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BBC (8 June 2022)

Soutik Biswas

In April 2020 allegations about a Muslim congregation sparking a cluster of Covid-19 cases in India quickly took an Islamophobic turn.

Thousands of preachers from home and abroad had attended the gathering in Delhi by the Tablighi Jamaat, a near-100 year-old Islamic missionary movement. Narendra Modi's ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government called it a "super-spreader event".

Islamophobic memes and hashtags blaming the group for spreading the virus trended on social media, and news networks broadcast incendiary headlines such as "Save the country from Corona jihad".

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