Husband ‘complains’ to mosque, wife ‘summoned’ and beaten up by mob: How India’s mosques are routinely dispensing Taliban-style ‘justice’
In Bengaluru, a Muslim mob allegedly assaulted a 38-year-old woman named Shabeena Bano after a complaint was filed against her at a local mosque over a family dispute. The Taliban-style mob ‘justice’ was caught on camera and sparked outrage on social media.
On 7th April, the victim, who works as a house help, was at her house when a relative, Nasreen, came to her house. Meanwhile, another person named Fayaz also visited the victim’s house. The trio went out for some time and later returned to Shabeena’s home. However, when Shabeena’s husband came home and saw Nasreen and Fayaz, he grew enraged. Subsequently, Jameel went to the local Jama Masjid in Tavarekere and filed a complaint against his wife and her relative, Fayaz.
Following this, Shabeena and her relatives were summoned to the mosque on 9th April. However, when Shabeena arrived at the mosque, six Muslim men identified as Mohammad Niyaz (32) – a driver, Mohammad Gauspeer (45) – a scrap dealer, Chand Basha (35) – a sugarcane juice vendor, Dastagir (24) – a bike mechanic, Rasool T R (42) a fisherman at Bukkambudi Lake, and Inayat Ullah (51) – a resident, brutally assaulted complainant Shabeena.
According to the FIR filed in this case, the victim alleged that the accused individuals had gathered with the intent of intimidation. They began verbally abusing Shabeena, used filthy language, and threatened her and her family. Moreover, the accused also slapped, kicked and assaulted her children.
“After this incident, I returned home and felt extremely humiliated, physically hurt, and mentally disturbed. I then came to the police station to file this complaint. I request strict legal action against the above-named accused persons for their criminal acts, threats, physical assault, and theft,” the complainant said.
In her complaint, Shabeena also alleged that Nasreen and another woman named Parveen allegedly entered her house later stole a TV, mobile phone, charger, and other household items, and left. “On 09.04.2025, around 2:30 PM, I asked my husband where he was going. He told me he was going near Jamiya Masjid in Tavarekere. Nasreen and Parveen also went in that direction. Near the mosque, I saw a crowd gathered,” the complaint reads.
Meanwhile, the police have filed a case under sections about conspiracy, assault, and attempted murder. The police arrested all six accused soon after the incident triggered social media outrage. According to the police, an investigation by the SIT in this case is underway.
Sharia courts: How a Muslim India exists within a broader ‘secular’ India
While this incident is as outrageous as it gets, this is not the first time that a Taliban-style mosque court has delivered ‘justice’ to Muslim women in India. Not to forget the Chopra flogging incident in West Bengal. Last year, a Shariah court-like ‘Insaf Sabha’ was organised in Chopra, wherein a TMC-linked Islamist named Tajemul Haque brutally assaulted a Muslim woman in public, aided by another Islamist, Amirul. Tajmul Haque brutally assaulted a woman and a man during a so-called ‘arbitration meeting’ which he named ‘Insaf Sabha’ over an allegation of an ‘extramarital affair’. A large number of people were spectators to the flogging, and nobody protested the brutal assault.
As if this Kangaroo ‘justice’ was not outrageous enough, a TMC MLA, Hamidul Rahman, justified this Taliban-style flogging by saying that there are some ‘codes’ in a ‘Muslim Rashtra’.
Time and again, several Muslim clerics and politicians have issued statements prioritising Sharia over the constitution, with many asserting that Indian Muslims will follow only Sharia. A latest example of this came on 14th April, when Hafizul Hasan, a minister in the Jharkhand government, said that for him, Sharia comes before the constitution. In an accidental moment of truth, Hasan divulged the Al-Taqqiya Islamists often use to fool ‘secularists’, as he said that “We carry the Quran in our hearts and the Constitution in our hands. Muslims walk with the Quran in their hearts and the Constitution in their hands.”
