The Naperville, Illinois area of Chicago became a center of much speculation and controversy recently as a Hindu American teenage boy was accused of burning the Quran, the holy book of Muslims as an apparent act of hate.
A video reportedly went viral on social media that showed the young boy burning a book. The strange thing though is that the video merely shows the boy burning a book and throwing it onto the ground. No one can make out what book is that because the book is entirely in flames. The incident happened during the summer and according to various local US news sources, the video began to be circulated sometime in October. The whole thing about the Quran burning is purely speculative as people who watched the video apparently started claiming that the book burned by the boy was the Quran. But no evidence whatsoever was discovered by anyone proving that it was indeed the Quran that was burned by the young Hindu schoolboy.
It’s incredible how the news spread like wildfire and so many news outlets like Chicago Tribune, Middle East Eye, Daily Herald, Kashmir Media Service, The Arab Daily News, Countercurrents, etc., published articles on this incident. Some of these news outlets at least had the professional decency to refer to the incident as an “alleged incident of Quran burning” since nothing was proven and it was all based on speculation, while others talked about the incident as if they were eyewitnesses to the alleged Quran burning and demonized a schoolboy without any proof. “Quran burning shown in video reportedly done by Naperville student”, “US Quran burning by student sparks concerns over rising Hindu nationalism”, and “Teenager Burns Quran in Chicago, Extremist Links Suspected”, these are a few of the misleading headlines carried out by these “esteemed” media outlets.
But this is not the end of the story. Most of these reports make far-fetched connections between the alleged Quran burning incident and the so-called ‘rising nationalism of India’s Hindu majority government’. They link the alleged incident to the BJP and the RSS. It’s almost like reading a badly done leftist version of Harry Potter, such is the insane level of imagination and fantasy in these so-called news reports! Local newspapers in the US and some leftist media outlets started seeing a connection between a random act of a book burning by a US Hindu teenager (which could be any book for all we know) and the BJP Government in Bharat, calling it an orchestrated conspiracy by the Bharatiya government against the Muslims. Whatever they have been smoking up.
Nag Jaiswal, a Community Leader and a Candidate for Naperville City Council took the initiative to intervene and find out the truth. According to Jaiswal, a fact-finding exercise was held in good faith between parents of the High School students accused of burning the Quran and representatives of various Islamic organizations i.e. ICN, CIOGC,CAIR. As per Nag Jaiswal’s own testimony, he got involved in the whole thing as the parents of one of the accused students contacted him requesting help. He had been noticing how the Hindu community of Naperville was being maligned and demonized through biased media reports.
Nag Jaswal then discovered that the main accused student was being bullied and harassed by a group of 40 students. In the meeting between the parents of Hindu students and the Islamic organizations of Naperville, it was discovered that two students were involved in the incident and that based on the testimony of students and the video of the incident, the burned book was not Quran. Also, as per Jaiswal, the students shared the video with Imams of various Islamic organizations and even they categorically denied that the burned book was Quran.
According to Nag Jaiswal, the whole rumor just started on word-of-mouth speculation and gossip even before the video of the incident had emerged. He also reveals another important detail – the accused Hindu student was harassed by a group of 40 students so much that he got scared and made a false confession about burning the Quran.
Jaiswal raises many important points here, the most important being the twisting of an incident that involved an innocent act by school kids, to propagate Hinduphobia and malign the Hindu community of Naperville. According to Jaiswal, it all started when the Hindu students were bursting firecrackers in an open field. Then, in childish excitement, they started burning random trash including a book.
What stands out in this whole incident is the role played by the media in not just spreading fake news regarding the Hindu community, but also creating a dangerous anti-Hindu narrative. How can the media write about an incident involving such a sensitive communal angle without any investigation? This just goes to show that a lot of the media is biased against Hindus and they love carrying sensational one-sided stories that portray Hindus as the perpetrators and carriers of Islamophobia.
When Hindus in Bharat are routinely maligned both by the Bharatiya and international media, the logic given is they are anyways majority here. So some things are necessary to keep them in check. And the “minorities’ always get the benefit of the doubt. But the media picks up on Hindus abroad in a similar fashion, in countries where they are a minuscule minority. What logic would the leftists and wokeists give to justify this targeting and profiling?
As Nag Jaiswal puts it, “It is very unfortunate to see press releases, blogs, news articles with extreme reactions from public, religious organizations, political organizations and community leaders. Press statements linking Hindu Religion with hate crimes without any formal investigation is very disturbing”.
Pertinently, he adds, “One-sided reactions of a political party is resulting in Hindu-Phobia”, most likely hinting at the questionable role of the Democratic Party in USA.
Hindu Dharma is perhaps the only religion that has become so vulnerable to baseless attacks and propaganda; a whole industry has sprung up whose bread and butter depends on targeting Hindu religion by cooking up exaggerated and unsubstantiated stories and reports.
Isn’t it a basic journalistic requirement that one cannot go on and on with stories based on alleged incidents without any investigation? On top of that, getting reactions from other communities about how the Hindus are supposedly anti-Muslim and this and that when the incident is not even proven, just smacks of a hidden agenda. And now that the truth has come out, shouldn’t these so-called media organizations publish the other side of the story? Or is it too much to ask for since the people to bear the brunt of this fake news-mongering are Hindu anyway?
