[Reader-list] Islamism, modernity & Indian Mujahideen - PRAVEEN SWAMI

Wed Mar 24 18:39:28 IST 2010

aditya,

im enlightened. i suffer from this enlightenment every morning. so
much enlightenment everywhere. it is like an overdose.

thanks for reacting anyway
anupam

On 3/24/10, Aditya Raj Kaul <kauladityaraj at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is posting an investigative piece on the list which exposes extremists, a
> crime ?
>
> Its not about advertising. Its about reality, perspective and games being
> played in dark. Games which kill people in the name of religion.
>
> Be enlightened.
>
> Cheers
>
> On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 6:27 PM, anupam chakravartty
> <c.anupam at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Pawan,
>>
>> I must praise you for being a chalta pheerta advertisement for
>> extremism. you have successfully advertised all forms of extremism on
>> this list. good going.
>>
>> anupam
>>
>> On 3/24/10, Pawan Durani <pawan.durani at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > "“Haven't you still realised 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”, the venomous Indian Mujahideen manifesto
>> > released to media as bombs went off across Ahmedabad read, “are not at
>> > all going to save your necks, Insha-Allah, from being slaughtered by
>> > our hands.”
>> >
>> >
>> > Islamism, modernity & Indian Mujahideen - PRAVEEN SWAMI
>> >
>> > http://beta.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article267670.ece?homepage=true
>> >
>> > Many believe the jihadist movement in India to be driven by religious
>> > fanaticism. There is little doubt that the idiom of the Indian
>> > Mujahideen drew on Islam, or at least a certain reading of Islam. The
>> > manifestos the organisation released after its operations sought
>> > religious legitimacy for the jihadist project.
>> >
>> > Days before 21 improvised explosive devices ripped through Ahmedabad
>> > on July 26, 2008, a young cleric from Azamgarh arrived to offer
>> > religious instruction to the Indian Mujahideen's bombers.
>> >
>> > Sheikh Abul Bashar hoped, Gujarat Police investigators say, to deepen
>> > the bombers' theological understanding of the war they were engaged
>> > in. He came armed with Salamat-e-Kayamat, an evangelical video replete
>> > with scriptural prophecies of the triumph of Islam before the day of
>> > judgment. He also acquired a copy of Faruk Camp, a paean to Taliban
>> > rule in Afghanistan, from Usman Aggarbattiwala, a young commerce
>> > graduate from Vadodara's Maharaja Sayaji University who allegedly
>> > programmed the integrated circuits used as timers for a separate set
>> > of bombs planted in Surat.
>> >
>> > Bored by the religious polemic, though, Bashar's students turned
>> > instead to Anurag Kashyap's movie Black Friday — a riveting account of
>> > just how a group of hard-drinking, womanising gangsters carried out
>> > the 1993 serial bombings in Mumbai to avenge the anti-Muslim riots
>> > that that tore apart the city after the demolition of the Babri
>> > Masjid.
>> >
>> > It seems improbable that the earnest cleric approved of these
>> > decidedly irreligious role-models — and the Indian Mujahideen's
>> > aesthetic choices — may point us in the direction of important
>> > insights into the jihadist movement in India.
>> >
>> > Many believe the jihadist movement in India to be driven by religious
>> > fanaticism. There is little doubt that the idiom of the Indian
>> > Mujahideen drew on Islam, or at least a certain reading of Islam. The
>> > manifestos the organisation released after its operations sought
>> > religious legitimacy for the jihadist project. They also point to
>> > specific secular political problems facing India's Muslims,
>> > specifically communal violence. Bashar's Black Friday story helps
>> > debunk notions that the jihadist movement in India is spearheaded by
>> > madrasa-educated fanatics indoctrinated in something called “extreme
>> > Islam.” Both SIMI, and the Jamaat-e-Islami from which it was born,
>> > would rail against watching films; Indian Mujahideen terrorists
>> > revelled in them. Many seminaries are still struggling with modernity;
>> > India's jihadists are natives of the new world.
>> >
>> > Azamgarh and the Indian Mujahideen: Early last month, police in Uttar
>> > Pradesh arrested Salman Ahmad, one of a string of alleged jihadists
>> > associated with the Lashkar-e-Taiba's so-called “Karachi Project”: an
>> > enterprise run by Karachi-based fugitive Indian jihadists Riyaz Ismail
>> > Shahbandri, his brother Iqbal Shahbandri, and Abdul Subhan Qureshi to
