The Kerala Story, a movie based on how Hindu and Christian women from Kerala are groomed, converted to Islam and trafficked to ISIS, has kicked up a storm in India. While it is being hailed as a brave movie which exposes the truth about the nefarious and dangerous designs of ISIS, “liberals” and Islamists are not very happy. They seem to believe that a movie based on the jihad waged by ISIS against non-Muslim women targets the larger Muslim community, while simultaneously claiming that not all Muslims support ISIS.
Mamata Banerjee, for example, a “liberal” hero after her thumping victory in West Bengal Assembly Elections, the post-poll violence and rampant violence against Hindus, banned the movie in West Bengal. “West Bengal govt has decided to ban the movie ‘The Kerala Story’. This is to avoid any incident of hatred and violence, and to maintain peace in the state,” news agency ANI quoted her as saying. Essentially, she claimed that a movie based on ISIS and its Jihad would offend average, moderate Muslims and lead to “unrest”, therefore, it was imperative to ban the movie.
After widespread calls for banning the movie by self-proclaimed liberals and Islamists, Shabana Azmi, the Bollywood entertainer, took to Twitter to act clever by half. She tweeted, “Those who speak of banning #The Kerala Story are as wrong as those who wanted to ban Aamir Khan’s #Laal Singh Chaadha. Once a film has been passed by the Central Board of Film Certification nobody has the right to become an extra-constitutional authority”.
Essentially, Shabana Azmi said that those who were asking for a ban on The Kerala Story were wrong. She then proceeded to equate the calls for a ban to “those who wanted Aamir Khan’s Laal Singh Chaadha banned”.
Interestingly, this strange, factually inaccurate and monkey-balancing tweet by Shabana Azmi went terribly wrong as she ended up getting pilloried from all sides of the ideological spectrum.
There were several Hindu netizens who called out Shabana Azmi for lying, quite blatantly. They pointed out that nobody had ever called for a “ban” on Laal Singh Chadha. Many had essentially given a call to boycott the movie because of the seemingly anti-Hindu mindset of the Bollywood industry and its A-listers. A boycott does not mean the same thing as a ban, since in a ban, the movie is not allowed to be screened, however, a call for a boycott is a legitimate means of protest where people voluntarily don’t go to watch the movie which is already being screened.
Several Hindus pointed out this fallacy in Shabana Azmi’s tweet.
Shabana Azmi also attempted to offer a mother claimed that The Kerala Story was a “propaganda” movie and therefore, justified the ban on it. It is important to remember that AltNews has been the propaganda wing of Islamists for a long time and deploys specific tactics to give clean chit to violence by them.
Aditya Menon, a veteran propagandist who has also whitewashed Islamists on numerous occasions claimed that The Kerala Story spread hate against a “specific community”. Given that the movie talks about ISIS and its terrorists, one wonders which community Menon was trying to talk about.
There were numerous such tweets that claimed The Kerala Story, which depicts the nefarious designs of ISIS, propagated against a “specific community” – Muslims, insinuating unintentionally that all Muslims would be hurt if the reality of ISIS was shown in a movie.
There were also allegations of the movie promoted hate speech. Of course, these allegations were made without any evidence and one is again forced to wonder why average Muslim citizens who claim to not support extremism would turn into bleeding hearts for ISIS and any “hate speech” against a terror organisation.
Irena Akbar, who had thanked COVID for saving Muslims from “detention camps”, essentially hinting at Hindus being killed by it, also jumped into the fray and called Shabana Azmi “dumb and dishonest”.
Interestingly, the movie The Kerala Story talks exclusively about ISIS and its sympathisers. It does not talk of average Muslims and does not attribute extremism to the larger Muslim community.
The ISIS involvement in Kerala was initially traced in 2013. As early as 2014, ISIS established roots in Kerala, with modules encouraging religious conversions and aiming to attract professionals to join its troops in Afghanistan and Syria. Plenty of Kerala men and women are said to have joined the ISKP (Islamic State of Khorasan Province) in recent years. The United Nations warned in its 2020 terrorism report that there are a substantial number of ISIS terrorists in the Indian state of Kerala.
