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A sec­ond Mus­lim or­gan­i­sa­tion has raised con­cerns about Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Mo­di’s of­fi­cial vis­it to Trinidad and To­ba­go, urg­ing the gov­ern­ment to con­front In­dia’s record on re­li­gious free­dom dur­ing bi­lat­er­al talks. In a state­ment is­sued by its pres­i­dent, Mirza Ali-Mo­hammed, the Is­lam­ic Da’wah Move­ment called on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to raise the is­sue of Mus­lim dis­crim­i­na­tion in In­dia when she meets with Mo­di this week.

The group ref­er­enced a se­ries of poli­cies in­tro­duced un­der Mo­di’s [Bharatiya Jana­ta Par­ty (BJP)](w) gov­ern­ment which have drawn in­ter­na­tion­al crit­i­cism, in­clud­ing the 2019 [Cit­i­zen­ship Amend­ment Act](w). The [Unit­ed Na­tions Of­fice of the High Com­mis­sion­er for Hu­man Rights](w) pre­vi­ous­ly de­scribed the law as “fun­da­men­tal­ly dis­crim­i­na­to­ry” be­cause it fast-tracks cit­i­zen­ship for non-Mus­lim im­mi­grants from neigh­bour­ing coun­tries. The Is­lam­ic Da’wah Move­ment al­so cit­ed state­ments by the [Or­ga­ni­za­tion of Is­lam­ic Co­op­er­a­tion (OIC)](w), which has ac­cused In­dia of en­gag­ing in “sys­tem­at­ic prac­tices against In­di­an Mus­lims” and fos­ter­ing “a grow­ing spate of ha­tred and defama­tion of Is­lam.”

“In­dia is home to some two hun­dred mil­lion Mus­lims… Since In­dia’s in­de­pen­dence, Mus­lims have of­ten faced dis­crim­i­na­tion, prej­u­dice, and vi­o­lence, de­spite con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions,” the group said. “If Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­dress­es this burn­ing is­sue of Mus­lim dis­crim­i­na­tion with PM Mo­di, she can earn the re­spect of the Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion of Trinidad & To­ba­go.” The group al­so quot­ed [Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi](w), say­ing: “There is a high­er court than courts of jus­tice and that is the court of con­science. It su­per­sedes all oth­er courts.” This fol­lows sim­i­lar con­cerns raised ear­li­er this week by the [An­ju­man Sun­nat-ul-Ja­maat As­so­ci­a­tion (AS­JA)](w), which al­so urged the gov­ern­ment to speak “frankly and re­spect­ful­ly” with Mo­di about re­li­gious free­dom and the rights of mi­nori­ties in In­dia.