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Islamophobia makes Coronavirus crisis worse

SHAFAQNA- Coronavirus fears and religious tensions are at a fever pitch in India. Virtually overnight, Muslims became the sole culprits responsible for the spread of the Coronavirus in India.

The Islamophobic hashtags began circulating shortly after the news broke in late March. According to Time magazine, tweets with the hashtag #CoronaJihad appeared nearly 300,000 times and were potentially seen by 165 million people. Other hashtags included #BioJihad.

Islamophobic hashtags have been trending on Twitter, while Indian television news has fuelled hatred with headlines including “Save the country from corona jihad”, morningstaronline told.

One of the most popular false #CoronaJihad tweets claims to show a Muslim man from the Delhi congregation intentionally coughing on somebody. The tweet referred to Muslims as “such vile minded people” and listed hashtags including #CoronaJihad and #TablighiJamatVirus, a reference to the religious group that met in Delhi. But the video featured in the viral tweet was actually filmed in Thailand, not India, and there is no proof that the man was a member of the Delhi congregation.

Earlier, Indian authorities had linked dozens of cases of COVID-19 to a Muslim missionary group that held its annual conference in Delhi in early March. India’s Muslim minority has been blamed for deliberately ‘spreading’ the coronavirus in the country and, a message is going in the society at large that Muslims, as a group, in India are not adhering to ‘social distancing’ and other measures to counter the spread of the pandemic,” the officers have written in their open appeal to Muslims.

The surge in hateful tweets demonstrates how anxieties over the coronavirus have merged with longstanding Islamophobia in India, at a time when the Muslim minority — 200 million people in a nation of 1.3 billion — feels increasingly targeted by the ruling Hindu nationalists.

Fake stories started circulating of Muslims spitting on people to spread the virus. India’s leading news channel, India Today, published a graphic that showed a skull cap and a face mask with a bold red virus over it, claiming Muslims contributed to a majority of coronavirus cases in India.

The toxic display of Islamophobia soon found its way into court orders. The high court of the western state of Gujarat on April 3 cited the Muslim congregation as the reason for the exponential growth of the pandemic in the country, according to Clarionindia.

Of course, Islamophobia isn’t new. Just in February, New Delhi exploded in anti-Muslim riots that left more than 50 people dead.

The coronavirus is just one more opportunity to cast the Muslim as the other, as dangerous.

Now, India is a very dangerous place for Muslims even apart from the Coronavirus.

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