While the controversy around Namaz on roads and other public places keeps appearing during every Muslim festival, a cleric in West Bengal has moved it a notch higher by now holding iftar on a road. Toha Siddiqui, the Pirzada of Furfura Sharif, a controversial cleric in the state, yesterday took his iftar meal, the meal after the day-long fast during Ramzan, on a road while returning home from somewhere.
Pirzada Toha Siddiqui informed about this himself on Facebook along with several photographs showing an elaborate iftar feat on a road. He wrote in the post, “Iftar on the road while returning home from a function.” In the photographs, four men, including Toha Siddiqui, are seen sitting on a sheet laid on a wide asphalt road.
Half of the sheet is inside the driveway of the road, while the other half is along the parking area along the wide road. The photos show that they carried several polythene bags containing food packets from some store, which they opened on the road for Iftar.
A Mahindra Scorpio with a beacon on it, presumably belonging to Siddique going by Arabic text written on the windshield, is seen parked near them. Along with this, multiple police vehicles, with cops standing near them, are seen in the pictures.
The fact that he was carrying a sheet and food packets indicates that it was pre-planned. He deliberately chose to organise the iftar on the road instead of some other place.
However, Toha Siddiqui’s this ‘iftar on road’ stunt didn’t go well with netizens, including Muslims. His Facebook post has received over 1200 posts till now, almost all of them for misusing his proximity to power to hold iftar on road. Notably, Toha Siddiqui is a close ally of Mamata Banerjee, and he supports her during elections.
Muslim Facebook users commented that due to such acts, the entire community earns a bad name. They also said that it was just a drama by him, and called him a hypocrite, as he routinely comments against Hindu festivals.
The netizens noted that he could have taken the iftar meal in his vehicle, or he could have found a mosque, a roadside stall, or any other suitable place, but he chose the road only for a show off. Many people also said that by holding iftar feast on road and posting the photographs, the cleric was giving ammunition to Hindu fundamentalists which will increase communal tension in the state. A large number of people also called him a broker of Mamata Banerjee.