After the Kerala government filed a first information report against Zee News anchor Sudhir Chaudhary for making “offending the Muslim religion” in his television show, the anchor took up the topic of “jihad” during his show yet again – this time to explain the “true meaning” of the Islamic concept.
In his show on Friday, Chaudhary laid out the five pillars of Islam and said jihad stands for a “pious fight”, all the while maintaining a respectful attitude and not resorting to offensive statements.
“The meaning of jihad has always been presented to us in a wrong manner,” Chaudhary said. “Terrorists around the world spread violence and fear and call themselves jihadis. Extremists justify their acts by addressing themselves as jihadis.” The anchor also went on to read out a list of acts that do not qualify as jihad.
In a show telecast in March 2020, Chaudhary had used a diagram to classify the alleged ways in which Muslims are “waging jihad” against Hindus. Chaudhary claimed there was “hard” and “soft” jihad. The first category, the anchor alleged, included “population jihad”, “love jihad” and “land jihad”. “Soft jihad” included “economic jihad”, “history jihad” and “media jihad”. However, the chart that Chaudhary had used to explain the types of jihad was plagiarised from a Facebook page, Newslaundry reported.
According to The Quint, the FIR against Chaudhary said that the anchor presented a programme that is “offending the Muslim religion”.
After the FIR, Chaudhary had tweeted that it was his “Pulitzer Prize for reporting the truth”.
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