Ideas
Hindu Woman Beheading: Like Others, India Should Officially Recognise Love Jihad Crimes Driven By Religious Extremism
- Why the crimes of ‘Love Jihad’ or Islamism-driven grooming gangs should be officially recognised — as they are in many countries.
Women associated with India Against Love Jihad hold placards and form a human chain to protest against love jihad and conversion to Islam at MP Nagar on September 12, 2014 in Bhopal, India. (Mujeeb Faruqui/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)
In a soul shaking case, a 23-year-old woman was brutally beheaded by her husband for allegedly refusing to convert to Islam in Sonbhadra, Uttar Pradesh.
The woman's beheaded body was found in a forest area near Preet Nagar under the Chopan police station area on Monday (21 September), India Today quoted Sonbhadra SP Ashish Srivastava as saying.
Police said that they tried to know her identity through social media. On Tuesday, one Laxminarayan from Preet Nagar reportedly identified the victim as his daughter Priya Soni from her shoes and clothes.
The father of the victim told police that Priya had married one Ejaz Ahmed against the wishes of the family about a month and half ago.
He told the police that Ejaz was pressuring her to convert to Islam, to which she did not agree.
The police said that Ejaz had made an arrangement for her stay at a lodge in the Obra area while continuously pressurising her to convert. When Priya refused, Ejaz with the help of his friend Shoaib took her to the forest area and killed her.
Historical roots of Love Jihad
The usual suspects would argue that the incident should not be “communalised”.
It is an example of hypocrisy and shamelessness where the self-styled progressives refuse to recognise who actually is communal — the person who targets Hindu women based on their religion. Instead, the victims get a talking to.
The argument is that the incident should only be seen as a one-off tragedy, an unfortunate event. Those who cannot frame any question outside the majority-minority lens suddenly become radical individualists — the crime is about two individuals and has nothing to do with larger society or context.
This cannot be farther from the truth.
Love Jihad or Grooming gangs is not merely a conspiracy cooked out of thin air by ‘Hindu nationalists’.
Historically, just like the cow, the body of Hindu woman has been the instrument for expressing the ‘might of Islam’ and subjugation of Hindus.
There is overwhelming evidence that foreign-funded Islamist organisations support and promise money and other rewards to youth who lure non-Muslim women into marriage and conversion.
It isn’t without a reason that young women formed the “single largest pool of converts” going to fight for the Islamic State. And it isn’t a coincidence that the two Indian women who left Kerala to join the Islamic State, and another woman accused in Sri Lankan Easter bombings were all recent converts.
A 2017 sting operation carried out by India Today caught on camera the functionaries of Popular Front of India (PFI) declaring their goal of converting India into an Islamic nation, and proudly boasting of converting thousands of women to Islam through institutions disguised as ‘educational’ or ‘charitable’.
Kerala High Court has itself recognised the problem of Love Jihad. In Shahan Sha A vs State Of Kerala, the High Court said that there was a “concerted effort” to convert girls of other religions to Islam and marry them off to Muslim men. The role of the PFI came out in the case.
The court noted that there had been 3,000-4,000 such conversions in the past four years, and it was clear there was a concerted effort to convert girls of a particular religion to another with the 'blessings of some outfits'.
The historical hatred for polytheists and idol-worshippers, aspirations of demographic ascendance, and the targeting of non-Muslim women are deeply connected issues, and the Islamist rhetoric filled with the above is remarkably similar even when separated in space and time.
Any woman, who resists the fulfilment of the above goals, is subjected to torture and abuse.
Unfortunately, Priya Soni isn’t the first and will not be the last to be victimised by the ideological Hindu-hatred peddled by the Islamist machinery.
Several courageous victims of Love Jihad have come forward with their stories. Their horrifying experiences include being deceived into a relationship/marriage by a boy disguised under a Hindu name, who only revealed later that he is a Muslim and forced the woman to convert.
The pressurising tactics include threatening to make viral their intimate photographs and videos, isolating the woman from her family by snatching away her phone, force-feeding beef, beatings, taking away her belongings, throwing away things of her pooja, threatening physical assault over usage of any Hindu symbols like sindoor, insulting Hinduism and Hindus, telling her that god’s wrath will fall on her if she continued worshipping false gods of other religions and she will burn in hell, and of course, even murder.
