A few years ago when China was rising as an economic power, there was a spate of global media coverage targeting the country over pollution, authoritarianism and human rights. Today, India is the fastest-growing major economy in the world with a growth rate of 6.9 percent and suddenly there are attacks from all corners. But unlike China, India is a constitutional democracy so calling it authoritarian is not logically possible. Hence the stick to beat India is religious intolerance and one of the most loyal users of this trope are the Islamists.
In the last decade and a half, India’s relations with the United States have improved in leaps and bounds coinciding with India’s own economic growth and dynamism in its foreign policy approach. Today there is a bipartisan consensus in the US on India’s significant role in the American pivot to the Indo-Pacific. This week’s visit to India by the Asia Coordinator of the White House, Kurt Campbell is a testament to the same. While articulating the US’ views regarding the country, he outlined that India is the most important bilateral relationship for the US in the 21st century. His reference to India’s great power potential independent of its ally status with the US nicely dovetails with India’s own vision of being an independent pole as articulated by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar many times. It is this bonhomie between India and the United States that the Islamists aren’t able to digest. Here, American-Islamists are no exception. Case in point is the CAIR which has emerged as a front for Islamists whose objective is to attack India and undercut its national interest.
CAIR, or the Council on American-Islamic Relations, projects itself as America’s largest Muslim civil rights organisation. It was formed in 1994 and has a stated aim of promoting social, legal and political activism among Muslims in America. Its standard job brief is to fight Islamophobia and promote the betterment of Muslims in the United States; despite having a constructive agenda, it has reduced itself to nothing but a lobbying front for the Islamists. Even as Muslims struggle to challenge the stereotypical portrayal in popular media and a just and equitable position in American society, CAIR is more concerned about furthering the agenda of the Islamists.
Just recently, CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper was caught spreading white lies about the treatment of Muslims in India. It so happened that a Muslim couple was attacked by a Muslim mob in Karnataka on 7 December for watching Kantara, a Kannada blockbuster that tells the story of Bhoot Kola — a ritual dance performed by the Tulu-speaking population in south India. The mob saw this as a move to support “Hindu culture” and hence attacked the young couple. A case was duly registered against the mobsters by the police. However, Hooper took to Twitter and twisted facts to present it as a case of a Hindu mob attacking Muslims.
This isn’t the first time that CAIR has been caught targeting India falsely over Islamophobia. Just last week, it used the same trope to target India after Indian-Americans took out a protest in front of the Pakistani consulate in New York on the 14th anniversary of the dastardly 26/11 attacks. CAIR called the imagery used by them as “Islamophobic” when the material used for the protests contained nothing but images from the brutal attack in 2008.
CAIR isn’t alone in targeting India. The Indian American Muslim Council, the Muslim American Society and the Hindus for Human Rights have emerged as its compatriots in spreading propaganda against India over the treatment of minorities. Ironically, they have found little support from the Islamic countries themselves. In the UAE, CAIR as well as the Muslim American Society have been designated as “terrorist group” in a list that also includes Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Al Shabab and Boko Haram. They are under fire over their links with Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. In 2007, CAIR was indicted as a co-conspirator of diverting funds to Hamas in the US, leading to calls from American lawmakers to designate it as a terror organisation. The Muslim American Society doesn’t only have links with Muslim Brotherhood, but it was itself founded by the MB members in the 1990s.
The Islamists in the United States are miffed with India’s growing stature and have become a ready agent for states such as Qatar, Pakistan and Turkey that can’t fathom a powerful and economically ascendant India. They have also captured institutions such as the US National Press Club. The press club has not only hosted Pakistani leaders, one of the state sponsors of terrorism in the world, but also extended support to Qatar’s state propaganda tool Al-Jazeera in the past in its quest to evade actions from American lawmakers. Recently, it handed out a “Press Freedom” award to Indian journalist Rana Ayyub. Ayyub is currently facing a trial in India over embezzlement of funds collected for Covid-19 relief. Interestingly in 2016, the same press club had given a platform to sanctioned terrorist Bouthaina Shaaban, political and media adviser of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Shaaban himself is accused of killing journalists including Samir Kassir, Gebran Tueni, and Marie Colvin.
The growing coordination among various hues of Islamists in the US against India is a worrying trend. Their propaganda needs to be called out on a serious basis. Their aim is to undercut India’s growing global influence while at the same time justifying terrorists and their nefarious designs, of which India is one the biggest victims.
The author is a PhD in International Relations from the Department of International Relations, South Asian University. Her research focuses on the political economy of South Asia and regional integration. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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