The government on Sunday faced a growing diplomatic storm over comments made by the suspended BJP leaders, as countries in the Gulf region summoned Ambassadors and conveyed their concerns about growing “extremism and hatred” the comments signified. Qatar and Kuwait summoned India’s ambassadors in Doha and Kuwait City respectively and demanded a “public apology” from New Delhi for the comments that were considered “Islamophobic”, as did Iran, and a number of other Arab countries are understood to have informally conveyed their concerns over the comments to India. The controversy erupted even as Vice President Venkaiah Naidu began his visit to Doha, part of a three-nation tour. The Iranian protest came three days before the Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian is due to make his first visit to Delhi.
Meanwhile the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) also issued a “strong condemnation” of what it called “abuses by an official of the ruling party of India (BJP)”, linking the comments to previous decisions to ban the hijab at educational institutions in certain Indian states, violence against minorities, and demolitions of their property.
Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif called the comments “hurtful”, and accused the Modi government of “trampling [on] religious freedoms and persecuting Muslims.”
