A Kuwaiti supermarket has pulled Indian products from its shelves over insulting remarks about Islam’s Prophet Muhammad made by two officials of India’s ruling right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Workers at the Al Ardiya Co-Operative Society store piled Indian tea and other products into trolleys on Monday in a protest against comments denounced as “Islamophobic”.
At the supermarket just outside Kuwait City, sacks of rice and shelves of spices and chilies were covered with plastic sheets. Printed signs in Arabic read: “We have removed Indian products”.
“We, as a Kuwaiti Muslim people, do not accept insulting the Prophet,” Nasser al Mutairi, CEO of the store, said. An official at the chain said a company-wide boycott was being considered.
Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkiye and other countries in the region, as well as the influential Al Azhar University in Cairo, have condemned the insulting remarks against the Prophet and his wife Ayesha in a TV debate by a spokesperson for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party, Nupur Sharma, who has since been suspended.
https://twitter.com/KhaledBeydoun/status/1533927178299183104?t=xIlE3OFV14UCTz1fxXs8iQ&s=19
Another BJP spokesperson and the party’s Delhi media head Naveen Kumal Jindal was expelled from the right-wing party over comments he made about Prophet Muhammad on Twitter.
Gulf countries are big importers of produce from India, with Kuwait importing 95 percent of its food according to the trade minister. ( Reuters Archive )Watch: Kuwait store removes Indian products after ‘Islamophobic’Prophet remark
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