ISIS and Love Jihad : The Deadly Combination In Kerala

December 11, 1999, was a black day for the Hindus of Kerala and Bharat as it was this day that Kerala’s renowned poet, short story writer and a great Krishna Bhakt, Madhavikutty Aka Kamala Das converted to Islam. She wore a Purdah and said that she has embraced Islam. It was indeed a shock for the Malayalee community as she was one of the best writers of the state who was shortlisted for Nobel Prize in literature in the year 1984 and had written several short stories which had influenced the youths and the Keralite community. Kamala Das can be considered as one of the foremost victim of Love Jihad which was planned and executed to the fullest by an influential political leader of the Muslim League who had promised to marry her even though he had two wives and children. Kamala Das who was a widow and was 65 fell for this pseudo-lover and converted to Islam after he promised that if she converted he would marry her. After conversion and a clear ditching from him, she had told several of her close friends that she was suffocating inside the Purdah as she was always a free bird. However much she wanted to, she had to live a life of a Muslim till her last and was ultimately cremated at the Palayam Juma Musjid Khabaristhan in Thiruvananthapuram. Her long time friend and Canadian writer Merrily Weisbord who has written the book The Love Queen of Malabar on Kamala narrates that how Kamala was cheated into false love by this Muslim preacher and writer who is also a teacher and a politician from the Muslim League. 

Contrary to this, Unnian Sahib a wealthy Muslim land lord of Malapparamba in Valluvanadu of Malappuram District, a Muslim majority district, had converted to Hindu fold with his family and his brother Aliyappu much to the disdain of the Muslim clergy. He adopted the name of Ramasimhan and his brother Aliyappu, Dayasimhan. Dayasimhan was a person of virtue that he was given the title of Daysimhan Namboodiri and married a Brahmin lady Kamala Antharjanam. The family turned vegetarian and was living peacefully when the Muslim clergy conspired and on the night of August 2, 1947, the family was butchered by a group of Muslims at the instance of the powerful Muslim clergy. Muslim landlords and influential politicians intervened and finally the culprits came out unscathed. These two incidents show how tolerant Hindus are and how intolerant are the Muslims.

Hindu organisations across the State have been crying foul over the rate of increase in the conversion of Hindu girls and Hindu women who are under the age of 35 getting converted into Islam and ultimately getting ditched by false love affairs. They are generally getting married to the Muslims as their second or third wives who after giving birth to two or three children are then discarded. Highly placed sources in the Police department said that there are several cases of Love Jihad but political
influence and interference of the highest level keeps the policemen in strong pursuit silent on these excesses. 

In several parts of Kerala, after the advent of the Gulf money or petro money, the Muslim community has reaped riches and this resulted in their economic development and with this the community started floating educational institutions of all kinds. The presence of the Muslim political outfits in the political scenario of the state with both the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) and the CPM-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) supporting their cause, several professional colleges came up under Muslim managements. Several of these colleges were later found to be the breeding ground of indoctrination of students who are vulnerable and can be converted under the guise of Love. 

A study by the Kerala Police found that in the past five years from 2011 to 2015, there was a total of 4,719 conversions from Hindu religion into Islam of which 2,729 are women (47 per cent of the total conversion). These conversions are bone chilling as most of these Women had fallen prey to the Love shown to her by the Muslim youths and after converting and marrying and after becoming mothers, they are dumped. The organisations which were actively behind the conversion also did not take any
interest once these girls are converted and married and deliver children. Take the case of Gayathri (Name changed) a Brahmin girl from Tirur in Malappuram District. She fell in love with Muneer who told her that he was working in a good position in the Gulf and then eloped and married him only to find that she was his third wife. After she became mother of a girl child, Muneer dumped her. She is now Sulaikha and living on her own with her ten-year-old daughter in Manjeri or Malappuram District, doing odd jobs in rehabilitation centres and as a midwife. No Muslim organisation has supported her cause nor are they interested.

A Muslim leader of Malappuram District on conditions of anonymity told this correspondent that if a person is just taken to Kozhikode for conversion, the agent gets a princely sum and this is one reason for the conversion. The Police records also shows that conversion is going on in full steam in the State and Love Jihad is the main pillar of strength for these conversions which is taking place mainly in Kozhikode, Ponnani and in Manjeri under the auspicious of Popular Front of India, Jamaat-e-Islami and the AP and EK factions of the Sunni group.

