Tackling Islamic Extremism in India - 6

[G Subramaniam]

http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=14611728

South India and the enemies within



Maloy Krishna Dhar started life off as a junior reporter for Amrita Bazaar Patrika in Calcutta and a part-time lecturer. He joined the Indian Police Service in 1964 and was permanently seconded to the Intelligence Bureau.
During his long stint in the Bureau, Dhar saw action in almost all Northeastern states, Sikkim, Punjab and Kashmir. He also handled delicate internal political and several counterintelligence assignments. After retiring in 1996 as joint director, he took to freelance journalism and writing books. Titles credited to him are Open Secrets-India's Intelligence Unveiled, Fulcrum of Evil — ISI, CIA, al-Qaeda Nexus, and Mission to Pakistan. Maloy is considered a top security analyst and a social scientist who tries to portray Indian society through his writings.

Soon after the Mecca Masjid bomb blast (May 2007) and twin blasts in Hyderabad (August 25), several TV and print media friends grilled me: why should there be Jihadist attacks in the South?

Kashmir and parts of North and West India have been in the hairpin of jihadist trigger finger, but the South was a Shanthi Nilayam. Their questions took on a sharper tinge after the reported detection of jihadist training camps in Hubli and Dharwar forests, and the training undergone by some of the jihadists in Pakistan.

The naiveté of the inquirers is pardonable. Knowledge comes with the pains of suffering.

India, and this means entire India- North, South, East and West -- has always been a battleground. Nestled in the peninsula, the southern part of the country could not escape the advances of Islam. Those aeons old Hindu-Muslim battles need not be recounted.

Some believers in perpetual jihad (external) against Dar-ul Harb (a land ruled by infidels that might, through war, become the "Abode of Islam," or Dar-ul-Islam) still exist in India. These minuscule fundamentalists are exploited by the jihadi military regimes in Pakistan and Bangladesh through their tanzeems and intelligence agencies- the ISI and the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence.

The Southern Peninsula has been the traditional home of several Islamist groups, who continue to believe in the concept of Dar-ul-Harb.

Decades ago, in 1921, when India was basking in the Hindu-Muslim bonhomie of the Khilafat movement, the Moplas of Kerala indulged in a barbaric communal carnage under the leadership of Mohammad Haji, who had declared the end of British raj and proclaimed himself a Khalifa.

Read all Maloy Krishna Dhar columns here



Annie Besant had commented on that sordid development, They (Moplas) murdered and plundered abundantly, and killed or drove away all Hindus who would not apostatise. Somewhere about a lakh (100,000) of people were driven from their homes with nothing but their clothes they had on, stripped of everything...Malabar has taught us what Islamic rule still means, and we do not want to see another specimen of the Khilafat Raj in India.

(The Future Of Indian Politics: A Contribution To The Understanding Of Present-Day Problems P252. )

Volumes have been written on this sordid chapter which foreshadowed the holocausts in Jinnah’s Direct Action killings in Kolkata and the Noakahli genocide. Larger genocides were committed on the eve of escape of the British from India and the truncated Transfer of Power; now pedalled as independence.

The Southern Peninsula has a been treated as a Dar-ul-Harb or land of war, inhabited by the kafir, just like other parts of India were during the Muslim forays, after British occupation and during the process of Partition on the basis of two religion and two nation theory.

It was much later, on December 8-11, 1989, a debate was initiated in the Second Fiqh Seminar in Delhi for determining the status of India according to the Shariah. Whether India is Dar-ul-harb or not; whether the republic of India, if treated as Dar-ul-kufr, (non-Muslim land) falls in the category of those countries in which properties do not bear the character of protected property (Amwal-e-masoom), these and other related issues came under consideration at the Seminar from various angles.

The Seminar called upon the Islamic Fiqh Academy to set up a committee consisting of Ulama and Jurists, and those well versed in contemporary political science, constitutional law and laws relating to International relations, to decide the status of India. Till now the debate has not been settled. It is presumed India continues to be a Dar-ul-Harb, a country which is an active battleground.

The best interpretation of Dar-ul-Harb can be found in Ghiyasu 'l-Lughat dictionary, Qumas and Fatawa Alamgiri, vol. ii. Pp. 854 etc. We need not enter into a debate here.

