<<Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has said that Mar Joseph Kallarangatt, the bishop of Pala, was not aiming to create enmity between communities when he delivered controversial sermon claiming that Muslims are waging a “narcotics jihad” against people of other faiths. According to The Hindu, Vijayan said that “the bishop delivered the speech from the pulpit to believers. He had not made a public statement. Hence, the government believed there was no legal ground for any case against the prelate.”
Even if we set aside the strange understanding of public and private that the Kerala chief minister wants us to accept, some context is necessary before we move ahead. During a sermon in a church in Kuravilangad on September 8, Bishop Kallarangatt had said that there had been an increase of instances of “love jihad” and “narcotics jihad” in the state. “Love jihad” is a conspiracy theory which claims that Muslim men are waging a campaign to court women of other communities with the aim of getting them to covert to Islam. The bishop said that “narcotic jihad” or “drug jihad” was a method adopted by “jihadis” to convert the youth of other religions into drug addicts. He did not stop there. ... “In the eyes of a jihadi, non-Muslims are meant to be destroyed,” Kallarangatt claimed. “When the intention is to spread the religion and annihilate non-Muslims, the adopted methods take different methods – two such methods that are widely discussed are ‘love jihad’ and ‘narcotic jihad’.” According to Kallarangatt, besides ill-treating and forcibly converting non-Muslims, “jihadis” capture women who are members of other religions by faking love and then use them for terrorist activities and to make financial gains. If this is a sermon to believers by a priest who professes to love Christ, we must reconsider the meaning of a sermon. What the bishop was doing was clearly instigating the followers of his church against Muslim men. It is hate speech and needs to be treated as a criminal act.> For Pinarayi Vijayan to rush to the aid of the hate-preacher and defend him by claiming that no legal action could be taken against him because his statement was not a public act is even more serious. It compromises the office of the chief minister. He has turned the understanding of crime on its head. If we go by the standard set by Vijayan, even the extremist Hindu priest from Ghaziabad, Narsinhanand, or those people from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh fold who spew venom against Muslims day and night cannot be charged with any crime: they could all claim that they were addressing only their followers, believers of a different kind. This could not be deemed a public act , hence no crime has been committed, they could say. The bishop was doing was not making his followers aware about a social evil, as the chief minister and the diocese are implying. He was clearly spreading misinformation with the purpose of creating enmity between Christians and Muslims. He achieved it. The chief minister must be aware that, as The Telegraph reported, “Two food-processing companies in Kerala have become targets of a communal hate campaign and boycott call in connection with a bishop’s allegations about ‘love jihad’ and a ‘narcotic jihad’.”>> (Excerpted from: < https://scroll.in/article/1005710/in-kerala-the-ruling-cpm-and-an-islamophobic-bishop-make-strange-bedfellows >.) Also relevant: 'CPIM Cautions Against Educated Women Being Lured To Terrorism In Kerala' at < https://www-ndtv-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.ndtv.com/south/cpim-cautions-against-educated-women-being-lured-to-terrorism-in-kerala-2544730 >. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/greenyouth/CACEsOZgFHdrT-00UtqGupm92%3D%3DxV74pjT3GV%2BmUb6CJxeutc7Q%40mail.gmail.com.
