http://indiatoday.digitaltoday.in/index.php?option=com_content&task=view& ;issueid=63&id=11162&Itemid=

When in desperation, put on your skull cap. The nuclear deal hitherto debated away from its communal implications, has been gaining the good ol’ Muslim angle.

Though the deal is yet to be signed, community organisations and politicians are revving up for the occasion. It all started with CPI(M)’s senior politburo member M.K. Pandhe inserting the nuclear deal into the list of grievances of Indian Muslims and announcing that “an overwhelming majority of the Muslim masses” opposed it.

He urged Samajwadi Party (SP) president Mulayam Singh Yadav not to alienate them by supporting it.

Though the Left party quickly distanced itself from his comments, the debate gained momentum as political parties jumped to the conclusion that the deal with the “Satan” can be a big ticket item in around 100 constituencies, where Muslim votes are decisive.

Last week, as her arch rival Mulayam extended support to the Congress-led UPA over the nuclear deal with the US, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati felt political tremors under her feet and followed up Pandhe’s comments with vigour. She targeted Mulayam by saying that his secularism had been a tamasha.

“Remember, it was Mulayam who had stopped Sonia Gandhi from becoming the prime minister and helped the BJP-led NDA to rule for six years. Now the Congress and SP are cosying up for the deal,” she said.

Muslims are being told that the deal is bad for them
Muslims are being told that the deal is bad for them
She firmed up her “anti-Muslim” theory by inviting influential Sunni and Shia clerics to discuss the deal’s impact on the community and the problems the Muslims faced.

It was due to the efforts of former Union minister Akhilesh Das and Siraj Mehdi, both of whom had recently resigned from the Congress to join BSP, that a group of ulema and maulanas including Shia cleric Maulana Kalbe Sadiq, Maulana Khalid Rasheed Fringi Mahali and Maulana Fazl-ur-Rahman, many of whom were with ‘Maulvi’ Mulayam till recently, walked into her house to thank her for her bold stand on the deal and to pledge their support to her.

Mahali even declared that through her clear stand, Mayawati has won the hearts of Muslims even as Rahman, the firebrand Imam of Tilawali Masjid, warned Mulayam that if he did not desist from joining hands with the Congress, a fatwa would soon be issued against him.

In response to this, SP General Secretary Amar Singh, the main architect of the SP-Congress deal, said that the whole world knows that Mayawati has been hobnobbing with the BJP by sharing power with the saffron party thrice in the past.

However, Mayawati’s move to win over the Muslims suffered a serious setback when Maulana Abdul Khaliq Madrasi, the deputy rector (naib mohtamim) of Dar-ul-Uloom Deoband and Hazrat Maulana Tauquir Raza Khan, the spiritual head of the Barelvi school of thoughts supported the nuclear deal and snubbed the handpicked clerics of Lucknow for supporting Mayawati who had “never cared for Muslims”.

And these men head two of the highly-revered Islamic institutions that can influence many Sunni Muslims in north India.

Mayawati has begun to ardently woo Muslim clerics
Mayawati has begun to ardently woo Muslim clerics
The Congress, which has been wooing Muslim votes with a slew of schemes, is now trying to diminish the stirring nature of the anti-Muslim theory.

The party claims that the Muslim opposition is restricted to the policies of outgoing US President George W. Bush and not with the deal.

“Muslims may have an issue with the shopkeeper but not with the product,” said Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi.

But like the Congress and RJD, SP leaders too seem to have turned the table upon Mayawati and the Left by trying to convince the Muslims that not only is the nuclear deal in national interest but that the BJP was a bigger threat to them.

Uttar Pradesh, with 19 per cent Muslim votes, plays a key role in deciding the fortunes of political parties in the Lok Sabha polls.

The community had been a strong pillar of Mulayam’s Muslim—Yadav combination till Mayawati forged her rainbow coalition successfully. SP is, therefore, planning to announce its Muslim candidates for the Lok Sabha polls, before the trust vote in Parliament to keep its flock together.

