A Chilling Revelation
One quiet afternoon, as I leafed through reports for fresh insight, I stumbled upon a study that altered my work’s course. From the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) at West Point, NY, it revealed that 91% of al-Islam Madrasa students in Indonesia declared it their duty to fight and kill non-Muslims. Even in so-called ‘moderate’ schools such as Darussalam, 35% endorsed religiously motivated violence. Students who viewed humanity as inherently evil were eleven times more likely to support violence.
This jolted me back to 2005, while filming Bangla Crescent: ISI, Madrasas and Infiltration, when a twelve-year-old boy in a Bengal village near the Indo-Bangladesh border explained kafir, dawat and jihad with chilling certainty. The fusion of evidence and lived experience drove Crimson Crescent: The Last Quarter, a documentary exposing the ideological war on India, amplified by Jihad Watch, Sangam Talks, PGurus, Jaipur Dialogues, Neeraj Atri’s Politically Incorrect and others.
Tracing a Filmmaker’s Path
My early films tackled tobacco, drugs and quackery for Doordarshan, followed by Bangla Crescent (2005) on cross-border terrorism and madrasa indoctrination. India Tomorrow: The Gujarat Miracle (2007) examined the Modi governance model and its security focus, launched by Shri Rajnath Singh and the late Shri Arun Jaitley.
Over two decades, I have made films on Naxalism (Chhattisgarh Now), public health (Death Warrant), and ethics in food (The Evidence: Meat Kills, released by Smt Maneka Gandhi). Crimson Crescent extends this journey, confronting the global spread of radicalism and its impact on India’s plural fabric, with insights from scholars such as the late Sita Ram Goel, Koenraad Elst, Robert Spencer, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Douglas Murray, Brigitte Gabriel and Jay Smith.
Terror’s Heavy Toll
The film documents 47,130 terror deaths in India from 2000 to 2024 (South Asia Terrorism Portal) and 35,098 riot deaths from 1947 to 2023 (GOI data). The 2008 Mumbai attacks cost ₹4,000 crore in 60 hours (ASSOCHAM) and $100 billion nationally, with $20 billion in FDI losses (Asia Economics Institute).
In 2017, terrorism and communal violence drained 9% of India’s GDP ($1 trillion in PPP terms, Institute for Economics and Peace). The 2020 Delhi riots, costing $646 billion, exposed urban warfare networks linked to jihadist outfits such as PFI and CPI (Maoist).
India Under Siege
While filming along the Indo–Bangladesh border, I encountered madrasa students — some barely in their teens — who spoke with chilling clarity about kafir, dawat and jihad.
A 2024 PFI-linked fatwa calling for India’s conquest drives today’s atrocities:
- 260 Hindu women killed in so-called “love-jihad” schemes (2020–2024, NGO & police data)
- saffron activists murdered in Tamil Nadu
- Dalit neighbourhoods turned into no-go zones
The ideology does not spare Muslims either. Thousands of Shias have been slaughtered in Pakistan by Deobandi groups. As Koenraad Elst explains:
“Attacks on the Shias are ultimately the same phenomenon as the attacks on Hindus and other unbelievers. Namely, they are considered some sort of apostates — sort of non-Muslims — in the sense that they have a different view of the same basic teachings of Islam.”
The Concept of Tawhid
At the heart of this conflict lies an ideology rooted in uncompromising iconoclasm. Tawhid, when taught in madrasas as hostility to idol worship, clashes directly with India’s plural traditions.
Koenraad Elst notes:
“The central doctrine of Islam, as any Muslim will tell you, is Tawhid, which means to declare as One — to say that God (Allah) is One. So, what follows is that everything else except God (Allah) should not be worshipped. This is why, when Hindus carry the idol, the Murti of Shri Ganesh, that is a valid target of attack.”
This doctrine explains the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas and fuels hostility towards Hindu and Buddhist traditions.
The Forgotten Victims: Muslims Themselves
The ideology also turns inward. According to the Fondapol report, 91.2% of victims of Islamist terror worldwide are Muslims.
Juliana Taimoorazy, an Assyrian Christian activist who has worked with ISIS survivors, recalls in the film:
“I’ve seen hearts being carved out of bodies. I’ve seen duct tape placed on men’s eyes, then they stand on mass graves and are shot. They don’t die immediately, so they are beaten. They make them bark like dogs. They force them to crawl on their hands and knees… I studied the Holocaust, I read about it in history. We saw ISIS’s genocide in Iraq. But this is on a different scale.”
