Posted on 04/09/2021 1:17:30 AM PDT by Cronos
A young girl leaves home to marry her lover defying her parents. She’s happy barely for a few minutes before her now-husband reappears in a skullcap and a crisp white kurta-pajama. He takes off her bindi and covers her head with a dupatta. He then teaches what looks like the Quran to a group of people, before he sells off his wife to some people who appear to be terrorists.
This isn’t a lazy caricature from an archaic and offensive movie plot, but a video going viral in several Christian WhatsApp groups in Kerala.
The video, shared on Facebook by the Christian Association and Alliance for Social Action (CASA), a Kerala-based Christian body, is one of the many based on the premise of “exposing love jihad”.
The caption with the video, in Malayalam, reads: “The Left (CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front) and the Right (Congress-led United Democratic Front) are competing to appease jihadists by covertly and overtly justifying the form of terrorism known as love jihad. We should not allow the jihadists to grow in their (LDF’s and UDF’s) shadow. For that, we need to cut down the trees that provide them shelter. Think… act.”
‘Love jihad’ is a term coined by religious fundamentalist groups, alleging a conspiracy by Muslim men to convert non-Muslim girls in the guise of love.
In January last year, the Syro-Malabar Church, one of the largest church bodies in Kerala, issued a statement raising concerns about Christian women being “targeted” through ‘love jihad’.
Father Antony Thalachelloor, a member of the church’s media commission, told the Print: “The Islamic State has been luring Christian women as part of their international agenda of hunting down Jewish and Christian women.”or Kennedy Karimbinkalayil, a 57-year-old resident of Kakkanad region in Ernakulam, there isn’t an iota of doubt that Christian women are under “a growing threat”.
“On Netflix, there is a thriller drama called Caliphate. It is based on a real life story about three women in London,” he told ThePrint. “It’s an international phenomenon. This love jihad — they are doing it globally.”
Karimbinkalayil is the state convenor of the Save Syro-Malabar Forum, a body he describes as being “simply pro-Church”.
The 57-year-old carries in his shirt pocket, copious notes on ‘love jihad’, and it is these “facts and figures” that he has been lately spouting in debates on local television channels. He said the Syro-Malabar Church has on multiple occasions raised the concerns of “Muslim fundamentalists taking our girls to Syria” but that “no one is taking any kind of action”.
‘Glad I’m old...
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