The party is also making use of former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam’s endorsement of the deal to counter the anti-minority perception.

Leading Urdu weekly Nai Dunia, ironically, owned and edited by SP MP Shahid Siddiqui carried a survey that showed that 70 per cent of Muslims in the country were opposed to the deal.

It also said that 85 per cent Muslims considered America their biggest enemy while about 70 per cent felt that the UPA Government has done nothing for the Muslims.

The party under the changed situation has rubbished the survey. But the tragedy is that the survey was “conducted” when the party had been against the deal but was published when it had reversed its stand.

Major political parties of Jammu and Kashmir, the National Conference (NC) and People’s Democratic Party have said that the deal is not against the community.

“We do not consider it against Muslims. The deal is either good or bad for the country. Where does the issue of Muslims come here?” said Omar Abdullah, NC president.

The CPI(M) in West Bengal and Kerala too is planning to hit the poll turf with the nuclear deal issue. In northern Kerala with a sizeable Muslim population, the party will play to community sentiments by raising the issue.

The Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), part of the Congress-led front in Kerala, will find it difficult to hold its turf. The IUML, whose sole representative in Parliament is Minister of State for External Affairs E. Ahamed, will be meeting in the coming days to finalise its stand on the deal.

The party has been caught between risking electoral backlash and pulling out its man from the Government. The youth wing of the Indian National League, a Left ally, has already demanded that Ahamed should resign from the Government.

Pandhe’s fresh gift to Muslim grievance roaster will surely add up to the election planks in the coming Lok Sabha elections. But, so far, there are no clear winners in the first stretch run towards the corridors of power.

The people, whoever may be are judged by their actions and the results.

We are fed up with such interpretation that “Islam” means “peace” and all, because, it only breaks minds into pieces, as the bodies are thrown into pieces by the Islamic bombers.

Why then they promote terrorism in the name og Allah?

Why the carry out jihad in the name of Allah?

Terrorism is never a Muslims monopoly, i have a humble request to you guys to learn n research about their own faiths before you pin point baselessly to any particulat faith. Look what the scriptures say… are all of you the real followers of so called any religion. What has religion to do with terrorism? No religion preaches to fight against mankind or any living being.

Dr.Zakir naik is a student of comparive religious studies, Just taking a phrase or an incomplete sentence dosent make it all. try to be a collective listener or a collective reader. Islam never have had encourged terrorism, but look at the beauty of Islam which only proclaims that there is only ONE Creator and to worship Him alone..dont understand why people are so against a religion which proclaims that there is only 1 Creator who created all from a single pair of male and female. Islam prescribes Universal Brotherhood. the Quran clearly says

‘O human kind, We have created you from a single pair of male and female, and have divided you into nations and tribes, so that you shall recognize each other (not that you shall despise each other). Verily the most honoured in the sight of God is the person who has Righteous. God is all-knowing and well acquainted with all things.’

This Verse Qur’an indicates that the whole human race originated from a single pair of male and female. All humans have common great-grandparents and ancestors.

Further, God says that he has made nations and tribes, so that humans can recognize each other, and not so that they may despise each other and fight amongst themselves.

Terrorism is a crime against humanity. Islam is a religion that means “peace”. In the Quran, God commands believers to bring peace and security to the world. The Islamic morality is the cure for terrorism, not the source of it. All forms of terrorist attack are roundly condemned in Islam. According to the Qur’an, it is a great sin to kill an innocent person, and anyone who does so will suffer great torment in the Hereafter:

… If someone kills another person—unless it is in retaliation for someone else or for causing corruption in the earth—it is as if he had murdered all mankind. And if anyone gives life to another person, it is as if he had given life to all mankind. Our Messengers came to them with Clear Signs, but even after that, many of them committed outrages in the earth. (Qur’an, 5:32)

In recent times, there cannot be any other great leader other than Mahathma Gandhi, who has sacrificed his life for the Hindu-Muslim unity. No son like Devadas could have tortured Gandhi, his father by becoming a Mohammedan. At one stage, he even declared that if Mohammedans persist for separate nation, they should only walk over his dead body. But before his eyes, they walked differently resulting in lakhs of Hindus becoming dead-bodies. Any way, that is near-past incidence.