Her words find grim echoes in more recent horrors. On 7 October 2023, Hamas terrorists stormed Israel, slaughtering civilians with brutal desecration. Former DGP Vikram Singh, in the film, warns that these methods mirror atrocities in Kashmir — from the 1990s Pandit exodus to the 2023 Pahalgam attack — terror that transcends borders but springs from the same ideological root.
Jihad’s Machinery
The West Point study exposes the pipeline: madrasa teachings that turn curiosity into zeal for violence.
- Arif, a former Muslim from Kerala interviewed in the film, recalls Salafi sermons condemning Onam and Christmas as betrayal.
- Digital platforms amplify “love-jihad” and jihadist propaganda.
- Pew Research (2004–2014) shows support for suicide bombings fell in Pakistan, yet indoctrination remains entrenched.
Reason must counter dogma. History proves it — Nazism and Communism collapsed, while rational critique endured.
Europe’s Warning Shadows
Europe mirrors India’s struggle:
- In Rotherham, Pakistani-origin gangs exploited 1,400 girls, with justice delayed until 2024.
- In Sweden, once a paragon of peace, police advised women not to go out alone; parents in Stockholm’s Järva schools wear bulletproof vests due to shootings in no-go zones; teachers refuse postings without hazard pay.
- France has suffered 82 Islamist attacks, triggering anti-separatism laws mirrored by Italy and Austria.
- Germany’s Cologne assaults and Belgium’s Molenbeek (hub for ISIS attacks in Paris/Brussels) reveal fractures where truth-tellers risk imprisonment.
These warn of societies unravelling — lessons India must heed.
From Gorbachev to MBS: A Berlin Wall Moment?
At its heart the film unveils hope: Saudi Arabia’s transformation under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). His $1.5 trillion NEOM project sidelines Wahhabi dogma, redirecting resources to innovation and pluralism. Just as the Berlin Wall’s fall in 1989 marked not merely the collapse of concrete but of an ideology, NEOM may become Islam’s Perestroika and Glasnost moment.
MBS himself has declared he will not allow jihad activity in his country. With $1.5 trillion tied up in NEOM, Saudi Arabia has no money left for exporting Wahhabi radicalism — bad news for terrorists and indoctrination teachers, but good news for their innocent students.
And just as Gorbachev’s reforms were amplified by voices like Alexander Solzhenitsyn, today a battery of scholars — from Sita Ram Goel to Koenraad Elst, Robert Spencer, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Douglas Murray, Brigitte Gabriel, Jay Smith — play the role of intellectual sentinels, relentlessly exposing radical Islam’s dangers.
Temples in the UAE and reforms at home — from women driving to cultural festivals — signal this shift. General GD Bakshi calls it a pivot, though he warns reform must strike at the jihad’s roots. The film positions this as not cosmetic but potentially a Berlin Wall moment for Islam — a civilisational opening where ideology itself begins to crumble.
A Call to Action
Crimson Crescent – The Last Quarter is both a warning and a hope.
It argues that India must foster rational critique and scientific temperament to challenge fundamentalist ideologies. Dogma perishes; reason survives. Just as Nazism and Communism collapsed under the weight of their contradictions, so too will religious fanaticism — provided it is continually interrogated, exposed and rebutted. With 47,130 terror deaths and $1 trillion in economic losses, the stakes are existential. The final quarter looms — will we rise to defend our civilisational soul?
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Mayank Jain – Filmmaker, Writer & Social Commentator
Mayank Jain is an Indian filmmaker and writer with over 25 years of experience and more than 50 films to his credit. Known for fearless storytelling and social engagement, his work spans national security, public health, agriculture, and caste reform. His films are widely respected for their integrity and depth, provoking dialogue in India and abroad.
He rose to national prominence with his landmark documentary The Bangla Crescent – ISI, Madrasas & Infiltration (2005), an unflinching investigation into cross-border terrorism, released in New Delhi by three former IPS officers. The film made a lasting impact on public debate and positioned Jain as a credible voice on national security.
In 2007, India Tomorrow – The Gujarat Miracle explored Gujarat’s governance and security model under then Chief Minister Shri Narendra Modi. Released by Shri Rajnath Singh and the late Shri Arun Jaitley, it received wide coverage and global viewership, opening discourse on what became known as the “Modi Model.”
