AZAMGRAH, India: At their usual evening gathering, six retired Muslim academics outdo each other with gloomy predictions if Narendra Modi is re-elected prime minister in India’s polls ending Sunday.
“We are one step away from being turned into second-class citizens,” Mohiuddin Azad told AFP in Azamgarh, a northern city long associated with Islamic scholars and poets.
“If Modi again comes to power we are doomed,” said the retired Arabic professor from Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state.
“The first term was a dry run for the BJP. Once they return to power they will put their long pending agenda into action,” echoed Hassan Khalid Azmi, a former chemistry professor.
Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) owes its origins to Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a militaristic group that has long espoused “Hindutva,” or Hindu hegemony, and making India an exclusively Hindu state.
India, however, is also home to 170 million Muslims, the world’s second-largest Muslim population, in the Hindu-majority but officially secular nation of 1.3 billion.
Since Modi stormed to power in 2014, many Muslims feel under threat.
Several cities with names rooted in India’s Islamic Mughul past have been re-named, while some school textbooks have been changed to downplay Muslims’ contributions to India.
A string of lynchings of Muslims by Hindu mobs over so-called cow protection — a sacred animal for many Hindus — and other hate crimes has sown fear and despair in the community.
There has never been much appetite among Muslims for their own political party, with many feeling that the existing parties can represent them. But this is changing.
In the outgoing parliament there are 24 Muslim MPs out of 545, none of them from the BJP, down from a peak of 49 in the early 1980s and the lowest since independence in 1947.
Modi’s BJP has fielded seven Muslim candidates in the current election — the same as 2014 when none won — while the main opposition Congress led by Rahul Gandhi has 30.
In Uttar Pradesh state polls in 2017, the BJP did not field a single Muslim candidate despite one in five of the state’s 200 million people being Muslims.
The state’s chief minister is Yogi Adityanath, a firebrand Hindu monk from Modi’s party notorious for his anti-Muslim rhetoric and touted by some as a possible future prime minister.
And it’s not just the BJP.
Critics say that Congress and other parties have also shifted to a “soft Hindutva” for fear of losing support from the majority Hindu population, seeing Muslims as an electoral liability.
Gandhi has made a point of visiting Hindu temples during the current election campaign, stressing his devout beliefs.
The Muslim community’s problems have been compounded by a lack of a strong and independent leadership.
“Since independence Muslims never had a leader,” said Asaduddin Owaisi, probably India’s best-known Muslim MP, the head and only MP for his All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen party.
The main parties, he told AFP at his home in Delhi, do not allow Muslims to rise through the ranks, something that is worrying for the future of Indian democracy.
“Indian democracy’s success is based on participation democracy and not majoritarian democracy,” Owaisi said.
Sarvar Ahmad, an Islamic cleric from Azamgarh, said that the political marginalization has happened gradually under successive governments.
“We have been labelled as baby makers, terrorists, parasites and unpatriotic under various dispensations in independent India,” Ahmad told AFP.
Azamgarh, home to 450,000 people — 15 percent of them Muslims — is a special place for Muslims and its Shibli College has long been a pioneer in Muslim education.
But the region earned notoriety in the late 2000s for being the epicenter of a network of alleged Muslim militants allegedly behind a series of deadly blasts across the country.
According to Rizwan Ashraf, a student, this was a big factor in exacerbating divisions between Azamgarh’s communities, who for centuries lived mostly in harmony.
“Our political space automatically shrunk. Who would vote or ally with Muslims when they are portrayed as violent and terrorists?,” he said.
But over the past five years of BJP rule, these narratives have been shriller.
“Being a Muslim in India is like a scandal. Everyone wants to stay away from us,” he said.
Anxious Indian Muslims fear Modi 2.0
Anxious Indian Muslims fear Modi 2.0
- “If Modi again comes to power we are doomed,” said a Muslim academic
- Since Modi stormed to power in 2014, many Muslims feel under threat
Trump is threatening to block a new bridge between Detroit and Canada from opening
- Trump’s threat comes as the relationship between the US and Canada increasingly sours during the US president’s second term
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump on Monday threatened to block the opening of a new Canadian-built bridge across the Detroit River, demanding that Canada turn over at least half of the ownership of the bridge and agree to other unspecified demands in his latest salvo over cross-border trade issues.
“We will start negotiations, IMMEDIATELY. With all that we have given them, we should own, perhaps, at least one half of this asset,” Trump said in a lengthy social media post, complaining that the United States would get nothing from the bridge and that Canada did not use US steel to built it.
The Gordie Howe International Bridge, named after a Canadian hockey star who played for the Detroit Red Wings for 25 seasons, had been expected to open in early 2026, according to information on the project’s website. The project was negotiated by former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder — a Republican — and paid for by the Canadian government to help ease congestion over the existing Ambassador Bridge and Detroit-Windsor tunnel. Work has been underway since 2018.
It’s unclear how Trump would seek to block the bridge from being opened, and the White House did not immediately return a request for comment on more details. The Canadian Embassy in Washington also did not immediately return a request for comment.
Trump’s threat comes as the relationship between the US and Canada increasingly sours during the US president’s second term. The United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement is up for review this year, and Trump has been taking a hard-line position ahead of those talks, including by issuing new tariff threats.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, meanwhile, has spoken out on the world stage against economic coercion by the United States.
Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Michigan, said the Canadian-funded project is a “huge boon” to her state and its economic future. “You’ll be able to move cargo from Montreal to Miami without ever stopping at a street light,” Slotkin told The Associated Press.
“So to shoot yourself in the foot and threaten the Gordie Howe Bridge means that this guy has completely lost the plot on what’s good for us versus just what’s spite against the Canadians,” Slotkin said.
Michigan, a swing state that Trump carried in both 2016 and 2024, has so far largely avoided the brunt of his second-term crackdown, which has targeted blue states with aggressive immigration raids and cuts to federal funding for major infrastructure projects.
Trump and Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer have also maintained an unusually cordial relationship, with the president publicly praising her during an Oval Office appearance last April. The two also shared a hug last year ahead of Trump’s announcement of a new fighter jet mission for an Air National Guard base in Michigan.
While Canada paid for the project, the bridge will be operated under a joint ownership agreement between Michigan and Canada, said Stacey LaRouche, press secretary to Whitmer.
“This is the busiest trade crossing in North America,” LaRouche said, saying the bridge was “good for Michigan workers and it’s good for Michigan’s auto industry” as well as being a good example of bipartisan and international cooperation.
“It’s going to open one way or another, and the governor looks forward to attending the ribbon-cutting,” LaRouche said.
Rep. Shri Thanedar, the Democratic House representative of Detroit, said blocking the bridge would be “crazy” and said Trump’s attacks on Canada weren’t good for business or jobs. “The bridge is going to help Michigan’s economy. There’s so much commerce between Michigan and Canada. They’re one of our biggest partners,” Thanedar said.
Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell of Ann Arbor brushed aside the president’s threat, saying she’s looking forward to the bridge’s opening later in the spring. “And I’ll be there,” Dingell said.
“That bridge is the biggest crossing in this country on the northern border. It’s jobs. It’s about protecting our economy. It was built with union jobs on both sides,” said Dingell. “It’s going to open. Canada is our ally.”
