Soon after Saif Ali Khan joined the raging debate on the azaan controversy following singer Sonu Nigam’s tweets complaining about the religious prayer call, the actor is facing brickbats online for telling the media that Sonu’s tweet was “aggressive”. However, Saif was quick to balance his views adding that “amplification of sound comes from insecurity”.
Sonu had started an online war last week by posting against the early morning call for prayer sent out from mosques on loudspeakers. He also called it “forced religiousness”.
Saif has said, “It’s fine to express your views on the decibel levels. I think that tweet was a bit aggressive though, initially. And I do think religion should be a private affair and we should be a secular country.”
Not sparing Saif for his opinions, Twitterati had a field day slamming the actor, though online comments have taken little note of his moderate tone.
“Saif Ali Khan who chose the barbaric “Taimur” name for his son out of insecurity fears too? What a sham this idiot,” wrote one user G Bhatt. “Saif do u hv guts t criticise stonepelter?? Hv u ever condemed the act of stonepelter on our gr8 indian army? So u r condeming sonu’s tweet!” (sic) wrote another user, Kusumanjali Singh.
Saif was also quoted as saying, “Not just here, but also in Israel apparently where three different religions co-exist. It’s fine to express your views on the decibel levels. I think that tweet was a bit aggressive though, initially. And I do think religion should be a private affair and we should be a secular country.”
“As a minority, you would like to make your presence felt and hopefully accepted. If someone says that it should be extinguished, it will make some people little uncomfortable. As a precursor to some sort of holocaust, it’s the first thing you think of. There’s a bit of fear there,” added the 46-year-old actor.
Meanwhile, singer Adnan Sami has come out in Sonu Nigam’s defence . “I haven’t read his [Sonu Nigam] tweet till now, so I don’t really know what he wanted to say. But I have known him for a long time, and I feel his tweet is being misunderstood,” Sami was quoted as saying.