Woman in burqa seen breaking Ganesha idols in Bahrain; legal action initiated

Manama: A video of a burqa-clad woman destroying Ganesha idols in a supermarket in Bahrain went viral on social media on Sunday.

In the video, two burqa-clad women can be seen standing near a supermarket shelf where Ganesha idols are kept on display ahead of the Ganesh Utsav. One of the women later picks up the Ganesha idols and starts throwing them on the floor one by one and breaks them.

The woman raised objection over the display of Ganesh idols in a Muslim country. She said, "This is Mohamed ben Issa's country, do you think he approved of this?" "This is a Muslim country, correct?" the woman was seen yelling at the shop attendant in Arabic. "Let us see who will worship these statues. Call the cops," the other woman who was recording the incident on her phone said.

The tyranny that passes for tolerance.
pic.twitter.com/oRu5ij92ZN

— Tarek Fatah (@TarekFatah) August 16, 2020

Meanwhile, the Bahrain Police on Sunday said that they had taken legal steps against the woman who destroyed the Ganesha idols.

Bahrain's Ministry of Interior took to Twitter and wrote, “The Capital Police took legal steps against a woman, 54, for damaging a shop in Juffair and defaming a sect and its rituals, in order to refer her to the Public Prosecution,”

Bahrain's royal adviser Khaled bin Ahmed Al Khalifa condemned the act and called it a “hate crime”. “Destroying religious symbols is not part of nature of the Bahraini people. It’s a crime that exposes alien and rejected hate,” he added.