While Kashmir and several other parts of India have been under the hairpin triggers of the jihadis from Pakistan, Bangladesh and other Salafi, Wahhabi and Deobandi fanatics, the southern part of the country often broke the veil of stoic placidity with bomb blasts and attacks at regular intervals. Several explosions and attacks were made at Coimbatore (1998), Indian Institute of Science and the RSS office in Tamil Nadu (1993). Starting from February 26, 2001 intermittent blasts have taken place on November 21, 2002; October 28, 2004, November 4, 2004, October 12, 2005, May 7, 2006, May 18, 2007 and August 25, 2007 in Andhra Pradesh.

The Southern Peninsula is described by the Islamic revivalists as a part of Hyderistan; a Muslim land with Hyderabad as nucleus. Maulana Kifayet Ali floated this theory in early thirties in his Silsila-I-Jamait-I-Vahdat Umam Islam. (Quoted by S. A. Latif in The cultural Future of India, Pp 1-18. Inquisitive readers may refer to my book: Fulcrum of Evil-ISI, CIA Al Qaeda Nexus).

Besides the Jamait-e-Islami, Jamait al Salafiya, Tablighi Jammat, Ahl-e-Hadith and SIMI, several regional militant organisations had sprouted in the States of Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. The prominent militant organisations are:

Muslim Defence Force: formed in Saudi Arabia by Abu Hamza of Hyderabad, it has units in Andhra, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Intelligence reports link this organisation with Lashkar-e-Toiba and Harkat-ul-Jihad- al Islami.
Indian Muslim Mohammedia Mujahideen: Formed by Azam Ghori. The organisation has several units in Andhra, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
Al Ummah: Formed by S A Basha, is the most active jihadist force is active in Tamil Nadu, Andhra, Kerala, Karnataka. It has connectivity with the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence of Bangladesh (DGFI) and the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), Lashkar-e-Toiba, HuJI, Jaish-e-Mohammad and SIMI.
Deendar Anjuman: Formed by Hazrat Maulana Sayed Siddique Kibla. The Andhra based organisation had earned notoriety with the suspected participation of Mohammad Mohiuddin in serial bombings. It has expanded activities in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. The Government of India banned the Deendar Anjuman in April 2001, after it was linked to the serial blasts at places of worship, including churches, a temple and a mosque, in Andhra, Karnataka and Goa. The Andhra Pradesh government too banned the organisation and sealed its offices at Hyderabad, Vijayawada and other places. About 40 Deendar activists were involved in criminal cases in Andhra Pradesh.
Kerala and Tamil Nadu also boast of several fundamentalist and pro-jihadist organisations, which are engaged in acts of subversive and communal violence. Most important outfits are: Islamic Service Society, National Development Front, Muslim National Development Front, People’s Democratic Party, All India Jihad Committee, and Tamil Muslim Munnetra Kazagham and the outfit floated by Palani Baba. The Manitha Neethi Paasarai (MNP), another militant outfit surfaced after Al Umma was banned for its execution of Coimbatore serial blasts. The MNP is involved in conversion of low-caste Hindus and training them in Jihadist activities. It is active in Theni and Coimbatore districts, which are close to Kerala borders. Its linkages with the NDF of Kerala have been substantiated.

Read all Maloy Krishna Dhar columns here

The Popular Front of India (PFI), a coordinated efforts between three organizations – Karnataka For Dignity (KFD), Karnataka, Manitha Neethi Pasarai (MNP), Tamil Nadu, and National Development Front (NDF), Kerala was launched on February 16 last year in Bangalore. A majority of the leaders of this new front belong to the banned SIMI. The decision to launch Popular Front of India (PFI) was taken at a conference of KFD, MNP & NDF held on 22nd November 2006 at Calicut. The leaders of PFI include, K.M.Shareef, President of KFD, Gulam Muhammed, leader of MNP and Abdur Rahman Baqari of NDF had decided to confine their activities to South India. The PFI was suspected of involvement in communal violence in Mangalore and several places in Kerala. It is the first umbrella organisation of the SIMI related Wahhabi and Salafi Islamists in Southern India. In the coming years, it might replicate the roles of the Pakistani-brand militarised Deobandism in the peninsular states.

