New Delhi: The events unfolding in the past few months and especially in the last few days from sustained partisan media trials to social media over drive are creating a situation to worry. Our own clergy and misguided Muslims with unacceptable public behaviour are adding fuel to fire.
As a result, public perception about Muslims is going from bad to worse. Most of us are feeling disturbed by the situation but sharing concerns among ourselves only. There is great need to express our views collectively and put forth our stand in public domain before it is too late. The liberal voices are getting cornered and our silence or inaction is only helping particular narrative being built and propagated without any counter or reality check.
While education, jobs, basic amenities should have been our priority to focus, but in the current context, we have to fight this challenge by proper strategy and action agenda.
Apex forum
This underlined the urgent need to form an apex forum for strategy and coordination. In this context, we connected with 40 plus concerned community leaders and held video conferencing on Zoom on April 2 and repeated it next day and took the decision to form a Think Tank.
Accordingly, IMEDA Research Centre was formed and a WhatsApp Group created with 100 eminent members from across the country. Later 5 Subgroups have been formed with specific tasks.
By MJ Khan, IMEDA President