Tablighi Jamaat continues to spell trouble for India and other countries, especially in Southeast Asia. The Islamic revival group has consistently ignored all warnings about COVID-19, and has recently brought together large assemblies of Muslims: 250,000 in Lahore and 16,000 in Malaysia. In Indonesia, a Tablighi Jamaat event of 9,000 was halted, and the attendees forced into quarantine. Still, the group is not fazed in the least. The group is now being defended by Muslim Students of JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University) and more aggressive Islamic supremacists. It is also reported to have ties with al Qaeda, Taliban, and Kashmir jihadis.
Now the usual, familiar term “Islamophobia“ is being utilized to further the Tablighi Jamaat agenda, in response to Indian authorities’ attempts to limit the group’s activities, which are threatening to spread the coronavirus to the rest of the population:
Defending the Muslim clerics of Jamaat who were found spitting out on roads while they were being transported to the treatment centres, the JCC ascribed the punitive measures taken against them to “bigotry and Islamophobic fantasies of the government”.
“Islamists who organised anti-CAA ‘protests’ stand in solidarity with Tablighi Jamaat super-spreaders, demand FIR be revoked calling it ‘Islamophobia,’” Opindia, April 1, 2020:
As hundreds of cases of COVID-19 with the history of their visit to the congregation organised by Tablighi Jamaat emerge from various parts of the country, sending authorities scrambling to contain the extent of the spread of the contagion, Jamia Coordination Committee and ‘Muslim Students of JNU’- a Facebook page once operated by the mastermind of Shaheen Bagh protest, Sharjeel Imam, have come to defend the Jamaat as it faces the wrath of the authorities for organising a large gathering and providing a breeding ground for the virus to spawn.
The Delhi Police had yesterday registered FIR against Tablighi Jamaat preacher Maulana Saad and other members of the outfit under section 3 of The Epidemic Diseases Act (1897) for organizing the congregation at the times of severe lockdown amidst the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak.
The event which gave rise to the numerous positive cases of coronavirus across states was organized in the mid-march. Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday claimed that 1,548 people were evacuated from the Markaz Tablighi Jamaat over the past three days. Out of these, 441 people were found with the symptoms of COVID-19 and have been isolated at the hospitals while others are quarantined.
In support of Tablighi Jamaat, the ‘Muslim Students of JNU’ uploaded an image on its Facebook page, expressing solidarity with the Jamaat and demanding cancellation of FIR filed against the Jamaat management. The Facebook page which was once handled by Sharjeel Imam, who advocated the secession of the NE states from India and incited communal passions, also tried to cast the delinquent management of Jamaat as victims by accusing the government of being ‘Islamophobic’ for initiating action against them.