Rukhsana Sayed, who claims to be an advocate at the Bombay High Court and runs an X account with the name ‘Advocate Ms Alvi’, published a post on 17th October, lamenting the organisation of a Garba event in Saudi Arabia. Advocate Ms Alvi said that her heart bleeds seeing a reel of a Hindu family going to a ‘Haram’ Garba event in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the ‘sacred land’ where the Islamic prophet Muhammad was born and the Quran, Muslims believe, was revealed.
“My heart bleeds when I saw this reel. A sacred land of a Muslim where Islam came, where Prophet Muhammad PBUH was born and brought up, and where the Qur’an came. That same place they started all such haram activities,” Alvi wrote.
In an apparent attempt to solicit a response and action against Garba events in Saudi Arabia, Advocate Ms Alvi tagged the Saudi Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Health, and the anti-India outfit Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).
Amusingly, when social media users, Hindus specifically, called out her bigotry, intolerance, and borderline dogwhistle against the Hindu family seen in the posted video, Advocate Ms Alvi doubled down on her Islamist fanaticism. She also used derogatory language for Hindus.
While it is known that the entry of non-Muslims into the entire city of Mecca is banned, the Garba function the Hindu family was reportedly going to attend was to be held in Jeddah, which is far away from Mecca. This essentially means that Advocate Ms Alvi believes that the entire Saudi Arabia is a ‘sacred land’ and thus festivities of other religions should not be allowed as they are “haram” in Islam.
“Aray paglo, it’s our “sacred place”…!! Do you understand that meaning? Islam not permitting dance, music, and all so stop abusing me. Audacity of those whose festivals are not complete without doing mujra in front of mosques, drinking, molesting women are giving me lectures,” she wrote.
Ironically, while Rukhsana Sayed, also known as Advocate Ms Alvi, wants celebration of Hindu festivals like Navratri or Garba to be banned in Saudi Arabia since it’s the ‘sacred’ place of Islam’s origin, when confronted with the argument that Muslims should be banned from Ayodhya, Mathura, Kashi or other places sacred for Hindus, she retorted, “India is a Democratic Country..!!”
Alvi was recently upset with her co-religionists for probably not giving outright Sar Tan Se Juda calls against a television actor Arjun Bijlani’s wife Neha Swami Bijlani for wearing a T-shirt with Arabic text: “Allah, Rasul Mohammed”. She even wanted the Hindu actor’s wife arrested.
“I’m shock to see responses from few Muslims, ‘Bohot choti si baat hai’, ‘Kia hua bola toh,’ ‘Usko malum nahi tha’ ‘Wo Muslim nahi hai’ ‘It’s ok bhai itna tension mat lo (to him) ‘ “Kitna acha hai dekho Maafi bhi mang liya ” Agar ap ko wo “Allah Rasul Mohammed” Naam ek T-shirt par dekh kar bura nahi laga toh phir ap ko apne ap k Taqwa wa eeman ko check karna hoga, Afsous wa Lanat hai aise Musalman pe jo Huzur Paak ﷺ ke naam ki touheen dekh kar bhi ranj na hue ho ..!!” she wrote.
Muslim exclusivity in Islamic countries, convenient invocation of democracy and secularism in Hindu-majority India: The Islamist hypocrisy no one wants to talk about
There is a prevalent misconception that Indian Muslims are the most liberal, tolerant and inclusive Muslims across the Indian Subcontinent, if not the whole world. However, the alarming reality is that a significant section among the Muslim community believes in the idea of Islamic exclusivity and supremacy. This delusion births bigotry, which they even realise is bigotry, let alone acknowledge it.
Just look at the asymmetry: Saudi Arabia permanently bars non-Muslims or Kafirs from the entire city of Mecca and the ‘sacred’ precinct of the Islamic prophet Muhammad’s mosque in Medina. There are checkpoints, visas, road points, and strict laws to enforce this exclusivity; violations of these rules attract fines, deportation, and stricter punishments.
Saudi Arabia does not permit construction of churches, Hindu temples or public non-Islamic worship across the kingdom. Many Islamic or Muslim-majority countries either restrict by law the construction of temples and non-Islamic places of worship or tolerate persistent attacks. In Pakistan, except for a few temples, most old Hindu temples are either destroyed, desecrated, or occupied and repurposed by Muslims. Be it Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan or any other Muslim-majority country, non-Muslim festivals are often curtailed or banned since Muslims cannot stand ‘Haram activities’ on ‘Islamic lands’.
