OICs human rights arm urges India to take steps against Islamophobia

Jeddah: The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Sunday urged India to take "urgent steps" to protect the rights of its minority Muslim community and stop the incidents of "Islamophobia" in the country.

The OIC's Independent Permanent Human Rights Commission in a tweet also said the Indian media was negatively profiling the Muslims and subjecting them to discrimination.

"OIC-IPHRC urges the Indian Govt to take urgent steps to stop the growing tide of Islamophobia in India and protect the rights of its" Muslim minority, it tweeted.

In an earlier tweet, the OIC-UPHRC condemned the "unrelenting vicious Islamophobic campaign in India maligning Muslims for spread of COVID-19 as well as their negative profiling in media subjecting them to discrimination & violence with impunity."

There was no immediate reaction from the Ministry of External Affairs. 

India has previously hit out at the 57-member grouping of Muslim majority nations, saying bodies like OIC should not make irresponsible statements. 

Earlier this week, MEA spokesperson Anurag Srivastava slammed the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) for adding "religious colour to our national goal of fighting the COVID 19 pandemic", after the commission commented on a report that patients in a hospital in Ahmedabad were being segregated on the basis of their religion. 

The USCIRF had said that they were "concerned with reports of Hindu & Muslim patients separated into separate hospital wards in Gujarat. Such actions only help to further increase ongoing stigmatization of Muslims in India and exacerbate false rumors of Muslims spreading COVID-19".