Arab netizens fire back as Indians step up anti-Muslim rhetoric on Covid-19

Discriminatory comments against Muslims, fuelled by the narrative that they are spreading Covid-19, have sparked anger

Some 8.9 million Indians work in Gulf countries and even a member of the UAE royal family has warned expats to watch their words

Reading Time:4 minutes

Students hold banners and participate in a protest against India’s citizenship law and recent communal violence in New Delhi, India, Tuesday, March 3, 2020. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

Published: 5:00pm, 22 Apr 2020Updated: 10:39pm, 22 Apr 2020

Social media users in the Arab world have in recent weeks called out Indians for what they have deemed anti-Muslim and anti-Arab comments, with a member of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) royal family warning that Indians working in the wealthy country would be “fined and made to leave” if they made racist and discriminatory comments.

Princess Hend Al Qassimi’s statement was made on Twitter on April 16, accompanied by a screenshot of a tweet by an Indian expatriate threatening “death to radical Islamic Tablighi terrorists” – a reference to the Islamic missionary group Tablighi Jamaat, which has been blamed for the surge in Covid-19 cases in India.

Soon after, a 2015 tweet from Tejasvi Surya – a parliamentarian from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – saying 95 per cent of Arab women “have never had an orgasm in the last few hundred years” began to circulate online and was decried as being derogatory.

After Dubai-based businesswoman Noora AlGhurair pointed out that Surya had been disrespectful to women and warned him against “travelling to Arab lands”, he deleted the tweet.

Afroz Alam, who heads the political science department at Hyderabad’s Maulana Azad National Urdu University, said the Gulf countries maintained a “fair” relationship with India and had never condemned New Delhi’s crackdown on the Muslim-dominated Kashmir region or even the attacks on Muslims under BJP rule since 2014.

This makes it all the more significant that there has been an unprecedented surge in Arabs openly criticising the growing anti-Muslim rhetoric in India. This week, several prominent journalists, lawyers and activists in the Gulf region turned to social media to highlight what they describe as “ill treatment” of Muslims, who make up 14 per cent of the South Asian country’s population.

Select Voice

Choose your listening speed

Get through articles 2x faster

1.25x

250 WPM

Slow

Average

Fast

00:0000:00

1.25x