By: Abu Huda Al-Hendy*
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) constantly lurks to get any opportunity and create an opportunity to persecute Muslims to further its anti-Muslim agenda every time. One of the significant ways of persecuting Muslims by the BJP is to target prominent faces of the minority community. The Hindutva party has been doing this in their states as well as at the Centre. Soon after coming to power at the Centre, Narendra Modi government went after internationally known Islamic preacher Zakir Naik in the name of terrorism in 2016. The witch-hunt has forced Naik to live self-exiled in Malaysia. The Indian government appealed to Interpol to extradite Naik from Malaysia but the international body rejected India’s extradition request by citing a lack of evidence against Naik.
Now, the BJP government of Uttar Pradesh, which is being led by anti-Muslim bigot Yogi Adityanath, is going after another Islamic preacher Umar Gautam. On 21 June, the Anti-terror squad (ATS) arrested Gautam along with his aide Mufti Jahagir for converting 1000 people to Islam. It is yet to see that how accurate is the number of the converted people provided by the ATS in relation to Gautama’s case. Even though it is an accurate number of people who were converted by Gautam, the question arises what crimes he has committed by converting people? Conversion or facilitating conversion is not a crime in India at all.
Article 25 of the Indian constitution grants every citizen the right to convert to any religion. “Freedom of conscience and free profession, practice and propagation of religion (1) Subject to public order, morality and health and to the other provisions of this Part, all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practise and propagate religion,” says the Article 25.
So, why the state is treating the case of conversion as a crime? Why is it being made a big issue? Why is the mainstream media spewing venom against the conversion? It’s just to witch-hunt an Islamic preacher to spread hatred against Muslims.
Other allegations which have been levelled against Gautam is forced conversion and his ISI links. However, the ATS did not put out any evidence with regard to both allegations. If Gautam has forced anyone to convert to Islam, he/she must come forward and tell the people that he has been converted forcibly. There is not a single person who made these allegations. Forced conversion is disapproved by Islam itself. Even though anyone is forced to convert to Islam, his conversion will not be valid. Another thing is that Gautam used to maintain an agreement form in which the converted people declared his/her consent to convert to Islam. These agreement forms used to be rectified by the government officials. Then, how is it possible that Gautam would force anyone to convert people? If he forced anyone to convert anyone, why would he maintain agreement forms? Why would converted people sign the form? The allegations of forced conversion are completely baseless. On the other hand, the police also did not provide any evidence about his links to ISI.
The fact of the matter is that these allegations have been made up to witch-hunt Gautam. He is himself a reverted Muslim, who converted after getting impressed with the behavior of a Muslim man in Nainital. After converting to Islam, he made the ambition of his life to propagating the message of Islam and clear misconceptions about it among non-Muslims. He has been doing it for years. He founded Islamic Dawah Center for this purpose.
But the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh is so desperate and vicious in its anti-Muslim agenda that it can target any innocent Muslim for anti-Muslim politics. This time, it directed its gun towards an innocent, apolitical and gentleman Gautam, who hardly spoke up on any political issue or against the BJP. This is why the witch-hunt of Gautam is so problematic?
*An Indian writer
**Opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of al-Mujtama