Several dissertations are required to analyse and explain the working mechanism of these pro-jihadist and separatist organisations in the South.

In the north, west and east, the main militant bodies are the SIMI, Ahl-e-Hadith, units of HuJI, and active modules of Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (Sunni), Jundullah, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and Al Badr. Assam and Manipur have over a dozen indigenous militant bodies patronised by the ISI and the DGFI. The Southern Peninsula has always looked towards the north, like they did during initial Muslim invasions, for discovering the footprints of HuJI, Lashkar, SIMI and other Pakistan related outfits. Over three-dozen youths from the south had undergone training in Pakistan and Bangladesh. The respective state intelligence units have not paid adequate attention to the home-grown militant bodies, which have been infiltrated by the ISI and the DGFI (through Bangladeshi infiltrators in the mega cities). They have overlooked ISI infiltration from Sri Lanka and Maldives and from the Middle East, through expatriate workers. Along with dollars and dinars, they bring in ideological baggage and brainwashed Islamism and jihadist ideology.

It is time for the state governments (irrespective of prism or other ism) and intelligence units to evaluate the extant jihadist groups, which aim at establishing ‘liberated’ pockets and link up with the jihadists in Gujatrat, Maharashtra and other parts of India beyond the Vindhyas.

This is not an alarmist’s war cry. It is high time for the South to know the enemies within.

The author is a former Joint Director, IB, with vast experience in handling Pakistani and Bangladeshi Jihadi thrust in India. He can be reached at maloy_d@hotmail.com.

The views expressed in the article are of the author’s and not of Sify.com.

[Sumeet]

J&K separatists criticise Deoband decree

[quote]
29 Feb, 2008, 0300 hrs IST, TNN

SRINAGAR: Kashmir militants have ‘regretted’ the ‘failure’ of Deoband’s religious scholars in making a distinction between Jihad and terrorism. They said the decree was correct but one-sided.

“Moulana (Margoob-ur-Rehman) is correct in saying that Islam rejects terrorism, but there is no interpretation especially because various powers are dubbing genuine struggles as terrorism,â€

[hnair]

[quote="Sumeet"]J&K separatists criticise Deoband decree

Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who heads a parallel Hurriyat faction, talked of his respect of the Deoband but insisted “the decree would have no impact on the Kashmir struggle which is politicalâ€

[svinayak]

[quote="hnair"][quote="Sumeet"]J&K separatists criticise Deoband decree

Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who heads a parallel Hurriyat faction, talked of his respect of the Deoband but insisted “the decree would have no impact on the Kashmir struggle which is politicalâ€

[shiv]

THis is the divide within the Islamic community in the sub continent. One group wants to modernize and move forward. The other group wants to regress and move backwards. They are trying to do all of these in a kafirs homeland when they are outsiders.

This discussion on Islamic behaviour is also a prower struggle of the political Islam. Kashmir Islamism used to see itself as a regional movement but now they are looking themselves as the leader of the political islam in the entire region.

Good post Acharya

[G Subramaniam]

THis is the divide within the Islamic community in the sub continent. One group wants to modernize and move forward. The other group wants to regress and move backwards. They are trying to do all of these in a kafirs homeland when they are outsiders.

This discussion on Islamic behaviour is also a prower struggle of the political Islam. Kashmir Islamism used to see itself as a regional movement but now they are looking themselves as the leader of the political islam in the entire region.

Good post Acharya

The Deoband fatwa is pure taqiya

One of the classic methods of taqiyah is to condemn terrorism in general but never condemn terrorist organisations by name such as HUJI and JEM or the Taliban
all of whom are Deobandi jihadists

[G Subramaniam]

After failing to increase muslims in army last year, they have now increased muslims in CRPF

Daily Pioneer



Budget with a communal twist

Kumar Uttam | New Delhi

Continuing the exercise started this year, the Government has decided to recruit more candidates belonging to the minority communities to the Central para-military forces in the coming fiscal.

