Delhi Muslims pray under armed guard

Muslims in India’s capital held regular Friday prayers under the watch of riot police, capping a week which saw 42 killed and hundreds injured during the city’s worst riots in decades.

Scores of mosques in New Delhi’s northeast held their first sermons since mobs armed with swords, guns and acid razed parts of the district on Monday.

The violence was triggered by protests against a citizenship law seen by many critics as anti-Muslim and part of prime minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist agenda.

Paramilitary police patrolled the streets outside, still littered with broken shards of glass, stones and other debris.

Dozens of volunteers stood outside the main mosque in the neighbourhood of Mustafabad, home to some of the week’s worst violence, urging devotees to disperse immediately after prayers.

‘These are testing times. We have to be patient,’ said the presiding imam, after calling on his congregation to stay calm.

Fear and tension were rampant through the neighbourhood, with police barring Muslim worshippers from what was left of one of several mosques set ablaze by Hindu rioters on Monday.

Nearby, a group of residents in the Hindu-dominated Shiv Vihar area blocked the lane leading to one of the local mosques with the burnt-out frames of motorcycles, which they said were set alight by Muslims.

‘No one will be allowed to enter until the rioters are caught,’ they shouted at a crowd of Muslims seeking entry.

‘We don’t want violence,’ said Saleem Mirza, as police told the Muslims to disperse to avoid any fresh trouble.

‘We want to live in peace, work for our children and live a normal life. We prayed for peace for everyone today.’

India’s new citizenship law has triggered months of demonstrations between anti-government demonstrators and police. At least 30 people died in protest violence last year, mainly in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.

Many of the country’s 200 million-strong Muslim minority fear the law — combined with a mooted citizens’ register — will leave them stateless.

Modi has sought to allay the fears but in recent weeks politicians from the prime minister’s right-wing party have called the demonstrators ‘anti-nationals’ and ‘traitors’.

Meanwhile, the United States on Thursday urged India to respect the right to peaceful assembly and called on all sides to refrain from violence after sectarian riots in Delhi.

In a cautious statement, the top US diplomat for South Asia sought to show little distance with prime minister Narendra Modi, who was welcoming president Donald Trump on a visit when the violence erupted.

‘We echo (Modi’s) call for calm and normalcy and urge all parties to maintain peace, refrain from violence and respect the right of peaceful assembly,’ assistant secretary of state Alice Wells wrote on Twitter.

Trump declined comment when asked at a news conference in New Delhi about the violence, saying the issue was ‘up to India’ and hailing Modi’s ‘incredible’ statements to him on religious freedom.

Bernie Sanders, the Democratic front-runner seeking to challenge Trump in November elections, denounced Trump’s response to the ‘widespread anti-Muslim mob violence.’

‘Trump responds by saying, ‘That’s up to India.’ That is a failure of leadership on human rights,’ Sanders tweeted.

Robert Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, denounced the violence as ‘shocking’ and called for all countries to condemn it.

‘I urge Indian authorities to step in and defend the communities being targeted in Delhi to prevent the violence from escalating further,’ Menendez said in a statement.

‘As the world’s largest democracy, the Indian government must do more to defend all of its citizens’ rights, including the right to peaceful protest.’

India has seen mass protests after Modi’s Hindu nationalist government pushed forward a controversial citizenship law, which critics say excludes Muslims in the officially secular nation.

Witnesses said that Delhi police initially did little to intervene as mobs fought running battles, with groups armed with swords and guns setting fire to thousands of properties and vehicles.

India and the United States have enjoyed a fast-warming relationship for the past 20 years and, until recent episodes, few US policymakers of either party criticized New Delhi.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net