Senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad today sought to draw a parallel between ISIS and RSS over their alleged attempts to divide communities, saying Muslims oppose both the Islamic State and the Sangh Parivar.
“We see among Muslims too, who have become reason of destruction of Muslim countries today… There are some forces behind it… But we need to understand why Muslims are taking part in it, why they are getting trapped.
“So, we oppose organisations like ISIS, the way we oppose RSS. If those among us, in Islam, too do wrong things, they are no way less than RSS,” the Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha said.
He made these remarks while addressing a massive gathering at the ‘National Integration Conference’ organised by Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind here.
During his speech, Azad urged the attendees to fight communalism of “all types”, whether engaged into by Hindus, Muslims or Sikhs, as they are “threat to the world and the country”.
“They create distances between a man and another. Let them be of any religion, we will have to fight them. Hence, all the secularist forces need to come together to eliminate these forces. The fight is between communalism and secularism, let’s see whether communalism wins or the secularism,” he said.
Azad further noted that people from all religions will take part in “fight for secularism”, while those in “fight for communalism” don’t belong to diverse background.
“India belongs to all religions, which means majority is with us,” he added.
Azad praised Hindi journalists and writers for their fight to protect secularism after the Dadri episode in which a person from the minority community was lynched to death allegedly for storing beef at home.
He also lauded roles played maulanas and ulemas for their contribution towards country’s freedom struggle right from 1857.
Besides Azad, the conference was attended by another Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar, Jamiat president Syed Arshad Madani, Muslim clerics and Christian, Buddhist and Sikh community leaders from parts of the country.