Now within 60 years, all have changed and the methods of terrorists have also changed. Instead of coming on horses with swords, now they come on two wheeler / cars with AK-47, AK-56 and other types of explosives and bombs. As they used to learn the art of using swords, spears and lances, now, they have learnt the art of bomb manufacture, bomb-planting, killing people etc. Others have been taught the art of procurement of chemicals, electrical items, electronic gadgets for the preparation. Earlier, the victims knew the marauding Mohammedans coming on horses, but now, none knows but the jihadis who have been on the prowl with meticulous planning.

Of course, the jihadis have been completely brain washed by the sophisticated experts like Zakir Naik and thus the educated young Mohammedans from 16 to 30 have been mostly attracted to terrorism to kill innocent Hindus branding them as “kafirs”. Note the arrested terrorists brought to the police station, court etc., they are smiling, laughing and walking proudly, as if they have done a great feat on the earth. The dangerous thing that is taught is killing Hindus, the kafirs would fetch them heaven by Allah.

Here only, unfortunately, the elite, eminent historians, secular judges and advocates, atheists and anti-Hindu atheists, communists of all categories etc., commit a great blunder by supporting such terrorists. If Islam does not promote terrorism, then all the responsible, sane and faithful Muslims / Mohammedans should denounce and expose such Islamic jihadis, when they are in making, as the parents, brothers and sisters know very well that their sons, brothers, husbands are becoming jihadis.

Therefore, not only Muslims / Mohammedans of India, but also all over the world, the responsible elders should see that their young people are not misguided by any ideologues. As we come close together, religion could be made a personal affair. And of course, in traditional society like Indian one would have culture, heritage and civilization connected to Hindu, but it should not misinterpreted as religious one, communalized one or Hinduized one. When crackers are now used for all occasions, where is the question of associating them only with “Deepavali” or “Naraka chathurthi”?

Though, this articles appears in the last year issue, the matter has relevance in today context. Significantly, the Islamic terrorists of Tamilnadu works in the similar lines.

Efforts need to be made to explore the ideological landscape in which the Karnataka jihadis moved on
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Ahmed was drawn around 1999-2000 to the Salafi movement Tablighi Jamaat attracted elite groups in search of legitimacy

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New Delhi: “I take pride,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in a June 2005 interview, “in the fact that, although we have 150 million Muslims in our country as citizens, not one has been found to have joined the ranks of Al-Qaeda or participated in the activities of [the] Taliban.”

Just two years after he made that assertion, the certitudes which underpinned it have been blown apart. News that three Karnataka residents possibly spearheaded an Al-Qaeda plot to bomb Glasgow and London suggests that the global jihad might have deeper roots in India than most people ever imagined.

All the Glasgow suspects are the kind of upper-middle class Indian Muslims who policy-makers imagined had been made immune to Islamist seduction for reasons of privilege and prosperity. Effort must now be made to explore the ideological landscape which led them to join al-Qaeda’s war-without-fronts, analysts point out.

Journeys into the jihad

Days before he is believed to have rammed a burning Jeep Cherokee into the Glasgow terminal, Kafeel Ahmed phoned home to say he was about to face a difficult examination. His first presentation had been unsuccessful, the postgraduate engineering student said – a possible reference to the fact that the cellphone-triggered fuel-canister bombs he had placed in two Mercedes-Benz cars parked in central London had failed to work. “Pray for me,” he asked his mother Zakia Ahmed.

The belief system that led Kafeel Ahmed to the hospital burns unit where he is now battling for his life is unknown, bar one fact: at some point he began to journey into the strange and subterranean world of the jihadist movement.

By some accounts, Ahmed was drawn around 1999-2000 to the Salafi movement, a sect inspired by the 18th century preacher, Saudi Arab Ibn Abd al-Wahhab. Salafis, who take the Prophet Muhammed’s companions and the two generations of Muslims after them to be exemplary models of the practice of Islam, became active in South Asia in the 19th century. Known in South Asia as the Ahl-e-Hadith, or followers of the Prophet’s traditions, the Salafi sect grew spectacularly because of Saudi Arabian support.

