The movie ‘The Kerala Story’ has ignited an intense political debate, with some states banning the screening of the film while some BJP-ruled states making it tax-free for viewers.
‘The Kerala Story,’ directed by Sudipto Sen and produced by Vipul Amrutlal Shah, stars Adah Sharma, Yogita Bihani, Sonia Balani, and Siddhi Idnani. The movie is about forced religious conversion and alleges that about 32,000 women in Kerala were converted to Islam and many were sent to ISIS-ruled Syria at the pinnacle of the terror group’s dominance. However, there have been objections regarding to the ‘inaccuracy’ of the claim and that it spreads ‘hate speech’ against Muslims.
However, the filmmakers have rejected opponents’ claims, even though the initial description of the film from ‘32,000 women’ was changed to ‘four women’ later. In an interview, actor Adah Sharma, director Sudipto Sen, and producer Vipul Shah all said that the film “targets terrorists rather than the entire Muslim community,” as per reports.
The threat of ISIS recruitment from abroad, especially UK, has been documented by some reports and papers. In India, the Islamic State has long sought to establish a “Khorasan Caliphate”. The terrorist organisation initially came to the attention of Indian intelligence authorities in 2013, when reports from Syria revealed that there were some Indians within the ranks of the IS combatants, who were then making military and territorial gains in Syria, as per a report by Indian Express. Read more on this here
As per a 2016 report in the Guardian which documented incidents of groups allegedly being recruited from Kerala by the IS, said that as per most estimations, India’s Muslim population had supplied negligible people to Isis. “More have gone from Britain, even the Maldives, than from India,” Vikram Sood, former chief of RAW had told the public agency at the time.
Let’s look at the trafficking stories related to ISIS from other countries:
The Case of Shamima Begum
One of the highly-discussed of a possible trafficking case from the UK is of Shamima Begum. The 24-year-old is a British-born woman who entered Syria at the age of 15 to join the extremist group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). She was a pupil at London’s Bethnal Green Academy when she and two classmates, known as the Bethnal Green trio, fled to Syria in February 2015. Begum married a fellow ISIL member 10 days after arriving and had three children, all of whom perished while they were young. According to the Daily Telegraph, Begum had earned a reputation as an enforcer among other ISIL members and had attempted to persuade other young women to join the organisation.
Begum was discovered alive in the Al-Hawl refugee camp in Northern Syria by war writer Anthony Loyd in February 2019. Sajid Javid, the British Home Secretary, revoked her British citizenship the next day. Begum will never be allowed to return to the UK, Javid had stated. The Court of Appeal concluded in July 2020 that Begum should be allowed to return to the UK in order to properly fight the Home Secretary’s decision by instructing attorneys.
This verdict was appealed to the UK Supreme Court, which ruled unanimously against her on February 26, 2021, overturning the Court of Appeal’s decision and preventing her return. The Special Immigration Appeals Commission concluded in February 2023 that Javid’s move to revoke Begum’s British citizenship was lawful on grounds of national security.
Despite the decision, the decision was damaging for the government, as per a report by Independent.
ISIS Recruitment
The Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) established “credible suspicion” that she was trafficked to Syria at the age of 15 to be sexually exploited by Isis fighters.
The court also decided that the UK’s “protective duties” may have been breached when Begum’s school, police, and local council failed to prevent her from travelling to Isis-controlled territory after one of her companions did so.
Justice Jay expressed worry that MI5 had “understated the significance of radicalisation and grooming,” whilst accepting that what occurred to Begum was “not unusual.” According to the court, “reasonable people will profoundly disagree” with Sajid Javid’s decision to strip Begum of her British citizenship in 2019.
But he concluded that the move was not unlawful, because it was in the then-home secretary’s power “to decide what is in the public interest,” the report said.
“In the commission’s opinion, there is a credible suspicion that Ms Begum was recruited, transferred and then harboured for the purpose of sexual exploitation. She was a child at the time,” the ruling had said. It pointed to Home Office documents recognising that female Isis recruits, including children, were “married off” to act as brides for Isis fighters and give birth to the next generation in the terrorist group’s caliphate in Syria and Iraq.
According to one UK parliamentary investigation, as per a 2022 Guardian report, there is “compelling evidence” that British women and children presently incarcerated in camps in north-east Syria were transported there against their will. The research aimed to exposes how systemic failures by UK public organisations enabled Islamic State (IS) trafficking of vulnerable women and children as young as 12. Around 20 British families are still being held in camps in north-east Syria, primarily by Kurdish-dominated militias.
According to investigations conducted by the non-governmental organisation Reprieve, the majority of the British women detained are victims of trafficking, based on evidence that they were subjected to sexual and other forms of exploitation and were either transported to Syria as children, coerced into travelling to Syria, or kept and moved within Syria against their will, the report says.
As per a 2015 Guardian report, in which author Nabeelah Jaffer talked to women on what had attracted them into the lure of IS, there were an estimated 500 plus western women who had travelled to Syria to join Isis. But she said there were more sitting at their computers at home, ‘voicing their support online’.
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