>> > execute a renewed wave of bombings across the country. Police say
>> > Ahmad, who was arrested after the Research and Analysis Wing
>> > intercepted phone calls he made from Nepal to Pakistan, had received
>> > training at a Lashkar camp in Karachi before being tasked to set up a
>> > safe-house in Kathmandu for routing new recruits to the Lashkar. Just
>> > 15, his lawyers claim, when he was alleged to have participated in the
>> > 2008 bombings in New Delhi, Ahmad studied at a government-run high
>> > school and had enrolled for a computer-applications course at a
>> > Lucknow college.
>> >
>> > Ahmad's profile closely resembles that of many Azamgarh jihadists —
>> > which, along with Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Bhatkal, near Mangalore,
>> > served as a core recruitment base for the Lashkar-e-Taiba — linked
>> > jihadist cells which are today collectively referred to as the Indian
>> > Mujahideen.
>> >
>> > Data obtained by The Hindu for 10 individuals alleged to be key
>> > members of the Azamgarh jihadist cell show that just two individuals —
>> > Bashar himself and Mohammad Arif Badruddin — had spent any length of
>> > time in madrasas. Many likely received some religious education in
>> > their spare time, in common with many small-town children of all
>> > faiths, but their aspirations appear to have been decidedly
>> > middle-class. Zeeshan Ahmad, one of the suspects involved in the 2008
>> > shootout with the Delhi Police at Batla House, was pursuing a business
>> > administration degree. His flat-mate, Mohammad Saif, a history
>> > graduate, also hoped to secure an MBA. Mohammad Zakir Sheikh was
>> > studying for a Master's degree in Psychology in Azamgarh. Sadiq Israr
>> > Sheikh, who spent two years in an Azamgarh madrasa as a child, was
>> > enrolled in a computer-educaiton course.
>> >
>> > Bashar's story casts some light on just how the jihadist cells in
>> > Azamgarh in fact formed. In the wake of the demolition of the Babri
>> > Masjid, the Jamaat-e-Islami came under intense pressure from
>> > hardliners calling for militant action. The party, deeply entwined in
>> > mainstream politics and suspicious of a confrontation with the Indian
>> > state, resisted. Maulana Abdul Aleem Islahi — a prominent
>> > Hyderabad-based cleric who had graduated from Azamgarh's well-known
>> > Madrasat-ul-Islah — earned the party's wrath by authoring an
>> > inflammatory tract challenging its line. Expelled from the
>> > Jamaat-e-Islami, Maulana Islahi became an ideological mentor to many
>> > young radicals who played a key role in the jihadist movement in India
>> > — among them, fugitive Indian Mujahideen commander Abdul Subhan
>> > Qureshi.
>> >
>> > In the summer of 2005, Maulana Islahi offered Bashar a job at the
>> > Jamaiat Sheikh ul-Maududi, a seminary named for the founder of the
>> > Jamaat-e-Islami. The cleric and Bashar's father had been friends and
>> > political allies in the Jamaat; their relationship evidently survived
>> > his expulsion.
>> >
>> > Later, though, Bashar was increasingly drawn to the jihadist project
>> > advocated by Maulana Islahi's son, Salim. He left his job, began
>> > addressing gatherings of the pro-jihadist organisations like the
>> > Darsgah Jihad-o-Shahadat and Tehreek Tahaffuz-e-Sha'aire Islam, and
>> > edited the Islamist magazine Nishaan-e-Rah, which drew its name from
>> > the seminal ideologue Syed Qutb's key work, Milestones. Salim Islahi
>> > introduced Bashar to Sadiq Israr Sheikh, a Mumbai-based SIMI radical
>> > with Azamgarh roots who had studied at a madrasa there for some years
>> > as a child. Sheikh, who was linked through SIMI to the Indian
>> > Mujahideen's fugitive commanders Qureshi and Shahbandri, in turn
>> > recruited jihadists in Azamgarh — key among them Atif Amin, who was
>> > killed in the 2008 shootout.
>> >
>> > The “Islamist Class”: Clearly, a complex matrix of factors — among
>> > them, personal friendship, kinship networks and ideology — helped
>> > build the Indian Mujahideen's networks. Madrasas or traditional
>> > Islamist affiliations were not among them. Bashar, for example, did
>> > not draw on students of the Madrasa Sheikh ul-Maududi for recruits.
>> > Nor did he seek out students at the Azamgarh seminary where he and his
>> > employer were educated, the Madrasat-ul-Islah.
>> >
>> > Part of the reason for this may be that the jihadist movement, of
>> > which SIMI was the most visible face, stood in opposition to both the
>> > traditional clerics and organised Islamist politics. In his rich
