On September 8, Joseph Kallarangatt, a Catholic bishop of Pala in Kerala, launched a gratuitous, hate-filled tirade against Muslims. With l...
On September 8, Joseph Kallarangatt, a Catholic bishop of Pala in Kerala, launched a gratuitous, hate-filled tirade against Muslims. With little evidence to support his absurd claim, he declared that Muslims had launched a “narcotic jihad” to lure members of other religious groups to become drug addicts.
Another way the community was attempting to “annihilate non-Muslims”, the bishop said, was through “love jihad” – a conspiracy theory that claims that Muslim men lure women into marriage so that they can later be converted to Islam.
In an exasperated response, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan quoted statistics of cases registered under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act to demonstrate that drug peddling and consumption had nothing to do with religion. He dismissed the bishop’s claims as “puerile”.
Past instances
The bishop’s diatribe against Muslims was not a one-off proposition to disrupt the communal harmony that has existed in Kerala over the decades. In early 2020, bishops of the Syro-Malabar Church issued a warning to believers that Christian women are being targeted by “jihadists” through inter-religious relationships and even being recruited to Islamic State through this method.
These claims flew in the face of reality. According to government figures, of the 449 people in Kerala who converted to other faiths, 116 Christians converted to Hinduism...
