“What began as a protest soon escalated into a violent roving mob ransacking houses of the majority Hindu community in the district. It is believed that dozens of businesses, houses, and at least six police vehicles, were torched by a mob in West Bengal’s North 24 Parganas district….Blockades are on in at least 60 places in Basirhat and incidents of police being beaten up are also being reported.”

The worst aspect of this, aside from all the senseless destruction, is that the “offender” has been arrested. This only feeds the impression that this appalling violence is justified. Neither India nor any other non-Muslim state should be enforcing Sharia blasphemy laws. Instead, authorities should be cracking down hard on these mobs, and making it clear that the offense here was not insulting Muhammad, but rioting and wreaking havoc and attacking police over the perceived insult. The way they’re behaving, Indian authorities, like authorities in the West who condemned the Muhammad cartoons instead of the rioting and killing Muslims did because of them, are just fueling this barbarism.

“Communal violence sweeps Bengal’s Basirhat district after student’s Facebook post ‘disrespects the Prophet Mohammad,'” by Anindya Banerjee, Mailonline India, July 4, 2017 (thanks to Jamal):