A 50-year-old man in northern India has been killed in a mob lynching allegedly over rumors that his family had been storing and consuming beef at home.
Mohammad Akhlaq was kicked and beaten with stones by a group of men in Dadri in Uttar Pradesh state on Monday night.
Mr Akhlaq’s 22-year-old son was also seriously injured in the attack, and has been admitted to a hospital.
Six people have been arrested in connection with the incident. Police are probing who spread the rumor.
Slaughter of cows is a sensitive issue in India, as the animal is considered sacred by Hindus, who comprise 80% of the country’s 1.2bn people.
Uttar Pradesh is among a number of Indian states that have tightened laws banning cow slaughter and the sale and consumption of beef.
The beef ban has also provoked outrage with many questioning how the government decides what is on their plate.
“Some locals spread rumors that Akhlaq had cow meat at his home and engaged in cow slaughter. Following the rumors, they attacked his home,” senior local official NP Singh told The Indian Express Newspaper.
The incident happened in a village, barely 50km (31 miles) away from the Indian capital, Delhi, where Mr Akhlaq, a farm worker, lived with his family.
His 18-year-old daughter Sajida told the newspaper that a “group of more than 100 people from the village” reached the house on Monday night.
Reports said local villagers, protesting against the arrests, had clashed with the police, and damaged a number of vehicles.
Eleven states – including Uttar Pradesh – and two union territories (federally-administered regions) in India ban slaughter of cows, calves, bulls and bulls. (Source: The Telegraph UK, 30/09/15)
Comment:
As usual the secular Hindu Indian state, needs little excuse to attack, and murder Muslims.
The Muslim presence had dominated India since Mohammed bin Qasim conquered the land in 712 AD or the 8th century CE, when he invaded it in order to protect and secure the lives and honour of Muslim women being harassed, and who justifiably called upon their Amir al Mumineen.
Islam spread throughout India, and had at least three capital seats of power, Hyderabad, Lakhnow and Delhi. Throughout the Ummayad Khilafah, the Moghul rule shed enlightenment and justice upon India and until the era of British colonialism, Islamic rule produced scholarship and knowledge, which enabled a vast fiqh and the application of Shariah.
Needless to say when the British began to colonize India, as with the Arab world, they stripped the Arabic language from the Muslims, and replaced Urdu, a language containing many Arabic words and associated with Islamic culture, with Hindi, other regional languages like Tamil and Telgu, and of course English.
Since then India has rapidly changed from a Shariah embracing land of plenty to one of outright Hindu domination, poverty and injustice… where intolerance and prejudice is rife, and where religious tensions are openly whipped up for political gain in every state and district.
In the last half century, we’ve witnessed year upon year increasing attacks on Islam and Muslims, and all manner of intolerance which culminated in hundreds of religious riots, the barbaric ethnic cleansing of Muslims in places such as Gujarat and even Bombay, and the burning down of Babari Masjid in 1992, during which 150,00 people also rioted; the death toll was in the thousands.
The extreme right wing BJP ruling party have an even more insidious branch who openly preach to huge public gatherings, for the need to “rape dead Muslim women”, “behead Muslim men”, and more recently, force Muslims to “sacrifice their sons instead of animals” for Eid al Adha.
It is little wonder therefore that the atmosphere is more and more stifling towards the practice of Islam, despite Muslims being a huge minority, they are discriminated against in education, the workplace, and in local council. Madrassas are closed down on a whim, and justice takes years to serve, especially for Muslims, whether it be for hate crimes, or land and property theft / disputes.
The values of the Hindu state are not just secular in nature, but consistent with the belief of reincarnation and karma, hence earthly justice is given little significance, poverty is accepted, the concept of humans as ‘untouchable’ is still lauded… So much for the modernity, wealth nuclear capability and industrialization… In the absence of Islam India had regressed to a filthy land of injustice and oppression, without an ideological rule of law, and one that relies on its western allies to give it any real credibility.
Only with the return of the rightly guided Khilafah upon the way of the Prophethood, will the Muslims like Mohammed Akhlaq, who fight to hold on to their Deen as a minority in the oppressive Hindu state receive the enlightened life of dignity their forefathers once enjoyed there. We pray that Allah سبحانه وتعالى continues to strengthen the Muslims against the kufr that surrounds them, and that they are soon liberated along with our brothers and sisters across the world.
Maleeha Hasan