Fighting Love Jihad

Nikita Tomar, 21-year-old B Com student of Aggarwal College, was shot dead by Taufeeq. The Muslim youth first tried to abduct her but failed. Is it the first time are we hearing about such cases? Surely not.

Let us first look at some recent statistics. From July to mid-September, 16 incidents of love jihad were reported from various parts of the country. It is for sure that many such incidents would not have found a place in newspapers. For instance, on September 20, a 16-year-old minor Hindu girl was abducted from Bangarmau tehsil of Unnaoby a Muslim man, Anees. He tried to forcefully convert her to Islam. Another incident occurred just a month before the above episode, at Panipat in Haryana, where a Muslim man, named Nijamuddin disguised himself as Goldy professed to love a 25-year-old Hindu widow. Later, he forcefully married her and subsequently impregnated and threw her out of his house. Several such incidents have taken place. Mewat, the Muslim majority district of Haryana, has witnessed several such incidents. This is not confined to Hindus.Last year, an 18-year-old Christian girl was trapped in ‘love jihad’ MohammadJasim, 19, at Kozhikode, Kerala.

The Hindu Janjagruti Samiti and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) have provided the figures related to love jihad cases. Recently, in September 2020, VHP in its fortnightly magazine, Hindu Vishwa, revealed the data of 147 recent cases of love jihad. Proving that this phenomenon is not an issue of Hindus alone, Syro Malabar Church issued a circular (dated January 15, 2020) which stated that Christian women are being targeted and recruited to the IS through love jihad. Kerala Catholic Bishops Conference (KCBC) claimed that there were 4,000 instances of love jihad between 2005 and 2012.

When Raja Dahir of Sindh got martyred fighting the war against the Umayyads, all the women of his family committed jauhar. However, two daughters of the great Hindu king who were captured were made sex slaves by the invaders

In January 2016, a Hindu girl, Akhila, disappears from her college in Kerala. Her father K.M. Ashokan files a habeas corpus writ to bring her back. When the girl was found, she had converted to Islam and adopted a new name Hadiya. Later, she married a Muslim man Shafeen Jahan. In May 2017, a historical judgement was ruled by the Kerala High Court with regards to the marriage of the same couple, the court annulled the marriage of the converted Hindu woman Akhila alias Hadia and Shafeen Jahan on the grounds of the love jihad angle of the issue after the father of converted Hindu girl asserted that Shafeen Jahan married and converted his daughter at the behest of the terrorist organisation, ISIS. Later, the case went to the Supreme Court of India. The National Investigation Agency which probed the case told the court that the woman had been psychologically abducted. The NIA probe was headed by former Supreme Court judge Justice RV Raveendran. Earlier, the NIA submitted that it had detected a pattern emerging in the state similar to the proceeding case. The NIA stated that in this case the husband was in touch with two individuals charged in another IS-related case and that one of these individuals may have coordinated their marriage. In March 2018, the Court overturned the annulment of their marriage but allowed NIA to investigate the terrorangle.

Acknowledging the fraudulent nature of such marriages, Jharkhand High Court, in June 2018, granted divorce in a love jihad case in which the Muslim man lied about his identity and forced the Hindu girl to convert to Islam after marriage.

But this model has a graver side to it. For understanding the much more insidious side, we must have to look back into the eyes of the history of the Islamic invasion in India. When Raja Dahir of Sindh got martyred fighting the war against the Umayyads, all the women of his family committed Jauhar but two daughters of the great Hindu king were captured by the aggressor. This is just a glimpse of the large history of atrocities committed by Mohammedans during the Islamic rule in India. From Muhammad bin Qasim to Mahmud of Ghazni, Khilji to Akbar and Aurangzeb to Adil Shah of Bijapur, history denounce these Islamist rulers as the most perverted souls who perpetrated ghastly crimes against Hindu and non-Muslim women.

The roots of the motivational source for these kinds of commitments are pervaded deep inside the religious texts which proclaim jihad as an integral part of Islam which calls a believer of Islam to even kill a kafir (one who do not follow Shariah).

It is high time that the government introduced a law toprotect gullible Hindu girls who are at the receiving end of jihadis. It is heartening that Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Yogi Adityanath has said his government is considering a law to prevent fraudulent love marriages with the intention of changing the demography

More specifically, love jihad is a kind of jihad — it has many dimensions. The very first stage is love jihad, about which we have already discussed. The second stage is ‘rape jihad’, which is a more unequivocal operation in which, non-Muslim girls or women are raped and subsequently, killed in many cases. In the Muslim dominated areas, non-Muslim or Hindu women are highly susceptible to these blunt assaults on them. The third and most fatal form is the one which we saw in the exodus of Kashmiri Hindus during 1989-1990 where hundreds of thousands of Hindus were evicted out of their land and a large number of them were butchered in the most brutal way possible. From the mosques, an announcement was being proclaimed that every Hindu man must exit from the Valley leaving their women behind so that the jihadis could rape them. And uncountable women were raped and killed in the most brutal manner.

Pallbearer of secularism, The Hindu, has not even reported Nikita Tomar’s murder in its October 27 edition. A majority of left-leaning newspapers and media outlets, either did not cover the event or even if they reported, they portrayed it as a simple case of stalking

These vile crimes are inconceivable and intolerable at the same time, but the wretched part is that the left-leaning intellectuals and media are incessantly either hiding or whitewashing these incidents. The latest example in front of us is the Tanishq jewellery brand’s commercial which clearly denies the whole agenda of love jihad. Another noteworthy point is that the so-called pallbearer of secularism, The Hindu, has not even reported Nikita Tomar’s murder in its October 27, 2020 edition. A majority of left-leaning newspapers and media outlets, either did not cover the event or even if some of them reported the incident, they portrayed it as a simple case of stalking. While in any other case of murder, molestation, suicide, or even rape, they are ready to ask the caste of the victim and the accused. It is the bare fact that the target of the left ideologists always has been the young minds of the country, which are very susceptible to misguidance.

It is high time that the government introduce a law to protect Hindu women who are at the receiving end of such nefarious machinations of a predatory belief system. It is heartening that Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Yogi Adityanath has said his government is considering a law to prevent fraudulent love marriages with the intention of changing the demography. Many other states may also follow the suit. While laws are important, the effective cure for this disease is the development of the Hindu society, mentally, physically, socially, and politically. From individual level to collective level, we need to develop sensitivity and a rational discourse on this issue. Family institution can play an important role this. Only a society that is strong can give effective response to such threats.