Arfa Khanum: From Delhi to D.C. — Journalism, power, and the battle for credibility

A moment of silence for a terrorist? How a journalism panel lost its plot in California

In a bizarre turn of events, the gathering (May 18 2025; City of Milpitas, San Francisco Bay area, CA) that was supposed to be a discussion about journalistic freedom and liberties, ended up paying a minute of silence to the terrorist who was instrumental in the kidnapping and subsequent execution by beheading of WSJ journalist Daniel Pearl.

The conversation between two Stanford Fellows, Aaron Glantz and Arfa Khanum, was on expected lines. When you have a contributor to The Wire and a contributor to NPR and NY Times have a discussion, you can anticipate criticism of the Trump and Modi administrations, and their respective political parties and the state of the two nations, and accusations on the people of the two nations for Islamophobia – and that is precisely what transpired.

Arfa set the tone by condemning the arrest of Ashoka University professor Ali Khahn Mahmudabad. She called his post benign and said that it indicated a deeper malaise of Islamophobia in the Indian government and the nation in general. However, Arfa failed to mention several aspects of the Twitter post.

This is the post of Ashoka University Prof Ali Khan @Mahmudabad for which he was arrested by Haryana Police. pic.twitter.com/ZZvDln0kd8

— Shah Nawaz ali (@NawazKiAwaz) May 18, 2025

While Mahmudabad initially appeared to explain what Operation Sindoor meant to India and Pakistan, he quickly shifted to blaming those calling for a response to the terror attack as “mindlessly advocating for war,” accusing them of doing so for the benefit of politicians and defence companies! While seemingly applauding India for fielding Col. Sofia Qureshi at the press conference, his intent to criticize India rather than Pakistan is clear in the rest of the post, where he uses words like “illusion” and claims the grassroots reality of Muslims in India is different.

What Arfa also failed to mention deliberately (of course, you cannot attribute ignorance of facts to a journalist with 20 years of experience) is the history of the individual in question. Mr. Mahmudabad’s grandfather was a leader of the Muslim League, the party responsible for the partition of India. He was an associate of Mr. Jinnah, the founding father and president of Pakistan. He migrated to Pakistan after the partition and was honored by the Pakistani government as one of the pioneers of their freedom movement. Mahmudabad also has a personal grievance with the Indian government, as his ancestral property was annexed by the state as enemy property after prolonged litigation.

Arfa continued with a lengthy critique of what she called jingoistic chest thumping and war mongering on Indian television. She bizarrely claimed that Indian journalists were seen carrying guns and in military attire on TV. She also ventured into the topic of caste (which of late has become a convenient tool for Islamists to bash India with) by saying that all journalists who “engaged” in war propaganda on TV belonged to the upper castes of Hindus in India, without offering evidence. She accused them of running a “circus show” to suit the agenda of the government in power, while adding at the same time that the Ministry of External Affairs and its bureaucrats were measured in their responses. Aaron Glantz supported her arguments by calling Indian journalists “psychos”—a strong statement from someone who began his career covering the Iraq War and chose not to address how the US mainstream media covered that conflict in the early 2000s.

Arfa also laid out startling numbers as the viewership of The Wire, and started taking some Q&A from the audience. Of Course, the audience – about 30-40 people in number, consisting of a motley of members of Indo American Islamic Council, senior citizens who visibly looked like they hadn’t visited India in decades, left-leaning individuals and friendly journalists from countries like Turkey, was more than happy to throw full-tosses and half-volleys. Questions like “How hard is it to be a Muslim in India?”, “How Hard is it to be a female journalist in India?”, “Is all hope lost for India now that Modi has been elected for the third term?”, “How did the construction of the temple in Ayodhya make you feel?” is the delight of every pro-congress and pro-muslim journalist in India. The answers were on predictable lines – “Things were great before, but once Modi ascended to power they have been bad; democracy is barely hanging by a thread, things are worse than during the emergency of 75-77 (never mind I freely travel to India and USA and then speak ill of the two nations and their leaders!) but I am a fighter and I will continue to fight for the minorities…”

The lone dissenter in the audience – a man who called for and made the audience and the guests stand up in a minute of silence for the victims of the terror attack in Kashmir- was criticized for his “rudeness” by a Turkish journalist. And the “victims” were widened to include “all the victims of the war” by a deranged fossil in the audience. The victims of “the war” also included Abdul Rauf Azhar, the man who was responsible for the kidnapping and subsequent execution by beheading of WSJ journalist Daniel Pearl (in 2002) in Pakistan.

Arfa comes across as another Indian journalist speaking all the familiar terms – speaking against democratically elected governments, laying false claims of Islamophobia with scant evidence, criticizing the media which does not peddle their narrative of events – being “nurtured” by the left leaning institutions and media in the United States, along the lines of Rana Ayyub. With a nation of 1.4 billion people and a growing exchange rate disparity, it is all but certain that she is not going to be the last one.

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