Thread by @gauravsabnis

I spent half the weekend ranting about that case to friends. Basically it was "A man is in jail for weeks for a joke he neither told nor was intending to tell and has been denied bail repeatedly by the judge, just because of his name. Kafka couldn't dream this up." On loop.

https://twitter.com/nazmaaman/status/1353655156307496960

With an "of course, no one should be arrested for jokes but we crossed that line in India years ago."

The world call now stop citing Minority Report as the reference for arresting people for crimes before they happen. #MunawarFaruqui case is even more dystopian. He is ostensibly under arrest because the local police think he might tell "insulting" jokes and threaten public order

When there was nothing at all. Nothing. At. All. He didn't even plan to do what they claim he did. It's just that the name #MunawarFaruqui sounds to whatsapp sanghi like a Sarfarosh villain that those Indore BJP folks were like, nice easy target to get some love from Modiji.

I have gone from how can #SudhaBharadwaj still be in jail to how can #UmarKhalid still be in jail to how can #MunawarFaruqui still be in jail. Rhetorical questions of course. Fascists gonna fasc. But it amazes me how most people shrug off the abolition of habeas corpus in india.

There are new Solzhenitsyn's being created everyday in India by the BJP.

The extent of anti muslim bloodthirst among my desi circles reveals itself in the most unexpected contexts. Remember when David Schwimmer said a FRIENDS reboot should be all black and people were like, dude, FRIENDS was like an explicit NBC white version of #LivingSingle?

In a group chat where the topic came up, I was like, yeah, I've seen both shows and while not identical, you can clearly see that LS was earlier and the inspiration and looking back, holds up better. I laugh more at a #LivingSingle rerun than a FRIENDS rerun.

I dare you to even imagine the bizarrely specific taunt I got from ban anti muslim sanghi in that group after saying this. It was so unimaginable and proved that no one knows arcane islamic theology and facts more than sanghis. You can't.

This dude checked out an episode and said oh I get why you feel like you have to say it is better than friends. The main woman is named Khadija like the wife of Prophet Mohammad.

That a brahmin dude should even know that and consider it a factor shows their commitment to hate.

That's why I'm really looking forward to deleting whatsapp at the end of the month. Exhausted by these sanghis hijacking even something as casually benign as a sitcom comparison to "own the sickulars".

I joked back that Rachel is also a pretty big name biblically. Looking back,I should have called out his obsessive muslimphobia.