Fugitive preacher Abdul Rashid Abdulla, sought by the National Investigation Agency for leading 21 Kerala residents to join the Islamic State in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province has reportedly resurfaced in the messaging platforms WhatsApp and Telegram.
A WhatsApp group called ‘Message to Kerala’ was created in the first week of May, and many have reported receiving messages from Rashid Abdulla, the leader of the Islamic State module from Kerala. In the messages Rashid, who was working in the Peace School International in Kerala, claims that that Muslim scholars in Kerala, including the Peace School’s Chairman and the Salafi preacher M M Akbar, are afraid of speaking openly about jihad, scared that they will be jailed.
Rashid also claimed in the message that he was the head of the department of ‘other cognitive areas’ at the Peace School and was in charge of developing the school curriculum. He also claims that Akbar used to tell him that he is trying to bring Shariat Law indirectly in India by producing more Muslim civil servants through his school.
However, refuting all the allegations Akbar said that the IS sympathisers are trying to misrepresent Quran texts to lure Muslim youth. Akbar also openly invited IS sympathisers, including Rashid, for an open debate on concepts like jihad and hijra based on the texts of Islam.
“Hundreds are working in Peace Schools and thousands of students study here. No one would say that such things are taught at the school. Persons like Abdulla have not studied Islam properly and are entertaining distorted notions of jihad and hijra. Earlier IS men were trying to woo confused Muslim youth through writings in the blog, but now they are cleverly using other social media such as WhatsApp and Facebook to propagate their dangerous ideas,” The Times of India quoted MM Akbar saying.
Few among the missing 21 worked in Peace Schools of Kasaragod and Kochi, and was reportedly lured by Rashid’s preaching.
Earlier the school was under criticism when the police found few text books taught at the school contained communal elements. Portions of some of the textbooks taught in the school leaked by parents and others to the media reveal that the textbooks promoted Islamic orthodoxy and nudged students towards the same.
However, even then M M Akbar had refuted charges saying religious studies was optional for students and they just use the textbooks available in market.
Meanwhile, Rashid in an exclusive interview to the Indian Express had come down heavily on traditional religious leaders of Kerala.