Thiruvananthapuram: IUML legislator K.M. Shaji said he has reported 10 cases of threats that were made to him for the strongly progressive stand he has been taking against the spread of Islamic fundamentalism in Kerala.
“There are 10 cases that I myself have given on the threats that I have received. I have even given the telephone numbers from which the calls have come, but surprisingly no action has been forthcoming. Does this not show that they do have influence?” Shaji, the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) legislator, told.
He suggested that the Islamic fundamentalists command “the money power” which they have been using to publish and circulate a huge amount of objectionable literature in Kerala.
“You would not believe the amount of literature that is being circulated in the state and the police should conduct a raid,” said Shaji, who is one of the 18 IUML legislators in the Kerala assembly.
The IUML has long been a constituent of the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) which lost power in the state to the Left Democratic Front (LDF) earlier this year.
Shaji said “a strong intervention” of the state government and the Centre is required if there is any truth in media reports that 21 people from Kerala have joined Islamic State (IS), which is a UN-designated terrorist group headquartered in Syria. “The first move to tackle this has to come from the Kerala government, but it remains to be seen if they will do it in the way it should be done, as to some extent there is a vote bank politics in it and they are taking on a section that has the money power with them,” he said.
Shaji’s colleague in IUML and the assembly, C. Mammootty, told that it is for the people who have reportedly joined the IS to explain what they are up to.
“The creed of Islam is spread through the mind and not through the tongue.
We can discuss on why they left, but the answer has to be given by them,” said Mammootty. (IANS)
