India: Amid lockdown, Tablighi Jamaat Muslims of Nizamuddin Markaz mosque act as super-spreaders of coronavirus By Radhika Singh

Jihad Watch : India has been brought to a standstill by a threatening Islamist movement that has aborted all government efforts to contain the contagion, and has taken the deadly virus to masses. An unnerving 3400-strong Muslim congregation at the Nizamuddin Markaz mosque in Delhi defied the lockdown and embarked on an unprecedented bio-war, which you may refer to as Corona Jihad, from India’s capital city.

Timeline of Tablighi Jamaat at Nizamuddin Markaz mosque during the lockdown

On March 16, the Chief Minister (CM) of Delhi sanctioned a ban on mass gatherings by prohibiting religious, social or political assemblies in the capital city. But the Tablighi Jamaat, that by then had already descended upon the Nizamuddin Markaz mosque, decided to stay put.

Days later, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a one-day Janta Curfew, which could be seen as a dry run before the eventual 21-day lockdown. On March 24, Nizamuddin Police asked the Muslims to vacate the Markaz mosque. But thousands of them, defying police orders and the lockdown, refused to leave. Six people who were suspected of being infected with the coronavirus were taken away by authorities and placed in quarantine.

On March, 28, a World Health Organization team visited the Markaz with state officials and quarantined 33 more people. An official communication demanding immediate vacating of the premises was sent to the mosque by the Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) of Lajpat Nagar in Delhi. This was the second notice that had been sent to the Jammat, and was again dishonored by Markaz officials, who argued that their gathering preceded lockdown orders from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).

The following morning, police and health officials reached the venue and forcibly sent members of the religious gathering to quarantine facilities. While being shifted to quarantine facilities in buses, these people were deliberately spitting on officials, so as to infect as many people as possible, thereby capitalizing on the global pandemic and reshaping it into a bio-jihad of sorts.

How These Islamists Acted as super-spreaders of Covid-19

This all started in the second week of March, when guidelines proscribing mass gatherings were already in place, but religious preachers and their followers continued to believe that their “only true God” would protect them. After the Nizamuddin Dargah area of Delhi was sealed off, hundreds of attendees showing symptoms of coronavirus infections were immediately hospitalized, and over thousands quarantined.

Foreign nationals, mostly from Indonesia, who were carrying the virus landed in India to preach Islam, and transmitted the virus to other attendees. Then they went into hiding in mosques across India. Of the thirteen Indonesian Islamic preachers who were taken out of a local mosque in the Southern state of Telangana, ten tested positive for Covid-19. Another group of eight were rounded up by police from a mosque in Bijnor, Uttar Pradesh. Again, ten foreign Muslims were discovered in an Ahmednagar mosque in Maharashtra.

Over 800 non-Indian Tablighi Jamaat members who have traveled to different parts of the country are accused of flouting visa regulations. Confidential US documents released by Wikileaks link the Jamaat to terrorist outfits including Al-Qaeda and Taliban, revealing that their travel is sponsored in great part by terrorist haven Pakistan. A preacher who had attended the gathering traveled to Srinagar, tested positive for Corona-19, and died, leaving the authorities clueless regarding the numerous people he may have crossed paths with and infected.

The Tamil Nadu state government reported that over 1000 people have returned from the capital city, and that many are possibly coronavirus positive. Two Thai nationals in Tamil Nadu have tested positive for Covid-19 after attending the Islamic congregation, and have passed the virus to four family members as well.

The island state of Andaman and Nicobar has registered six positive cases, all Jamaat returnees. Jhadkhand recorded its first coronavirus case after nabbing a Malaysian Covid-19 positive woman, along with eleven other foreign nationals who were hiding in a Ranchi mosque.

Ten coronavirus deaths have already been traced to the Tablighi Jamaat. Over 200 members who had tested positive for Covid-19 and 1500 other attendees have dispersed to different parts of the country on trains and in miscellaneous vehicles, and have returned to crowded towns and remote locations, thereby transmitting the virus to untraceable masses across the length and breadth of India. The contact-tracing of these people to discover how many have been infected by them stands as an elephantine task for government officials.

Though the government has demanded self-revelation from all attendees of the Jamaat, how many will honor the call remains open to speculation. Islamists in India have come out in daunting numbers to express their solidarity with the Jamaat and its doings. That it was a well-planned conspiracy is evident from the mindset exposed by an Infosys employee, Mujib Mohammad, in a contentious Facebook post through which he makes an appeal: “Let’s join hands, go out & sneeze with open mouth in public. Spread the virus.”

After the threatening message by this follower of Islamic preacher Zakir Naik created a massive uproar across social media, Mujib Mohammad was terminated by Infosys and arrested by the City Crime Branch of the Bengaluru Police.

This instance corroborates the fact that whether one is associated with a radical Jamaat or is a degree-holding techie employed by a prestigious IT giant, the core values of Islamists remain rooted in hate and destruction across the spectrum.