[jeswin]

Here's what happened:

- Nupur Sharma, spokesperson of the governing party (BJP) mocks Prophet Mohammed on National TV saying that he had sex with a 9 year old. She then justifies it saying she was quoting the Hadith (Islamic religious texts).

- ZooBear on Twitter brings attention to the issue, via his channel AltNews

- India gets international condemnation, Gulf countries are pissed

- India apologizes to various Gulf countries and calls Nupur Sharma a "fringe element"

- Muslims in India are still very, very angry. There are widespread calls to behead Nupur Sharma.

- Two people get murdered (one beheaded and the video streamed) for supporting Nupur Sharma on Social Media

- Now it's Hindus' turn to be pissed; they want ZooBear arrested (using whatever laws they can find)

- They dig up ZooBear's own old social media posts, file cases against him using blasphemy laws, and he gets arrested

- The govt is pissed too; so they try to lock ZooBear up under various laws, such as laws pertaining to how international donations need to be accounted

- The police ask RazorPay to hand over a list of people who have donated to AltNews, under Section 91 of the Code Of Criminal Procedure

- They comply.

[arcticfox]

Holy cow. Thanks for the context.

> - Two people get murdered (one beheaded and the video streamed) for supporting Nupur Sharma on Social Media

JFC, humans suck.

Also interesting after looking into it is that ZooBear has tweet after tweet mocking Hinduism, yet takes extreme offense at someone mocking Islam and seems to consider it hate speech.

[rootkea]

> ZooBear has tweet after tweet mocking Hinduism

Absolutely false. Can you share one?

[snambi]

There were plenty. But I think they were deleted now.

[throwaway_1928]

Here are some of them:

https://www.opindia.com/2022/06/netizens-dig-up-old-posts-al...

https://www.opindia.com/2022/06/alt-news-mohammed-zubair-del...

[Clubber]

Whenever I think US politics have gone off the rails, it's perhaps comforting to see other countries are way worse.

[mrguyorama]

Except this kind of system (significant nepotism, open corruption, a government that people mostly don't have faith in, strongly charged with religious fervor and rhetoric) Is pretty much exactly what the more aggressive parts of the American Right are literally trying to make happen.

Oh, and they are succeeding spectacularly.

[throwaway_1928]

Not entirely true.

- TV debates in India are charged and partisan.

- Nupur Sharma was debating a man named Tasneem Rehmani.

- Tasleem Rehmani said something denigrating towards a Hindu God (which is normal and typically goes unpunished and even unnoticed in India).

- Nupur Sharma countered him by saying "Do not mock my religion. Do you want me to start talking about flying horses or the fact that your Prophet married a girl at age 6 and consummated the marriage at age 9?"

- Various Islamic scholars have themselves said exactly what Nupur Sharma said. She was merely quoting their own texts in a debate.

- Debate goes on and ends. Nothing happens for days.

- Self-proclaimed 'fact checker' (not a journalist, according to himself) Mohammed Zubair edits this debate clip, removes the provocation by Tasneem Rehmani, only showing Nupur Sharma 'insulting' this religious Prophet.

- Zubair then distributes this clip across social media and various Islamic Whatsapp groups.

- In India, free speech is not absolute. Saying and doing things to create enmity between religious groups is a crime.

- The fact that what Nupur Sharma says is factual and simply a response to what Tasneem Rehmani said, becomes irrelevant.

- Many Muslims in India, millions of whom study in Islamic seminaries (madrasas), are whipped into a frenzy and behead multiple people with the slogan 'Sar Tan Se Juda' (meaning they will separate heads from bodies, in the ISIS style).

- Police and agencies arrest this 'fact checker' Zubair and are looking into his funding. This is where the RazorPay data comes in.

- Prior to his arrest, he deletes several of his social media posts and tweets mocking Hindu Gods.

- Various organizations like the BBC, New York Times, Al Jazeera as well as India's left leaning publications decry Zubair's arrest as an 'attack on democracy'.

[rootkea]

> Tasleem Rehmani said something denigrating towards a Hindu God

I watched that entire debate and he didn't say anything degrading towards Hindu Gods.

Here's the context- Hindu RW claimed a fountain in Gyanvapi mosque (situated in Kashi) as Shivalinga (God Shiva's phallus)[0] which is a part of larger campaign of claiming Muslims mosques as Hindu temples by RSS/BJP. Started with demolition of Babri mosque (situated in Ayodhya) in 1992.[1] The war-cry of the time was "Ayodhya to zaki hai. Kashi Mathura baki hai" (Ayodhya is just a trailer. Kashi and Mathura are remaining)

Many Indians (majorly we secular Hindus) made fun of communal Hindus for claiming anything shaped like a phallus to be a "Shivalinga". I myself shared how in 1990s Hindus in San Fransisco started worshiping traffic barricade as "Shivalinga".[2]

[0] https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/hindu-group-recognise...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demolition_of_the_Babri_Masjid

[2] https://www.freepressjournal.in/viral/san-francisco-people-w...

[throwaway_1928]

> Many Indians (majorly we secular Hindus) made fun of communal Hindus for claiming anything shaped like a phallus to be a "Shivalinga". I myself shared how in 1990s Hindus in San Fransisco started worshiping traffic barricade as "Shivalinga".

