No Rent for Indian Blind Muslim Prof.

TEHRAN (IQNA) - Arriving at the flat she rented in Delhi, Reem Shamsudeen, an Indian Muslim assistant English professor at Delhi University, was denied entry after the landlord said she does not rent flats to Muslims.

“When I arrived at the flat with my luggage the landlord refused to give me the keys saying she could not rent the flat to a Muslim,” Shamsudeen, 30, said in a video that went viral on YouTube, Hindustan Times reported on Saturday, July 25.

The young lady who suffers from impaired vision said she had paid in advance for the accommodation so she and her mother could move into the flat after the summer holidays.

As the landlord refused to give her keys, she had to look for another flat with her mother.

Sharing her experience of discrimination on YouTube, the video went viral after receiving more than 15,000 views.

Shamsudeen urged Arvind Kejriwal, the chief minister of Delhi, to look into the matter and guarantee that people do not face discrimination based on their religion.

“I believe… Delhi you promised to accommodate every citizen, Bihari, Bengali, Malayali, Manipuri, Kashmiri, Goan, black, white, man, woman, transgender, gay, blind, deaf, homeless,” she said as she addressed the chief minister.
“I hope no one

will have to encounter this kind of shameful and inhuman experience in future and I urge you to kindly look into the issue.

“Of course this was a shocking experience, considering Delhi boasts of a cosmopolitan and metropolitan nature all the time,” she went on to say, adding that she never experienced discrimination based on religion while she lived in Hyderabad.

The thirty-year-old lived in Hyderabad for eight years to complete her MA, MPhil and PhD.

Fear

For now, Shamsudeen prefers to remain silent about the experience, in what many see as fearing for her job.

“She does not want the incident to get politicized. May be she is scared about her job,” said a teacher.

Official figures show Muslims, who make up around 13 percent of India's 1.1 billion population, are lagging behind in literacy.

Muslims have long complained of being discriminated against in all walks of life in Hindu-majority India.

Muslims also complain of being discriminated against in jobs.

They account for less than seven percent of public service employees, only five percent of railways workers, around four percent of banking employees and there are only 29,000 Muslims in India's 1.3 million-strong military.

Source: On Islam