In an undated video that has gone viral on social media, Shafi Saadi Kumaramputtur a teacher of Samastha Kerala Sunni education board preached that anyone who leaves the religion of Islam should be killed.
While taking an online session of class 12 students, Shafi Saadi can be heard saying, “If someone quits Islam/religion then what is his fate? Islam asks him to repent, still, if he does not repent then he needs to be killed by the ruler or who is responsible.”
“Is that violence? No. But it is to remind the followers of Islam that what is the consequence of leaving the religion and how he will be treated after death. He will go to hell,” Shafi Saadi preached further.
Children are taught not to show any reluctance to kill believers who leave Islam, this video is from Samastha Kerala Sunni Education board and the teacher is named Shafi saadi kumaramputhur, Hail secularism hail democracy
— Rocket Scientist 🇮🇳 (@Rockumon) June 20, 2021
NB: If you are alive pic.twitter.com/bdSpqbSD8x
Several social media users tagged Kerala Police demanding an arrest of Shafi Saadi Kumaramputtur for his inflammatory preaching.
Samastha Kerala Sunni Vidyabhyasa Board Islamic Education is one of the most influential organizations in Kerala headed by Indian Islamic scholar Mufthi Moulana Sheikh Aboobacker.
As per the official website, around ten thousand madarsas are affiliated with the Samastha Kerala Sunni Board. The madarsa children acquire religious education for a duration of two hours before heading to schools for general education.
Radicalization in Kerala
As per a July 2020 article, the UN in its report on terrorism had warned that there are “significant numbers” of ISIS terrorists in Kerala and Karnataka.
According to the 26th report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team concerning ISIS, “One member state reported that the ISIL Indian affiliate (Hind Wilayah), which was announced on May 10, 2019, has between 180 and 200 members”.
In May 2019 the Islamic State (also known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh) terror group claimed to have established a new “province” in India.
ISIS terrorists want to return to India
We reported last week how ‘Fathima Isa’ along with 19 others from Kerala flew to Afghanistan in June 2016 to wage a war against the US forces in ISIS-controlled Khorasan Province.
After her terrorist husband was neutralised, she surrendered to the Afghan government in 2019 and she along with other women expressed the desire to return back to India.
According to the charge sheet filed by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in 2017, another Sonia Sebastian had left India in 2016 to join the ISKP in Afghanistan along with a group of 21 men and women from Kerala. They had crossed over to Afghanistan on foot from Iran. The NIA said Sebastian, from Kasargod in Kerala, left India on May 31, 2016, with her husband, Abdul Rashid Abdulla, from Mumbai airport.
They had said the couple held secret classes supporting IS and jihad during the last part of Ramzan in Padanna and Kasaragod. Sebastian is an engineering graduate.
Another IS sympathiser, Merrin Jacob alias Mariyam, was married to Bestin Vincent, a resident of Palakkad. The couple escaped to Afghanistan in 2016 to live in the IS-controlled territory. Later, the Chrisitan couple converted to Islam after their marriage, and Vincent assumed the identity of Yahya. Vincent was later killed in Afghanistan.
Similarly, Vincent’s brother Bexon and his wife, Nimisha alias Fathima, also converted to Islam and escaped to Afghanistan with them. Raffaela was married to a 37-year-old physician Ijas Kallukettiya Purayil a physician from Kasargod. The couple is believed to have stormed a prison in a terror attack in Eastern Afghanistan’s Jalalabad in August 2020. Around 30 persons were killed in the attack.
Kerala HC questions the funding of madarsas
Early this month, the Kerala High Court asked the Pinarayi Vijayan-led state government why it was financing a religious activity by pumping vast amounts of public money to run madarsas in the state.
According to the reports, the Kerala High Court heard a petition filed by Manoj, secretary of Citizen Organisation for Democracy, Equality, Tranquility, and Secularism, seeking to quash the Kerala Madrasa Teachers’ Welfare Fund Act, 2019.
C Rajendran, counsel for the petitioner, said that these madrasas in Kerala only impart knowledge about the Quran and other textbooks pertaining to Islam. However, under the act, the madarsas in Kerala are getting huge amounts of money for the said purposes, which is unconstitutional and against the principles of secularism enshrined in the Constitution, the petitioner argued.
“In Kerala, these are involved purely in religious activity. What is the purpose of contributing funds by the state for a religious activity?” the Kerala HC asked the state government regarding funding madrasas in the state.