The banned terrorist organization Popular Front of India (PFI) is by large responsible for making Kerala a hotbed of ISIS recruitments. The radicalization of Muslim youths and the conversion of non-Muslims to Islam was spearheaded by the PFI terrorists. This was also cited in a report filed by the National Investigation Agency in front of a court in Kochi in September 2022.
Accordingly, there have been many conversions in Kerala right from 2008-2009. The converted girls and their Muslim husbands were sent to ISIS. It was only in 2016 that the horrific stories of the girls came to the fore when they were first arrested and then investigated in Afghanistan. One of the most discussed cases of love jihad was that of the four girls who were in the 21-member group that joined ISIS in 2016 along with their husbands.
The four girls were identified as Sonia Sebastian alias Ayisha, Merrin Jacob alias Mariyam, Nimisha alias Fathima Isa and Raffaela. Nimisha was the only Hindu girl among these four girls. The other three were Christian. These four girls were trapped and lured to become Muslims. They left India in 2016 to join the ISKP (Islamic State of Khorasan Province) – the Khorasan edition of ISIS – in Afghanistan along with a group of 21 men and women from Kerala. They were first taken to Iran and then they crossed over to Afghanistan on foot from Iran.
Sonia Sebastian alias Ayisha is from Kasargod in Kerala. She left India on May 31, 2016, with her husband, Abdul Rashid Abdulla, from Mumbai airport. The couple held secret classes supporting IS and jihad during the last part of Ramzan in Padanna and Kasaragod. Sebastian is an engineering graduate.
Merrin Jacob alias Mariyam, was married to Bestin Vincent, a resident of Palakkad. The couple escaped to Afghanistan in 2016 to live in the IS-controlled territory. The Christian couple converted to Islam, and Vincent assumed the identity of Yahya. Vincent was later killed in Afghanistan.
Similarly, Vincent’s brother Bexon and his wife, Nimisha alias Fatima, also converted to Islam and escaped to Afghanistan with them. Raffaela was married to a 37-year-old physician Ijas Kallukettiya Purayil a physician from Kasargod.
There are several such cases that lend credence and credibility to the story being told in The Kerala Story, however, while Islamists abuse and threaten on the internet justifying the calls for ban and peddling lies about the movie demonising the entire Muslim community, there are several Islamists who are also threatening those who support the movie in real life.
Sadhu Magar, an autorickshaw driver from Pune had promised free auto rides to those who were going to watch The Kerala Story. He started getting calls from unknown international numbers and was eventually threatened with a fate like that of Kanhaiya Lal.
OpIndia spoke to Sadhu Magar to know more about this. He said, “Many people liked my decision to provide free services to people for going to watch the film that shows the reality of love jihad. Many people called me to praise me and congratulate me. As the phone number was displayed on my autorickshaw and the viral image, many people took cognizance of that and the news spread.”
He further said, “However, as I went on to receive calls from unknown numbers and unidentified callers who praised me, I also received some calls from unknown Islamists who seemed outraged at my decision. They abused me. Two days ago, there was an hour when my phone was continuously ringing and every call I received started with filthy abuse. One of them even said ‘You know what happened in Udaipur with that tailor? You will meet the fate of Kanhaiya Lal’. Then I took it very seriously and went to the Alandi police station and lodged a complaint. I submitted at least 15 different phone numbers to them. Some of the phone numbers are from different states in India. Other phone numbers are from other countries like Saudi Arabia. I have also received abusive WhatsApp messages from international phone numbers. The threateners did not tell their names but I could see Muslim names as True Caller application is active. Two such threat calls were received when I was in the police station. The police officer Godse received these calls and listened to the kind of threatening stuff I was receiving from the other end. He then took a detailed written complaint from me.”
A Bajrang Dal worker was also assaulted for posting about The Kerala Story on WhatsApp and received beheading threats for it.
For Shabana Azmi to compare these dangerous trends and justifications to a mere call for the boycott of Laal Singh Chadha was disingenuous by Shabana Azmi, however, for her to not address the problem of Islamism and the reason why there are calls to ban The Kerala Story was also dishonest. The fact that Islamists went hammer and tongs against Azmi, one of their allies, shows that the Islamists demand absolute submission to their Islamist agenda and any deviation from the agenda will lead to the person being humiliated, abused and threatened, even if they are sympathetic to their cause largely.