BJP calls West Asia crisis Muslim world's 'internal fight for supremacy'

Indore: The crisis in West Asia, including the Israel-Iran conflict, is the fallout of the Muslim world’s “internal fight for supremacy”, the BJP said on Wednesday, expressing hope that the issue would soon be resolved peacefully.

“The West Asia crisis is nothing but a fight between Muslim countries for supremacy over one another. One pole of this fight is Saudi Arabia, the leader of the Sunni world, and the other pole is Iran, the leader of the Shia world,” BJP national spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi told reporters here.

Referring to the Israel-Hamas war, he said Iran thought that the entire Muslim world would side with it if it raised an “emotive issue” against Israel, but that did not happen.

“That is why today you are seeing that the Sunni world remained largely silent during the attack on Iran. Not only this, on the one hand Iran was being attacked and on the other hand Pakistan’s Army Chief Asim Munir was suggesting that US President Donald Trump should get the Nobel Peace Prize,” he said.

The BJP Rajya Sabha member stressed that India respects the sovereignty of all countries.

“We hope that a positive spirit will emerge and the crisis in West Asia will be resolved peacefully soon,” said Trivedi.

He launched a scathing attack on the Congress over the imposition of the Emergency in 1975, saying that the “mentality of Emergency” is still intact in the opposition party.

Trivedi claimed that the Congress believes in the “objectionable slogan of ‘India is Indira and Indira is India’” even today, and leaders like Rahul Gandhi consider themselves above the Constitution.

The then prime minister Indira Gandhi had imposed the Emergency in India on June 25, 1975. The 21-month period saw the suspension of civil liberties, and arrest of opposition leaders and the suppression of press freedom.