[SSridhar]

Journey from Deoband - exacting but rewarding statecraft

Harish Khare is a flame baiter. I don't know how is The Hindu able to find such uniformly moronic persons for employment.
[quote]Last week, two elderly gentlemen dropped in at The Hindu office in New Delhi as part of what they said was an effort to help members of the media get a correct picture of Islam. They were pleased to present two tracts, Towards Understanding Islam and An introduction to understand the Quran. The gentlemen from the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind regretted that the media continued to report and comment rather negatively on Islam and Indian Muslims; even The Hindu, they felt, had of late become prone to using expressions such as “Islamic terrorism.â€

[Rye]

Acharya quote:

THis is the divide within the Islamic community in the sub continent. One group wants to modernize and move forward. The other group wants to regress and move backwards. They are trying to do all of these in a kafirs homeland when they are outsiders.

This discussion on Islamic behaviour is also a prower struggle of the political Islam. Kashmir Islamism used to see itself as a regional movement but now they are looking themselves as the leader of the political islam in the entire region.

It looks like the Dar-ul-uloom deoband is the faction that wants to move backward --- they are the same ones that gave the "anti-terrorism" fatwa and tried to pull the wool over the eyes of kafirs.

For one, the above article notes:

Then, early this week took place the anti-terrorism convention organised by the Darul Uloom Deoband. It was dubbed a conference attended by all major clerics, although this claim was somewhat incomplete as Shia representation was almost negligible.

There is a post in the islamism thread talks of a fatwa on movies given by the very same "anti-terrorist" dar-ul-uloom deoband.

It is the Shia Clerics, Maulana Kalbe's name is mentioned, who are taking a modern and progressive view.

The deobandis want to emulate the pakis, and the mullahs of maulana Kalbe's ilk are the ones that want to move forward?


Cross-posting:

http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?news ... 3&pageid=2

Clerics slam fatwa by Deoband’s Darul Ifta
Deepak Gidwani
Friday, February 29, 2008 08:51 IST

LUCKNOW: Several Muslim clerics have slammed the fatwa against films and acting issued by the Darul Ifta, part of Deoband’s Darul Uloom, which provides online answers to questions relating to the Muslim faith posed by people from all over the world.

The latest fatwa has been sparked by a simple query: Is working in cinema permissible?

The edict issued in response to this poser (fatwa no. 193) reads: "The cinemas are centres of sins and other unlawful things which are either basically unlawful or co-operation on unlawful [sic] and both these things are haraam in Shariah; the Quran says: But help ye not one another in sin and rancour, fear Allah, for Allah is strict in punishment and Allah (Subhana Wa Ta'ala) knows best."

Says Nadeemul Wajidi, mufti at the Darul Ifta: "When Islam does not permit making pictures of living things itself, then any kind of activity related to film-making is haraam for a Muslim as per the Shariah [Islamic law], whether it is production of films, watching them or working in them.

" He points out that the Darul Ifta's fatwa (no. 221) clearly states that "the pictures of living beings, whether still or moving, are unlawful".

Another mufti, Maulana Irfan, ups the ante further, saying: "Islam clearly prohibits earning from singing and dancing. So earning from acting in films is not halaal for Muslims."

Islam prohibits but parasti (idol worship), and fatwa (no. 1232) says: "Photography of animals and human being is not allowed without any exigency and pressing need, while photography of things other than living being is allowed."

According to fatwa no. 1867, the pictures of living beings are prohibited for two reasons: (i) it leads to polytheism; and (ii) it resembles the creation of Allah. "These two reasons are present in every picture whether they are worshipped or not," it says.

However, Muslim clerics have pooh-poohed the latest fatwa. Eminent Shia cleric Maulana Kalbe Jawwad points out that Arab TV channels broadcast live five-time salawat as well as the tarawih prayers from Mecca.

"Some Maulanas and muftis are out to make a mockery of our religion. I beg them to put an end this frivolity and do something constructive for the faith," he told DNA.

Says film actor Raza Murad: "Such fatwas are meaningless.â€

[Rye]

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fo ... F%29&sid=1

Outlook article by islamist sympathizer Saba Naqvi Bhaumik.

The bogus "anti-terrorism fatwa" is called "the peace edict". That is it..in one fell swoop, terrorism has been eliminated in the subcontinent? Could that be really true?

