Irfan Shahzad Takalvi

As India and Pakistan complete 75 years of partition and independence from the British, a ‘partition within’ is clearly visible in India of today, between the Hindu majority and the Muslim minority. While one Pakistan got separated, several others have been created within India that was left behind. 

Release of 11 convicts of Bilkis Bano case, hateful remarks by BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma and her shameless defense by her party as well as destruction of homes and properties of protesting Muslims are only some of the recent most examples.

Muslims of India have always been treated as second class citizens by majority Hindus, over past seven and a half decades of partition of the sub-continent. However, the suppression of Indian Muslims has increased manifold since Bhartia Janta Party (BJP) took power in 2014, and Narendra Modi became Prime Minister.

In this eight years’ period, Muslims have been forced to convert, attacked for keeping cows and eating beef – even lynched and killed for this ‘crime’ as BJP has banned consumption of beef in several states of India. However, even if the links to beef are not established, Muslim are routinely pressurized to convert (in the name of retuning to ‘original’ religion Hinduisms); Muslims girls are forcibly married; Muslims’ businesses and employments are targeted; and even on small personal or village / street level crimes the whole localities of Muslims are torched. Muslims have been lynched to death, and a huge number of them have been put behind bars in false cases.

Hard-liner Hindu have also been accusing Muslims of following ‘love Jehad’ that means marrying Hindu girls after trapping them in love; they have been accused of extremism and harboring / supporting terrorists as well as having sympathies for Pakistan – and simply, by blaming them for having ill-feeling, hate, or contempt towards Hindu religion or their thousands of gods and goddesses. In this way, actually, the Hindu majority and particularly the BJP – which is the political offshoot of the extremist Rashtriya Swaimsevek Sangh (RSS) – have been venting their own hatred and anger against the Muslims.

RSS and majority of BJP cadres are actually following declared policy of Hindutva, or Hindu-ness – under which they target that every citizen living in India – Hindustan or Maha Bharat the Greater India)] should 1) be ethnically Indian; 2) be religiously Hindu, and 3) speak Hindi / Sanskrit. Hindu extremist groups have over past few years made it clear that they can accept those living in India only if they adhere to the above three conditions of Hindutva.

Under the Citizenship Law passed on December 11, 2019, Muslims living n India for hundreds of years and for decades after independence from Britain in 1947 are now being asked to prove the grounds – through documents – that they have a right to live in India as citizens. This is impacting tens of millions of Indian Muslims. When Muslims took to streets to protest this draconian law, the protestors were tortured, killed, their houses burnt and properties looted – rapes and sexual molestations committed against Muslim women and girls – in the period of December 2019 and January 2020. Most of such atrocities took place in Delhi neighborhoods with police shielding the Hindu mobs – even participating in torture and killing of Muslims.

International independent media have recorded several proofs of this. International rights groups, as well as US’ and European government bodies have expressed concerns over this and the US Congressional Commission on religious freedom has even recommended putting India on blacklist for subjugation of freedom of religion.

Ironically, in past couple of years, the outbreak of CoronaVirus gave extremist Hindus a new pretext to target, oppress and subjugate Muslims, all across India. It all started when in March 2019, several members of Tableeghi Jamaat (TJ) that gathered in a mosque in New Delhi, contracted virus and it further spread through their onward interactions.  

It was a natural phenomenon of how a pandemic takes shape. However, extremist Hindus – including those in power at central and state level – used this opportunity to further increase ill-founded and baseless anger and hatred against Muslims. They forwarded this conspiracy theory that Muslims have willfully spread the virus to infect and kill Hindus. They also accused Muslims of willfully infecting food, water, and other items so that Hindus can be infected – terming this as ‘corona Jehad’ being followed by Muslims. Hindu political and social leadership – including sitting legislators from ruling BJP in states as well as in central legislatures – called upon their Hindu followers to boycott Muslims businesses and works.

In many cases, Muslims were violently attacked under suspicions of spreading virus – beaten, lynched, and even killed in some instances that were reported widely in Indian and international media. Police and law enforcing agencies joined the Hindu mobs and enforced strict blockades in Muslims localities, properties, households, and workplaces as well as mosques and shrines – where Muslims have been subjected to torture and severe punishment in the name of lockdowns and isolations. Muslim leadership made it clear that Hindus used this opportunity to drive Muslims out of certain localities and businesses. A large segment of Indian media also shamelessly engaged in support of Hindu majority in this drive. Even some hospitals blatantly refused to admit Muslim patients of corona-virus; only on nationwide protests they allowed Muslims to be admitted; yet, in separate wards.

The inherent hatred against Muslims in India has manifested itself time and again. It would not be wrong to say that several ‘mini Pakistans’ have been created within India of today due to continuous inhuman treatment inflicted upon the Muslim Indians. Authorities in India must ensure that Indian Muslims are treated, not only in letter but also in practice and spirit, as equal citizens. That is must for social cohesion of a country as big as India.

The author is Founding President of the Eurasian Century Institute, Islamabad-Pakistan and may be accessed at [email protected]

At first glance, a potential bid by Saudi Arabia and Egypt, two of the world’s worst human rights violators, together with Greece, to host the 2030 World Cup sounds like an invitation to a perfect public relations fiasco.

That is undoubtedly true if one looks at Qatar three months before its World Cup kicks off in November.

