When an occupying force locks 8 million people inside their homes, shuts down the internet, silences the press, and builds detention centres in broad daylight — and the world barely blinks — it is a crisis of both conscience and faith. In this episode of The Deen Show, host Eddie sits down with Junaid Ahmed, an Indian-born activist based in the United States, to break down the humanitarian emergency unfolding in Kashmir following India’s revocation of Article 370, to interrogate the silence of the world’s most famous Muslim celebrities, and to call believers and people of good conscience alike to something Islam has always demanded: the courage to speak truth when injustice is most costly to name.
Kashmir Under Siege: The Revocation of Article 370 and the Crisis the World Ignored
Article 370 was not a technicality — it was a constitutional firewall protecting the people of Kashmir’s right to self-governance and preventing outsiders from purchasing their land. When the Indian government unilaterally stripped it away, even Gandhi’s own grandson condemned the move as unconstitutional. What followed was more than 100 days of lockdown: no mobile internet, no open communication, businesses shuttered, and families cut off from one another for months at a stretch. Junaid Ahmed is emphatic on a point central to any honest understanding of this crisis — this is not a Hindu versus Muslim conflict. The driving force is a supremacist, nationalist ideology rooted in the RSS and its affiliated organisations, which the CIA has categorised as nationalist militant groups, and which targets not only Muslims but Dalits, Christians, and any minority standing in its path. These are the same ideological descendants, Ahmed notes gravely, of the forces that assassinated Mahatma Gandhi — and today they hold the levers of national power.
“If the government claims this is a good thing for Kashmir, then people should be out there, they should be free, they should be celebrating. The fact that 8 million people have been locked in their homes for over 100 days — that tells you everything you need to know.” — Junaid Ahmed, The Deen Show
- Article 370 guaranteed Kashmiri autonomy and land rights; its revocation was condemned as unconstitutional even by Gandhi’s grandson
- Over 8 million people endured communication blackouts, internet shutdowns, and rolling curfews for more than 100 consecutive days
- The RSS and its sister organisations — Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad — have been listed by the CIA as nationalist militant organisations
- The 2002 Gujarat massacre, carried out under Modi’s tenure as Chief Minister, is being identified as a potential blueprint for wider state-sanctioned violence
- Detention centres are under active construction in Assam, and India’s Home Minister publicly named every religion eligible for citizenship under the NRC — conspicuously excluding Muslims
- Good Hindus, police officers, and journalists who have spoken out have been silenced, disappeared, or professionally destroyed
- Analysts and Bosnian genocide survivors are drawing direct parallels between the current trajectory in India and the early stages of the Srebrenica massacre
The Selfie Heard Around the World: What Aamir Khan and Shah Rukh Khan’s Silence Costs
Few moments in this conversation are as sharp as the discussion of Aamir Khan and Shah Rukh Khan — two of the most famous Muslim men alive — photographed smiling and taking selfies with Prime Minister Modi while millions of their co-religionists remained confined, dispossessed, and terrified. Junaid Ahmed offers a measured but unflinching verdict: whatever their private reasons — fear of retribution, genuine belief things are manageable, or hands genuinely tied by a system that has already silenced senior civil servants and police officers who dared investigate the 2002 Gujarat carnage — the optics of those photographs sent a message the world received clearly: that everything in India is fine, that there is no crisis, that nothing needs to change. Islam, in its divine legislation, has always recognised that those who are given enormous platform carry an enormous trust. Faith without accountability to the oppressed is not the full expression of the deen. Whether their silence is fear or comfort, the episode forces a question every influential believer must sit with: when your name alone could shift a conversation, what does God expect of you?
“When they went and took those selfies, the message being given — to Modi, to the world — is that things are pretty cool in India. Nothing is happening. India is good. But it is not cool. Eight million human beings are locked up.” — Junaid Ahmed, The Deen Show
The lessons of Kashmir, Gujarat, Assam, and Bosnia before them converge on one truth that faith has always carried: silence in the face of oppression is never a neutral act. For Muslims grounded in taqwa and guided by the prophetic imperative to stand for justice even against great personal cost, the call is clear — educate yourself on what is actually happening on the ground, speak about it with those around you, and make your voice heard by the elected officials who represent you in the halls where these decisions are either challenged or ignored. The mainstream media has largely failed this story; it falls to conscious individuals, communities of faith, and platforms willing to ask the uncomfortable questions to ensure that 8 million souls are not forgotten. May Allah ﷻ ease the suffering of the oppressed in Kashmir and everywhere injustice persists, grant steadfastness to those whose voices have been silenced, and open the hearts of those with the power and the platform to act before it is too late.
