Students urged to contribute intellectually in defense of Prophet
By TCN News,
Aligarh: Hundreds of students – boys and girls separately – took out a protest demonstration after Friday prayers yesterday at Aligarh Muslims University against the anti-Islam movie. They demanded President of India to lodge protest with the US and compel Google and YouTube to delete all such blasphemous contents.
The AMU students staged massive protests against the movie “Innocence of Muslims” and the French cartoons published in Charlie Hebdo maligning the Prophet of Islam. These things intentionally misrepresent Prophet’s vision and mission and thus hurting the sentiments of more than a billion Muslims across the globe, the protesters said.
Boys marched after Friday Prayers from Jama Masjid AMU to Bab e Syed and girls staged a sit-in at Abdullah College.
Addressing the boys Mr. Abdul Rouf, a research Scholar at AMU, condemned the blasphemous acts and said that all such acts of the west are mere expression of frustration that west is going through. He said that west represents losing wars, dying economy, increased crimes and degrading social structure that leads westerners to search for an alternative and Islam comes as an alternative. He called upon Muslims to contribute intellectually in defence of Prophet of Islam and bring forth his right picture to the mankind.
Dr. Naghma Mirza, while speaking to the huge gathering of girls at Abdullah College called upon international community to redraw the lines of freedom of expression and condemned the movie and cartoons as the most irrational and blasphemous acts. She said that west is complete failure against Islam and thus uses cheap tactics to malign it.
Anam Rais Khan, a student leader said, “We condemn and out rightly reject any such blasphemous projection of our beloved Prophet – The messenger of Peace and Brotherhood, anywhere in world. We want to make it clear that we love our prophet more than anything in the world…We want to stress that Right to freedom of speech and expression rests on certain limitations and certainly does not give any one a right to insult and malign the Prophet of our religion in particular or any sacred person in general, thereby creating a mass discontent”.
Demands
Abdul Rouf read out a memorandum at Bab e Syed and Hiba Kakul read out the same memorandum at Women’s College. The memorandum sent to President of India, Pranab Mukherjee has five demands:
1. Immediately condemn both the movie and the cartoons in the strongest terms.
2. Lodge strong protest with the US and France and demand them to punish the sick elements behind these blasphemous acts.
3. Compel Google and YouTube to delete any such blasphemous content and if needed, also ban these sites in order to pressurize them to remove the said clips.
4. Curb all those who misuse such contents for dividing our nation, before any law and order crisis is created.
5. Allow all sorts of peaceful means to protest against such acts of hatred and ensures that the police and paramilitary forces do not use force against the non-violent protesting masses.