Gaza conflict: Lucknow maulanas want India to help Palestinians

Expressing concern over the plight of Palestinians in Gaza, maulanas in Lucknow want Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take up their cause.  

Several maulanas raised the issue while addressing large congregations during the Eid prayers. They called upon the Union government to come to the rescue of Palestinians being attacked in Gaza.

A number of younsters were seen offering the Eid namaz with black bands tied around their arms as a mark of protest against the killings.

“India and Palestine have been friends,” said Lucknow’s Eidgah Imam Maulana Khalid Rashid. “The Indian government should rise to the occasion and assist Palestine in resolving the crises,” he told a massive gathering in Lucknow.

Calling the killings in Iraq and Gaza as “extremely unfortunate”, Maulana Fazlur Rehman Nadwi of Lucknow’s historic Tile-Wali Masjid said, “The Indian government should intervene as several innocent people are being killed in gross violation of human rights.”

Shia cleric Maulana Kalbe Jawaad called the Gaza killings a “war against humanity.”  

“Besides praying to Allah to give good sense to the perpetrators of violence, there is precious little that we can do sitting here,” he said.

“We must appeal to the Indian government to do its bit and initiate steps to save the lives of innocent people who are being butchered mercilessly,” he added.

Image: A Palestinian woman looks on as she stands at a United Nations-run school sheltering Palestinians displaced by an Israeli ground offensive, that witnesses said was hit by Israeli shelling, in Jebalya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip Photographs: Mohammed Salem/Reuters