From Love Jihad to Grooming Gangs: Tracing Flows of the Hypersexual Muslim Male through Far-Right Female Influencers

Eviane Leidig

doi:10.3390/rel12121083

Abstract

This article traces the transnational flows of constructions of the hypersexualized Muslim male through a comparative analysis of love jihad in India and the specter of grooming gangs in the UK. While the former is conceived as an act of seduction and conversion, and the latter through violent rape imaginaries, foregrounding both of these narratives are sexual, gender, and family dynamics that are integral to the fear of demographic change. Building upon these narratives, this study analyzes how influential women in Hindu nationalist and European/North American far-right milieus circulate images, videos, and discourses on social media that depict Muslim men as predatory and violent, targeting Hindu and white girls, respectively. By positioning themselves as the daughters, wives, and mothers of the nation, these far-right female influencers invoke a sense of reproductive urgency, as well as advance claims of the perceived threat of, and safety from, hypersexualized Muslim men. This article illustrates how local ideological narratives of Muslim sexuality are embedded into global Islamophobic tropes of gendered nationalist imaginaries.

Highlights

While tropes of love jihad are predominately centered within India and neighboring geographies in South and Southeast Asia, it is rarely conceptualized beyond this region
This article compares two case studies that involved the framing of Muslim male hypersexuality by Hindu nationalist and European/North American far-right female influencers, namely, the Nikita Tomar incident and grooming gang scandals in the UK
Despite some slight variation that can be attributed to local context, these far-right movements share similar tropes concerning the representation of Muslim men as savage and barbaric; Muslim sexuality as an instrumentalized tool of demographic warfare toward achieving the “Islamization” of India and Europe; “native” Hindu and white women (i.e., “our daughters”) constantly existing in a vulnerable state and needing protection by militant Hindu and white men; an invoked sense of urgency to save Hindu and Western civilization; and complicity of the mainstream media, entertainment industry, and the political left in allowing for, and sometimes promoting, these alleged pro-Muslim and pro-Islam abusive practices

Summary

Introduction

While tropes of love jihad are predominately centered within India and neighboring geographies in South and Southeast Asia, it is rarely conceptualized beyond this region. This article builds upon this collective effort by positioning the specter of Muslim male hypersexuality as an integral element within two distinct nationalist myth-making movements: Hindu nationalism and the European/North American farright It traces how gendered constructions of femininity and masculinity relate to, and are simultaneously informed by, projections of the Muslim “other” as barbaric, savage, and deviant. This article examines how female influencers within the Hindu nationalist and European/North American far-right milieus circulate visuals and text on YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter to contribute to the narratives of an existential Muslim threat to Hindu and Western civilization When analyzed comparatively, these narratives share a common trope of depicting Muslim men as hypersexualized, predatory, and violent figures that are seeking to target vulnerable “native” women as an act of Islamization of India and Europe. The demographic of women involved in these organizations is broad, the leadership is almost always comprised of middleclass, upper-caste women, who are frequently related to male leaders in the parallel men’s organizations

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Conclusion