Games People Play: A guide to how you can be trapped to convert to Islam via an online game

The Ghaziabad police, as they busted an online conversion racket, also uncovered an uncanny modus operandi, which has been gaining ground in recent times—using online games to lure unsuspecting victims.
The police arrested a man for running this syndicate in collusion with a Mumbai-based man.
According to Ghaziabad police, the accused men allegedly used an online gaming app to target children and teenagers, and entice them to convert to Islam.
A cleric at a mosque in Sanjay Nagar area in Ghaziabad was arrested on Sunday, police said, adding that a hunt had been launched to nab the second accused, who hails from Thane in Maharashtra.
“On May 30, a case of religious conversion was registered at Kavi Nagar Police Station, in which two people were named and were identified as Shahnawaz Khan alias Baddo, a resident of Thane, Maharashtra and Nanni alias Abdul Rehman, a Maulvi at a mosque in Sanjay Nagar area. Rehman has been arrested,” said Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), Ghaziabad, Nipun Agarwal.
“During an investigation, the role of Rehman in the conversion of a minor Jain boy and two Hindu boys was found and police have seized electronic evidence and affidavits related to it,” the DCP of Ghaziabad City said.
According to the cops, the modus operandi was to target teenagers via the online game, which required users to recite verses from the Quran in order to win.
According to the DCP, the teenage gamers were also shown videos of radical Muslim preachers Zakir Naik and Tariq Jameel.
Naik an accused in numerous cases related to money laundering and spreading hatred had fled the country in 2016.
“The accused also used to talk with the gamers (children) through a chat application and there they were shown videos of Zakir Naik and Tariq Jameel to persuade them to convert,” DCP Ghaziabad City said.
The DCP said a team has been sent to Maharashtra to nab the accused Shahnawaz Khan.
Backstory






Virender Sharma, who operates an anti-trafficking organization in Delhi, working closely with the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), informed Firstpost that a similar modus operandi is prevalent in the world of trafficking.
“Traffickers use chat rooms in online games to befriend vulnerable girls, enticing them into relationships and convincing them to travel to distant locations for either physical abuse or involvement in sex work,” he stated.
Singh shared that his team has successfully rescued several girls in the past two years who were trafficked after being lured through online games.
Recalling a Love-Jihad incident, Singh mentioned an accused individual from Kairana, UP, who deceived a Bengali Brahmin girl while playing online Ludo with her.
“The accused allegedly befriended her and convinced her to elope. She was taken to Panipat, where the man not only subjected her to physical abuse but also coerced her into converting,” he explained. Fortunately, the girl’s family located her and alerted the police, resulting in her rescue by Singh and his team.






Laying trap
Unless and until we have laws or systems in place that require government-issued IDs to create social media accounts, there is no way to verify whether the person whom we see online is actually the person they claim to be. At the very least, we need laws governing catfishing, and not simply categorise it as fraud.
Religious conversion using online games starts the same way as catfishing in online dating. Normally, all apps allow users to sign in using the same profile as that of Facebook, and Gmail. People do have the option of creating a fresh profile, and tying it to an email, but because signing in through Facebook or Gmail automatically ports the same profile into gaming apps, people tend to do it this way. What happens because of this, is that there’s no verification at any point, of who is behind the profile that appears.
Once a miscreant has created a profile on a popular gaming app, they identify their targets based on their behaviour – people who tend to spend a lot of time on gaming apps, and are very open to sending random messages to strangers are also open to receiving them. This is how targets are chosen. The perpetrators usually chose very impressionable young adults.
Once a target is chosen, the miscreants will start a casual conversation, mainly about something very common and mundane, usually about things that are happening in the game.
The miscreant will cajole younger boys to become close friends, by sharing tips and tricks to win. Certain games allow cheat codes, which the perpetrators will use to their advantage. They will tell their targets that they have guaranteed “recipes” to win the game.
And because most games allow you to form teams of squads, and give users the ability to add people as their friends, groups get formed within the game. This is where the most crucial step comes in.
Tightening the noose
Often at this stage, numbers are exchanged and people start conversing using WhatsApp. Groups are formed on IM apps, to decide a common time to play. Later, these groups become like any other boy’s WhatsApp or Telegram groups, where people share memes, some vulgar jokes and videos, links to pirated games or movies, and a bunch of other stuff.
Once numbers get exchanged, the perpetrator’s work becomes much easy.
This leads to one on one conversations as well, where the perpetrator will try to find out what their target’s parents are like. If they feel that the parents aren’t too involved with the kid, or are too protective of them, to the point of coming across as overbearing, and therefore irritating, they will continue to lay their trap.
Slowly, they will steer the conversation to subjects like violence and glory, and the need to be pious, in the context of a certain religion. This is usually accompanied by a sob story, about how a close friend or a family member of the miscreant was killed or kidnapped by the police, the armed forces, or other religious fanatics. Then, the conversation will be steered towards the Israel-Palestine conflict, and supposed atrocities by the armed forces and the police.
They also share videos that speak highly of a certain religion, as if it is the one and only true way to get to heaven. Slowly more and more content is presented that brainwashes the targeted kids into developing a warped sense of reality.
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