Different approaches

While some Salafi groups urge their followers to support or endure the regimes they live under, others call for armed struggle against non-Islamic regimes and Muslim states opposed to the Sharia. Perhaps the most active of these pro-jihad Salafi factions is the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, which carried out the attack on the Indian Institute of Science right in Bangalore. In the Lashkar’s variant of mainstream Salafi ideology, the Koran is a manifesto for a perpetual jihad against unbelievers, in the pursuit of the construction of an ideal Islamic state.

Some, though, say Ahmed was in fact drawn to the Tablighi Jamaat – a pietist organisation that has often been involved in acrimonious ideological exchanges with the Salafis. Perhaps the fastest-growing Islamist organisation worldwide, the Tablighi Jamaat urges Muslims to discard what it perceives as corrupt influences that have permeated South Asian Islam. Its founder, Mohammad Illyas, privileged the jihad bin-nafs, or the war for the conscience, over the jihad bin-Saif, or holy war by the sword. Most South Asian Muslims reject the neoconservative theology and politics of organisations like the Tablighi Jamaat: their faith includes syncretic Barelvi-school practices like the veneration of saints and the worship of relics.

While the Tablighi Jamaat once used to be criticised for its apolitical stand, the links between some Tablighi Jamaat followers and Islamist terror groups has become increasingly clear. In February 1995, Pakistani investigative journalist Kamran Khan quoted a Harkat ul-Mujahideen spokesperson as admitting that “most of our workers do come from the TJ.” He said: “Ours is a truly international network of genuine jihadi Muslims.”

Like Hindu and Sikh neoconservative movements, the Tablighi Jamaat attracted elite groups in search of legitimacy. Lieutenant-General Javed Nasir, who was Director-General of the Inter-Services Intelligence in Pakistan during Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s first stint in office, was a Tablighi Jamaat activist. So was Mohammad Rafiq Tarar, President of Pakistan during Mr. Sharif’s second tenure. In 1995, the Pakistan Army arrested a group of 36 officers led by Major-General Zaheer-ul-Islam Abbasi on charges of conspiring to overthrow Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and declare an Islamic state. The conspirators, the Pakistani media reported, were mainly Tablighi Jamaat and Harkat ul-Mujahideen members.

It is not immediately clear if his Salafi or Tablighi Jamaat leanings led Ahmed – as well as his arrested brother, the Liverpool-based doctor Sabeel Ahmed, and cousin, Mohammad Haneef – into the embrace of Al-Qaeda. But this much is clear: others from the Tablighi Jamaat have traversed much the same road as Ahmed.

Preacher’s role

Earlier this month, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) secured the conviction of several members of an Islamist cell led by Maulana Sufiyan Patangia – a Tablighi Jamaat preacher who used to run in the Waliullah seminary in old-city Ahmedabad’s Kalupur area. Patangia is thought to have recruited cadre for the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad after the 2002 communal pogrom in Gujarat. According to the CBI, the preacher played a key role in organising the assassination of one-time Gujarat Home Minister Haren Pandya.

Salafi clerics, like their Tablighi counterparts, steer clear of endorsing terrorism. But their stances have proved attractive to many angry young people. Investigations into the 2006 serial bombings in Mumbai showed that top Lashkar-e-Taiba organisers Rahil Ahmed Sheikh and Zabiuddin Ansari often met at the Islamic Research Foundation (IRF) in Mumbai’s Dongri area. IRF librarian Feroz Deshmukh, their contact there, turned out to be a key member of the Lashkar-e-Taiba cell which executed the bombings.

Zakir Naik, a popular Salafi television evangelist who heads the IRF, had no role in the Mumbai serial bombings. But his teachings, which include calls for Muslims not to participate in Hindu and Christian festivities, have considerable symmetries with those of organisations advocating violence. Interestingly, the IRF is listed as an approved religious information resource on the official website of the Lashkar’s parent organisation, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa.