In August 2009, Justice KT Sankaran of Kerala High court had in a landmark judgment pointed out that there cannot be any compulsive, deceptive conversions under the pretext of love and rejected the bail application of two persons who were accused of Love Jihad. The learned judge also asked the then state government to consider enacting a law prohibiting it. Justice Sankaran went on to say that “After studying the case diary of the cases it is clear that there is a concerted effort to convert girls of a particular religion into another with the support of certain religious outfits”. The court had then pointed out that there were around 4000 to 5000 conversions owing to this during the four years ending 2009. This shows that this phenomenon of Love Jihad has been existing in the state with the support of religious organisations.

Sources in Malappuram District said that the AP faction of the Sunnis led by Kanthapuram AP Aboobacker Musaliar, the EK faction of the Sunnis in the name of the Late EK Aboobacker Musaliar, the Popular Front of India and the Jamaat-e-Islami are the main Muslim groups and organisations which were responsible for these conversions in addition to the Salafi Wahabism being practiced and implemented by the Mujahideen groups led by the Kerala Nadvathul Mujahideen and other Mujahideen outfits.

The former state president of the banned Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and an aeronautical engineer by training, CAM Basheer had fled the country in 1995 after setting up several terror modules. According to highly placed sources in the central agencies, he was the West Asia Commander of the LeT and had recruited several Keralite youths in the age group of 20 to 35 and was also instrumental in setting up the Indian Mujahideen. He is supposed to be in the West Asia with the base either in Dubai or Qatar. He is believed to be the main fundraiser for the terror movements and is a dreaded operative who according to his dossier is one of the most cunning operatives and with his aeronautical engineering background can be deadly. The whereabouts of the Sunni Tiger Force leader Said Alavi alias Bike Alavi is also known. Sunni Tiger Force is believed to be the brainchild of Said Alavi and was involved in several murders of several RSS and BJP activists and leaders. A right-hand man of Kanthapuram AP Aboobacker Musaliar, Alavi is also believed to be in West Asia scouting new recruits.

Ashraf A Kadakkal who teaches Islamic History in Kerala University said that the split in the Mujahideen organisations into several factions has led to certain elements in these groups to turn into extreme religious preachers. These self-styled preachers have created a group of youths who are into deep Islamic ideology and who are now in the quest of puritan Islam practised by Prophet Mohammed 1400 years ago. He said that while these youths are now in the quest of this puritan Islam, they can be indoctrinated into an aggressive ideology which can turn them into fertile grounds for terrorism. 

However Arshi Qureshi, guest relations manager of controversial preacher Zakir Naik’s Islamic Research Foundation and Rizvan Khan who runs a matrimony office for converted people, has admitted to the police that they had converted Merin of Thammanam in Kochi to Mariam and had facilitated her recruitment to the Islamic State along with her husband Yahia alias Bestin Vincent. Merin’s brother Ebin Joseph (25) had complained the police that Yahia had taken him also to controversial preacher Zakir Naik’s Islamic Research Foundation and Arshi Quereshi had tried to forcibly convert him to Islam. Ebin had also told the Police that Merin used to say after conversion that she would take arms to protect her Muslim brethren. This shows where Love Jihad is leading the state to.

A  former Director General of Police  on conditions of anonymity told Organiser that he had been pointing out to the successive governments on the hydra-headed phenomenon of Love Jihad and Islamic terror and how it is tearing apart the social fabric of the state. Abdul Hakeem, father of Hafeezuddin TK, 23 who was missing from Padanna in Kasargod and is suspected to be in the Syrian or Afghan province along with the twenty others missing from Kerala, said wiping his tears that he don’t want his son to be back home nor does he wants to see his son’s body if he is gone into the IS land or is with the terror groups. Hafeezuddin was a jolly good fellow who was in the West Asia and had danced during his sister’s marriage just two years before. Hafeezuddin has left home telling his parents that he was going to Kozhikode to learn Quran and later said that he was going to Sri Lanka in religious quest. However the family received a message through telegram app on the Eid day stating that he and his friends were in Jannat (Heaven). They are a group of twelve men, six women and two children who have embraced the Wahabi Salafi ideology and are missing. The state DGP Loknath Behra was tight-lipped and said that it cannot be ascertained that whether this group had reached the IS groups.

Nimisha aka Fathima , a final year BDS student at Century Dental College, Poinachi, Kasargod was lured by her former lover Syed Rahman, a medical student at a prestigious medical college in the country, to convert to Islam, according to her mother Bindu. Nimisha turned pregnant in the affair with Syed Rahiman and was aborted. She was, according to her mother converted to Islam in a Salafi Mosque in Thiruvananthapuram, a stone throw away from the power centre of Kerala, the state secretariat. Nimisha even after Syed Rahiman ditched her continued to practice the Islamic religion and later married Bexton Vincent aka Easa brother of Yahia who had forcibly converted Merin to Islam. Nimisha and Bexton are among the twenty-one motley group which have disappeared from Kerala in the pretext of going to various destinations. 

