This is the poster of a study camp organized by the Students Islamic Organisation (SIO) in Kerala. At the top of the poster are the photographs of those who are regarded as the ideological mentors of this organization. All three of them are notorious Muslim extremists whose posters, photographs, books, or ideas are banned from being propagated even in several Islamic countries across the world.
The first one is Imam Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. He reportedly had more than fifty thousand followers in Egypt, and were ready to do ‘anything.’ Eventually, he was shot dead by the Egyptian secret police after attempting to overthrow the Islamic government of Egypt to establish a Caliphate. Extremist organizations revere him as a leading ideologue of Islamic state theory. He believed that Islam was a comprehensive way of life and that Islamic values should be applied in all spheres—political, social, and economic. He argued, citing the Qur’an and Hadith, that a Muslim should live under a Caliph, or a religious authority operating under Islam. According to him, where such conditions do not exist, every Muslim’s true purpose is to wage jihad and establish a religious state. He advanced what is described as the most dangerous idea, calling upon every Muslim brother to declare war against all other nations, especially against Western imperialism. He also argued that even some of the existing Islamic governments were anti-Islamic and called upon Muslim brothers to engage in jihad to establish what he considered true Islamism. Imam Hassan al-Banna believed that the formation of an Islamic state is part of a Muslim’s way of life and that a Muslim is born on earth solely for that purpose. For this, he cited the Qur’an, Hadith, and the Sunnah.
The next one in the poster is extremist is Sayyid Qutb. He too was based in Egypt. He is regarded as the author of the manifesto of modern Islamic politics. The Islamic nationalism of organizations such as Al-Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Taiba is based on his ideas. In 1966, Qutb was sentenced to death in Egypt after being accused of conspiring against the state. His ideas later inspired organizations such as Al-Qaeda and Hamas to commit killings. His ideology is known as “Qutbism.” According to Qutb, any government that is not Islamic is part of Jahiliyyah (the pre-Islamic age of ignorance), including governments in Muslim countries. He argued that ideologies such as Marxism, liberalism, nationalism, and democracy are all anti-Islamic.
The third extremist is Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas, who was killed in Israeli bombing in 2004. He founded the organization known as the Islamic Resistance Movement, and later Hamas was formed declaring that there would be no bilateral negotiations with kafirs and that the objective would instead be pursued through the path of Muhammadan struggle. He issued the Hamas Charter, citing verses from the Qur’an and Hadith calling for the expulsion of Jews. The motivating factors behind it were ideas associated with the Islamic Brotherhood, including anti-communism, anti-Semitism, and anti-Westernism. He masterminded numerous suicide attacks. Having begun extremist activities at a very young age, he lost his legs at the age of twelve as part of that involvement. Thereafter, he used a wheelchair. He was a Palestinian who later migrated to Gaza.
The larger question is why Kerala’s self-proclaimed secular political parties remain conspicuously silent when individuals associated with some of the most influential strands of modern Islamist extremism are publicly celebrated and presented as intellectual role models. The same voices that react swiftly to perceived threats from other ideological quarters often appear reluctant to scrutinize the growing visibility of radical Islamist narratives in public and academic spaces. Such selective silence risks normalising ideas that have inspired intolerance, violence, and religious supremacism across the world.
A democratic and plural society cannot afford to ignore the ideological roots of Muslim extremism merely because they are packaged as intellectual discourse or community education. Allowing sympathisers of extremist ideologies, a free hand in shaping public opinion, especially among the youth, carries long-term consequences for social harmony, national integration, and public security. Kerala’s civil society and political leadership must confront these issues with consistency and moral clarity, for silence today may prove far more costly tomorrow.