In fact, one of the victims of the Muslim grooming gangs in UK who was raped over a 100 times said that the perpetrators were inspired by religious extremism and operated exactly like terrorist networks, with all the same strategies.
“I witnessed the ways young men are groomed to become perpetrators by older grooming gang members. It’s very similar to the tactics used in grooming for terrorism, with love-bombing, emotive language (“brother”, “cuz”, “blud”), and promises of wealth and fame, then humiliation, controlling with guilt and shame, training with weapons, and instilling hate and fear of outsiders. Always, at the same time, they continue to convince these young men that they must find girls to be gang-raped too.”
The victim also said that the religious indoctrination is a big part of the process of getting young men involved in grooming gang crimes and manifests as the othering of the non-Muslim women. Non-Muslim women are worthless and deserve to be gang-raped.
“My main perpetrator quoted scriptures from the Quran to me as he beat me,” she said.
What can we do?
Even the most liberal of countries have been forced to recognise Islamism-motivated sex crimes. In November 2017, the Swedish government noted, “Sexual violence is being used as a tactic of terrorism”, and it was recognised as a threat to Sweden’s national security.
India should also officially recognise Love Jihad — the crimes against non-Muslim women upheld by religious extremism — and work to curb systemic and institutionalised preaching of Hindu-hatred.
It is important to note that the systematic inculcation of Hindu hatred is routine and happens through mainstream channels. The design of our model of secularism is such that these channels keep functioning unhindered regardless the changes in politics, society etc.
So, it would be foolish to rely on the administration to do the work. Hindu women should take their safety in their own hands.
The first thing would be to sensitise young, impressionable girls about their history, the predators, their standard techniques of luring the girls, how they groom their victims, and the emotional, mental, psychological abuse that follows.
The infamous Muslim grooming gangs in Britain revealed the selective targeting of non-Muslim young girls by by “fashionably dressed Pakistani men pretending a modern outlook” who would roam around in “flamboyant vehicles” in areas and schools with predominantly Hindu-Sikh population.
They were reportedly paid £5,000 ‘commission’ for the job. Their aggressive conversion tactics included stalking, beating up those who protest, and forcing women to drop out of college.
We unfortunately live in a culture where young women are projected as sex objects, and stalking-leering is promoted as a sign of love. Young women feel the peer pressure to engage in activities that are harmful.
Combine this with an education system that deliberately denies Hindus their history and, tacitly or otherwise, promotes the hateful colonial stereotypes of Hindus and Hinduism.
It is important to educate our children about historical persecution of Hindus, and systematic targeting of Hindu women. Many parents have a false belief that by keeping their child in the dark about the harsh reality, they are protecting their innocence. It’s the opposite. By keeping them ignorant, they are only making easier the task of predators who target gullible young women.
It would be wonderful if the right-wing intellectuals produced child-friendly material on the subject so that the parents can easily educate their children about the history and reality that the post-independence socialist establishment simply brushed under the carpet.
The material should also cover the standard techniques used by the predators to groom women — isolating them from their friends and family members; replacing all the girl’s friends with their own; lying about real identity; emotional abuse with statements like ‘If you love me you will do this or that”; a Jekyll and Hyde personality where even slight resistance/defiance begets disproportionate anger and threats, etc.
Parents should clearly and unequivocally tell their children that if a person threatens them with making viral their photographs then they should immediately inform the parents. It is the distance between a child and a parent that is the most exploited by the predators.
Contrast the experience of the victim and the predator in Love Jihad or ‘grooming gang’ situations.
The predator is confident due to organised support behind him and being surrounded with all his friends and community. On the other hand, the victim is completely isolated and her family feels ashamed of the incident and fears judgement from the community.
This needs to change.
The one who needs to be shamed is the predator, and the people who justify and trivialise the targeting of Hindu women. The family members and the wider community should come together to support the victims in getting justice.
Such attempts, as expected, will be branded as “Islamophobic” and “Hindutva fascism”, but the lives of our women and children are much more important than the judgements of the regressive Left. We have full rights in a free country to secure ourselves against ideological Hindu-hatred through peaceful, legitimate means.
