By Shakir Husain
NEW DELHI, June 11 (Bernama) — A leading Islamic body in India has asked Muslim scholars to boycott provocative television news channels as the Indian media’s role comes under scrutiny over religious tensions.
Indian television channels are notorious for inviting controversial figures on their shows during which participants shout and hurl abuses at each other.
A ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokeswoman, now suspended, recently insulted Islam and the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) during a television debate, leading to outrage in India and throughout the Islamic world.
The All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) on Friday said such television debates were held with the “sole intention to insult Islam and Muslims.”
Its statement asking Muslim intellectuals not to take part in television debates comes amid growing accusations of media bias against the community.
“The intention of these programmes is not to reach any conclusion through constructive discourse but to ridicule and defame Islam and Muslims,” the influential Muslim body said.
“To gather some legitimacy, these TV channels need Muslim faces in their debates. Due to their obliviousness, our Islamic scholars and intellectuals become victims of such agendas,” it said.
India’s large media houses are mostly owned by tycoons seen close to Hindu nationalists.
The Editors Guild of India, which represents the country’s newspapers, in a statement on Wednesday, criticised “the irresponsible conduct of some national news channels for deliberately creating circumstances that target vulnerable communities by spewing hatred towards them and their beliefs.”
Referring to India facing anger in the Islamic world over Islamophobia and the recent defamatory remarks by two BJP leaders, the media body said the “unnecessary embarrassment” could have been avoided if the television channels had followed the rules governing broadcasters instead of being “prompted by the desire to increase viewership and profit.”
The Islamic body also argued that a Muslim boycott of television debates would undermine the media’s efforts to promote communal conflicts.
“If we boycott such programmes and channels, not only it will affect their TRP (television rating point) negatively, but they will also fail in achieving their desired outcome through these debates,” the AIMPLB said.
— BERNAMA
