The Kerala Story: Dhruv Rathee’s viral video gets point-by-point rebuttal from Rizwan Ahmed

The Kerala Story starring Adah Sharma as the lead actress is running packed houses in many states of India. The film is based on the real story of three girls in Kerala who were trapped through love jihad, converted to Islam, and later on, were trained by ISIS as terrorists.

A video on the movie made by Dhruv Rathee discusses various aspects of the film that somehow were thought to be misleading by Rizwan Ahmed and hence he has given his point-by-point analysis of the same in his rebuttal.

The focus is not on Kerala but on conversion and girls

At the start of The Kerala Story teaser, Adah Sharma who is playing the role of Shalini aka Fatima Ba says 32,000 girls have been converted and buried in the desert of Syria and Iraq.

Explaining this, Rizwan says that nowhere does the girl is saying that these 32,000 girls were from India or Kerala. Rather she is speaking in general about the overall girls that may have been a part of this process. So, here the common factor is girls and conversion and not Kerala.

Point by point rebuttal of Dhruv Rathee’s video on The Kerala Story by @Dr_RizwanAhmed

Must watch! pic.twitter.com/FLEReTFzAI

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Converted and brainwashed

In his analysis of The Kerala Story, Dhruv says, “Do bhai aur unki dono biwiya, sare converts, sare brainwashed.” In his rebuttal to this statement, Rizwan says that it means that conversion and brainwashing exist as a disease.

He says that the director has the cinematic liberty to show the extent of conversion and brainwashing that is being done to justify his script whereas it is up to the audience to pick up the right thing from the entire depiction.

To support his statement, Rizwan gives the example of the Border movie. He says when this patriotic movie was made it was based on heroes like Suniel Shetty, Sunny Deol, Akshaye Khanna, and others. But a lot of things like Suniel Shetty leaving his wife after suhag raat to go on borders or the Chithhiyan song and romance that took place before the actual fight did not happen in reality.

This is the cinematic liberty in which the director will show the truth in the core part of the story and surrounding that he will create audio-video so that the message reaches the maximum number of people.

Otherwise, The Kerala Story could have been a one-hour black-and-white documentary.

Radicalization happened, and the disease of conversion do exist

In his next clip, Dhruv says that four women’s request to enter India was rejected. Rizwan explains that this statement in the movie does not mean that the girls were Muslims or from Kerala but it indicates that they had been a part of ISIS which indicates that radicalization as a disease exists.

Sirf 29…

Dhruv shares that in 2015, it was found that only 29 Indians have joined ISIS. In 2017, the government of Kerala submitted a list of 90 such cases to the NIA to investigate whether it has a love jihad angle or not.

NIA examined 11 cases and concluded that although the conversion was facilitated by PFI there was not a single person who was forced to convert to Islam.

Rizwan says that PFI did facilitate conversion and the ban made by the state government was justified. However, NIA could not find out the truth about the existence of love jihad because of the absence of evidence.

Rizwan gives examples of Aarushi’s death, the killing of 69 Muslims by PSI in Meerut 30 years ago, or the bomb blasts in Gujarat. The judiciary could not prove that the accused committed these crimes and hence were released in the absence of evidence. That does not mean that these incidents did not take place.

So, people must understand that just because NIA and the Kerala people could not establish that the conversions and radicalization did take place it does not mean that the girls were never trapped in this way.

No mention of 32,000 girls

Rizwan says there is no mention in The Kerala Story that 32,000 girls from Kerala were radicalized and converted to Islam and sent to ISIS. It is only in the teaser which was later on cut on the editing table.

He also explains that it is not possible that the clip was sliced from the movie just 7 days before the release owing to pressure because it takes the editor, director, and the team weeks to make other scenes relevant after editing even a 30-second clip.

Rizwan slams Dhruv Rathee that since he has picked up the data from here and there on the internet and has no legal background, he simply does not know that establishing the conspiracy theory is the toughest part of law.