Inspiration

While figures like Zakir Naik are emphatic in their rejection of terrorism, others are less so. Tablighi Jamaat preachers in Gujarat, for example, have been deeply inspired by the South African cleric Ahmed Deedad. While Deedad’s target was syncretism, his work contained the seeds of violence praxis. Deedad’s Durban-based Islamic Propagation Centre International received large financial contributions from Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin-Laden. In 2001, South Africa’s Sunday Times reported that Deedad’s son and successor, Yusuf Deedad, had distributed anti-Jewish literature emblazoned with pictures of Adolf Hitler at the World Conference Against Racism.

Ahmed and his relatives, then, might well have picked up the foundations of their ideology through Tablighi Jamaat teachings. It is also possible that experiences of communal hatred reinforced their beliefs. The son of an unemployed factory worker, Jalees Ansari graduated from Mumbai’s Sion Medical College in 1972. Despite his professional success, Ansari felt embittered by what he perceived as pervasive religious intolerance. Students and staff at his college, Ansari told investigators later, often insulted Muslims. Later, Ansari came to believe that his Hindu colleagues did not treat their Muslim patients with care. Although Ansari claimed to have been a “secular-minded person,” successive communal massacres and the demolition of the Babri Masjid led him to snap. He executed 50 bombings nationwide.

From east to west

In the weeks to come, investigators will seek to piece together just what led Kafeel Ahmed to snap. Most likely, he came into contact with the rest of Glasgow group through Bilal Abdullah, an Iraq-trained doctor who sat with him during the Glasgow airport attack. Abdullah is believed to have had active links in the Hizb ut-Tehrir, a U.K.-based Islamist group that has long supported Osama bin-Laden.

When Abdullah was a student at Cambridge, Ahmed studied at the nearby Anglia Polytechnic. Abdullah possibly put Ahmed and his relatives in touch with the overall head of the car bombing plot, Saudi national Mohammed Jamil Asha.

Experts note that no similar collaboration between South Asian and Arab Islamists has ever been seen before – but it is, in fact, no surprise. Groups such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Harkat ul-Mujahideen and Harkat ul-Jihad Islami are affiliates of bin-Laden’s International Islamic Front. In April 2006, bin-Laden expressly linked Al-Qaeda’s campaign against the West to these organisations, by referring to a “a Crusader-Zionist-Hindu war against the Muslims.” Since then, Arab-South Asian alliances have been increasingly evident.

For example, a French court recently convicted Pakistani national Ghulam Rana for funnelling funds to terror groups with the assistance of two French citizens of Arab origin.

Attribution

For many in India, it will be tempting to attribute these new alliances to the anger generated by the war in West Asia. While it is a tempting theory, this is only half the truth. Shiraz Maher, a friend of Abdullah, told British television that he “actively cheered the deaths of British and American troops in Iraq.” “One of his best friends had been killed by a Shia militia tank while he was at medical school,” said Maher, himself a former member of the Hizb ut-Tehrir.

“He was clearly very angry about what was happening. But to say it was just all about Iraq or foreign policy is mistaken. It feeds off a much wider ideological infrastructure.”

India, home to a not-insignificant part of that ideological infrastructure, needs to listen to Maher’s words with the greatest care.

http://www.thehindu.com/2008/08/01/stories/2008080155141000.htm

Gujar at has been targeted by jihadists half-a-dozen times since 2002 in a little-understood war.

One still afternoon in March 2002, Feroze Abdul Latif Ghaswala watched 40 victims of the anti-Muslim pogrom being buried near his aunt’s home in Ahmedabad. Back home in Mumbai, the automobile mechanic saw a printout of a Lashkar-e-Taiba pamphlet, which purported to show a riot victim begging for his life: “Do you think he should have a gun,” it asked.

