The West’s hypocrisy is glaring, where Islamists are romanticised as ‘activists’ and ‘fighters’ while Hindu victims of Muslim intolerance and violence are dismissed as footnotes in a “regional pattern”.
In a horrific incident, Dipu Chandra Das, a Hindu garment factory worker in his thirties, was brutally lynched by an Islamic mob in Mymensingh, Bangladesh. Dipu Das was first beaten to death, then his body was tied to a tree, and set ablaze in full public view by a Muslim mob on 18th December over the allegations of blasphemy. The Western media, ever dextrous in pushing the Muslim victimhood bogey, maintained a deafening silence on Das’s killing. No front-page outrage from CNN, no urgent dispatches from Washington Post, no alarm-raising by The Guardian. Days after ignoring the incident like it never happened, The New York Times finally reported on the brutal lynching of Dipu Chandra Das.
Muslim mob killed Hindu man in a rapidly Islamising Bangladesh, but NYT finds entire South Asia to blame, refuses to name the Islamic mob that killed Dipu Chandra Das
The acknowledgement, however, was not without framing it as an incident of some sort of abstract intolerance and a part of a “broader pattern of intolerance in South Asia.” The headline of the NYT report itself is quite revealing of the newspaper’s agenda of using the Bangladeshi Hindu man’s lynching for making a broader statement that somehow religious intolerance is not a Muslim-exclusive phenomenon, but the entire South Asian region is grappling with it, and Muslims too are victims of it.
Notably, Dipu Chandra Das’s alleged comment that all religions contain superstitions, during a discussion with co-workers about Muslims fixating on Friday (Jummah), somehow enraged the Islamist co-workers who accused him of insulting the Islamic prophet, Muhammad.
In the article headlined “Lynching of a Hindu in Bangladesh Fans Fears of Rising Intolerance”, the NYT reported this atrocity, however, the framing of the horrific incident by reporters Shafi Hasnat and Mujib Mashal, evidently intended to dilute the Hindu man’s brutal killing by Muslims and integrating it within “a wider pattern of religious intolerance in the South Asia region.”
The article tries to claim the entire ‘South Asian region’ as dysfunctional when it comes to religious tolerance, and that all parties, be it Muslims, Hindus or other religious groups, are equally intolerant of each other and brutal lynchings, as that of Dipu Chandra Das, happen with Muslims too in India.
The New York Times article says that “…the brutal nature of the killing, amid a wave of riots and mob violence, has raised alarms about the tense leadership vacuum that has persisted in Bangladesh since its authoritarian prime minister was toppled in student-led protests last year.”
Very shrewdly, the NYT reporters mentioned facts of the brutal lynching of the Bangladeshi Hindu man, to maintain a balance, while blaming everything–leadership vacuum, exploitation of chaos by ‘extremist forces’ for political gains ahead of elections, and rumours of insult to Islam, but not the actual, factual and persistent cause of the Islamist onslaught against Hindus.
Islamists are intolerant of the mere presence of Hindus, their temples and culture; they are intolerant of the fact that a Hindu, a Kafir, reportedly dared to even speak about Islamic superstitions. Political instability, blasphemy rumours and other circumstantial aspects are mere excuses, not causes, of the Islamist persecution of Hindus.
The NYT’s wordplay is a sample of its bias here. A Hindu man got brutally lynched, and the Islamist mob that killed him gleefully chanted Islamic slogans while torching his body and enjoying the spectacle. Buy for NYT, the incident is not the highlight, the perpetrators who did it are not even named, but their priority is that ‘fears of rising intolerance are being fanned’. It almost reads as if the Hindu man got lynched on his own, and the incident just fanned the fears of rising intolerance automatically. The Islamic mob that carried out the brutal act has nothing to do with it.
The New York Times dragged India into its report about the brutal killing of a Bangladeshi Hindu: The insidious monkey balancing
The NYT dragged India into the scene, and claimed, “The threats to Hindus in Bangladesh have drawn widespread concern in India, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has repeatedly voiced alarm. But they are the latest in a wider pattern of religious intolerance in the South Asia region.”
The NYT claimed that ‘Hindu vigilantes’ target Muslims over accusations of carrying cow meat, or suspected Bangladeshi Muslim infiltrators. The newspaper, however, did not make any mention of the brutal killing of Kanhaiyalal by Islamic jihadis; it does not find the incidents of Sar Tan Se Juda and Allahu Akbar slogan-raising Muslim mobs attacking Hindus on Holi, Diwali, Ram Navami and other festivals or for celebrating cricket match victories, as cases fit for mention under ‘rising religious intolerance’.
Earlier this month, a Muslim man named Sarfaraz and nine other Islamists were found guilty of brutally of murdering a Hindu youth named Ram Gopal Mishra last year for removing an Islamic flag and installing a saffron flag. Sarfaraz was sentenced to death, while others were awarded a life sentence. Mishra was dragged by Islamists, shot at close range, his body was riddled with 40 bullet wounds, and his toes were burnt. Still, the NYT did not mention this case or say that Hindus are being attacked for their religious identity only in Bangladesh and Pakistan, but also in India. (Courtesy: OpIndia.com)
