In India, Islamophobic propaganda from the fitting typically capitalises on unfounded fears of a Muslim inhabitants enlargement. This deep-seated perception has given start to a conspiracy principle referred to as “love jihad“, which alleges that Muslim males are actively in search of to entice Hindu ladies and convert them to Islam.
Exploiting this principle, vigilante teams have been concerned within the harassment of interfaith {couples}, notably when the lady concerned is Hindu. Outstanding Hindu nationalist figures often ship speeches encouraging Hindu males to marry Muslim ladies and convert them to Hinduism. Lately, a femo-nationalist narrative has additionally gained traction, the place influential ladies linked with Hindu nationalist organisations have urged Muslim ladies to marry a Hindu man to seek out “freedom” from alleged oppression.
“Saving” the Muslim girl has been an indispensable part of India’s Hindu nationalist narrative, because it helps painting Islam as a faith that oppresses ladies followers who want intervention from Hindu males for his or her emancipation. The ruling authorities of the Bharatiya Janata Get together (BJP), as an illustration, has claimed credit score for getting the nation’s Supreme Courtroom to ban the follow of triple talaq or immediate divorce.
The Muslim girl is paradoxically essentially the most hyper-present and invisible determine within the political discourse in India. Her life is consistently a topic of public dialogue, whereas her personal opinion on it’s nowhere to be seen.
In current months, nonetheless, an equally worrying and conspiratorial development has taken start, once more purportedly centred on “saving Muslim ladies” – this time led by Muslim males. What initially began as a Twitter marketing campaign referred to as Bhagwa Love Entice, warning Muslim ladies about Hindu males supposedly making an attempt to lure them, quickly reworked right into a full-blown mirror-image principle of affection jihad.
Self-appointed ethical policing teams of Muslim males have focused {couples} or mates the place the lady is Muslim, following the very same sample because the Hindu proper in its vigilantism. A number of instances have emerged throughout the nation the place Muslim ladies seen with a person suspected to be Hindu, or in mixed-gender teams, have been confronted in public areas.
In photographs and movies recorded and shared on-line to humiliate them, the ladies might be seen as they’re interrogated, lectured on chastity and compelled by the mob to share the phone numbers and addresses of their fathers or brothers.
Individually, an nameless Twitter account went so far as doxing the non-public particulars of Muslim ladies who had married interfaith, obtained from the wedding registration web site of the Telangana state authorities.
That is worrying and harmful, notably at a time when Muslim ladies are already on the receiving finish of dehumanising stereotypes and harassment of a sexual nature by Hindu nationalists.
In the end, in each instances, it’s Muslim ladies who bear the brunt of heightened surveillance and scrutiny – and this extends from bodily areas to the web world.
Over the previous couple of years, younger Hindutva radicals have created platforms – one was referred to as Sulli Offers, the opposite titled Bulli Bai App – which posted pictures and particulars of Muslim ladies who they claimed to be auctioning nearly. The concept: to humiliate and disgrace notably these Muslim ladies who’ve been assertively calling out the rising anti-Muslim sentiment in India.
Amongst their targets – the platforms have been shut down following a worldwide outcry – have been Fatima Khan, a journalist, and Nabiya Khan, an activist and poet.
The horrific irony? It’s exactly ladies like Fatima and Nabiya who at the moment are within the crosshairs of the small, fringe set of Muslim males, who don’t symbolize the neighborhood and are attacking Muslim ladies whose views they disagree with on-line.
Fatima, a journalist for The Quint publication who has extensively lined rising Islamophobia in India, was focused by these trolls on-line after she wrote a narrative overlaying the Bhagwa Love Entice marketing campaign. Nabiya too was focused for days, by a number of nameless handles on social media, together with Twitter and Instagram, after she tweeted: “Why is ethical policing completely reserved for ladies?”
When Muslim males tweeted in defence of those ladies, they too have been slandered and attacked by the trolls.
To sort out this harmful phenomenon, it’s necessary to know what’s driving it.
Dwelling below a Hindu nationalist regime for nearly a decade, the normal notion of males as protectors and girls as preservers of cultural traditions is more and more getting strengthened in shaping individuals’s identities in up to date India – amongst each Hindus and Muslims.
The recurring requires genocide, rising hate crimes and on a regular basis humiliation of Muslims by the hands of Hindu nationalists pose an existential disaster for your entire Muslim neighborhood. A number of males, nonetheless, are internalising this disaster as a private failing on account of their conventional gender function as protectors of their neighborhood and are adopting exaggerated and superficial masculine traits as a defence mechanism.
The trolling of Fatima, a non-hijabi girl, was centred round her Muslim identify and the validity of her religion. Within the case of Nabiya, in the meantime, accounts with massive followings on the web circulated photographs of her displaying her sitting with male non-Muslim mates – an act that, based on these concentrating on her, introduced disrespect to the hijab.
The Muslim trolls satirically attacked her by the very same stereotypical beliefs that the Hindu right-wing associates with Muslim ladies, based on which the hijab worn by her isn’t a illustration of her religion however moderately an emblem of her subjugation to the boys of her neighborhood.
The character of the trolling that these ladies have been subjected to was based mostly on the assumption that liberal or feminist thought inside Muslim ladies has influenced them to go in opposition to the boys of the neighborhood, misuse their names or their spiritual symbols (on this case, the hijab) whereas jeopardising the honour of the Muslim neighborhood. A troubling tradition of sufferer blaming is breeding, the place the Islamophobic violence directed in direction of Muslims is being blamed on the weakest of all throughout the neighborhood.
Regardless of placing their security in danger to talk in opposition to the rising Islamophobia in India, ladies like Fatima and Nabiya are being labelled by some as traitors to the neighborhood. This has nothing to do with real morality and every part to do with the show of policing. A show of male supremacy, cloaked within the age-old guise of conventional morality.
Whereas the web assault on Nabiya and Fatima is vile and harsh, they’re city, comparatively privileged ladies – a standing that affords them at the least some stage of safety. Girls who come from marginalised sections have little to no help, as soon as they’ve change into topics of public humiliation. This in flip can result in social ostracisation and even bodily violence, all of which is certain to have a profound destructive impression on their psychological wellbeing.
It’s tough to talk up in opposition to the implications of those assaults. There already exists in India and lots of different components of the world an unfair, made-up narrative that frames all Muslim males as oppressive, violent and predatory. Being conscious of how her personal oppression can be weaponised in opposition to her neighborhood and can embolden a system that’s continuously looking out for excuses to place stamps on these stereotypes, the Muslim girl is below stress to submit silently to this new, rising menace.
This double silencing not solely limits her capability to guard herself in opposition to violence but in addition denies her any political company, lowering her to both a spectator, a supporter or a battleground.
She is pressured to select from a pre-written binary – one the place she will both be “saved” by the Hindu man or “protected” by the Muslim man.
The views expressed on this article are the creator’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
Read the full article here
