After the video of Black American George Floyd being suffocated to death by White cops went viral, Black Americans protested across the US. In India, Muslims waited for FIVE years to protest after the first hate crime under Modi 1.0 (Mohsin Sheikh’s murder in Pune, June 2014)

We didn’t protest after Akhlaq,Junaid,Pehlu Khan &many other victims of lynching. The exception was joining Not in My Name protest (which wasn’t organised by the community). We only REACTED when CAA became law. We reacted as a community because CAA+NRC would affect us all.

We didn’t react to murders of Akhlaq or Pehlu or Asifa becoz though these crimes were meant to humiliate Muslims (and we did feel humiliated) but they directly harmed the actual victims. It’s only when we feared that ALL of us would be affected by CAA+NRC did we protest.

And that shows we are SELFISH as a people. At the root of cowardice lies selfishness. As long as we are comfortable in our homes, it doesn’t matter to us if an Asifa is raped or an Akhlaq is lynched. We, including I, are SELFISH and we must admit it.