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Coronavirus pandemic
This Week in AsiaHealth & Environment

Coronavirus outbreak at Muslim group Tablighi Jamaat in Delhi spurs Islamophobia in India

  • The missionary group linked to an outbreak at Malaysia’s Sri Petaling mosque complex in February, has been criticised for holding an event in New Delhi
  • This has snowballed into anger against Muslims in India, with social media posts suggesting they were the main carriers of Covid-19

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Indian paramedics facilitate the transport of Muslims to a quarantine facility, after several people who attended an Islamic congregation earlier this month in the Nizamuddin area of New Delhi tested positive for Covid-19. Photo: AP
Sonia Sarkar
Hafiza Sheikh, a homemaker in Greater Noida in India’s Uttar Pradesh state, was suddenly flooded with anti-Muslim messages on social media on Tuesday morning. Some of these called Muslims “illiterate” while others labelled them as “carriers” of the coronavirus infection.
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Confused about the reason for these Islamophobic messages, she checked a news site and found out that 24 Muslims who recently attended an event organised by missionary group Tablighi Jamaat had tested positive in New Delhi.

“The entire community became the target of right-wing propaganda machinery,” Sheikh said. “Just once again.”

Muslim pilgrims wait in bus that will take them to a quarantine facility from the Nizamuddin area of New Delhi, India. Photo: AP
Muslim pilgrims wait in bus that will take them to a quarantine facility from the Nizamuddin area of New Delhi, India. Photo: AP

Social media users expressed anger at the organisation for holding an event in early March as the coronavirus pandemic was already raging across the world. A similar gathering by the same group in Malaysia’s Sri Petaling mosque complex in February, with 16,000 attendees, resulted in hundreds of infections across Southeast Asia.

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The government has declared New Delhi’s Nizamuddin area, a neighbourhood of narrow, winding lanes where Tablighi Jamaat has its international headquarters, as one of the country’s 10 coronavirus “hotspots”.

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