Facebook Let Islamophobia Flourish in India Despite Employees’ Warnings: TIME
The TIME Magazine has exposed how Facebook allowed Islamophobic conspiracy theories to flourish on its platform inciting hatred and violence towards Muslims, and refused to take them down even when many employees constantly flagged such content.
One video in which a self-styled Hindu saint openly exhorted Hindus to “take weapons and start killing” Muslims was watched 1.4 million times and was taken off only when TIME approached Facebook about it in October 2021. “Facebook was aware of the danger and prevalence of the anti-Muslim conspiracy theories but had done little to act on it,” internal Facebook documents seen by TIME, as well as interviews with former employees, confirmed.
The documents suggested that “political sensitivities” were part of the reason that the company had chosen not to ban Hindu nationalist groups close to India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the magazine said.
Indian City Cancels Long-Standing Permission To Muslim Prayers In Designated Places
The Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC) condemns the administration in Gurugram city near New Delhi for cancelling the long-standing permissions to Muslim groups for holding their Islamic prayers on Fridays at various locations.
The decision has followed protests by Hindu extremists who descended on various locations on successive Fridays and loudly protest against the Muslims praying there peacefully. The protesters demanded that the Muslims be forcibly removed from those locations. Muslims have prayed in designated public places with the permission of local administrations for decades in different parts of India without ever harming interfaith relations, especially with the Hindus.
However, since the advent of the Hindu right-wing government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Hindu-Muslim relations have been vitiated with a proliferation of hate speech and Islamophobic violence.
Muslim Activist Slapped With Criminal Charges For Tweeting Against Anti-Muslim Violence In Tripura State
The IAMC condemns the police in the north Indian region of Ladakh for filing criminal charges against a Muslim activist, Sajjad Kargili, for tweeting his criticism of the anti-Muslim violence in the Indian state of Tripura over the last week that has seen at least half a dozen mosques vandalized or set on fire and hundreds of Muslims homes and businesses torched.
Kargili had on October 27 tweeted that he “strongly condemn[ed] these nonstop attacks,” but the police filed a case against him Sections 107 and 151 of the Indian Penal Code, that relate to “willful misrepresentation” and “disrupting peace and integrity.” The Indian Government has been pathetically silent on the ongoing attacks on Muslims in Tripura, while the state government has gone one step ahead and entirely denied that any attacks took place at all.
Even though it is widely reported that extremists belonging to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Bajrang Dal, which are armed militias allied to the BJP and attack Christians and Muslims across India, the Tripura government is yet to make any arrests.
