Kuwait Supermarket Pulls Indian Products, Boycotts Them Amid Prophet Remarks Row

Workers at the Kuwait store pulled down Indian tea, rice, spices, and other products, as per reports.

Amid a row over a BJP official's remarks about the Prophet Mohammed, a supermarket in Kuwait pulled down Indian products from its shelves on Monday, 6 June, to protest the derogatory comments.

(Photo Courtesy: Twitter/OSINT Insider)

Amid a row over a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) official's remarks about the Prophet Muhammad, a supermarket in Kuwait pulled down Indian products from its shelves on Monday, 6 June, to protest the derogatory comments.

Workers at the Al-Ardiya Co-Operative Society store pulled down Indian tea, rice, spices, and other products into trolleys and covered the items with plastic sheets, photos circulated on social media showed.

"We, as a Kuwaiti Muslim people, do not accept insulting the Prophet," Nasser Al-Mutairi, CEO of the store, told news agency AFP, adding that they disapproved of the 'insult' to the Prophet. Signs in Arabic mounted on plastic sheets obstructing access to Indian products read: "We have removed Indian products," as per the report.

The Controversy

Six Islamic nations, as well as the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which consists of 56 member states, have censured the BJP over the controversial remarks made by former party spokesperson Nupur Sharma against Prophet Muhammad.

Indian ambassadors to Iran, Kuwait, and Qatar were also summoned by the foreign ministries of the respective countries on Sunday. Kuwait’s foreign ministry said that it had summoned the Ambassador to India and had conveyed to the envoy that it “rejects and denounces the statements made by an official in the ruling party against the Holy Prophet."

The contentious comments were made by Sharma during a debate on a television channel. When the controversy snowballed, BJP's Delhi media chief Naveen Jindal posted a controversial tweet about the Prophet, which he deleted after the outrage.

On Sunday, the BJP suspended Sharma and expelled Jindal amid the backlash.

The Indian government also said in a statement that the controversial remarks were "the views of fringe elements," and that the Centre respected all religions.

(With inputs from AFP.)