His later works include Gujarat Fast Track, Gujarat Tomorrow, Team Gujarat, Gujarat Ahead and No to Terror, as well as the acclaimed health series Death Warrant (2004) for Doordarshan. In 2017, he released The Evidence – Meat Kills, launched by Smt Maneka Gandhi, sparking a national dialogue on diet, ethics, and wellness. Jain also served as Content Head of NaMo TV during the 2012 Gujarat elections.
He has worked with IGNOU, The Leprosy Mission, PSBT and the Ministry of External Affairs, producing films on health, education, and culture, including Quacks – Doctors or Killers and a documentary on Hindi. His current project explores caste unification and the struggles of sanitation workers.
Sam Kafir says
The reason for this disaster is Al-Azhar institution in Egypt. Thousands of Indonesian, Pakistani, Afghan, Indian and Malaysian students graduate from Al-Azhar, and all of this is funded by the state in Egypt without any compensation, not even food, drink and plane tickets. The western world, including the United States of America, does not know that the source of Islamic terrorism and killing all over the world is Al-Azhar with its teachings that incite violence and killing. Al-Azhar practices taqiyya in all its forms, as the Sheikh of Al-Azhar repeats throughout Europe that Islam is a religion of peace. He is a lying hypocrite and the son of Satan, as he commented in the Egyptian newspapers, “Hamas has restored our spirit, determination and dignity,” after Hamas’s terrorist attack on the State of Israel. Al-Azhar must be closed in Egypt and classified as a terrorist institution.
What is certain is that all the killers and leaders of Al-Qaeda, such as Al-Zawahiri and Al-Zarqawi, are all graduates of Sharia law from Al-Azhar University. The leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, holds a doctorate in Sharia law from Al-Azhar University, and all the jihadists around the world, such as the Nigerian Abubakar Shekau, hold a master’s degree in Sharia law from Al-Azhar University.
gravenimage says
Sam, Al Azhar is a bloody font of Jhad, no doubt–but the ultimate problem is Islam.
OLD GUY says
Sadly Qatar and Saudi Arabia are bringing those teachings to American Universities also. Most all major Colleges and Universities have Muslim/Islamic student unions and Islamic studies being taught on campus. All because of huge contributions to the schools endowment fund from Islamic countries.
Walter Sieruk says
A “Madrasas Fulltime” ! Whatever is may be called, there are places in Indonesia also in other Islamic nations that there are many Muslim mind control places where young Muslim males are thoroughly indoctrinated into the strong but blind and unquestioning faith in Koran with all non-watered down, hard core Islam with its militant jihad. Those places, “schools,” are called madrasas. In those Islamic mind programming centers young Muslim male are ingrain in the mindset Koranic dogma of the use of violence and killing for the advancement of Islam. As the Koran instructs. As in, for example, in 2:191. 9:5, 123. 47:4.
Many of those who at such centers are so much damaged that they are literally dangerous to self and others. As seen many times in jihad suicide, homicide bombing/attacks. For the Koran instructs in 9:111. “The believers fight in Allah’s Cause, they slay and are slain, they kill and are killed.” Furthermore, those mind programming places also ingrain the outlandish absurd Koranic doctrine of a sex-filled paradise with many virgins, houris, in it for the Muslim male who dies fighting for the cause of Islam in the jihad. Such a strange doctrine of a houris filled- place in found in the Koran in 44:54. 55:56. 78:31
. Furthermore, such Islamic mind programming centers are further explained about by the scholar Don Richardson in his book SECRETS OF THE KORAN which on pages 69,70. Informs the reader that “The world needs to be warned. At least forty million Muslim youth in the Muslim worlds’ religious schools, called madrasa, are avidly memorizing the entire Koran … These schools become breeding grounds for potential terrorists. When male students, isolated from family and friends in madrasa, reach puberty and their hormones are active, there are no girls to date. Instead, Muslim clerics easily shift to focusing the male student’s attention on Koranic verse that promises sex in heaven with dark-eyed houris. Students can only fantasize about martyrdom followed by the sexual release Muhammad promised. This is an unspeakably cruel brainwashing technique, and the Koran is its perfect guidebook.”
The first two on the heading this jihadwatch are ” Crimson Crescent.” That must mean” bloody crescent” with all the jihad suicide/homicide bomber that are a result of all those matrasses
Walter Sieruk says
Those despicable and deceitful Muslim clerics in those madrassas who indoctrinate, brainwash, i impressionable youth into the awful way of thinking that fighting and dying in the jihad for the cause of Islam is a “grand and “thing and wonderful” thing to do are beguiling as they are also evil.
