New Delhi: The Central government on Wednesday announced Y+ category security to All India Imam Organization (AIIO) chief Umer Ahmed Ilyasi who has allegedly been receiving death threats after his meeting with Rashtriya Swayamseva Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat on September 23.
The security was granted after Ilyasi complained of receiving death threats over phone calls from contact numbers traced to the United Kingdom since his meeting with Bhagwat. After what he claimed to be a 'personal meeting', the Imam was mired in controversy for calling Bhagwat the father of the nation.
The All India Imam Organisation is the representative voice of the community of Indian Imams and claims to be the largest imam organization in the world. AIIO chief Ilyasi, who claims to work for peace and harmony across the globe with around half a million Imams as a part of his organization, has in the past shown support for the loudspeaker ban, a controversy created by Maharashtra's MNS chief Raj Thackeray. He had also tagged the Hijab row as an attempt to 'malign the country by foreign bodies and terror groups such as Al Qaeda'.
Also read: Meeting with RSS chief was personal, not political: AIIO chief Umer Ahmed Ilyasi
The meeting between Ilyasi and Bhagwat, which lasted for more than an hour, was held at Kasturba Gandhi Marg mosque where the office of the All India Imam Organisation is located. Before the meeting, there were speculations across the media that the RSS Chief, who had been holding meetings with the Muslim intellectuals around that time, will discuss issues related to the Hijab controversy, Gyanvapi, and the maintenance of peace and harmony among religions. However, both parties had dismissed any political connotations attached to the meeting and called it purely 'personal'.
