Shias love Modi (for all the wrong reasons)

In India you should always expect the unexpected. If you feel something must be true the opposite will be true as well.

Shias will (may) vote for Modi because they feel oppressed…. by Sunnis!!!

If petty issues prevent muslims from being united against a common enemy…well that is pretty much the story of India is it not? Hindus have their Jaichand, Muslims have their Mir Jafar, either way Indians have (always) lost out due to in-fighting. This is why people must make an effort to read history (and to learn from history).

….
Despite the clarion call by Shia cleric Kalbe Jawwad to defeat the Congress
and the BJP in the Lok Sabha polls, Narendra Modi is surprisingly garnering
support from over 35,000-strong Shia community in Varanasi.

Excited by the response, the BJP also asked its minority cell to woo the
Shia Muslims. Varanasi has nearly three lakh Muslims, most of whom are weavers.
Also, the Gujarat riots have taken a back seat with local issues gaining
prominence.

“There is no doubt that Shia Muslims in Varanasi are supporting Modi. The
support will come mainly from Dosipura, which is a Shia-dominated area,”
Maulana Mohammad Aqeel, Imam-e-Juma Dara Nagar Masjid in Varanasi told The
Indian Express.

He also reminded that in 2009, BJP’s M M Joshi victory margin was only
17,000.Dosipura includes as many as three to four localities, all dominated by
Shias whose number is around 15,000-20,000. Religious acrimony between Sunni
weavers and Shias will tilt the scale in favour of Modi.

Shias are supporting BJP because of local issues. Muslims from the Sunni
sect oppose our Taziya procession and Azadari during Moharram in Dosipura.
There is also a dispute over an Imambada land. BJP openly supports us and now
we will support in return,” Maulana Aqeel said. Another Shia cleric, Baqar
Balliavi, based in Varanasi also admitted that Shias will vote for Modi.

Another Shia cleric Baqar Balliavi based at Varanasi also admitted that
Shias will vote for Modi. “No party supported Shias in their Azadari issues.
BJP openly supported us so Shias will support Modi here,” Baqar stated. He is
also a Pesh-e-Imam of Aurangabad Masjid, another prominent mosque of Shia
Muslims in Varanasi, and also runs a religious school.

Shias are also concentrated in Madanpura, Dal Mandi, Badi Bazar locality. “A
large section of Shias in these locality will also support BJP. It is
surprising for others, but not for us. The proportion of Shia support can
increase if other local clerics are mobilised,” Baqar added.

The BJP has asked its state general secretary (minority cell) Haider Abbas,
who also hails from Varanasi to motivate Shia Muslims. “Local issues are
affecting the polling in favour of BJP. But we are also placing larger issues
like development before them,” said Abbas.

regards

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Razib Khan is a Bangladeshi-American geneticist and writer. He is co-founder of Brown Pundits and runs Unsupervised Learning, a Substack on population genetics, evolution, history, and politics with more than 55,000 subscribers, alongside the accompanying podcast. He has blogged at Gene Expression since the early 2000s. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, National Review, Slate, India Today, Quillette, and UnHerd. He is Director of Operations at FUTO in Austin, Texas, and co-founder of GenRAIT, a life-sciences platform company. Earlier in his career he developed ancestry algorithms for Gene by Gene, the Genographic Project, and Insitome, and was among the first employees at Embark Veterinary. Born in Dhaka and raised in upstate New York and eastern Oregon, he holds degrees in biochemistry (2000) and biology (2006) from the University of Oregon, and undertook doctoral work in genomics and genetics at UC Davis. He lives in Austin. View all posts by Brown Pundits Archive