Love Jihad

Love Jihad (also known as Romeo Jihad) is an Islamophobic conspiracy theory developed by proponents of the Hindutva ideology. The conspiracy theory purports that Muslim men target Hindu women for conversion to Islam by means such as seduction, feigning love, deception, kidnapping, and marriage, as part of a broader "war" by Muslims against India, and an organised international conspiracy, for domination through demographic growth and replacement.

Arranged alphabetically by author or source:
A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z · See also · External links

A

• A key plan of Muslims, according to Hindutva ideologues, is to “allure, attract and abduct young Hindu girls for marriage to the Muslims” (Paliwal 2003: 24).
  • Hindu Nationalism in India and the Politics of Fear, D. Anand, p. 30

• A narrative common among Hindutva intellectuals, leaders, and activists across the country was that of a conscious Muslim ploy to seduce “innocent” Hindu girls.
  • Hindu Nationalism in India and the Politics of Fear, D. Anand, p. 51

B

• We have seen how the sufi divine Khwaja Hasan Nizami in his Daiye Islam had instructed the Muslims on the ways to convert Hindus to Islam. His over-enthusiasm cautioned the Hindus. The instructions did not remain a secret, the book was translated and the Hindus found out how and why secret kidnappings, abductions and seductions of Hindu girls by Muslims in almost every town and city of northern India had become the order of the day. Hindus, individually and through their organisations, began to exercise vigilance. They began to undo such dirty attempts by rescuing Hindu girls, widows and orphans and bringing the offenders to book.
  • V.P. Bhatia, "The Ever Green Mulla Power", in Organiser, 27 October 1996 citing references from B.R. Ambedkar, Pakistan and Partition of India; Indra Prakash, The History of Hindu Mahasabha; and Shaikh Abdullah, Aatish-e-Chinar. Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 6

G

• How far will this go? SC has said there is no love jihad. I know love jihad is real, I will say there is ‘love jihad. When I’m saying where we are headed, don’t misunderstand. There is only one solution to put an end to this. Respected Bharath must be declared a Hindu Rashtra... Love jihad is real and Muslims plan to make India an Islamic country by 2030… it was delayed due to the demonetisation move by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
  • P. C. George quoted in [1]

K

• Launching Demographic war: Seducing and marrying Hindu girls and displaying them as proud jihad trophies i.e., jihad through “love”;
  • From a pamphlet spread by Krishnaswami (Krishnaswami n.d.: 41)

• The spate of organised religious conversions and using the victims for terror activities by trapping them through ‘love jihad’ has shown the Christian community is a soft target for Islamic radicals.
  • George Kurian, vice chairman of the National Commission for Minorities (NCM), The Week [2]

L

• Of the many pamphlets and brochures in Urdu instructing Muslims in the ways of converting Hindus, only one may be examined to give an idea of the stuff contained in such literature. It is the Daiye Islam (Propagation of Islam) by Khwaja Hasan Nizami. Hasan Nizami was a sufi divine connected with the dargah of Nizamuddin Awliya of Delhi. The pamphlet teaches the Muslims the quickest and comprehensive way of converting Kafirs to Islam. The Khwaja exhorted Muslims of all categories from the highest to the lowest, to serve the cause of Islam by helping in the conversion of non-Muslims to Islam. In this missionary endeavour Zamindars and Nawabs, doctors and prostitutes, ekka players and bangle sellers were all invited to make their contribution. ... The bangle seller was to seduce young Hindu girls and the ekka driver was to seduce away Hindu ladies and children. Such a recipe was neither spiritual nor edifying but it fitted with the Muslim mentality. The pamphlet recorded wide sale among Muslims. The Nizam of Hyderabad fixed an allowance for the Khwaja and other Muslims Chiefs and Zamindars followed suit. Muslim magistrates, police and excise inspectors and other influential officials were found working according to the plan laid out by this sufi devotee of Islam.
  • Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 6

