Indian liberals are almost as predictable as religious bigots. And thus the fears expressed by OpIndia.com has started coming true.
After keeping mum since the news of an Indian Muslim youth named Mehdi Masroor Biswas running one of the most influential pro-ISIS Twitter account was broken, the liberal crowd has now started speaking in favour of Biswas.
Following the standard operating procedure in such cases, they have first started by drawing unequal parallels, which would prove that Biswas is “just another Twitter user”.
One of the first ones to come out in support of Biswas as Business Standard journalist Mihir Sharma, known for his pro-Congress and anti-Hindu views. On Twitter, he drew parallels between a random Internet Hindu Twitter account and Mehdi Masroor Biswas.
Hindutvadis who regularly incite violence online should be most concerned about Biswas’ (unjustified?) arrest for hateful online speech.
— Mihir Sharma (@mihirssharma) December 13, 2014
Apart from drawing the false equivalence, the journalist also plugs in his view that arrest of Mehdi is unjustified.
Although one may argue that Mihir Sharma suffers from low intellect and thus cannot differentiate between randomly ranting online and actively encouraging a person to join a real terrorist organization, the truth is that Mihir has that basic intellect but it’s a deliberate obfuscation to save Mehdi.
It should be noted that Mehdi supported ISIS activities like the beheading of US journalists and killings of non-Muslims in conquered lands. This is not hate speech, but a direct call for violence – a difference even the US constitution, known for its free speech statutes, makes.
However, Indian liberals will not make this difference because their agenda is always to draw unequal parallels between Islamists and Hindutva supporters.
After this false equivalence is established, the next step will be to paint Mehdi as a “victim” of circumstances and an unfriendly state.
Many people have pointed out that even in this case, the modus operandi is going to be similar to the one adopted in Ishrat Jahan case, where a Lashkar affiliated terrorist was painted as innocent college going girl.
Last year Tehelka profile of “innocent” Ishrat, brightest, hard working member of family: http://t.co/kRKfhMlThA || Quite like Mehdi guy?
— Akhilesh Mishra (@amishra77) December 13, 2014
The liberal crowd is all set to welcome Mehdi, an innocent MNC going executive.
