Here's an in depth article on love jihad. Personally, I think we'll see a few more instances of over-reaction by authorities. In this article the high courts analyzed 94 cases, and found 23 to be guilty.
In Islam there has always been an 'it's okay' attitude for men to marry outside Islam, but a ban on women marrying outside. I believe this is a result of patriarchy all around. It's the woman that has to convert, sadly demonstrative of chauvinism.
One question that arises is if the marriage (or pre-marriage) is truly love, why can't the young man convert to the woman's faith? That would clearly show it's love.
In any case, the anti-Hindu press will have a field day finding and focusing on examples that confirm their bias. In other words, we're sure to hear about the 23 guilty, but not about the 71 not guilty cases.
Love Jihad: Loving for religion
Interesting article. I think the point comes towards the end that Liberalism, which saw a decline in religion via Max Weber, is outdated and unrealistic. I myself, being a person of modernity and postmodernity, recognize science and reason will not replace the religious impulse. The point is that secular governments, which are Liberal tend to be ill-equipped to respond to religious expansionist efforts in a postmodernist age. In fact it is a non-issue for them largely because of the belief that secularism and pluralism will rule the day, love of others wins in the end, which I myself prefer to believe.
So from the perspective of traditional religions, they see pluralism as a threat to their own survival. If you have two traditionalist religions, colliding with each other, and the one is driven by conversion efforts and the other is not, then you have a defensive posture being taken in response. The article goes into how historically statistics have shown how Islam switched it's spread with sword, to spread by marriage; but marriage in a largely one-way direction.
That bit, if considered valid statistically, reminds me a bit of the line from the movie Brave Heart, where King Edward 1 says when invoking the right of "first night", where an English Lord has sexual rights to the bride on her wedding night, "The problem with Scotland is the Scots! If we can't drive them out, we'll breed them out". That tactic is a form of one nation conquering another. So if those who have studied "Love Jihad", as a form of this "soft Jihad" through love rather than the sword has merit, it certainly would be cause for concern. Patterns of behavior historically do lend itself to an overall reason for concern.
From the secularist position, which I'd largely fall into as opposed to a traditionalist perspective, I am under no illusions that expansionist religions are ripe for the plucking of those seeking power over others. Just here in America, the right-wing Christian Evangelicals have placed political and social power over the principles of their own religion to the point there is little if anything resembling the Jesus of the Bible in their actions. They are now fallen to the point of attempting to topple the secular Democracy of the United States of America in order to bring their vision of social order under religion theocratic ideals to the top.
They themselves view it as a war, or a "jihad" using Islamic terms for the same thing. It's a war against Islam, a war against secularism, and a war against others in general. So while you certainly have those who are anti-Muslims, or anti-Christians using that to spread their own form of hatred of others, or "otherism", there is also a reasonable concern that I can see where not only the traditionalist of one religion who is otherwise peaceable and non-expansionist, but also the modernist, and the secularist needs to be concerned.
As a liberal and largely a pluralist, one only has to look at the White Evangelicals who are trying to thrown out the Election and put a dictator who is the exact opposite of all Christian beliefs and values in power, to recognize the threat that religion can pose if allowed to run unchecked by a system of checks and balances.
It's a complex issue with many sides, from the personal and individual, to the collective. There is no one simple black and white solution, and any efforts to contain expansionists religions and the thirst to assume power over others at all costs and all prices paid, whether through open warfare or subversion, are going to be fraught with difficulties and injustices, because it is a diversity of humans administering them. No easy answers, which is what these right-wing religions peddle to sell to others to make converts to themselves.