M

• There are some cases which have come up that need to be addressed, we should definitely address it. If something like this is taking place, we should address it... There are some issues and apprehension about this. The government should clearly come out about what has happened and if there are any such cases (of ‘love jihad’), they should be addressed and stopped.
  • Jose K Mani, 2021. [3] [4]

• This is an organised crime. There is money coming from the Gulf and other countries to enable a gang of Muslim men trap Hindu women, marry them and then use them for crime including terror.
  • Pramod Muthalik On Love Jihad, as quoted in "Muthalik finds cases of ‘love jihad’ in state, cites RTI info", The Indian Express (20 September 2014)

N

• We have seen how the sufi divine Khwaja Hasan Nizami in his Daiye Islam had instructed the Muslims on the ways to convert Hindus to Islam. His over-enthusiasm cautioned the Hindus. The instructions did not remain a secret, the book was translated and the Hindus found out how and why secret kidnappings, abductions and seductions of Hindu girls by Muslims in almost every town and city of northern India had become the order of the day. Hindus, individually and through their organisations, began to exercise vigilance. They began to undo such dirty attempts by rescuing Hindu girls, widows and orphans and bringing the offenders to book.
  • Khwaja Hasan Nizami, in V.P. Bhatia, "The Ever Green Mulla Power", in Organiser, 27 October 1996 citing references from B.R. Ambedkar, Pakistan and Partition of India; Indra Prakash, The History of Hindu Mahasabha; and Shaikh Abdullah, Aatish-e-Chinar. Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 6

• Of the many pamphlets and brochures in Urdu instructing Muslims in the ways of converting Hindus, only one may be examined to give an idea of the stuff contained in such literature. It is the Daiye Islam (Propagation of Islam) by Khwaja Hasan Nizami. Hasan Nizami was a sufi divine connected with the dargah of Nizamuddin Awliya of Delhi. The pamphlet teaches the Muslims the quickest and comprehensive way of converting Kafirs to Islam. The Khwaja exhorted Muslims of all categories from the highest to the lowest, to serve the cause of Islam by helping in the conversion of non-Muslims to Islam. In this missionary endeavour Zamindars and Nawabs, doctors and prostitutes, ekka players and bangle sellers were all invited to make their contribution. Muslim lawyers and doctors were to influence their Hindu clients to convert. Nawabs and Zamindars were to pressurize Hindu tenants under them to become Musalman. The prostitute was required to exert her influence on her Hindu visitors and admirers into becoming Muslims. The bangle seller was to seduce young Hindu girls and the ekka driver was to seduce away Hindu ladies and children. Such a recipe was neither spiritual nor edifying but it fitted with the Muslim mentality. The pamphlet recorded wide sale among Muslims. The Nizam of Hyderabad fixed an allowance for the Khwaja and other Muslims Chiefs and Zamindars followed suit. Muslim magistrates, police and excise inspectors and other influential officials were found working according to the plan laid out by this sufi devotee of Islam.
  • Khwaja Hasan Nizami, in Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 6

S

• There is a dark sexual obsession about allegedly ultra-virile Muslim male bodies and overfertile Muslim female ones, that inspire and sustain the figures of paranoia and revenge.
  • Sarkar, Tanika. "Semiotics of Terror: Muslim Children and Women in Hindu Rashtra." Economic and Political Weekly 37, no. 28 (2002): 2872-876. Accessed July 9, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4412352.

• There is also the perpetual fear of a more virile Muslim male body that lures away Hindu girls, a kind of penis envy and anxiety about emasculation that can only be overcome by doing violent deeds.
  • Sarkar, Tanika. "Semiotics of Terror: Muslim Children and Women in Hindu Rashtra." Economic and Political Weekly 37, no. 28 (2002): 2872-876. Accessed July 9, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4412352.

