If ‘The Kerala Story’ Was a Work of Pure ‘Fiction’, Liberal-Secular-Islamists Won’t Have Felt So Insecure - News18

It is said that 2014 was a landmark year in Indian politics because it ushered in a movement that eventually caused a decisive shift in the ‘Overton window’. According to her, the “main elements of the strategy” include the reduction of women “to the status of reproductive machines for the purpose of demographic transformation”, taking “advantage of the focus on ‘inclusion’ by progressive political parties in democratic societies, then to force these parties to accept Islamist demands in the name of peaceful coexistence.” The Kerala Story also tackles the societal consequences of such a disruptive movement and its incompatibility with modern, democratic societies. In 2010, former Chief Minister of Kerala, Communist leader VS Achutanandan had accused the now-banned PFI outfit of planning to “Islamise Kerala in 20 years using money and marriages.” In 2021, then Chief Minister of Kerala, Oommen Chandy, in a written statement to the state legislature said a total number of 7713 persons were converted to Islam during 2006-2012, and the Global Council of Indian Christians had called “love jihad in Kerala a part of global Islamisation project.” We have already seen in Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s book that one of the main elements of the ‘dawa’ strategy is “to reduce women to the status of reproductive machines for the purpose of demographic transformation.” In his 2018 paper ‘How Islam Spread Throughout the World’, published in Yaqeen Institute, Hassam Munir writes, “Intermarriage between Muslims and non-Muslims has been historically important for the spread of Islam in many contexts. Though the motley crew of Left-liberals and their Islamist allies get triggered by the term, ‘love jihad’ acquired judicial sanction far back in 2009 when the Kerala high court “found indications of ‘forceful’ religious conversions under the garb of ‘love’ in the state, and asked the government to consider enacting a law to prohibit such ‘deceptive’ acts.” As The Economic Times had reported in 2009, Justice Sankaran concluded that there were indications of ‘forceful religious conversions’, and “quoting statistics, the court said during the last four years 3,000-4,000 religious conversions had taken place after love affairs” backed by a sinister plan “to ‘trap’ brilliant upper caste Hindu and Christian girls from well-to-do families.” The charges of ‘love jihad’ since then have been levelled more by the Christian organisations and churches. In 2020, the Synod of Syro Malabar church in Kerala claimed that Christian girls are being killed in the name of ‘Love Jihad’, and stated that “over half of the 21 women who joined Islamic State hailed from the Christian community.” A year later in 2021, the head of a Catholic diocese in Kerala, bishop Joseph Kallarangatt, accused a section of Muslim community of targeting Christians through “love jihad and narcotic jihad.” According to a report in The Hindu, the bishop pointed to a “sharp rise in cases of young Christian women being subjected to abuse or religious conversion after eloping with men from other community” and “warned that these ‘jihadists’ had already cast their nets over places including schools, colleges, training centres and even commercial centres”.