However, in countries like India, where the Muslim population is significant but there is a secular democratic form of government, the reverse is demanded by Muslims as a matter of right.
Quite conveniently, a Muslim woman, supposedly a high lawyer, says that Muslims cannot be banned from Hindu holy cities like Ayodhya, Mathura or Kashi since India is a democratic country. The same person who invokes India’s democracy and Constitution to assert right for Muslims to move around freely across the country, including in the cities Hindus hold sacred, never does and never will demand that Mecca or Medina be opened to non-Muslims, or construction of Hindu temples be allowed in Islamic nations. Rather, they would press the demands for restriction on observance of non-Muslim festivals across the all the land claimed under the name of Islam, be it Saudi Arabia or any other Islamic nation.
No wonder, a significant section of Indian Muslims were furious when the United Arab Emirates, a Muslim nation, permitted the construction of a grand Hindu temple in Abu Dhabi. Such is their intolerance and bigotry that when floods devastated the UAE a few years back, several Islamist from India, Pakistan and other countries claimed that Allah was punishing the UAE for allowing the construction of a Hindu temple in the Islamic country.
Islamic texts are very unambiguous about the status of non-Muslims under Muslim rule. Kafirs are treated as dhimmis with conditional and subordinate rights. In Dar-al-Islam, public spaces, unlike in secular democracies, are not required to be religiously neutral.
Clearly, when Muslims are a minority inside a secular liberal and non-Muslim-majority state like India, the same Islamic doctrines of Muslim exclusivity do not require them to accept reciprocal limits; rather, the host country’s own rules and values, be it democracy, secularism, equality before the law, are invoked to maximise access and minimise restrictions on Muslims. This is not accidental; this is a strategy.
The same Islamist lot that glorifies the medieval Muslim tyrants like Aurangzeb, who ordered the demolition of numerous Hindu temples, imposed Jizya and introduced policies designed to humiliate Hindus and other non-Muslim communities, also cries hoarse that Muslims have been relegated to second-class status and India’s secularism is dying under the Modi government, which is supposedly ‘pro-Hindu’.
The hypocrisy is hard to miss, unless you are an absolute leftist lackey of Islamists. This Muslim hypocrisy is a minority-protection strategy of an expansionist religious system that does not accept permanent minority status as theologically final.
If we go by the logic of Indian Islamists, why should Hindus tolerate mosques, festivals, and even Azans or any other Islamic practice in the Hindu-majority country?
Islamists have two strong beliefs: first, “what’s mine is mine, what’s yours is also mine”, and “until Islamic victory, the war is never over”.
On one hand, somehow Indian Muslims are religiously incapable of tolerating the fact that a city in Islamic Saudi Arabia is allowing private organisation of a Garba celebration. On the other hand, they cry secularism and inclusivity are in danger when Hindus advocate restricting entry of Muslims in Garba events.
Not only Garba, from the Ram Janmabhoomi case, Kashi, Mathura, Sambhal and several other cases wherein Hindu temples were demolished, encroached upon and/or repurposed as mosques, but Muslims also fight tooth and nail to retain their control by any means, even violence. In fact, a huge section of Muslims harbour this sentiment that one day, when the Nizam changes, they will destroy the Ayodhya Ram Mandir and rebuild the Babri Masjid.
The same Islamist lot that boasts of the global Muslim Ummah having over 50 Islamic countries is vehemently opposed to the idea of Hindu Rashtra. This is because secular liberal laws and values of tolerance in non-Muslim countries, be it India or the West, are nothing but a ladder to climb to the peak of dominance and authority.
Be it Garba or temple disputes, or Waqf, any other issue, Islamists defend exclusive Muslim ‘sacred’ geography and treat any equivalent Hindu claim as an ‘attack on democracy’. Even though it sounds like a cliché, secularism, tolerance and inclusivity are a one-way street, a burden only the Hindu majority bears despite all the Islamo-leftist vilifications. ‘Sacred’ exclusivity is non-negotiable and sacrosanct when Muslims control the state; however, the same exclusivity or proposition of it is denounced by Islamists like Rukhsana Sayed aka Advocate Ms Alvi, as majoritarianism, violation of democracy, death of the ‘idea of India’ and whatnot.