The Bible informs its reader “the counsel of the wicked is deceitful “ Proverbs 12:5. [N.K.J.V.]
Walter Sieruk says
This is child abuse to the extreme. Those despicable imams in the madrasas who brainwashing children in in his hope of them ,in the future becoming stooges and tools for Islam’s jihad demonically wicked.
Furthermore, to use children as brainwashed Muslim soldiers in the jihad for is totally unconscionable. Those Muslim clerics, as the mullahs, with their Islamic lies and lines to must have kept telling them are completely despicable. Such Koranic lies and lies the say are “We will honor you” and “You will go to paradise” and “We are doing this for Allah.”
That’s some very strange kind of “We.” For the reader might, very well, notice that the imams never, ever, strap bombs vests on themselves and then go out and commit the suicide bombing. All those heinous mullahs do is brainwash other people into actually wanting be becomes mind programmed human bombs. Then they manipulative those people to go out and engages in murderous jihad attacks. In other words they create the delusional and dangerous mindset in other to such a demonic extent the theses people are literally dangerous to self and others. Then all the while those suicide/homicide bombings are going on those same Muslims clerics, who mind program those people in the first place ,site home safe.
This alone shows the real deplorable character of those Muslims clerics . . In addition to all this, there are some good decent people who would be shocked by all this and then stop and wonder and ask “Just how can the Muslim clerics be to very heartless, unfeeling and heinous as the brainwash young and in such deadly ways ,as that ?”
The answer to that question is found in the Bible. For the Bible teaches the there are some men who are so hideously cruel, callous and dangerous because that have had “their own conscience seared with a hot iron.” First Timothy 4:2. [N.K.J.V.] The “hot iron.” in this case is Islam.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Mr Jain
As a Hindu, I’m not remotely interested in the arguments about “muslims being the biggest victims of islam”. Honestly, we are burnt out, and I don’t care. Who I do care about are Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, Sikhs, Parsis, Christians and Jews. Both within India and outside. Just like muslims in India care more about the “Palestinians” (ie Hamas) than about Hindus being slaughtered in Bangladesh, I care more about Jewish hostages in Gaza than about muslims in the Indian subcontinent who are targeted by other muslims
This concept about “muslims being the biggest victims of islam” is what has guided the current BJP regime in India into pandering to different subsets of muslims – be it women, “Pasmandas”, what have you, at the expense of Hindus. Enough Hindus are disillusioned and disgusted w/ the Sanghis (the RSS/BJP group of organizations) and you’re starting to see that from last year’s election, where the BJP barely won, thanks to picking up a state and 2 of their allies picking up 2 others
Otherwise, fewer & fewer Hindus are now hoodwinked by the myth that the BJP is a Hindu nationalist party. If it were Hindu, it wouldn’t make life miserable for Hindus during Hindu festivals like Diwali, where it’s sponsored bans on fireworks, or try and redefine what Hinduism is at the World Hindu Conference. If it was nationalist, it wouldn’t tolerate millions of Bangladeshi muslims and Rohingyas all over India, while threatening to deport Bangladeshi Hindus who did manage to land in India
Oh, and screw those of your comrades who claim that “Hinduism is not a religion, just a way of life”, or those who try to deny that non-Indians can’t be Hindu. They are doing everything they can to erode the protections that Hinduism enjoys as a religion not just in India, but abroad as well
commonsense says
Once again, Infidel, I must thank you for reporting events in India and vicinity largely unknown to most of us here at JW. Your posts are important.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Thank you, commonsense
gravenimage says
Crimson Crescent: The Last Quarter – Inside the 91% Madrasa Faultline
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Important points, Mayank Jain–thank you.
abu taleb says
> From the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) at West Point, NY, it revealed that 91% of al-Islam Madrasa students in Indonesia declared it their duty to fight and kill non-Muslims.
I really doubt it, even though I don’t know much about Islamic schools in Indonesia. If it were true, we would have seen a lot more violent and extremism in Indonesia from the youths. But we don’t. I believe, the Islam extremism in Indonesia comes more from Islamic organizations that are more in making money from extortion and mercenary..
Those students may have declared such statement at school, but most of them will not practice it under the current circumstances. Under Islamic government, it may be a different thing because the students are taught to be selfish, dishonest, entitled and lazy by Islamic teaching.
Frankly, I no longer trust western insittutions, many of them are just some greedy and dishonest institutions trying to suck up money by dishonesty.