JOFRA Archer might be an aggressive bowler on the field, but the England pacer won hearts with his calm and composed reply to author Taslima Nasreen on Tuesday.

Taslima had said that England all-rounder Moeen Ali would have joined the militant Islamic State (IS) group had he not been playing cricket.

“If Moeen Ali were not stuck with cricket, he would have gone to Syria to join IS,” Taslima tweeted.

Jofra Archer did not take it lightly and wrote: “Are you okay? I don’t think you’re okay.”

The Bangladeshi author tried to calm things down and later claimed that her tweet on Moeen was “sarcastic”.

“Haters know very well that my Moeen Ali tweet was sarcastic. But they made that an issue to humiliate me because I try to secularise Muslim society & I oppose Islamic fanaticism. One of the greatest tragedies of humankind is pro-women leftists support anti-women Islamists,” she wrote.

But Archer urged her to delete the tweet as it was in no way funny or sarcastic.

“Sarcastic ? No one is laughing, not even yourself, the least you can do is delete the tweet,” Archer tweeted.

By arrangement with Times of India

Published in Dawn, April 7th, 2021