"Muslims are not violent or barbarians, nor is the book they revere most a book of hate."

Political anthropologist Irfan Ahmad is a Professor of Anthro po­ logy and Sociology at Istanbul’s Ibn Haldun University in Turkey, known for his work on various aspects of Islam and Islamophobia, including Western and Indian thought.

He had taught at univer­ sities in the Netherlands and Australia before moving to Istanbul. He was also a senior research fellow at Max Planck Institute, Gottingen, Germany. He spoke to Snigdhendu Bhattacharya, putting the Indian situation in a global perspective.  

If we look at Islamophobia as a phenomenon prevailing in many countries outside the Arab world, how bad is the situation in India? Muslims are living in a state of terror and without a choice. Islamophobia has led to ugly consequences: today, Muslims’ lives are marked by social dispossession, routine humiliation, worsening economic status, and attacks on their cultural symbols like the hijab, mosques and Urdu.

We have recurring cases of Muslims being lynched, with the authorities doing nothing or very little. What they can eat, wear, watch, speak and how they behave in public space are all dictated by the ideology of a Hindu nation. 

A democracy that robs its own citizens to pursue their own choice and aspiration is clearly anything but a democracy. Notice that phrases vilifying Muslims seem to have become acceptable: ‘love jihad’, ‘corona jihad’, and ‘land jihad’. In use are slur words denoting Muslims’ wretched economic condition: ‘redi jihad’ (street vendor jihad) and ‘puncturewala’ because many Muslims are automobile mechanics. 

What is worse is that amidst such rampant dispossession against Muslims, it is the talk of ‘Hindu genocide’ that people like Major Surendra Poonia (with six lakh Twitter followers) promote on social media. To transform aggressors into victims–it happened in the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom too, as anthropologist Veena Das noted–“is to defy facts and justice.”