The Chief Minister of Kerala, Sri. Pinarayi Vijayan said, ‘Coronavirus won’t look at a person’s religion’ while addressing the state in his press meet. The CM stressed his point by saying that it is not the time to initiate a communal mission but it is the time to tackle the spread of the virus with unity.
While the deadly Covid-19 is spreading enough terror among the people, the social media communalists join the party with social media doctors and professors in order to spread fake news. Soon after Nizamuddin in Delhi, was reported as one of the hotspots in India from where the virus was spread to more people, Islamophobia has also been on the rise. Days before India went into a 21-day lockdown, a congregation of the Tablighi Jamaat took place in Bangalewaali Masjid. Jamaatis from across India as well as abroad took part in the congregation, and the latter may be the carriers of the virus and they might have spread it around the Markaz during the event. Many who had attended, soon started displaying COVID-19 symptoms, which led to the flow of Islamophobia contents over social media. Umpteen number of social media forwards and retweets led to blaming the Muslim community as the prime spreaders of the virus in India.
The rising number of cases among people linked with the congregation and their primary and secondary contacts had fueled the increase in the number of fake news as well as the anti-muslim propaganda in India. Religious tensions related to anti-CAA protests were already at its highest peak in India and with the fear in the minds of the people about the spreading coronavirus, it didn’t take so much time for both to intersect and to link Islamophobia to the spread of coronavirus. As the cases began to hike, a number of hashtags including, #CORONAJIHAD and #Nizamuddinidiots, began to trend on Twitter and other social media platforms. Videos that claim members of the missionary group are trying to spread the virus through unlawful methods went viral in social media within no time. Some of the videos were showing Muslims spitting on the Police, rubbing saliva on the fruits and so on. This led to worsening the already inhospitable situation of Muslims in India.
One of the most popular tweets with the hashtag, #CORONAJIHAD, shows a man from the congregation coughing on somebody intentionally. But the video was found to be filmed in Thailand, not in India and there was no proof that the man attended the congregation. Twitter removed a caricature cartoon tweet that had more than 2,000 retweets due to violating Twitter’s rules in which a caricatured Muslim man labeled ‘Corona Jihad’ and a Hindu man appeared. In this removed tweet, the caricature Muslim man is trying to push the Hindu man off a cliff. The extreme rightists are using the Coronavirus too as a weapon to target the Muslim population. After Love Jihad and Population Jihad, Corona Jihad is now trending everywhere in social media and it is the most outrageous one too.
The impact of the virus can increase many folds when it is linked with hate speech. The Chief Minister of Kerala, Sri. Pinarayi Vijayan said, ‘Coronavirus won’t look at a person’s religion’ while addressing the state in his press meet. The CM stressed his point by saying that it is not the time to initiate a communal mission but it is the time to tackle the spread of the virus with unity. Kerala has been at the forefront of the fight against Covid-19 with the state’s powerful measures to control the spread of the virus so as to flatten the curve. Initiating hate speech on social media platforms or in public spheres would only lead to the creation of a misinformed society, which is more perilous than the deadly virus.
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