>> > anthropological study Islamism and Democracy in India, the scholar
>> > Irfan Ahmad explored the frictions between the Jamaat-e-Islami
>> > establishment and SIMI at the Jamaat-e-Islami-run Jamiat-ul-Falah
>> > seminary in Azamgarh. Founded by the Jamaat-e-Islami to capitalise on
>> > the new political space that opened up after the Emergency, SIMI soon
>> > embarrassed the party's elders by its support for jihadists.
>> >
>> > SIMI mounted polemical attacks on the Jamaat-e-Islami scholar Maulana
>> > Mohammad Rahmani, and sought to take control of the Jamiat-ul-Falah's
>> > old-students' association. In 1999, a time when it had become
>> > increasingly vocal in its calls for jihad and support for
>> > organisations like the Taliban, SIMI members provoked a showdown with
>> > authorities at the Jamiat-ul-Falah. The Jamaat-e-Islami's official
>> > students' wing, the Students Islamic Organisation, responded by
>> > founding a parallel student body, the Tanzeem Tulba-e-Qadim, which
>> > charged SIMI with propagating “katta [gun] culture”, saying that its
>> > calls for jihad were “lethal for Islam, Muslims and the country.”
>> > Notably, SIMI was proscribed by authorities at the Jamiat-ul-Falah
>> > well before the Government of India finally acted against the jihadist
>> > organisation in the wake of the Al Qaeda's attacks on the United
>> > States on September 11, 2001. During the police crackdown that
>> > followed the SIO refused to join in protests against SIMI leaders from
>> > the Jamiat-ul-Falah.
>> >
>> > Dr. Ahmad points to the existence of what he describes as a distinct
>> > “Islamist class”. Unlike at some other seminaries, students living at
>> > Falah did not come from among the ranks of the poor. Fees, including
>> > food and incidental costs, ranged around Rs. 900 a month. Of 5,365
>> > students, 4,300 came from cities. But class, he noted was “not just
>> > based on monthly income and an urban location but, more crucial, the
>> > specific cultural capital.” Just as cultural capital of the
>> > Jamaat-e-Islami led its leadership to make specific political choices
>> > to the crisis with which the Muslim community has been confronted, so,
>> > too, did the jihadists linked to the institutions and organisations
>> > that broke with the structured Islamist movement. Both sides drew on
>> > Islam to legitimise their position — but their choices were shaped by
>> > the challenges of politics in a modern, plural society.
>> >
>> > “Haven't you still realised 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”, the venomous Indian Mujahideen manifesto
>> > released to media as bombs went off across Ahmedabad read, “are not at
>> > all going to save your necks, Insha-Allah, from being slaughtered by
>> > our hands.”
>> >
>> > Below, though, were five demands, each entirely secular in character:
>> > demands for restitution against police outrages, the punishment of the
>> > perpetrators of communal violence, and the legal defence of terrorism
>> > suspects.
>> >
>> > Fighting the jihadists must obviously involve better policing and
>> > intelligence. But it also needs political interventions built around
>> > rights and justice — not the appeasement of religious neoconservatives
>> > and clerics, as successive Indian governments have seemed to believe.
>> > _________________________________________
>> > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city.
>> > Critiques & Collaborations
>> > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with
>> subscribe
>> > in the subject header.
>> > To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list
>> > List archive: &lt;https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/>
>> _________________________________________
>> reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city.
>> Critiques & Collaborations
>> To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with
>> subscribe in the subject header.
>> To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list
>> List archive: &lt;https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Aditya Raj Kaul
>
> Cell -  +91-9873297834
> Blog: http://activistsdiary.blogspot.com/
>
> For a man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes a place to live.
> _________________________________________
> reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city.
> Critiques & Collaborations
> To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe
> in the subject header.
> To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list
> List archive: &lt;https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/>