Though there is a buzz about the film titled ‘The Kerala Story’, it does not only refer just to the topic of the film – love jihad and subsequently deploying victim women to ISIS – but it also refers to the way Kerala has become a new epicentre of terrorist recruitment in the Indian peninsula. The Kerala Story here essentially implies to the Kerala ISIS module.
The Kerala ISIS module busted by NIA has so far unfolded multiple layers of the story showing connections with other states in India. This shows how Islamic jihad and terrorism it inspires are not a problem of a particular territory but they seed, root, spread, operate, and destruct defying the limitations of borders between different states and nations. Islamists may be divided by borders, but they are united by the ideology behind jihad.
Story of Yasmin Ahmed Jahid of Bihar
Yasmin Ahmed Jahid hails from Muroul village in Sitamarhi in Bihar. According to some reports, she was married to Syed Ahmed and both lived in Saudi Arabia. In 2011, they came to Kerala. Yasmin Ahmed Jahid started living in Malappuram which was already a hotbed of forced Islamic conversions with the intent of jihad. In Malappuram, Yasmin Ahmed Jahid started to work as an English teacher. She joined the ‘Peace International School’.
This Peace International School has 12 branches in India. It also had a branch in Dhaka of Bangladesh. That branch was shut down after people associated with the school were suspected to be involved in the Dhaka bomb blast that took place on 1st July 2016. This Peace International School is inspired by Dr Zakir Naik’s Islamic International School. The fugitive preacher used to run this school in the Mazgaon area of Mumbai. MM Akbar founded this Peace International School in 2006 under Niche Group, an independent religious body aiming to propagate Islam. This school has 10 franchises in Kerala and one each in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. These schools had classes up to 12th standard and according to a report in 2016, the number of enrolled students was over 7000.
On 3rd May 2016, Yasmin Ahmed Jahid married Abdul Rashid Abdulla. This marriage was solemnized on a phone call. This is the same Abdul Rashid Abdulla who lured an engineering graduate Sonia Sebastian. Sonia converted to Islam for marriage. She became Ayisha. This couple used to conduct the coaching classes of Islamic Jihad in Kerala. Yasmin not only attended these classes but also brought in other students aspiring to become ISIS terrorists.
During interrogation in 2016, Yasmin revealed that till then she had recruited into ISIS 22 people from Kerala, including six women and three children. Many areas of Afghanistan were under the control of ISIS, where these people were sent. She had claimed that Abdul Rashid had brainwashed 40 youths in Kerala by then. Yasmin herself used to attend the religious classes of Abdul Rashid and his wife Ayisha. There she was taught about ‘Hijr’, ‘Jihad’ and ISIS.
Abdul also used to send money to Yasmin, from which she used to arrange air tickets for Afghanistan. Yasmin was accused of recruiting 15 people from the Kasaragod district alone to the terrorist organization ISIS. The Kerala Police had initially taken it as a missing complaint, but the real case was revealed after the NIA investigation.
ISIS operative Yasmin Zahid :
— Anshul Saxena (@AskAnshul) May 10, 2023
She was involved in recruiting 15 youths from Kerala for ISIS & sending them to Afghanistan
NIA court sentenced Yasmin to 7 years in jail
She's 2nd wife of Rashid Abdullah, leader of ISIS Kerala module, who was believed to be killed in Afghanistan pic.twitter.com/pNBdGrA4Ah
During interrogation, Yasmin Ahmed Jahid informed that people from Kerala were recruited to ISIS and sent to Kuwait, Dubai, Muscat and Abu Dhabi from Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Mumbai airports. From there they were sent to Afghanistan via Iran. This revelation was about the same ISIS recruitment case of 2016 in Kerala in which 21 Indians were sent to Iran and Afghanistan to join ISIS.
This group included the four women terrorists who urged the Indian government to come back to India after surrendering in Afghanistan but were denied entry into India by the Union government due to their ISIS-related past. The detailed story can be read here. Abdul Rashid Abdulla had also gone in this group with his wife Sonia Sebastian alias Ayisha.
Abdul Rashid would call Yasmin through Telegram. These terrorists were aiming to establish a caliphate in support of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. In July 2016, Rashid told her that the men he had sent had reached ISIS territory in Afghanistan. Rashid had made an ATM card in the name of his first wife Ayisha and gave it to Yasmin. In mid-July 2016, Rs 1.5 lakh was also sent to her. Some of the people recruited by him to ISIS were even killed while fighting for the terrorist organization.
Yasmin Ahmed Jahid was arrested from the New Delhi International Airport on July 30, 2016, while trying to escape to Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, with her minor child. On 24th March 2018, the NIA Court in Kochi awarded seven years of rigorous imprisonment to her. She was 30 years old when the court awarded her the sentence. Yasmin was also handed a Rs 25,000 fine.
NIA Judge S Santhosh Kumar said, “Considering the nature and circumstances of the case, the court doesn’t find any reason to invoke the Probation of Offenders Act. At the time of arrest, the son of the accused was with her and now he is in the custody of his father. However, considering the fact that the accused is a lady aged about 30 years, a lenient view is taken.”
The Kashmir and Karnataka Connection of the Kerala Story
As part of the investigation into the Kerala-ISIS module case, on 4th August 2021, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) conducted raids at five different locations across Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka, and Kerala. The purpose of these raids was to gather more evidence and information related to the case.
During the operation, the NIA apprehended four individuals: Obaid Hamid from Bemina in Srinagar, Muzammil Hassan Bhat from Bandipora in Kashmir, Ammar Abdul Rahman from Ullal Mangalore, and Shankar Venkatesh Perumal, also known as Ali Muaviya, from Bangalore. This Shankar Venkatesh Perumal alias Ali Muaviya is an important character in the male version of the real-life Kerala Story.
Besides, similar ISIS modules have also been identified and busted in states like Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh which indicates that the terrorists do not recognize the borders of states and nations. All they recognize is Jihad while walking on the path of their religiously motivated terrorist ideology. Anyone subscribing to it, however unknown in their prior life, is a friend to them. Anyone except those who believe in that ideology is a foe for them.
Conclusion
National integrity, interests of mutual prosperity, and civilizational identity usually motivate persons from different states to come together and initiate an activity. In a large country like India where there are so many different cultures, languages, regions, etc. people come together for these reasons and perform in unison to achieve better. But pan-Islamism is one such concept that defies even international borders and inspires religiously motivated Muslims from one nation to take a stand for a similar lot in other nations.
This is why the Kerala module of ISIS readily attracted Muslims from other parts of the country. This is why Muslims staged violent protests in Azad Maidan in 2012 to stand in solidarity with some so-called religiously persecuted Muslims of Myanmar. This is why an attacker attacked Salman Rushdie in the USA to comply with a Fatwa issued in Iran against the writer even before the attacker was born, proving that this pan-Islamism also transcends time. Thus, for countering this religiously motivated terrorist ideology it is necessary to first understand how Islamic terrorism seeds, roots, spreads, operates and finally destructs beyond the borders.
