The Marxist party has traditionally been supporting radical Islamisation. The colouring of Mappila riots as freedom movement, creating Malappuram district for Muslims, support to Saddam Hussein, their friendship with the radical Muslim leader, Madani and their political affiliations with Jama'at Islami and the Popular Front is well known.

Moplahs are the Muslims of Malabar from an Arab descent. The first set of Islamic invasion in Kerala was by the army of Mysore under Hyder Ali and later his son Tipu. Numerous temples were demolished, and over 400,000 Hindus forcefully converted to Islam. Since then, there has been regular but isolated attacks and raids by Moplahs in Malabar. Responding to the call of Gandhiji, Indian Muslims joined the Khilafat movement against the policy of the British empire towards the Ottomans. What had started as a movement against the British Empire, ended as a violent jihad against the Hindus of Malabar.



The following words of Annie Besant bust the myth of the Moplah riots being an agrarian revolt against the Upper-class landlords. "Two Pulayas the lowest of the submerged classes were captured with others and given a choice between Islam and Death. These, the outcast of Hinduism, the untouchables, so loved the Hinduism which had been so unkind a step-mother to them, that they chose to die Hindus rather than to live Muslim. May the God of both, Muslim and Hindus send his messengers to these heroic souls, and give them rebirth into the faith for which they died.”



Dr B.R. Ambedkar called the Moplah riot an “inhuman uncontrolled savagery”, and Gandhiji mourned that his Muslim brothers “had gone mad”. A report on the riot by the Kozhikode District Congress Committee stated that “Hindu men, women and children were slain for the sole reason of being kafirs”. Later, the Communists painted the Moplah riots as peasant revolts and rewarded the participants of the riots with freedom fighters pensions.

In 1969, the United Front ministry of E.M.S. Namboodiripad carved out a new, predominantly Muslim District of Malappuram to please the Muslim League for their political support by redrawing the borders of Kozhikode and Palakkad districts. Even today various circles criticise this move as 'the illegitimate child of the old Two Nation theory,'. As the new Malappuram-this 'Moplastan' area includes mainly those taluks where Moplah riots took place in 1921.



The Communists always struggled to make inroads to the Muslim-majority Malappuram even though they are very active in the northern Kerala. So to break the Muslim consolidation under Muslim League, the CPM mollycoddled with the more radical sections of Muslims. Elections were fought showing Yassir Arafat and Saddam Hussein on billboards rather than on local issues. The Marxists love for the PDP leader, and a key accused in the 2008 Bangalore bombings case also was aimed at the Muslim votes. This unholy alliance between the Marxists and the extremist elements did have an effect on the radicalisation of sections of the minority community. Never to forget, Kerala's role even in recruiting for the IS.

There have been several instances where the accused attempted to fuel a communal riot by planting misleading evidence at the crime scenes. In the murder of the ex-CPM activist Mohammed Fasal, they placed a 'Trishul' near the body to link the crime to RSS. On another instance, the killers had pasted a sticker with Arabic scripture on the vehicle they went to butcher T P Chanrashekharan in so that the inquiry could be diverted to some jihadi outfits. In both cases, the accused turned out to be CPM activists.