• There is a physical reason Muslims can seduce Hindu girls. They give them more sharirik anand (physical pleasure) because they have a surgery, Hindus don’t.
  • Giriraj Shakor, quoted in Naqvi 2007

• Love jihad, yes, I see what’s happened in Kerala. How Hindus are being tricked in a marriage and how they suffer…not only Hindus, Muslims, the Christian girls are being tricked in a marriage. Now that sort of a thing I certainly will oppose.”
  • E. Sreedharan, 21 Feb 2021, NDTV [5] [6]

• While the Left dismisses these occurrences as a figment of the ‘right-wing imagination’, the cases are real. The dead bodies are also real and the threat is imminent... It is because of the narrow definition of a term like ‘Love Jihad’ that the Left is now attempting to twist it to allege that the term Love Jihad is simply used because ‘extremist Hindus’ are against inter-faith marriages, whereas, the phenomenon is far from being about consensual relationships.
  It is for these reasons that OpIndia has now decided to do away with the term ‘Love Jihad’ in its parlance and reportage. There is no ‘Love’ in Jihad and even if accept the term along with its problematic syntax, it fails to capture the severity of the Jihad that is being waged by sections of radical Muslims that specifically target non-Muslim women. We believe that the term ‘Grooming Jihad’ is far more appropriate since it encapsulates within itself all categories of crimes that keep women at the centre of this Jihad.
  Non-Muslim women are being groomed to accept their own subjugation at the hands of Muslim men. They are kidnapped, raped, lured, converted to Islam, punished and brainwashed. There is no ‘Love’ in these crimes against humanity. There is no ambiguity that it is a form of Jihad. It is time to call it what it is – Grooming Jihad.
  • Why OpIndia has decided to use ‘Grooming Jihad’ instead of ‘Love Jihad’ moving forward, Nupur J Sharma | 18 November, 2020 [7]

• Kashmir is not Pakistan where Sikhs can be forced to convert, we won't allow this to happen. Jathedar Akal Takht Sahib has written a letter to Lieutenant Governor of Jammu & Kashmir to bring a law against 'Love Jihad'.
  • Sardar R P Singh , June 2021, [8] [9]

T

• It is a cause of great worry that Christian girls are the most targeted lot. The CBI, the NIA and the IB have all reported that such cases are occurring in the state and the country. It is saddening and worrying that despite the existence of a mechanism to counter efforts by religious terrorist groups to entrap gullible girls, these are not being tackled efficiently.
  • FR Antony Thalachelloor, [10]

• As if this is not enough, there is a deliberate and organised design to convert Kargil's Buddhists to Islam. In the last four years, about 50 girls and married women with children were allured and converted from village Wakha alone. If this continues unchecked, we fear that Buddhists will be wiped out from Kargil in the next two decades or so. Anyone objecting to such allurement and conversions is harassed... Therefore, to protect the religious and cultural identity of the Ladakhi people, an anti-conversion law must be enacted for Kargil as is presently in force in states like Arunachal Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.
  • Tundup Tsering and Tsewang Nurboo of the Ladakh Buddhist Association, quoted in: Koenraad Elst: Bharatiya Janata Party vis-à-vis Hindu resurgence, also quoted in K. Elst (2002). Who is a Hindu?: Hindu revivalist views of Animism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and other offshoots of Hinduism.

V

• Love jihad shouldn’t be viewed only from the love angle, but addressed at a broader level. This is not to target any particular community. Secular political parties should at least accept that love jihad exists here. A small group of people in the state is continuously getting radicalised and it has its links to international and global Islam. It varies in names, but people and leadership of these groups are almost the same... It’s a major problem we’ve been facing for many years, but secular political parties in Kerala are not interested in discussing these issues. It’s part of their politics. Every death and killing that happens in the state is sidelined as a “isolated” incident. A series of killings have taken place and yet no mainstream party in the state has addressed the issue. There have been reports that the radical groups were involved in the killings and the government has all the details... “Even today we received phone calls from worried Christian parents seeking help and counselling for their daughters. It’s not about getting married to someone from another religion. In these cases, we don’t see them living happily after the marriage. We’ve been monitoring the issues. The police themselves have revealed in many cases that girls have gone missing after marriage or they have joined the Islamic State and were being used as sex slaves. That means it was not love. Love has been used as a weapon.
  • Fr Varghese Vallikkat, as quoted an attributed in [11] [12]