"Love jihad" backlash has Indian muslims worried

By Shuriah Niazi

NEW DELHI 

Muslims in northern Indian district Meerut are on edge. They fear a backlash after the reporting of a false story about a Hindu teacher being gang-raped and forcibly converted to Islam by a group of Muslims in early August. 

The 20-year old woman in question was initially forced to make the claims by her family, but in court she said that she had actually freely eloped with a Muslim man. Her admission however, has not done much to ease the tension between the communities in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. 

The term "love jihad", coined by political Hindu outfits, has began to gain traction as Muslim men are accused of luring non-Muslims into Islam by feigning love. Previous allegations of love jihad, mainly made in southern India, were found by police to be unsubstantiated. 

Activists in the Hindu nationalist group Dharma Jagran March have been tying threads known as Rakhis, a symbol of a brother's vow to protect his sister, onto the wrists of Hindu girls and warning them not get "trapped" by Muslim youths.

“Our aim is to save Hindu girls from getting trapped by Muslim boys who try to entice them into marriage," said the group's leader Rajeshwar Singh. "We know there is a conspiracy going on against Hindus in India and we want to tell our sisters that they should not be carried away by false promises of the Muslim boys.”

“We have taken up this campaign because our population is going down and the population of a particular community is growing in India. They are converting innocent Hindu girls in the name of "love jihad", which is very common in this area. We want to protect Hindu religion,” he said. 

In one week the group attempted to tie Rakhis to at least a million Hindu girls, and received support for their campaign from other Hindu nationalists. Claims by the groups that that "love jihad" is widespread has forced many Muslims to leave their homes for fear of reprisals, especially with increasing hostility in Uttar Pradesh, where there have been 600 communal riots in the last two months. 

“It is nothing but an attempt to communalize the situation. There is no such campaign as "love-jihad" by Muslims," said Muslim cleric Mufti Shees. "For years we have been harmoniously living with Hindus in this place, but suddenly we have become each other’s enemy.”

Shabbir Khan, another local Muslim says it is a personal matter and that there are also cases of Muslims girls falling in love with Hindu boys. "If a Muslim boy falls in love with a Hindu girl, we cannot stop them from loving each other. However, we don’t favour such unions because ultimately it is the Muslim community which has to suffer,” he said. 

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