It was Abdul Rashid a purchase manager with the Islamic Institution Peace International owned by a trust headed by Televangelist MM Akbar, who was the common link of all the twenty-one people who are missing from the state. Abdul Rashid and his wife Ayesha aka Sonia Sebastian was instrumental in the marriage of Nimisha to Eesa and is considered as the kingpin of those who had
left the state. 

Islamic preacher Zubair Mankada after splitting away from the Kerala Nadvathul Mujahideen had started a Salafi recluse centre promising puritan Islam and leading the true life of Prophet Mohammed. He bought three acres of land on the banks of Chaliyar in Athicadu near Nilambur and sold this into ten cent plots to his disciples. The idea was to live in a commune replicating the life led by Prophet. There were eighteen families to start with and later following strong differences of opinion between his followers and Zubair Mankada, the latter left with six families leaving the Salafi commune headless. This type of puritan Islamic teachings has led to sort of mental trauma in the youths and can turn them into fertile breeding grounds of terror, warns Islamic scholars and other experts. 

Islamic experts and scholars are of the opinion that the split in the Mujahideen movement and the emergence of self-styled Salafists has led to the formation of the puritan form of Islam and youths are lured into this form of Salafism which was unheard of in Kerala a few decades back.

Dammaj in Yemen is home to Salafis from across the world and the main attraction is the country’s oldest Salafi seminari called Dar Al –Hadith. There are several Keralites in this place who have broken links with all the Salafi groups in Kerala. This also shows that Kerala is home to an ideology which Is leading to love, lure, sex, conversion and ultimately terrorism. All these studies on puritan Islam are ultimately leading to Islamic State and Islamic Caliphate with messages through telegram stating that they have reached Jannat or Heaven and that they are in Darul Islam from Darul Kufr and Darul Harb (Land of disbelief and Land of war). This shows that there are clear undercurrents which have to be tracked down and cleared, otherwise, Kerala touted as Gods own Country by its natural beauty will soon be a fertile ground for Islamist separatists.

By Arun Lakshman from Thiruvananthapuram 

The ISIS Connection

--T Satisan, Kochi

The arrests of Arshi Qureshi and Rizvan Khan in Mumbai and the enquiries by Kerala Police and Anti Terror Squad of Maharashtra reveal shocking information about the tight grip IS in Kerala. Both the accused are considered to be the kingpins of IS recruitments in Kerala and are allegedly connected with the Islamic Research Foundation (IRF) of the controversial Dr Zakir Naik. Qureshi is the Guest Relation Executive of IRF. They are found to be behind the missing of 21 Keralites who are reported to have reached Afghan borders en route to Syria for joining IS. Qureshi and Rizvan were produced before the Ernakulam court on July 25. About 400 Keralites have been converted to Islam allegedly by them. 

The arrest took place after police investigation as a result of the complaint lodged before Palarivattom (Kochi) Police Station by Merin’s (Mariam after conversion) brother Ebin. During raids in the apartment of Rizvan in Kalyan, Mumbai, police could find the marriage documents of Merin and Yahya (Bestin Vincent before conversion). Rizvan Khan is found to have made all arrangements for the marriage and signed in the document as the witness. Documents pertaining to the conversion of Merin through Masjid Trust are among the papers found in the apartment. Ebin had stated in his
complaint that both Qureshi and Rizvan had tried to convert him to Islam by force and to establish contact with Dr Zakir Naik, but, Ebin resisted hence in vain. 

Ebin, in his statement, has said that his sister Merin had told him that she was ready for gun fight if something happens to her ‘Muslim brethren’. This open statement makes the family members believe that she has joined IS. They believe that her mind set underwent this much change due to her rapport with her husband Yahya (formerly Bestin), Arshi Qureshi, etc. and her Mumbai life based on extreme religious faith. Her family members believe that she has joined IS. It is due to this belief of her family members that police imposed UAPA in this regard. 

Now, media reports suggest that Merin, after conversion and marriage, had worked in a school in Kochi and her husband visited the school several times. Now, investigation team examines that angle of the episode. Police suspects that Qureshi had earned money for conversion. Enquiries are on to find out the links between Zakir Naik and both Qureshi and Rizvan.