Zaira Wasim deletes Twitter, Instagram accounts after posting religious verse on locust attack

Srinagar: Former actor Zaira Wasim has deleted her Twitter and Instagram accounts. She was reportedly trolled and received hate online for a recent tweet on Thursday which mentioned locust attacks. She later deleted the tweet.

On Thursday, Zaira had shared a verse from Quran, which mentioned the five plagues of Egypt, including the swarm the locusts. “So We sent upon them the flood and locusts and lice and frogs and blood: Signs openly self explained: but they were steeped in arrogance- a people given to sin” -Qur’an 7:133,” she wrote in her tweet.

Zaira was then targeted for her tweet by a few social media users. They seemed to infer from her tweet that she was justifying locust attack as the wrath of god. “I like Zaira Wasim. But this is dumb and in bad taste. People are suffering becoz of locusts, floods, covid. She’s implying that this is ‘divine punishment’”, a Twitter user wrote.

However, another section of social media came to her defence. “Nothing is wrong in this tweet she wrote it right, all things happen only with permission of God whether it’s a punishment or etc he can kill or do any miracle, he can do anything he wants cause it’s not our world it’s his, we are here just for some years not forever,” read a tweet.

Zaira had announced that she was leaving the Hindi film industry in 2019. “As I had just started to explore and make sense of the things to which I dedicated my time, efforts and emotions and tried to grab hold of a new lifestyle — it was only for me to realise that though I may fit here perfectly, I do not belong here,” she had written in a detailed post, “This field indeed brought a lot of love, support, and applause my way, but what it also did was to lead me to a path of ignorance, as I silently and unconsciously transitioned out of ‘Imaan’ (a Muslim’s steadfast path in Allah’s devotion). While I continued to work in an environment that consistently interfered with my Imaan, my relationship with my religion was threatened.”

Locust swarms from Pakistan have entered Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh threatening major damage to standing cotton crops and vegetables. The desert locust is a species of locust, a swarming short-horned grasshopper. They are known to devour everything in their path, posing an unprecedented threat to food supply and livelihoods of millions of people.