In September 2003, Ghaswala volunteered for training in Pakistan with a group led by the 2006 Mumbai serial bombing architect, Rahil Abdul Rehman Sheikh. When the Delhi police caught up with him in the summer of 2006, Ghaswala, along with computer engineer Ali Mohammad Cheepa, had just received a consignment of military-grade explosives from the Lashkar for a major bombing in Ahmedabad

Ever since last week’s bombings in Ahmedabad — one among half-a-dozen major plots targeting Gujarat that the Indian police and intelligence services did not succeed in interdicting — the media have not tired of informing us that jihadist terrorism has taken a dramatic new turn. Instead of Pakistan-based terrorists, it is claimed, a new generation of Indian jihadists is spearheading the attacks.

On point of fact, the claim is nonsensical: not one single Islamist urban terror cell since 1993 has not involved a preponderance of Indian nationals. But the claim does show how little Islamist terror groups, and the politics that have driven their growth, are understood in India.

Politics isn’t welcome at the Lal Masjid seminary in Ahmedabad’s Kaulpur area. Its students learn the six principles of Islam as enunciated by the founder of the Tablighi Jamaat, Mohammad Illyas, and are exhorted to give up frivolities like television and cinema. Maulana Sufiyan Patangia, who ran the seminary, often travelled to Saudi Arabia, seeking support for his students. After the January 26, 2001 Gujarat earthquake, the cleric put these networks to use to raise funds for relief work. It was his first foray into the secular world.

The al-Qaeda’s bombing of New York and Washington D.C. gave Patangia a new cause. In the wake of the United States-led war on the Taliban, he declared that Islam was in danger. He set up a study group, Idara-e-Fadlullah-ul-Muslimeen (Institution of Charity for Muslims), to educate his earthquake volunteers. The IFM members monitored events in Afghanistan on the Internet, and listened to tapes of Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Mohammad Masood Azhar’s speeches.

Patangia used to be jokingly called ‘Mullah Omar,’ after the Taliban leader. His second-in-command Suhail Khan adopted an Osama bin-Laden-style headgear, acquiring the nickname ‘Chhota Osama,’ or Little Osama. In February 2002, when the communal pogrom in Gujarat began, Patangia was in Saudi Arabia on his annual pilgrimage. He turned to the South Asian Islamist there for help to defend his community — and to exact revenge. Abdul Bari, a one-time Hyderabad resident who is among the Lashkar’s top financiers, put up Rs.3,75,000. Two Saudi-based JeM fundraisers of Hyderabad origin, Farhatullah Ghauri and Abdul Rehman, threw in another Rs.5,00,000.

Most important, though, Patangia made contact with Rasool Khan ‘Party’ — nicknamed with the Ahmedabad argot for ‘contractor’ because of his work for top Gujarat mafioso Abdul Latif Sheikh and his Pakistan-based boss, Dawood Ibrahim Kaksar. In May 2002, Khan and his brother Idris met Patangia in Mumbai to discuss just how vengeance might be planned.

Late in May 2002, five bombs went off on buses in Ahmedabad, injuring 26 people. It was the first act of violence by Gujarat-based jihadists. In December, Khan arranged for eight of Patangia’s volunteers to travel to Pakistan for training. Along with other groups of young people from Hyderabad, Mumbai and Bangalore, the Ahmedabad jihadists flew to Pakistan through Dhaka, Kathmandu, Dubai and Bangkok.

Soon, the vengeance they sought was delivered. Gujarat’s Home Minister, Haren Pandya, who had led some of the most murderous mobs in Ahmedabad during the pogrom, was shot just 13 months later, by when he ceased to be Home Minister. Central Bureau of Investigation detectives later determined that he was killed by a hit-team directed by Patangia. Nine of the 12 assassins received life terms last year.

Despite the CBI’s successes, plans for large-scale reprisal attacks in Gujarat continued apace. The LeT and the Maharashtra-based Students Islamic Movement of India operatives took the lead — helped by a steady flow of funds.

