Regional
Hindu group toughens stance on India’s mosque-temple disputes
A powerful Hindu group said several mosques in India were built over demolished Hindu temples, apparently hardening its stance in a decades-long sectarian dispute just days after a huge temple was inaugurated on the site of a razed mosque, Reuters reported.
The comments from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological parent of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist party, come after Modi and the RSS chief led Monday’s consecration of the temple on the site of a 16th-century mosque demolished by a Hindu mob in 1992.
The fight over claims to holy sites has divided Hindu-majority India, which has the world’s third-largest Muslim population, since independence from British rule in 1947.
Four days after the temple was inaugurated in the northern city of Ayodhya, a lawyer for Hindu petitioners said the Archaeological Survey of India had determined that a 17th century mosque in the Hindu holy city of Varanasi, in Modi’s parliamentary constituency, had been built over a destroyed Hindu temple, Reuters reported.
The Archaeological Survey did not respond to a request for comment.
Late on Friday, senior RSS leader Indresh Kumar questioned whether Varanasi’s Gyanvapi mosque and three others, including the razed one in Ayodhya on the site where many Hindus believe Lord Ram was born, were mosques at all.
“Whether we should consider them mosques or not, the people of the country and the world should think about it,” Kumar told Reuters in an interview, referring to the sites in Gyanvapi, Ayodhya, one other in Uttar Pradesh state and one in Madhya Pradesh. “They should stand with the truth, or they should stand with the wrong?”
In the group’s first reaction to the Gyanvapi findings, Kumar said, “Accept the truth. Hold dialogues and let the judiciary decide.”
Raising questions about the mosques does not mean Hindu groups comprise “an anti-mosque movement”, he said.
“This is not an anti-Islam movement. This is a movement to seek the truth that should be welcomed by the world.”
‘Nothing political’
Muslim groups are disputing the assertions of Hindu groups in court.
Zufar Ahmad Faruqi, chairman of the Sunni Central Waqf Board in Uttar Pradesh, said the group “have confidence in the judiciary that it will do what is correct.
“We want to live in harmony and peacefully while protecting the monuments as they are,” he said. “Nothing political about it, we are in the court and facing it legally.”
The Modi-led opening of the Ayodhya temple fulfilled a 35-year-old pledge of his Bharatiya Janata Party ahead of a general election due by May. He is expected to win a third straight term, the longest stretch since India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.
The razing of the Ayodhya mosque sparked riots across India that authorities say killed at least 2,000 people, mostly Muslims. Hindu groups have for decades said that Muslim Mughal rulers built monuments and places of worship after destroying ancient Hindu structures.
Indian law bars the conversion of any place of worship and provides for the maintenance of the religious character of places of worship as they existed at the time of independence – except for the Ayodhya shrine. The Supreme Court is hearing challenges to the law.
The court this month halted plans for a survey of another centuries-old mosque in Uttar Pradesh, the country’s most populous and politically important state, to determine if it contained Hindu relics and symbols.
The RSS’s Kumar, who is also the chief patron of the group’s Muslim wing, said Islamic law requires mosques to be constructed on undisputed land, or the land should be donated by someone who has bought it or the people building the mosque should buy it.
The Saudi-led coalition fighting Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis said on Sunday it had intercepted two Houthi ballistic missiles launched towards the Saudi capital Riyadh and three drones in the kingdom’s oil-rich Eastern Province.
The Houthis, who control most of the populous parts of Yemen, have intensified attacks on the Saudi capital in recent days. A Houthi attack last week damaged an administrative building of the state oil company Saudi Aramco in Riyadh’s financial hub, Reuters reported.
The Eastern Province, the economic powerhouse of Saudi Arabia, has been subject to multiple attacks by Houthis in the past few weeks.
It contains the majority of the kingdom’s oil and gas reserves and is home to Aramco’s headquarters, which suffered extensive damage in an attack in October.
The Houthis have stepped up strikes on Saudi airports, ports and oil facilities, while Saudi Arabia has ramped up airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen in response.
Regional
Saudi Arabia says debris from intercepted missiles falls in Mecca region
The missiles were launched towards the region and intercepted and destroyed, Saudi Arabia’s civil defence said in a statement.
Saudi Arabia said debris from two ballistic missiles intercepted by its air defences fell in the Mecca region on Wednesday, as the kingdom and Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis continued to trade attacks in an escalating conflict.
Saudi state television identified the locations as Sabuhah village, about 35 km (22 miles) northeast of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, and Wadi al-Maghmas, about 21 km east of the mosque, Reuters reported.
The missiles were launched towards the region and intercepted and destroyed, Saudi Arabia’s civil defence said in a statement.
The Houthis have repeatedly denied Saudi accusations that they target Mecca and Medina, Islam’s two holiest cities, saying their military operations are directed at military and strategic targets elsewhere in Saudi Arabia.
Mecca, home to sites sacred to Muslims worldwide, is the focal point of the annual hajj pilgrimage, one of the five pillars of Islam, which millions of Muslims undertake each year.
“This hostile targeting of civilian objects constitutes a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law and reflects the dangerous hostile approach pursued by the Houthi militia,” Saudi Arabia’s civil defence said early on Thursday.
The Houthis seized Yemen’s capital Sanaa in 2014, prompting Saudi Arabia to intervene militarily the following year in support of the internationally recognised government.
A UN-brokered truce in 2022 largely froze the conflict, but hostilities resumed earlier this year, with the Houthis launching missile and drone attacks on Saudi territory and Riyadh carrying out airstrikes in Yemen.
The latest escalation has threatened the strategic Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a key shipping route linking the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
Regional
Iran defends two-day proposal for peace talks after US rejects conditions
Iran defended a proposal on Monday to restart peace talks in as few as two days as the most reasonable offer on the table, after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called some of Iran’s conditions “outrageous and ridiculous”.
Iran defended a proposal on Monday to restart peace talks in as few as two days as the most reasonable offer on the table, after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called some of Iran’s conditions “outrageous and ridiculous”, Reuters reported.
“Is it unreasonable that Iran demands that US illegal sanctions and its naval blockade must be lifted before negotiations start and that the war should end on all fronts?” Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei told a weekly press conference in response to Rubio’s remarks.
Iran defended a proposal on Monday to restart peace talks in as few as two days as the most reasonable offer on the table, after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called some of Iran’s conditions “outrageous and ridiculous”.
“Is it unreasonable that Iran demands that US illegal sanctions and its naval blockade must be lifted before negotiations start and that the war should end on all fronts?” Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei told a weekly press conference in response to Rubio’s remarks.
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