Indian parents condemn their own sons who left home to fight for ISIS

Some Indian parents are condemning their own sons who left their homes to fight for the Islamic State in Afghanistan.

According to The Washington Post, aspiring jihadists have left their homes and their jobs as doctors and businessmen in May last year, slipping away in twos and threes in order to avoid suspicion.

Indian authorities believe that 19 adults and three children have settled in ISIS-held Nangahar province in Afghanistan, raising alarms about the terror group's reach in India as well as the rising extremism in the southern state of Kerala, which has deep ties to the Persian Gulf through migrant workers.

Family members said that two Keralites have been killed by drones in Nangahar, including one on April 11. Thirteen Indian nationals are believed to be among the 94 people who died on April 13 when U.S. forces dropped a Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb on a cave complex, which was believed to be the hiding place of militant commanders.

While it is not known whether any of the victims were from the Kerala cell, some families have accepted that they will likely never see their relatives again.

"Let them die in a bombing!" said Abdul Rahman Hamza, a father of a doctor and a school employee who took their families to the remote Afghan region. "What they are doing is not Islamic. The real Islam doesn't promote terrorism," the 66-year-old father added.

Hamza's sons had attended Quran classes organized by Abdul Rashid Abdullah, a former engineer who had embraced a strict form of Islam called Salafism.

K. Madhu, a civil police officer from Kerala who knows some of the families of the ISIS recruits, noted that those who joined the terror group did not do it for money.

"All these people were very rich. They didn't need money. They were going to give up all material pleasures for a medieval lifestyle, to live like shepherds," the police officer said.

At one point, Hamza, who owns a hotel and restaurant in Mumbai, castigated his nephew who also left home to join ISIS. When Hamza told the man not to bother coming home, the nephew responded with a photo of an AK-47.

"We are not going to come back. We are devoted to [Islamic State leader] Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. We'll meet again in paradise," the nephew told him in a text message.

Hamza's wife, Hafsath, expressed her belief that the religious classes that their sons attended had taken them "to an extreme level."

"I'm scared. I'm frightened. I'm also worried about the small children, their lives. I don't understand why they have chosen that place. I feel angry at times, but I still want them to come back," she said.

Ajai Sahni, executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management in New Delhi, said that an estimated 100 Indians have left their homes to fight for the Islamic State in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere.

Almost 70,000 Indian Muslim clerics have signed a fatwa against ISIS and other terror groups in 2015, saying their actions do not align with the teachings of Islam. Another 1.5 million Muslims from the Sufi Islam tradition have signed a petition against terror attacks.