India hits back at Iran over criticism on treatment of Muslims

India has lashed out at Iran’s supreme leader after he spoke about the plight of India's Muslim minority, suggesting the Iranian leader should be concerned by his own country’s poor human rights record.

"The enemies of Islam have always tried to make us indifferent with regard to our shared identity as an Islamic Ummah. We cannot consider ourselves to be Muslims if we are oblivious to the suffering that a Muslim is enduring in #Myanmar, #Gaza, #India, or any other place," Ali Khamenei wrote in a post on X on Monday.

His post was made on the Islamic occasion of the birth of the Prophet Muhammad, known as Mawlid al-Nabawi.

New Delhi said Khamenei's comments were "unacceptable" and that the 85-year-old leader was "misinformed."

"Countries commenting on minorities are advised to look at their own record before making any observations about others," a statement by India’s external affairs ministry said.

India's Muslim population – about 200 million or 14 percent of the world's most populous nation – have long been subject to communal violence, bearing the brunt of Hindu nationalist aggression.

There have been dozens of cases of brutal beatings and even lynching by Hindu nationalist mobs on suspicion of cow slaughter and beef consumption, among other things.

Earlier this year, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government announced rules to implement a 2019 citizenship law that provides a fast track to naturalisation for Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Christians who fled to Hindu-majority India from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan before December 31, 2014.

The law excludes Muslims, who are a majority in all three nations.

Critics say Modi’s conspicuous silence over anti-Muslim violence has emboldened some of his most extreme supporters and enabled more hate speech against Muslims.

Iran's treatment of minorities, among them Baha'is, has also been slammed by rights groups.