Being communal means thinking about community: Shazia

Clarifying her allegedly controversial remarks that Muslims should become ‘communal’ rather than secular, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Shazia Ilmi said on Thursday that she had made a sarcastic comment which meant ‘think about the community’.

‘There is a difference between ‘communal’ and ‘sectarian’. There is also a diffrence between ‘communal’ and ‘communalism,’ Ilmi said, addressing a press conference here.

While releasing a pocket manifesto for AAP’s Ahmedabad East candidate Dinesh Waghela, Ilmi said her remarks were ‘sarcastic’ and she merely solicited votes for Arvind Kejriwal and Meera Sanyal who are not Muslims.

She said that she had referred to the etymology of the word ‘communal’ from the dictionary and said that the word basically originated from ‘commune’ which means ‘community’.

‘I used to tell people in the den of the RSS, that you must think about yourself and your community. What will happen to you if Modi becomes PM. It’s the same thing I said in Amethi. If Rahul becomes PM or gets any other post, what will happen to you? I often asked them to think about their community,’ Ilmi said.

She said that a particular community had been threatened and kept in fear by major political parties.

‘There is a community. They are being threatened. BJP is threatening and creating a fake wave to get the votes. There is another party which says that if they do not vote in that party’s favour, then another party will come into power,’ Ilmi said, adding that especially minorities are kept in fear.