India Fake News has found that a popular video of Bengali cleric Peerzada Taha Siddiqui has been edited out of context.
It is falsely claimed that Taha Siddiqui, a Furfura Sharif cleric from West Bengal, asked Muslims to wage war against Hindus in a clipped video that has been circulated.
He is urging Muslims to compete with Hindus in terms of education, but the video is clipped, as we discovered.
A prominent Muslim pilgrimage site in West Bengal called Furfura Sharif is where Pirzada Taha Siddiqui serves as a cleric. According to a Times Now report from June 2022, Siddiqui was the subject of complaints for allegedly making disparaging remarks about Hinduism in the past.
In the widely circulated video, Siddiqui is seen pleading with Muslims to wage war against Hindus while speaking Bengali to a crowd. Hey Muslims, wake up! Hey Muslims, you should teach your sons and daughters to fight. Teach them to fight.”. Be ready, be ready. Ought to train Muslim daughters and sons. For your sons and daughters, parents, always be ready. Hindus must be our adversaries. We must wage war against Hindus.
Journalist Abhijit Majumder posted the video to Twitter along with the caption, “Peerzada Taha Siddiqui of Furfura Sharif Mazaar, Bengal, exhorts Ms to prepare their children for war against Hs. In this tweet, Ms and Hs stand in for Muslims and Hindus, respectively. (Archive)
Kanchan Gupta, a senior adviser at the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting of the Government of India, quoted Majumder’s post and said, “Years ago I wrote an article with the headline “How green is my Bengal?” which drew the usual cacophony of LeftLiberal protest and snark. Sadly, Bengali “intellectuals” are partners in this hate project. The mob will eat useful idiots before they realize it, though. “.
Fact Check
We found a video of the same speech that had been posted by journalist Tamal Saha on Twitter after conducting a keyword search there. This clip is longer than the popular one; it lasts 2:11 minutes.
Fact: On Jan 27 Furfura Sharif Pirzada said :Muslims wake up, parents teach your children to fight. Get ready, #Muslim children have to fight a war against #Hindu & #Christian. But that war should not be fought with swords, arms or lathis. That war should be over EDUCATION ..1/2 pic.twitter.com/rerzL1BRT6
— Tamal Saha (@Tamal0401) February 3, 2023
In this clip, Siddiqui shouts to the crowd, “O Muslims, wake up! Teach your sons and daughters to fight.”. Plan ahead. Prepare your kids, fathers and mothers. We have to battle the Hindus. “After saying this, I noticed that the faces of the ministers seated on the dais had shrunk, ” he continues in an undertone, seemingly referring to another occasion. Everybody was perplexed. They started speculating as to whether I had gone there to fan the flames of communism. “.
I’m saying this again, he says before returning to his high pitch. Be ready, Muslims, and teach your kids to be ready. Teach them to struggle against Christians and Hindus. Swords, guns, or sticks should not be used in that fight. The issue of education will be at issue in that conflict. Then, in an undertone, he adds, “Everyone started laughing the moment I said this. “.
The author continues, “In Bengal, Muslim and Hindu boys and girls will compete with one another for advancement in education. Bengal’s Hindu and Muslim children will one day advance to the point where they will unite to battle other states over education. “.
Therefore, it is evident that the cleric from Furfura Sharif in the Hooghly district of Bengal was not advocating for Muslims to wage war against Hindus, but rather for competition among the communities regarding education and calling for progress for all.
We searched for the full video and discovered it on the YouTube channel Waz Mahfil 21 in order to understand the context of his reference to “ministers on the dais” in between his exhortation.
To sum up, a number of Twitter users circulated a portion of Furfura Sharif Pirzada Taha Siddiqui’s speech that was cut out to make it appear as though he was urging Muslims to train their children to wage war against Hindus. He was really talking about kids competing with each other for education, regardless of their faith.