Yet it is the changing realities in India that have forced Deoband's hands. Madani explains the reason for the anti-terrorism declaration: "It's when the water rises to the head level that we know we are facing a crisis. The number of arrests of innocent Muslims under the guise of fighting terrorism has increased. ( Note that there is an explicit exculpation of Islam or muslims with terrorism after proclaiming grandly that theirs is a "fatwa against terrorism" --- Taqiyya 101 ) We know terrorism is the second biggest challenge before the country after corruption but our community is getting frightened at the manner in which Muslims, especially those from madrassas, are being picked up."

The only terrorist group mentioned by name is the Government of India.

That is why sociologist Imtiaz Ahmad says there was a clear political dimension to the gathering at Deoband. "I believe the clerics were sending a message to the Congress, a warning that you can ignore us only at your on peril." He points to the growing political clout of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind: it formed a political front in Assam, joined hands with the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal to fight the Communists on the Nandigram issue, and has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to bring activists on the streets at anti-US rallies.

These fellows cannot hold rallies on Indian issues, and yet they bleed for the Ummah in Iraq.

Certainly, it has clout in the Muslim community, and Deoband cannot be ignored when it comes to religious interpretation and organised Islam in India. But it is possible to over-estimate the hold of the clerics of a particular school of Islam over the political choices of a complex and diverse community.

Saba Naqvi first makes a threat saying "the deobandis need to be taken seriously, or else..." and then completes it with, "but they are not really at all after power politically so they are very harmless really" -- masterful rhetoric worthy of the mullahs.


The deoband thinks and I quote:

This is a strategic step to counter the terror tag that is increasingly hounding the Indian Muslim

So this edict is basically to remove any responsibility on the part of Indian muslims if any terrorist acts are committed, even if the terrorists are both Indian and Muslim.

the potential reason for their behaviour appears later -- they are the original mentors of the paki madrassas.

Because the Talibs (students) emerged from Pakistani madrassas that followed the curriculum set by the Deoband school, the historic seminary gained a certain notoriety.

[G Subramaniam]

This article is a classic whine fest
However, I have edited out the whines and simply tried to pick out the relevant texts by Taslima

This IM wants Indian laws section 295 and 153 be applied agains Taslima


Free Speech – Hate Speech:
The Taslima Nasreen Case
Iqbal A Ansari


However her characterisation
of all Muslims in the following paragraph
of Dwikhandita (2003) as potential
terrorists by virtue of their allegiance to the Quran deserves the attention of all those who are sincerely pursuing the agenda of promotion of inter-faith dialogue for durable peace based on mutual understanding,
tolerance and respect.She says: If somebody, being inspired by Islam, follows
the commandments of Allah and wants to be a true Muslim, then he easily may take oath from the Quran wherein it has been advised not to make friendship with the Jews and the Christians, i e, non-Muslims. If somebody does not follow this, Allah will throw him into the fire of the Hell. Not only this, (Quran says) wherever you get non-Muslims destroy them, kill them. Whenever you find a non-believer (who does not believe in Islam) cut his left arm and right leg with one strike and his right arm and left leg with another (Dwikhandita, p 48).
...

Islamo-phobic ViewIt is very obvious that what Taslima Nasreen has stated implies that it is the religious duty of all Muslims to kill or destroy every person who does not believe in Islam, i e, all Muslims are potential if not actual terrorists.

....


She seems to be more Islamo-phobic than Christian and Jewish extremists and Hindu fascists, who are thriving on the image of Muslims as terrorists, and want to perpetuate
this image.
About Mohammad, Taslima says that “he killed people without any hesitation, bathed in the blood of people of other communities, ruthlessly killed the people of other religions, ordered his soldiers to loot the wealth of the Jews and he raped their women, thus he could hoist his victory-flag.â€

[Dilbu]

Deoband plays peace card; a few call it bluff

[Gerard]

The Peace Edict

[shiv]

This article is a classic whine fest
However, I have edited out the whines and simply tried to pick out the relevant texts by Taslima

What is the source/source url.
You seem to have edited out that as well.

