converted the Hagia Sophia, a cathedral turned museum into a mosque, Rana had tweeted how this move by Turkey had ‘chilling’ parallels with India.
Ayyub’s tweet was with reference to Supreme Court judgement on the Ram Janmabhoomi case where the apex court ruled in favour of Ram Lalla and directed the mosque be constructed on a separate land. A disputed structure named ‘Babri Masjid’ once stood on the land where where Ram Mandir existed in Ayodhya, birth place of Lord Ram. On 6 December, 1992, the disputed structure was pulled down by Ram Bhakts as part of ‘karseva’ to build a Bhavya Ram Mandir where the original structure of Mandir once stood before being destroyed by the barbaric Mughals.
Rana Ayyub’s comparison to conversion of cathedral turned museum turned mosque to Supreme Court verdict favouring Ram Mandir had irked the ummah since the Islamists believed Turkey government was right. This would have compared the mosque to a Ram Mandir which would have drawn more ire. Rana deleted her tweet to likely not upset the Muslim community.
In fact, Ayyub likes to be so petty that when Indian athlete Neeraj Chopra won the gold at Olympics last year in javelin, she had posted an image of his to likely appreciate his achievement. However, she deleted it just moments later.
However, since netizens had already taken screenshot of her tweet hailing Neeraj Chopra and it would have likely appeared way too petty for her to delete a tweet because Chopra thanked the government of India and PM Modi for helping him make India proud, Rana tweeted the image again a few hours later.
In fact, she was even elated when in a great display of sportsman spirit Neeraj had reportedly said that having the Pakistani athlete Nadeem Arshad on podium would have been nice and proud moment for the Indian subcontinent.
Since Neeraj, along with thanking the ruling dispensation, also showed basic human decency to not pull down a fellow athlete, Rana was okay talking more about him.
And while her deletion of tweet on Neeraj Chopra shows her pettiness, her deleting her tweet on wishing full recovery for Salman Rushdie just shows how for Islamists and the apologists, even the ones without a gun, it is ummah above everything else including basic human decency.