Reports suggest that there are nearly 100 Sharia courts in ‘secular’ India. Back in 2023, the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) boasted that there are over 100 Sharia courts in India and that AIMPLB intends to set up such Islamic courts in all of India’s Muslim majority districts. In 2018, too, the Muslim body had said it plans to open Darul-Qaza (Sharia courts) in all districts of the country. These Islamists have received support from Muslim appeasing political parties. In 2018, it was reported that the then Telangana government was contemplating extending judicial powers to Waqf Boards, which would allow the setting up of Sharia courts—an Islamic justice system operating parallel to the Indian constitution-based judiciary, although not as powerful as the latter.
In July 2018, the Central government dismissed a proposal by AIMPLB, which advocated for setting up Sharia courts. The Modi government deemed the proposal unconstitutional. Later that year, a Muslim woman filed a plea in the Supreme Court demanding that Sharia courts in India be declared unconstitutional.
In 2020, AIMIM urged Muslims to disregard the Indian Judiciary and approach Sharia courts to resolve their disputes. This, however, was not shocking as Hamid Ansari, the former Vice President of India, had also once made a similar assertion. He had backed the idea of setting up the Shariat courts in every district of the country, saying that each community has the right to practice its own personal law.
Back in October 2017, a Muslim family in the Mallapuram district of Kerala was ‘ostracised’ by the community after a Muslim girl, Jaseela from that family, married a Christian boy, Tiso Thomas. Kunnummal Yusuf faced a boycott by the local Mahallu mosque committee in Keezhattur. The boycott was called by the local Mahallu committee (mosque committee).
“A member of this mosque committee, Kunnummal Yusuf, has conducted the marriage of his daughter with a non-Muslim. So the mosque committee has unanimously decided not to cooperate with the family of Kunnummal Yusuf and his family in matters related to the mosque and other affairs,” the mosque committee’s circular stated, adding that local Muslims should refrain from attending the ostracised family’s wedding-related functions.
Similarly, back in 2019, a Muslim family of Thrithala, Palakkad district in Kerala was boycotted by a local mosque committee as women of the family posed publicly for photographs during a wedding function in the family and for organizing a musical programme at the event.
These mosque-run Kangaroo courts are often touted as easy, accessible and non-expensive means to achieve justice for poor Muslims, however, the functioning of these parallel religious justice systems is not only undermining the authority of the Indian judiciary but also harming Muslims.
Several mosques in India function as police stations, as seen in the case of Shabeena Bano. Such cases demonstrate that Muslims are running an Islamic nation within a secular India. When they want to shield their Islamic dominance, they brandish India’s ‘secular’ constitution and invoke ‘Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb’; however, in reality, they are running a parallel Taliban government of sorts. This should not be taken lightly if one has read the history of religion-based separate electorates in British India.
Apparently, India is a secular country until one mentions Indian Muslims. The second-largest religious majority in the country, which for political reasons has been labelled as a permanent ‘minority’, enjoys certain freedoms and privileges that other communities can only dream of. One such privilege of arbitrarily declaring any property, including that of the government and non-Muslim, as Waqf, was taken away in the Waqf Amendment Act. Myriad attempts are being made to assert Islamic dominance within the Muslim community and on others, particularly the Hindu majority.
From Taliban-style Sharia courts, violent anti-Waqf agitations as seen in West Bengal’s Murshidabad where out of nowhere local Hindus became the victims, attacks on Hindu processions passing near mosques or Muslim-dominated areas, glorification of Islamic fanatics like Aurangzeb, love jihad to Islamic terrorism, Islamists are implementing their sinister designs while their liberal enablers whitewash their deeds with ‘Sharbat-e-Mohabbat’ and villainise the Hindu victims. Mosque-led Muslim mobs bypassing laws to resolve dispute of Muslims through violence or mosque committees calling for boycott of community members for establishing relations or interacting with non-Muslims or Muslims preferring to approach mosques to file complaints instead of police stations to resolve their disputes suggests that many Muslims are drifting away from secular mainstream towards a more ‘Muslim-only’ framework.
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