KOCHI: Keralite Christian girls are being targeted and killed in the name of “love jihad”, the 28th synod of the Syro-Malabar Church has said.

“Many are even scared to use the term ‘ love jihad ’ but the synod has now come out and said the exact words. There are reports of Christian girls getting converted and taken abroad. They are not living an ideal pious life either. They are made to live with more than one person and some are even pushed into becoming sex slaves,” said Syro-Malabar media commission secretary Fr Antony Thalachelloor on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, the church said it would begin a sensitisation campaign against the issue through Sunday schools. Sources within the church said they were planning to use all their lay organisations to make Christian youth cautious about the “threat”.

Fr Thalachelloor said the recent incidents in Kozhikode in which a 19-year-old woman was sexually abused and blackmailed into converting and instances of Christian women joining Islamic State were examples that got the church worried. “It has also come to our notice that a Christian teenager was brutally stabbed to death after getting lured into an affair. Love affairs used to happen earlier as well, but the church cannot overlook girls, especially Christian girls, getting targeted and later murdered on the pretext of ‘love’,” he said.

The synod said if movements like “love jihad” grew stronger they would endanger communal harmony in Kerala . It pointed out that around half of the 21 youths recruited to IS from the state were Christians. “It is a concern that several girls who are not accounted for in official records are being used for terrorist activities through love jihad. Statistics show that love jihad is not an illusion. It is a sad fact that police are not taking appropriate action in complaints,” it said.

Synod, however, said that they don’t observe Love Jihad in a way that it would affect the friendship between religions in the state. It said the authorities should look at it as a menace that would negatively affect the society.

