December 20, 2019, will go down in history as the day the Muslim community for once chose not to listen to self-serving clerics. It started in Delhi’s Jama Masjid, the most unlikely of places for a revolt or even social engineering to begin. For decades, the Shahi Imam of the Jama Masjid has had a firm grip over the community. His writ runs in the area. He is as feared as he is respected. Never has the imam been defied publicly by the residents of the walled city. In the lanes around the mosque, built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, the word of the imam, who hails from the family of the first imam from Bukhara, is respected.
It all changed on December 20, a Friday, as thousands marched across the streets of Old Delhi protesting against theNational Register of Citizens and the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (NRC-CAA). Two days earlier, Imam Ahmad Bukhari spoke to community members, seeking to allay their fears about the CAA and the NRC. “It [CAA] is not against minorities. It is not against Muslims in India. They [Muslims] need not fear. Nobody is asking them to prove their identity. They will not be deported,” Bukhari told a few hundred people who had joined the protest near the mosque. “First understand the CAA. It is not about Indian Muslims,” the imam said.
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