As the debate over the Citizenship Amendment Act continues which aims to expedite giving citizenship to religiously persecuted minorities from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, reports of abduction and forced conversion of minorities, especially women, keeps coming from these countries. Amid this, a video has gone viral on social media which purportedly shows a Hindu woman being forcefully to Islam at knifepoint.
The video is being circulated saying that it is from Sylhet in Bangladesh where Muslim fundamentalists are forcefully converting an innocent Hindu woman to Islam. In the video, the woman is sitting on the floor with both her hands tied together, while a man sitting on a chair behind her keeps her restrained by holding her arms.
https://twitter.com/mahamunji/status/1222231605692882944?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Another man, purportedly the cleric conducting the conversion, dictates Islamic verses to her and forces her to repeat the same. He threatens the woman by placing a large knife on her head, and the woman screams in fear. A few other women in burqa can also be seen in the room. The conversations in the video take place in Bengali.
https://twitter.com/mahamunji/status/1222232165200449537?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
In another video of the same incident, the woman is asked to repeat, ‘I have become Muslim from Hindu, I take oath in the name of Allah.’ After repeating that, the woman counters, ‘But I was already Muslim’, which is laughed away by the men in the room suggesting that she had become non-Muslim. After that, the woman is made to do a sit-up by holding her ears.
In a third part of the video, the men in the room proceed to give her a Muslim name. To that, she says that she already has a Muslim name, but the cleric says that she must take a new name, and asks her to choose a nice name. Someone suggests the name ‘Fatema’, while the woman keeps insisting that she already has a good name.
https://twitter.com/anandavnt/status/1221158354996822016?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The entire video and the conversations leave it no doubt that the Hindu woman was forcefully converted to Islam by forcing her to repeat Islamic verses and giving her a Muslim name, all this, while she is kept restrained by one man and the cleric conducting the conversion, is holding a knife on his. But there is one intriguing thing in the video, which is the behaviour of the woman. Apart from when she screamed after the knife was put on her head, all other times it does not look like that she is being forcefully converted. The conversation of the woman with the men in the room sounds more like a friendly banter than facing a deadly threat. Also, the woman keeps saying that she is already Muslim and she has a Muslim name.
This is because, although it looks and sounds like a forced conversion video, actually the video shows an exorcism process in Bangladesh. The woman is already Muslim, but it is believed that she is being possessed by a Hindu Jinn. And this procedure was conducted to convert the Hindu Jinn to Islam, not the woman that the Jinn was riding.
A much longer video of the incident was posted by Bangladeshi Youtube Channel EM Multimedia last year, which says ‘watch how Hindu Jinn is converted to Islam’. In this much longer video, the cleric asked the woman to sing a song, and the woman breaks into laughter while singing a song.
An Internet search shows that exorcism of Hindu Jinns from Muslim men and women is quite common in Bangladesh, and there are several videos showing the same. The following video shows a peer freeing a man from the possession of a ‘stubborn powerful Hindu Jinn’ which had entered his body 3-4 years ago.
It may be noted the video of the woman had gone viral last year also, and at that several fact-checking sites and media houses had reported that it is an exorcism video, not conversion, but still that same video is being circulated with the same false claim.
The superstition of people possessed by ghosts, spirits, jinns are common across the world, and usually, services of babas, tantriks, peers, exorcists etc are used to ‘free’ the persons from such ‘possession’. But while everywhere else the goal is to get of the supernatural elements out from the bodies of ‘possessed persons’, perhaps it is a unique practice in Bangladesh to convert the Hindu Jinns into Islam, instead of removing them from the body.