Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai	Your front page report on Tabligi Jamat in HT: 'Close watch on mega meet of Islamic preachers' - By Ghulam Muhammed
Blog	Posted By: hindtodaynews on:12/26/2007 12:56:22 PM

To: Sunita Aron, <saron at hindustantimes.com>

Hindustan Times, Mumbai

This refers to your front-page story: Close watch on mega meet of Islamic preachers, published in print edition of Hindustan Times' Mumbai Edition today, December 26, 2007. 

I am surprised at the most negative treatment of news by you and more so that Hindustan Times should be publishing such kind of Muslim-bashing treatment of news of an spiritual gathering with such callous abandon. This reflects the most sinister nature of media coverage of Muslim affairs in India. How can an open and public meeting of expected 'seven to eight lakh' Muslims in the heart of India, should be made to appear as if some dark conspiratorial meeting is being held to, God forbid, plan and carry out terrorist activities. All gatherings of such proportions are routinely monitored by security authorities. So why you should make out as if any security watch is directly related to some terrorist activities that are planned in the meeting. Your highly alarmist reporting is most condemnable. Your editor, Vir Sanghvi should have known better to play such communal games when the nation is at such juncture of frayed emotions, in the aftermath of Modi victory in Gujarat.

Besides, how you can file a report on a meeting that is to be held in Uttar Pradesh, while you are datelining it in Mumbai. Why this long-distance media manipulation. Who are the instigators of such Muslim bashing in Mumbai that have briefed you to file such distorted image of a very clean and above board religious gathering that has strengthened the faith of millions to follow the path of righteousness? Do you know that in this very city of Mumbai, Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray had given permission to Tabligi Jamat to hold one of their gathering in his own backyard, very near to his own residence, Matoshari in Bandra East? A million people took part.  Do you think Bal Thackeray, or Mayawati or the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh or Union Home Minister Shivraj Patel are less informed than you, to have allowed Tabligi Jamat to hold such mammoth gathering in a most sensitive area of a very sensitive state? Have you ever visited the venue of any Tabligi gathering? How can you become the tools of mischief mongers and defame your own profession. The headquarters of Tabligi Jamaat is in Delhi. Why this event was not handled by your New Delhi editors and why you in Mumbai found it convenient to sow the seeds of suspicions.

Is this something to do with your own identity? With a surname like 'Aron', resonating with Jewish connotations, are you put up by international Anti-Muslim Zionist organisations to defame Indian Muslims?

The Indian government at the highest level should institute an enquiry into your antecedents to find out if you are guilty of sowing seeds of communal division and strife and are a serious threat to nation's communal peace and integrity through your insidious reportings in public media.