In June 2004, the LeT despatched two Pakistani nationals from Jammu and Kashmir to execute a fidayeen attack in Gujarat. Jishan Johar of Gujranwala in Pakistan and Amjad Ali Rana, who hailed form Sargodha, were killed in a controversial encounter in Ahmedabad along with SIMI activist Javed Sheikh and his friend, Ishrat Jehan Raza.

The Maharashtra-based SIMI bomb-maker Zulfikar Fayyaz Kagzi built a sophisticated suitcase bomb that was planted on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad Express train in February 2006. An error in the timer circuit resulted in the bomb exploding 12 hours after the scheduled detonation time, by when the cleaning staff had deposited the suitcase in an empty corner of the Ahmedabad station. And in May 2006, the Intelligence Bureau prevented a potentially catastrophic bombing in Gujarat, penetrating an Aurangabad-based SIMI unit, which was in an advanced stage of preparation for serial bomb strikes.

Intellectual infrastructure

Has the vengeance the jihadists sought been delivered? Not quite. Minutes before the latest bombing, the Indian Mujahideen — a Lashkar-SIMI front organisation which also took responsibility for the earlier bombings in Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh — sent out a manifesto explaining just what it now seeks.

According to the manifesto, the Indian Mujahideen is “raising the illustrious banner of Jihad against the Hindus and all those who fight and resist us, and here we begin our revenge with the help and Permission of Allah — a terrifying revenge of our blood, our lives and our honour that will Insha-Allah terminate your survival on this land.”

The manifesto calls on Hindus to “realise that the falsehood of your 33 crore dirty mud idols and the blasphemy of your deaf, dumb mute and naked idols of ram, krishna and hanuman [sic; capitalisation as in original throughout] are not at all going to save your necks from being slaughtered by our hands.” It demands that Hindus change their attitudes, lest “another Ghauri shakes your foundations, and lest another Ghaznavi massacres you, proving your blood to be the cheapest of all mankind.”

No great effort is needed to locate the intellectual genesis of this body of ideas: it draws heavily on long-standing LeT polemic. Indeed, the manifesto’s plea that the LeT not take responsibility for the attacks is something of a giveaway, since the terror group has never owned up to actions targeting civilians. In 2003, for example, the LeT argued on its website that violence against Muslims in India was an outcome of the core character of Hindus, who “have no compassion in their religion.” It was the duty of Muslims to wage a jihad against “Hindu oppressors,” and it was “the Hindu who is a terrorist.”

Lashkar chief Hafiz Mohammad Saeed also said, “the Hindu is a mean enemy and the proper way to deal with him is the one adopted by our forefathers [who] crushed them by force.” He made clear — just as the Indian Mujahideen has — that the objective of the jihad was extending Muslim control over what it saw as Muslim land. At a November 1999 rally, he promised that he would “not rest until the whole of India is dissolved into Pakistan.” All those who participated in this project were promised “huge places in Paradise.”

SIMI, like the Indian Mujahideen, also invoked medieval conquerors in its literature. In the wake of the demolition of the Babri Masjid, SIMI called for Muslims to avenge the act by following in the steps of the 11th century conqueror, Mahmud Ghaznavi. SIMI posters appealed to god to send another Ghaznavi, and thus avenge attacks on Muslims and their mosques by attacking temples.

Local influences

Local religious influences are also evident. In its manifesto, the Indian Mujahideen describes itself as “terrorist,” an apparently odd usage. However, it suggests that the author followed the neoconservative television evangelist Zakir Naik — just as several past Mumbai-based Lashkar operatives like Rahil Sheikh and Feroze Deshmukh did.

In a controversial speech on al-Qaeda chief Osama bin-Laden, Naik proclaimed, “If he is fighting the enemies of Islam, I am for him. If he is terrorising America the terrorist — the biggest terrorist — I am with him.” “Every Muslim should be a terrorist,” Naik concluded. “The thing is, if he is terrorising a terrorist, he is following Islam.”

