Hindus threatened with death by Muslim man for not reciting Kalma
Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, India 
10 July, 2025
Case Summary
In Rasulpur Aurangabad village of Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, a Muslim man named Irshad posted a video on social media in which he threatened Hindus with violence if they did not recite the Kalma. The video, initially shared as a WhatsApp status, sparked outrage in the village. In it, Irshad used abusive and obscene language against the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, and the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath. He also issued a direct death threat, stating: “Tell your people [Hindus] to recite Kalma, or I will kill them.” Following public anger, the video was deleted. However, Irshad later re-uploaded it to Instagram, further escalating tensions in the area. As of the time of reporting, a case has been registered, and police have launched a search operation to apprehend the absconding accused.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
This case has been added to the tracker under the prime category- Predatory Proselytisation. The sub-category relevant in this case is- Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion. Harassment covers a wide range of behaviours of an offensive nature. It is commonly understood as behaviour that demeans, humiliates, and intimidates a person, including threats and coercion. Harassment and threats, in this case, find their root on discriminatory grounds which has the effect of nullifying a person’s rights or infringing upon his freedom to exercise his right specifically owing to the victim’s religious identity. Verbal and physical threats and psychological or physical harassment are often used against Hindu victims because they choose to practice their professed religion. Religious harassment also includes forced and involuntary conversions by harassment, threats or coercion. Coercion includes intimidatory tactics like force-feeding a Hindu victim beef to convert to another religion, forceful circumcision etc. In several cases documented, non-Hindu perpetrators or those who harbour specific animosity towards Hinduism, harass victims simply based on their religious identity. Such cases often also include harassment to ensure the Hindu victim abandons his/her professed religion and adopts the religion of the perpetrator. Such cases where Hindu victims are harassed to convert to the perpetrator’s religion are rooted in animosity towards the victim’s religious identity and are therefore documented as religiously motivated hate crimes. The primary category selected is: - Hate speech against Hindus. Within it, the sub-category selected is: - Violent threats. Violent threats, explicit, implicit or implied, is the most dangerous form of hate speech since it goes beyond discriminatory and prejudicial language to express the intent of causing harm to an individual or a group of people based on their religious identity and faith. There could be several different kinds of threats that are issued to Hindus based on religious animosity. An explicit threat would mean the direct threat of violence towards an individual Hindu, a group of Hindus or Hindus at large. Physical violence, death threats, threats of destruction of property belonging to Hindus and threats of genocide would mean explicit threats against Hindus for their religious identity. Implicit threats may not be a direct threat but implied through the use of symbols of actions – for example – in the Nupur Sharma case, other than explicit threats, there were also implicit threats when Islamists took to the streets to burn and beat her effigies. It implies that they want to do the same to Nupur Sharma – thereby is considered an implicit threat. Violent threats can be delivered in person, through letters, phone calls, graffiti, or increasingly through social media and other online platforms. It would be important to understand that a threat – explicit or implicit, online or offline – to an individual who happens to be a Hindu does not qualify as a religiously motivated threat. Such a threat, while vile and dangerous, could be owing to non-religious reasons and/or personal animosity. To qualify as a religiously motivated threat, it would need to exhibit an indication that the individual is being targeted for religious reasons and/or owing to his/her religious identity as a Hindu. This incident qualifies as a religiously motivated hate crime against Hindus not just because of the threat itself, but because of the intent, content, and context of that threat. The Muslim perpetrator, Irshad, did not issue a general or personal threat—he issued a targeted ultimatum to all Hindus: either recite the Kalma or be killed. The Kalma is the Islamic declaration of faith; demanding its recitation under the threat of violence is an attempt to erase the victim’s religious identity and enforce submission to another religion. That intent—compelling Hindus to abandon their faith or face death—is what makes this a religiously motivated crime. What distinguishes this from an ordinary threat or abuse is that the violence is conditioned explicitly upon the religious identity of the victims. Irshad did not threaten violence for political, personal, or financial reasons—he threatened it only if Hindus refused to convert. This makes the Hindu identity of the victims both the reason for the threat and the target of the intended harm. The abuse directed at Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in the video further reinforces the religious motivation behind the threat. Both leaders are viewed by the Muslim community as emblems of Hindu identity and assertion. The use of vulgar and threatening language against them was not merely political opposition; it was an extension of the perpetrator’s religious hostility toward Hindus. This kind of targeting reflects a broader pattern of anti-Hindu sentiment, where prominent Hindu figures are vilified as a proxy for attacking the Hindu community itself. The incident also involves a direct and coercive attempt to compel Hindus to abandon their faith and accept Islam under the threat of death. By demanding that Hindus recite the Kalma—the Islamic declaration of faith—as a condition for survival, the perpetrator used intimidation as a tool for religious conversion, which is a hallmark of predatory proselytisation. The threat was not an isolated outburst but a calculated message aimed at undermining the Hindu community’s religious autonomy and enforcing submission through fear. Such coercion, rooted in religious animosity and expressed publicly, clearly meets the criteria for inclusion in the hate crime database. The threat issued in this case—demanding that Hindus recite the Kalma or be killed—echoes the same theological framework espoused by terrorist organisations like ISIS. At the core of ISIS’s ideology is the belief that it is a religious obligation to establish a global Islamic order through offensive jihad, replacing all non-Islamic systems with their version of Sharia rule. This includes the forced conversion or subjugation of non-Muslims under a global caliphate. By invoking the Kalma as a non-negotiable condition for survival for Hindus, the perpetrator in this case mirrored the same supremacist mindset that seeks to erase religious diversity and enforce uniformity under Islam. The notion of the umma as a single global Muslim community, central to jihadist thinking, underpins such threats: non-Muslims are either to be absorbed into this community through conversion or eliminated. Thus, Irshad’s video, while appearing local, reflects a microcosm of the broader ideological project of religious domination, making it not just a hate crime, but a grassroots manifestation of radical Islamic proselytisation through coercion and terror. Hence, this case is included in the hate crime database. Disclaimer: It is important to clarify that the report does not specify the exact date when the anti-Hindu comment was posted. Therefore, for documentation purposes, the date has been recorded based on when the incident was reported in the media.
Case Status
Complaint filed
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
One Person
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
