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BREAKING
The Israeli occupation targets Deir Keefa in South Lebanon with 2 surface-to-surface missiles
Philippe Lazzarini: The famine in Gaza is a direct result of banning food and other basic supplies for months including from UNRWA .
Philippe Lazzarini: The spread of famine can still be controlled by a ceasefire and allowing humanitarian organizations to do their work and reach starving people with aid.
The United Nations on the Israeli-induced famine in Gaza: The starvation of civilians for military objectives is a war crime.
UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini: famine is now confirmed in Gaza city. This is starvation by design and manmade by the Government of Israel.
More than 30 people have been martyred in Gaza since Friday dawn in Israeli bombardment targeting refugee camps throughout the blockaded strip.
Al Mayadeen correspondent: The Israeli occupation forces are carrying out demolitions of residential buildings in Gaza's al-Tuffah neighborhood amid intensifying airstrikes.
Israeli media: A man is critically wounded from a shooting near Malachi Hashalom between Ramallah and Nablus, and ambulance crews are on their way to the scene.
Al Mayadeen correspondent: One person was martyred in an Israeli airstrike that targeted a motorcycle in southern Lebanon's Deir Saryan.
Al Mayadeen's correspondent to Southern Lebanon: An Israeli drone strike on a motorcycle in the town of Deir Saryan left one civilian injured

What's behind Indian extremists’ anti-Muslim theory?

  • By Al Mayadeen English
  • Source: Agencies
  • 30 May 2022 15:32
3 Min Read

For years, bigots have fueled Hindu nationalist worries of demographic erasure by Muslims. However, new government data tells a totally different story.

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  • What's behind Indian extremists’ anti-Muslim theory?
    What's behind Indian extremists’ anti-Muslim theory?

Head of the powerful Dasna Devi temple in northern India, Yati Narsinghanand, warned the country's one billion Hindus, "produce more children or prepare to live in an Islamic state."

"With the way their [Muslims'] population is increasing, there will be a Muslim prime minister in 2029," said the extreme priest at a religious conclave last month, after being released on bond following his detention earlier this year on hate speech charges.

“Once that happens, 50% [of] Hindus will have to undergo religious conversion, and 40% will be killed.”

Data from a government study earlier this month exposed his apparent lies. Even though Islam is practiced by barely 14 percent of the population, Narsinghanand's statement echoes a theme that Hindu racists have used for years to instill fear over the potential of a Muslim-majority India in a country that is 80 percent Hindu.

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One dead as sectarian clashes rock parts of India

International condemnation over BJP member anti-Muslim statements

Islamic misconceptions 

One common misunderstanding is that Muslims have a considerably greater reproductive rate than other communities in India.

According to the most recent National Family Health Survey, the Muslim fertility rate fell the highest among all communities between 2015-16 and 2019-20 and now stands at 2.36, nearly half of the figure of 4.4 from three decades ago.

While this is still the highest fertility rate among all religions in India, the gap with the Hindu fertility rate – 1.94 – is closing. The most recent figures back up results from the Pew Research Center in September, which were based on earlier data.

Read next: Indian mosques, including Taj Majal, targeted by Hindutva extremists

“It’s clear as daylight: the idea that Muslims are going to become India’s biggest community is a total hoax,” says former Indian chief election commissioner SY Quraishi, whose 2021 book, The Population Myth, challenges this notion.

According to Quraishi, fearmongering over the alleged threat to India's Hindu majority has intensified during the last eight years. That period corresponds to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party's reign (BJP). Sadhvi Rithambara, a fiery leader of the BJP-affiliated Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), advised Hindu couples to have four children on the same day Narsinghanand spoke out.

If members of Congress and important media figures in the United States have emphasized the "great replacement theory" that further emboldened extreme right-wingers and white supremacists, members of parliament and television stations in India have mainstreamed the falsehood of a demographic threat to Hindus that has further incited violence against Muslims. 

Read more: Muslims in India and Kashmir face systemic violence: Welcome Ramadan
  • Anti-islam
  • Hindu Extremism
  • Hinduism
  • Islam
  • India

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