‘It’s not just a fantasy. It’s a fantasy of hate, a fantasy of domination. And it’s being allowed, it is being encouraged,’ says author Annie Zaidi
Team Clarion
NEW DELHI – Several Hindutva groups have flooded social media platforms with AI-generated semi-pornographic photos, videos and posts of Muslim women to target the community.
According to a report published in The Quint, hundreds of accounts and pages on Instagram and Facebook posted images of women in hijab or a burqa in intimate positions with a Hindu men.
“We found that there are at least 250 such pages on Instagram, many of which use AI tools to make soft porn images of Muslim women. On Facebook, the nature of engagement is different, as such activity is mostly through a smaller number of pages but with thousands of followers,” reads the report written by Adity Menon for the news website.
According to the report, the ‘Muslimness’ of the women invariably is communicated through a burqa or a hijab and the ‘Hinduness’ of the men is often depicted through items like Rudraksh beads, Kalava on the wrist, Tilak or ash on the head and/or body, Hindu symbols as tattoos and saffron clothing which includes items like scarves and bandanas.
The pages and accounts use the term ‘Hijabi’ in their names, posts and hashtags to put the Muslimness at the main target of their social media accounts.
While posting semi-pornographic images, the users also make lewd remarks about Muslim women. “Muslim women are sexually frustrated and they don a burqa to hide this”, reads the post shared widely on many accounts and pages.
Nabiya Khan, a Delhi-based poet and an activist who was put on auction through ‘Sulli deals’ in 2021, is among the Muslim women who was shared such AI-generated images in a private message on X.
“I have been receiving pornographic images of hijabi women in my Twitter DM ever since my follower count began growing. The people who send these messages threaten me that they can also morph my images if they want. Now AI tools have become so advanced, so the messages containing such images have also increased,” said Khan.
She wondered that while on the one hand, pro-Hindutva people support a ban on hijab and burqa in public spaces but in private spaces, some of them fetishise the garment.
“There is a unique depravity in this thinking,” Khan said.
Explaining the fantasy behind such images, author Annie Zaidi said a burqa also may represent what the men want to do with women in their lives.
“You see this woman, she is covered up and she belongs to this other man who is a Muslim. This other man and this woman seem to be getting along, and you don’t like that because you hate the man. So, you are building this fantasy in your head of you possessing that woman to humiliate the man. But embedded in that fantasy is your possession of women per se,” she said.
“It’s not just a fantasy. It’s a fantasy of hate, a fantasy of domination. And it’s being allowed, it is being encouraged,” she added.
According to the report, in these images, the Hindu men are invariably shown as being unrealistically muscular and, in a dominating, or even threatening position. On the other hand, the Muslim woman is often shown as submissive and intimidated.
For instance, the analysed profile picture of one of the Instagram pages shows a Hindu man grabbing a Muslim woman from behind in a threatening manner.
In some images, the men are also disproportionately larger, a common theme in “domination fetish” pornography.
Then, in a few places, multiple Hindu men are seen surrounding a Muslim woman, as a form of collective domination.
These pages also use vulgar and abusive words for the Muslims to dehumanise them. For instance, a page claims to be “Hijabiyon ka shikari, Mulliyo ka Maalik.” Another page claims to make Muslim women his “rakhail (concubine)”.
Explaining the mentality behind their obsession with Muslim women, Zaidi pointed out: “They see Muslim women as something to be taken, something to be possessed, or otherwise just humiliated as an indirect attack on the whole community. It has happened in the past, but it has never been legitimised in these ways, for instance by using AI to do all this,” she says.
A recurring theme in these pages is the obsession with what they believe is the superiority of the “Uncut (uncircumcised) Hindu penis”. The report found fifty pages which talk about “uncut”. These pages post semi-pornographic images and make obscene and vulgar comments.
The report noted that a majority of pages frequently put out posts soliciting “Muslim girls and housewives” seeking “sexual satisfaction”.
However, many of the pages also carry posts and comments complaining about catfish accounts pretending to be Muslim women. Many pages have made video chats compulsory as proof of identity.
Some of the pages claim that they can facilitate “sexual meetings” between Muslim women and Hindu men. For instance, a page put up a post inviting “men in Odisha” to “hook up” with an 18-year-old Muslim girl.
The pages also periodically post area-specific invitations, most commonly in cities in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. A few of the pages also claim to be involved in what is known as “Bhagwa Love Trap” that is the alleged grooming of Muslim girls aimed at converting them to Hinduism.
One page put up an Instagram story about “Bhagwa love trap” on “aalim ladki” – that is a claim that a girl who is a religious scholar has been groomed into converting.
Some of these pages emphasise the caste identity of the Hindu men involved in the images and memes – some have titles like ‘Zalim Pandit’, ‘Zalim Brahman’ or ‘Zalim Thakur’. We found at least 60 pages on Instagram with names that are versions of “Zalim Pandit” or “Zalim Brahman” dedicated to posting explicit images of Muslim women.