Most Indian Muslims would dispute the proposition: it is not for nothing, after all, that the Indian Mujahideen manifesto devotes considerable space to railing against clerics who oppose its jihadism. But the fact remains that some numbers of young Muslims — angered by discrimination, enraged by pogroms — see jihadism as the sole option available to them. As the work of scholar Ashutosh Varshney points out, the roots of this tragedy lie in the breakdown of inter-communal institutions: in a creeping religious apartheid that enveloped Gujarat in the second half of the last century, decades before the pogrom.

In the weeks to come, the police and intelligence investigators will have to find out the perpetrators of the bombings. Politicians, however, have a far more important task: to ensure that justice and equity are placed at centre stage of civic life in Gujarat, and India as a whole. No other way exists to bring down the intellectual infrastructure of hate, on which the jihadist campaign rests.

As street crime and narcotics proliferate, religious extremists draw island youth
http://www.hinduonnet.com/2007/11/18/stories/2007111860431200.htm

MAL E (THE MALDIVES): Three years ago, Ali Rameez abandoned his place under the spotlights, and chose a new life guided by the light of Islam.

In a public demonstration of his new convictions, the Maldives’ top rock star had thousands of hit compact discs thrown into the sea off Male, and invited his fans to follow the teachings of the islands’ best-known neoconservative Islamic theologian, Sheikh Ibrahim Fareed.

Both Mr. Rameez and Mr. Fareed are now being investigated for possible links with the cell which carried out the September 29 bombing at Male’s Sultan Park — the first-ever Islamist terror attack in the Maldives. But the real significance of Mr. Rameez’s story doesn’t lie in his possible links with terrorism. Instead, his journey represents an ongoing battle between religious neo-conservatism and liberalism: a battle Islamists seem to be winning.

Maldives residents say the influence of Islamists has become increasingly visible in what used to be an almost ostentatiously westernised society. There are more women wearing headscarves than short skirts or jeans now, while a growing number of men can be seen sporting full-length beards. On some islands, women have defied laws that prohibit the all-enveloping buruga, known in India as burkha.

Underpinning this shift is a deep cultural dislocation. Signs of the simmering social crisis aren’t hard to come by. Just three kilometres by two kilometres, Male is home to a welter of street gangs, engaging in violent crime and competing to sell drugs. Machangolhi’s Buru gang has clashed with the BG in Maafannu and the Flats’ Bosnia gang, named after the jihad which stirred Islamists worldwide.

Narcotics use has also grown to disturbing levels. According to a 2006 United Nations Children’s Education Fund report, non-governmental organisations have estimated that there are some 8,000 drug users in the islands — an astounding figure, given that their total population is just some 300,000. In the southern-most atoll of Addu, informants told UNICEF that up to 70% of young men and women were using drugs.

Islamist mobilisation

Islamist groups have been quick to cash in on the discontent, offering the rigours of religious practice as a cure for the strains of cultural and economic change. “Many parents,” says Male journalist Ahmed Nazim Sattar, “are delighted that their wards turn to religious groups, since it keeps them away from drugs and gangs. Very few understand where this journey might take their children.” Bookstores selling the Islamist vision to new recruits have proliferated. One, until recently owned by Mr. Rameez’s brother, Ibrahim Fareed, stocks a wide range of Salafi sect literature. Zakir Naik, a controversial Mumbai-based television evangelist whose admirers included 2005 Mumbai serial bombing-accused Feroze Deshmukh and Glasgow suicide-bomber Kafeel Ahmed, occupies a place of honour on the shelves.

Perhaps more important than ideology, Islamist groups are able to provide new recruits tangible material inducements.

Male’s traditional elites — in the main merchants and traders — have proved energetic sponsors of Islamist networks, hoping to regain the political influence they have lost to the new rich. Young Islamists are offered jobs, loans to start up businesses, and access to commercial networks that stretch into India and Pakistan.

Maldives Information and Legal Reform Minister Mohamed Nasheed is candid about the scale of the problem: “We turn out 10,000 ‘O’-level graduates each year, but the kinds of white-collar jobs they expect aren’t on offer. We need to find ways to absorb them into useful economic activities. We always thought prosperity would solve all our problems, but are now realising there are distributive and social issues that must be addressed.”