I will offer you a rhetorical choice. Either we agree on free speech: that you or Tasneem Rehmani or anyone else is allowed to publicly mock Hinduism by saying things like you just did: "Hindu Gods are phallic in shape" etc. and in return Hindus are allowed to mock your favorite religion or way of life in any way. Or we agree instead on no free speech: that neither anyone can mock Hindus in any way nor can Hindus mock others (as is enforced by HR departments in companies). Either way, we will make it a level playing field.

I say this choice is rhetorical because this choice does not really exist.

In reality, if Hindus are mocked, violence is rare. Hindus have no text or decree saying that if they are insulted they must engage in violence. In the rare cases there is violence, it is not due to mockery but in response to extreme acts of violence. And even so, there are groups within Hindus who will hold them to account. One oft cited example by people like you in the context of Modi are the 2002 Gujarat riots where Hindus retaliated on the streets after 59 Hindus were burned alive by a Muslim mob in a train compartment. For 20 years, every left-leaning Indian and Western publication, the usual suspects, likened him to 'fascist hitler', even though he has been exonerated at every level of court in India, including in the final appeal by the Supreme Court recently [1].

However, if Islam is mocked or even questioned, there will be threats, intimidation, violence. The Nupur Sharma case is not the first and will not be the last. As examples, see cases of Salman Rushdie [2], Ayaan Hirsi Ali [3], Geert Wilders [4], Samuel Paty [5], Charlie Hebdo [6], Mila [7], Asia Bibi [8], Salman Taseer [9], Taslima Nasrin [10] and countless more.

You are well aware of this double standard. You openly mock Hindu Gods because you are pretty certain nobody will hunt you down and kill you. You do not ever publicly mock or criticize the Islamic faith because you know you do not enjoy that same guarantee.

Winston Churchill summarized this quite well: "While the Hindu elaborates his argument, the Moslem sharpens his sword.".

I believe this double standard must change. Hindus must learn from Israel in this regard. If you hurt the Jewish people in any way, they will hurt you back. You are a 100 year old ex-Nazi in Argentina? Does not matter, the Mossad is on its way. You express an anti-Semitic opinion somewhere? You will never find meaningful work again.

> Here's the context- Hindu RW claimed a fountain in Gyanvapi mosque (situated in Kashi) as Shivalinga (God Shiva's phallus)[0] which is a part of larger campaign of claiming Muslims mosques as Hindu temples by RSS/BJP. Started with demolition of Babri mosque (situated in Ayodhya) in 1992.[1] The war-cry of the time was "Ayodhya to zaki hai. Kashi Mathura baki hai" (Ayodhya is just a trailer. Kashi and Mathura are remaining)

Simply put, you seem to be unaware of the fact that Islamic invaders destroyed places of worship wherever they went as a sign of religious conquest. In India, several waves of Islamic hordes over time destroyed tens of thousands of temples in addition to libraries and other cultural centers. The ones you list are some of the most prominent and sacred to Hindus. Islamic historians bragged about this in their own chronicles.

Upon gaining independence, any self respecting country would have restored all landmarks: city names, places of worship etc. tainted by signs of conquest to their original form. But for reasons I will not discuss here, India did not do so. Hindus must therefore fight these battles in court.

Hindus and India aside, see the cases of Hagia Sophia, converted from a church to a mosque in 1453 after the Islamic conquest of Constantinople, "the cradle of Orthodox Christian civilization"; and the Al-Aqsa mosque built at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem following Islamic conquest there. There are several other cases [11].

Samuel Huntington wrote: "Violence also occurs between Muslims, on the one hand, and Orthodox Serbs in the Balkans, Jews in Israel, Hindus in India, Buddhists in Burma and Catholics in the Philippines. Islam has bloody borders."

Just because you lack even the most basic knowledge of Indian history (due to no fault of your own; just the way it was taught or not taught to you), it does not make everything a 'Hindu RW' conspiracy.

[1] https://www.sundayguardianlive.com/news/supreme-court-reaffi...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Satanic_Verses_controversy

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayaan_Hirsi_Ali#Al-Qaeda_hit_l...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geert_Wilders#Death_threats

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Samuel_Paty

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Hebdo_shooting

[7] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/french-teenager-in-hiding...

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asia_Bibi_blasphemy_case

[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salman_Taseer#Assassination

[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taslima_Nasrin

[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_of_non-Islamic_plac...

[unmole]

> Islamic Whatsapp groups.

> Prior to his arrest, he deletes several of his social media posts and tweets mocking Hindu Gods.

You're literally peddling IT cell propaganda.

[alex_smart]

https://socialblade.com/twitter/user/zoo_bear

This website shows 99 deleted tweets between 26th and 27th June.

[MrBlueIncognito]

TL;DR two extremists make offensive statements on television, journalist tweeting a segment from it to bring it to public attention gets arrested.

You may argue that Mohammed Zubair is somehow an evil cynical person who wants to watch the world burn, but the fact is that tweeting a segment from national television is not a criminal offence and should not be treated as such.

> which is normal and typically goes unpunished and even unnoticed in India.

Kudos for living in an alternate dimension!

[boruto]

Well he was not arrested for it.

If he had stuck to doing what he did I guess no one would go after him.

He had caused diplomatic issues and bayed for nupurs head. It would do well to remember what a minority ABV gov did to tehelka and promotors. Guess that is what Modi gov is trying here.

[ImPostingOnHN]

Nupur caused the diplomatic issues with her comments, as the counterparty countries with the actual issues clearly articulated to both India and the world, in response to said comments.