Lucknow:
Charging the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) with stoking religious
fundamentalism, Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh Tuesday
said using religion as a medium to spread hatred was not allowed by
any faith.
Singh, who was in
the city to attend a function of the Youth Congress-affiliated Anti
Communal Forum, founded by Rahul Gandhi, noted that opportunists
were present in every religion and they are responsible for every
kind of dispute among people of the same or different religions.
No religion
preaches hatred and it is wrong to term any religion or creed as
terrorist, he said.
"It is because of
its poor educational credentials that the Muslims are suspected to
be terrorists. However, there are some communal and fundamentalist
Muslim organisations that are confusing youths and diverting them
towards anti-national activities," Singh said.
"I would also like
to call upon our young members of the National Students Union of
India to make all possible efforts to fight the BJP's Akhil Bhartiya
Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) as it could be rightly termed as the
breeding ground of the ideology of politics of hate amongst students
and youths," he added.
Film director
Mahesh Bhatt, who was also present, said: "My mother was a Muslim
belonging to Lucknow and what I have known and learnt about Islam is
that a scared person cannot be a Muslim. Communalism is a bigger
threat than secularism. I would like to urge the Muslims to break
the age-old shackles and start focusing on earning knowledge.
Education is the best weapon to fight any kind of problem."
Zafar
Ali Naqvi, Congress parliamentarian from Kheri, blamed some
political parties in the state for playing the caste or religion
card rather than striving for the development of the state.
He also rued the
absence of "any strong leader who could raise issues related to us".
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