To the “hard jihad” of Muslim terrorism and the non-violent, “stealth jihad” challenging Western societies, the oxymoron “love jihad” can now be added.  But this latest form of Islamist aggression has nothing to do with love but rather, like its soulmates, with hatred for the infidel and women.

The love jihad’s modus operandi involves a heartless strategy of luring vulnerable girls and young women to convert to Islam by feigned love and promises of marriage. But instead of marital bliss, the girls unwittingly trapped in its deceitful web usually wind up in the hands of Muslim fundamentalist organizations.

The south-western state of Kerela in India is the latest place where this perverse practice has raised its ugly head. Authorities in this state of 32 million are holding in jail two young Muslim men who stand accused of “luring” two non-Muslim university students with promises of marriage “for the purpose of conversion.”

In court, both students testified the two men “trapped” them and forced them into converting. One told the court she fell in love with one of the men, a senior student at her college, and eloped with him. But instead of the expected marriage, she and the other woman were taken to a Muslim center where they were subjected to Islamic extremist propaganda.

The case has created such concern that Kerela’s High Court ordered the police to investigate the organization responsible for the conversions, the Campus Front, which serves as the student wing of the Muslim fundamentalist organization, the Popular Front of India. It is believed more than 4,000 Hindu and Christian young women in Kerela have converted to Islam in the last six months.

The Times of India reports that Kerela’s Hindu and Christian religious authorities are so alarmed at this development that they are cooperating to “combat the ‘social evil’ which. . .is hitting their respective communities hard.” It is suspected that college girls and working women are especially targeted.

“It’s shocking but it is happening. Many Christian families are getting affected,” said a member of the Kerala Catholic Bishops Council.

One report states the “jihad Romeos” in Kerela are given cell phones, bikes and fashionable clothes to accomplish their sinister mission. They have two weeks to find a girl of another religion and six months to convert her to Islam. If the girl shows no interest within two weeks, they are to leave her and find another.

For every conversion, the men also receive a monetary reward. The money for the “love jihad” in Kerala is reported to come from “foreign sources.”

If a recruiter does marry his convert, he is encouraged to have four children with her. Some believe this capability to bear offspring is the reason why young women are targeted. With conversion, their reproductive powers are taken away from a competing religion and increase instead the Muslim extremist demographic.

But while the term love jihad may be new, the tactic is already a known one. In the 1990s, Sikhs in England believed young women in their community were being targeted for conversion. Young Muslim men looking for prey were even thought to have attended parties for young Sikhs, while pretending to be Sikhs themselves.

Sometimes, however, the jihad Romeos in England used a more brutal approach. A story in the Daily Mail two years ago stated that police were targeting such Muslim extremists and working with universities against “aggressive conversions.” These involved Hindu and Sikh girls being beaten up and terrorized by the Muslim men they were dating until they converted.

The Hindu Forum of Britain, the story says, claimed hundreds of Sikh and Hindu girls were victims of such vicious intimidation. Some even had to leave their university to escape their tormentors.

“Some girls are petrified because they are constantly being phoned up, having their door knocked on,” a Hindu Forum member said at the time.

But the best evidence that this form of jihad has been in operation for some time comes from a former Muslim extremist, who converted to Christianity. In the book, Why We Left Islam, a compilation of testimonies by former Muslims who left their faith, the unidentified apostate gives a powerful account of his days as a jihad Romeo in Egypt who targeted Coptic Christian girls.

Like in Kerela, the former Muslim testifies that money was paid for conversions and that it came from outside the country. And the higher the educational and social status of the victim’s family, the more money the jihad Romeo received.

Unlike in India though, the recruiters would parade the converted girl through the streets, playing music and waving flags, while yelling “Allah Akbar.” The goal, he said, was to humiliate the Christians, especially the men, and dishonor their families in a country where the women are the family’s honor. But such parades were banned in 1985.

All kinds of tricks, he writes, were used to convert the girls. From outright expressions of love and attending their churches to trapping them in moral scandals, everything was fair game. In this, the extremists were often helped by young Muslim women who identified likely targets, encouraged the Christian girl in the “relationship,” and would even help set up the morally compromising situations.

While ruining the lives of others, the former Muslim states he thought he was serving his religion, since Muslims “were in a perpetual war with the ‘filthy infidels’.” He lived for three years with one woman he had converted, tormenting her mercilessly, while converting seven other Christian women during that time.

In essence, the love jihad is a form of demographic aggression. Like the “stealth jihad”, which employs political activism to achieve Islamist aims in Western societies, it employs deception and is viewed as a useful tactic in bringing about Islamic world domination. That, however, is of little solace to the many precious young women whose lives it has destroyed.