Coverage of the Qatar World Cup in independent media remains harshly critical of the Gulf state’s final preparations for the tournament and migrant worker and human rights record, despite significant legal and material reforms.

Moreover, human rights groups continue to confront Qatar with legitimate demands such as an improved compensation system for workers who suffered serious harm, including death, injury, and wage theft.

Even so, Qatar’s rough public relations ride over the last 12 years since it won in late 2010 its World Cup hosting rights, despite having been responsive to criticism, may prove to have been mild compared to what likely awaits Saudi Arabia and Egypt, if and when they submit a formal bid to FIFA, the world soccer governance body. Greece, too is likely to be taken to task for partnering with the two autocracies.

Saudi Arabia has wanted to host a World Cup for some time as part of a concerted effort to establish itself as a regional sports hub, eclipsing Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

Sports is one pillar of a larger endeavour to position the kingdom as the Middle East’s commercial and political centre of gravity. Moreover, as the custodian of Mecca and Medina, Islam’s two holiest cities, Saudi Arabia is already a major religious point of reference.

The sports effort also aims to boost Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s creation of an entertainment sector that caters to youth aspirations, contributes to the diversification of the country’s oil export-based economy, and helps project the kingdom as forward-looking and cutting-edge rather than secretive and ultra-conservative as it was perceived for much of its existence.

By partnering with Greece and Turkey, Saudi Arabia hopes to enhance its chances of winning the bid in a competition that is likely to be dominated by multi-country proposals. The bid’s strength is that it would be tri-continental, Asia, Africa, and Europe.

Other potential contending partnerships include Spain and Portugal; England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Ireland, and Wales; a North African combination of Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria; and a joint South American effort by Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, and Paraguay. Romania, Greece, Bulgaria, and Serbia have also expressed interest in banding together.

Partnering could allow Saudi Arabia to circumvent FIFA’s likely hesitancy to award the tournament to a Middle Eastern country as sole host for the second time in a decade.

The potential alliance with Egypt and Greece follows an earlier apparently failed attempt to team up with Italy for a World Cup bid.

Saudi Arabia’s willingness to risk the kind of scrutiny that Qatar was exposed to is rooted in a degree of hubris on the part of Mr. Bin Salman and an evaluation of the Qatari experience.

Mr. Bin Salman has been encouraged by the willingness of leaders like US President Joe Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron, and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to put behind them the unresolved 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and the arrest of scores on often flimsy charges and welcome the crown prince back into the international fold.

By the same token, Mr. Bin Salman has nothing to fear from non-democratic members of the international community like China and Russia and much of the Global South that either sit in glasshouses, do not want to align themselves with US and European lip service to the defence of human rights, or opportunistically don’t want to get on the wrong side of Saudi Arabia.

Saudi hubris was evident in this month’s sentencing of 34-year-old Leeds University PhD candidate Salma al-Shehab, a mother of two, to 34 years in prison for following and retweeting dissidents and activists on Twitter.

Mr. Bin Salman’s willingness to shoulder the risk is likely to be rooted in an analysis of Qatar’s experience that suggests that, on balance, the Gulf state’s hosting of the World Cup will prove to be a success, despite continued negative press in Western media, provided that it pulls off the tournament without significant glitches.

However, Saudi Arabia and Egypt’s human rights records are far more egregious than Qatar’s, which is hardly commendable by any measure.

Like the kingdom and Egypt, Qatar is an autocracy with a legal infrastructure that fortifies the emir as the country’s absolute ruler. Like the potential 2030 World Cup bidders, Qatar lacks freedom of the press and assembly, outlaws extra-marital sex, and refuses to recognize LGBT rights.

But unlike Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Qatar’s jails are not populated by political prisoners or offenders of anti-LGBT laws. Human rights groups estimate that Egypt keeps 60,000 political prisoners behind bars.

Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which has enhanced the rights and opportunities of at least some women, eased gender segregation, and lifted bans on modern entertainment such as music, dancing, and cinema. have often targeted LGBT communities for domestic political gain.

Human Rights Watch has repeatedly charged that Egyptian authorities “arbitrarily arrest” LGBT people and “detain them in inhuman conditions, systematically subject them to ill-treatment including torture, and often incite fellow inmates to abuse them.

Going to extremes, Saudi Arabia, amid a push to encourage tourism, launched “rainbow raids” in late 2021 on shops selling children’s toys and accessories.

Authorities focused on clothing and toys, including hair clips, pop-its, t-shirts, bows, skirts, hats, and colouring pencils “that contradict the Islamic faith and public morals and promote homosexual colours that target the younger generation,” according to a commerce ministry official.

Earlier, the kingdom banned Lightyear, a Disney and Pixar animated production, because of a same-sex kiss scene, and Disney’s Doctor Strange in the Universe of Madness, in which one character refers to her “two mums.”

The litany of Saudi violations of fundamental rights includes a ban on non-Muslim houses of worship even though the kingdom has recently emphasized inter-faith dialogue and welcomed Jewish visitors, including those with a double nationality of which one is Israeli, as well as Christian religious leaders.

As a result, the headwinds a bid involving Saudi Arabia and Egypt is likely to encounter could make Qatar’s experience look like a cakewalk.

Qatar has demonstrated a degree of dexterity in dealing with its World Cup critics, a quality that the Saudi crown prince and Egyptian general-turned-president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi have yet to exhibit.

Dr. James M. Dorsey is an award-winning journalist and scholar, an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.