What Can Masjids Do to Save India
Masjid is a home for Muslims; that is where Muslims are. That is power. Masjids must educate Muslims, organize, and influence their elected leaders about India.
In a Hindu Religious Parliament in December 2021, Hindu religious leaders openly declared that they want to exterminate Muslims on the model of Burma genocide of Rohingya Muslims, by killing 2 million Muslims, so the rest of the 200 million will be forced to leave the country; they then announced a 10 million Rupee reward for suicide bombers to achieve this goal.
Saving India from Fascism is critical and urgent for the world. It cannot be just relegated to Indian Muslims. India has the second largest Muslim population in the world. The first Masjid in India was built three years before the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم passed away, Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him.
Hindutva extremists have been building power for years. RSS-BJP came to power by installing Modi, the butcher of Gujarat, on the heels of the Babri Masjid demolition. That is the reason Modi was banned from entering the USA for ten years.
RSS took years organizing to taking India down this path. Muslim Americans will not be able to make a difference immediately. But Muslim Americans have helped stop genocide in Bosnia. We have helped declared rape as a war crime and the US, despite the Muslim Ban, has helped Rohingya Muslims with 1.3 billion dollars of our tax money. All of that happened because Masjids and Muslims responded to the united efforts led by Bosnia Task Force and Burma Task Force where Justice For All was born.
Allah controls the world, we don’t, but we will be asked what we did once we learned about it.
So let’s learn, educate, organize, and influence
-
Educate first:
- Khutbah is a time when the largest number of people are most attentive. Alhamdu lillah. We can provide you with multiple sample khutbahs for you to choose from
- Include Indian Muslims in your duas
- Organize a webinar for your masjid, we will provide the speaker if you need one, or we can also train
- Publish articles in your masjid newsletter? We can provide you with many
- Does your website have a space on Ummah issues? You should. We can provide you information on Indian Muslims, Palestine, Kashmir, Uyghur Muslims, Rohingya Muslims. Just let us know how many pages.
- Do you need brochures on these issues to educate? We can provide you with those brochures.
- Exhibit on India: We can lend you an exhibit on India which you can host in your masjid or even work with your library or city hall for display
- We can provide you a list of books on India which you can ask your local library to acquire, so a balance perspective is available to your community
-
Organize:
- Does your masjid have a committee to focus on Ummah issues? If not, form one. We can provide you with a sample plan and action items for them. Maybe you can call it Ummah Committee
- If you decide not to have a committee, announce the need for volunteers after khutba on this topic. We can provide you a volunteer sign-up sheet and we will take it from there.
-
Connect with Your Neighboring Churches:
- Most churches are quite supportive of missions around the world. They give $24 billion a year for their missions. Developments in India targeting 30 million Christians lives is going to be of serious concern for them. For that reason, we believe your relationship with neighboring churches needs to strengthen
- We have a briefing available for what churches can do to Save India from Fascism. If your relationship reaches a level of understanding you can share it with them. Or at least use the talking points
- We can help arrange Christian leaders, Evangelical Christian leaders and Indian Christian leaders to address their audience
-
Brief Your Elected Leaders:
- Indian government has neither condemned nor arrested the Hindu religious leaders who in their religious parliament gave open calls for genocide of Muslims. The US government is silent as well. International pressure is going to be critical for the survival of Indian minorities, especially Muslims.
- A religious freedom commission of the US Government called USCIRF has been calling for the State Department to declare India as a country of particular concern (CPC) for the past two years. They have requested sanctions against those people who are committing violence against religious minorities. It is a bi-partisan commission which has both Republicans and Democrats.
- The pressure in a democracy can come only through citizens pursuing their elected leaders for our country to do the right thing. It has been done by Muslims in America successfully and it can be done again.
- When was the last time your elected leaders visited your masjid? Please organize that. It is good for your empowerment and helpful for the ummah.
- Seek an appointment with elected leaders, at all levels of government as HIndutva is alive and well in the United States as well. They give top priority to donors, then to organizations in their constituency and then to their voters. We can assist you in seeking appointments, in developing memos, and provide talking points for you. Coordinate with us through email at SaveIndia@JusticeForAll.org
- If possible, make it a joint delegation of your masjid and the church.
- Do you have a civic engagement committee? If not please establish one. We can guide you.
- SIGN UP FOR ADVOCACY MEETINGS
- Contact us at SaveIndia@JusticeForAll.org if you need any material, have a suggestion or would like us to assist you in any way.
About Justice For All
An NGO with Consultative Status at the United Nations (DPI), Justice for All is an Illinois registered nonprofit organization based in Chicago, with staff in Washington DC, New York, Boston, Houston, Toronto, and Ottawa. The organization, which was incorporated in 1999, grew out of advocacy efforts on the human rights abuses experienced in Bosnia and later Kosovo during the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. At that time, it was instrumental in shaping the discourse around the ‘genocide’ debate and campaigned to declare rape as a war crime in international law. 27 E. Monroe St. #700, Chicago, IL 60603 • (312) 750-1178 • SaveIndia@JusticeForAll.org KashmirAction.org • SaveUyghur.org • BurmaTaskForce • StopGenocide.org • FaithCoalition.org