Sana Shakil By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Muslim leaders on Friday said the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act may force Muslims to convert.

Prominent Muslim bodies like Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (JIH), All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat (AIMMM) and members of the civil society said they felt let down by some ‘secular political parties’ that had assured to not support the “divisive” Bill but voted in favour.

Responding to a question on whether this law may compel Muslims to convert, Jamaat-e-Islami Hind vice-president Salim Engineer said, “Conversion cannot be ruled out. This law has to be seen together with NRC. When a lot of genuine citizens won’t have documents to get through NRC, as we saw in Assam, everybody except Muslims will manage to escape that because of CAA. At that time, a lot of Muslims may think they too would have escaped the trauma if they were non-Muslims.”

Salim added that the law is poisonously divisive and dangerous in ways that cannot even be imagined and that it should be collectively opposed by all Indians.

Responding to the same question, AIMMM president Navaid Hamid said, “There are different dimensions of the hidden agenda of Sangh Parivar and they wish to exploit every option to create confusion among the citizens and a false illusion amongst their vote bank.”

The two prominent Muslim leaders were addressing a joint conference along with activists against the newly enacted law.

Mohammad Jafar, also a vice-president of JIH, called for countrywide peaceful protests against the “communal, anti-Muslim” law.

Expressing disappointed with ‘secular political parties’ like TRS, JD(U) and BJD for supporting the Bill in Parliament, he said, "We were given an impression that these secular parties will oppose the Bill. We had several meetings with their leaders, but we know what they did. Maybe they don’t realise the dangerous consequences of the law."