JAKARTA: Indonesia and Malaysia have both summoned India’s envoys in their countries over “derogatory” remarks made about the Prophet Muhammad by two officials with the South Asian nation’s ruling party, their foreign ministries said Tuesday.
It comes as anger spreads across the Arab and Muslim world, with various Middle Eastern nations summoning New Delhi’s envoys and a Kuwaiti supermarket removing Indian products.
Remarks by a spokeswoman for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), who has since been suspended, sparked the furor.
Another official, the party’s media chief for Delhi, posted a tweet last week about the Prophet that was later deleted.
Indonesian foreign ministry spokesperson Teuku Faizasyah told AFP that India’s ambassador in Jakarta, Manoj Kumar Bharti, was summoned on Monday, with the government lodging a complaint about anti-Muslim rhetoric.
In a statement posted on Twitter, the ministry said Indonesia — the most populous Muslim-majority country — “strongly condemns unacceptable derogatory remarks” made by “two Indian politicians” against the Prophet Muhammad.
The tweet did not mention the officials by name but was an apparent reference to BJP spokeswoman Nupur Sharma and the party’s Delhi media chief Naveen Jindal, who was expelled from the BJP, according to Indian media reports.
Malaysia also “unreservedly condemns the derogatory remarks” by the Indian politicians, its foreign ministry said in a statement late Tuesday, adding that it had conveyed its “total repudiation” to India’s envoy.
“Malaysia calls upon India to work together in ending the Islamophobia and cease any provocative acts in the interest of peace and stability,” it said.
Modi’s party, which in the past decade has established dominance in India by championing Hindu identity, has frequently been accused of discriminatory policies toward the country’s Muslim minority.
On Sunday, it suspended Sharma for expressing “views contrary to the party’s position” and said it “respects all religions.”
Sharma said on Twitter that her comments had been in response to “insults” made against the Hindu god Shiva.
But the remarks, which stoked protests among Muslims in India, sparked another backlash from Indonesia’s Muslim community.
Sharma’s words were “irresponsible, insensitive, caused inconvenience and hurt the feelings of Muslims worldwide,” Indonesian Ulema Council senior executive Sudarnoto Abdul Hakim said in a statement Monday.
He said the remarks also contradicted the United Nations resolution to combat Islamophobia, which was adopted in March.
Indonesia, Malaysia summon India envoys over ‘derogatory’ Prophet remarks
https://arab.news/c98bp
Indonesia, Malaysia summon India envoys over ‘derogatory’ Prophet remarks
- Remarks by a spokeswoman for India’s ruling party, who has since been suspended, sparked the furor
- Another official, the party’s media chief for Delhi, posted a tweet last week about the Prophet that was later deleted
Nigeria signals more strikes likely in ‘joint’ US operations
- Nigeria on Friday signalled more strikes against jihadist groups were expected after a Christmas Day bombardment by US forces against militants in the north of the country
LAGOS: Nigeria on Friday signalled more strikes against jihadist groups were expected after a Christmas Day bombardment by US forces against militants in the north of the country.
The west African country faces multiple interlinked security crises in its north, where jihadists have been waging an insurgency in the northeast since 2009 and armed “bandit” gangs raid villages and stage kidnappings in the northwest.
The US strikes come after Abuja and Washington were locked in a diplomatic dispute over what Trump characterised as the mass killing of Christians amid Nigeria’s myriad armed conflicts.
Washington’s framing of the violence as amounting to Christian “persecution” is rejected by the Nigerian government and independent analysts, but has nonetheless resulted in increased security coordination.
“It’s Nigeria that provided the intelligence,” the country’s foreign minister, Yusuf Tuggar, told broadcaster Channels TV, saying he was on the phone with US State Secretary Marco Rubio ahead of the bombardment.
Asked if there would be more strikes, Tuggar said: “It is an ongoing thing, and we are working with the US. We are working with other countries as well.”
Targets unclear
The Department of Defense’s US Africa Command, using an acronym for the Daesh group, said “multiple Daesh terrorists” were killed in an attack in the northwestern state of Sokoto.
US defense officials later posted video of what appeared to be the nighttime launch of a missile from the deck of a battleship flying the US flag.
Which of Nigeria’s myriad armed groups were targeted remains unclear.
Nigeria’s jihadist groups are mostly concentrated in the northeast of the country, but have made inroads into the northwest.
Researchers have recently linked some members from an armed group known as Lakurawa — the main jihadist group located in Sokoto State — to Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP), which is mostly active in neighboring Niger and Mali.
Other analysts have disputed those links, though research on Lakurawa is complicated as the term has been used to describe various armed fighters in the northwest.
Those described as Lakurawa also reportedly have links to Al-Qaeda affiliated group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), a rival group to ISSP.
While Abuja has welcomed the strikes, “I think Trump would not have accepted a ‘No’ from Nigeria,” said Malik Samuel, an Abuja-based researcher for Good Governance Africa, an NGO.
Amid the diplomatic pressure, Nigerian authorities are keen to be seen as cooperating with the US, Samuel told AFP, even though “both the perpetrators and the victims in the northwest are overwhelmingly Muslim.”
Tuggar said that Nigerian President Bola Tinubu “gave the go-ahead” for the strikes.
The foreign minister added: “It must be made clear that it is a joint operation, and it is not targeting any religion nor simply in the name of one religion or the other.”