[Rye]

Tavleen Singh on the true nature of the Indian jihadi mullahs in Daar-ul-uloom Deoband.

http://www.indianexpress.com/sunday/story/279075.html

Tavleen Singh
Posted online: Sunday, March 02, 2008 at 2315 hrs Print Email

The scariest religious institution I have ever been to is the Darul Uloom in Deoband. In the hour I spent wandering about its grounds on my single uninvited visit a couple of years ago I understood why it had inspired the Taliban. It is an institution that remains frozen in seventh century Arabia, a time when men were primitive and women got a primitive deal. I saw one woman while I was there and she was veiled to the eyeballs. The angry young students I met were Islamists to a man and the maleficent power of Saudi Arabia manifested itself in their refusal to speak to me because they were only allowed to speak Arabic. So they said. This most important Islamic seminary on the Indian sub-continent may not be directly training jihadis but it is responsible for perpetuating a narrow, literal interpretation of Islam which is the ideology that inspires the jihad.

Last week, this seminary was in the news because it declared cinema offensive to Islam and held a conference of bearded clerics at which terrorism was discussed. The cinema fatwa can be ignored because it is meaningless except to literalist interpreters of Islam and they do not go to the movies anyway. The All-India Anti-Terrorism Conference held in Deoband on 17 Safar 1429H (February 25) we need to pay careful attention to. Most newspapers reported on their front pages that the conference had condemned terrorism. As someone who thinks of the Deobandi interpretation of Islam as exactly the kind we do not want in our land of happy infidels, my ears instantly pricked up. Could the Darul Uloom have changed since my one and only visit? Had it now become a place of unveiled women? The head Maulana refused to entertain my request for an interview because I was unveiled. And, I, proud infidel that I am, sent him a message to veil himself if he had a problem with gazing upon the female form.
Last week, when I heard the Darul Uloom had condemned terrorism, I went disbelievingly to their website to download a copy of the declaration made at the end of the conference of bearded mullahs. This is what I found. After declaring untruly that Islam treats all mankind with equality (there should be no infidels then) the declaration says, ‘Islam sternly condemns all kinds of oppression, violence and terrorism’.
So far so good, but the next paragraph and the one after clarifies that the Darul Uloom’s idea of terrorism is different to yours and mine . It’s not attacks by Islamist suicide bombers on us idol-worshippers that they are worried about but attacks on Muslims. Listen. ‘The Conference expresses its deep concern and agony on the present global and national alarming conditions (sic) in which most of the nations are adopting such an attitude against their citizens, especially Muslims, to appease the tyrant and colonial master of the West . . . the conference strongly demands the Indian Government (sic) to curb those maligning the madrassas and Muslims’.

As I suspected, nothing has changed in the cloistered world of the Darul Uloom. If it had the declaration should have contained at least one reference to innocent infidels being killed by Islamist suicide bombers as they prayed in temples and went home from work on Mumbai’s commuter trains.
The problem with institutions like the Darul Uloom is they give all Muslims a bad name. The vast majority of Indian Muslims do not believe in the literalist interpretation of Islam that the Saudis propagate through seminaries like the one in Deoband. They do not think of cinemas as ‘centres of sin’ or believe that the solution to the world’s problems lies in returning to the times of the Prophet. They do not believe either that the West is a ‘tyrant and colonial master’ but it is not those Muslims that our ‘secular’ government likes to promote, so the finance minister in his budget last week announced a fund to modernise madrassas. It is a criminal waste of tax-payers’ money and a disservice to the Muslim community because what ordinary, non-jihadi Muslims need badly are neighbourhood schools that are modern, secular and affordable. If they want to turn their children into maulvis they will send them to the Darul Uloom type seminary anyway. And, even a casual stroll in its compounds is all you need to notice that it is flush with funds.
Personally, as a secular, unbelieving Indian, I object to my money being spent on religious schools of any kind. I understand that we are heading towards a general election and the Muslim vote bank is elusive and important but if the Congress party and its Marxist friends want to woo it, then they should use party funds and not the budget. Right?

So It is not completely unexpected that a minister from UP Yaqoob Qureishi placed a bounty on the heads of the danish cartoonists.

[Kalantak]

This article is a classic whine fest
However, I have edited out the whines and simply tried to pick out the relevant texts by Taslima

What is the source/source url.
You seem to have edited out that as well.

G Subramaniam has posted that selected parts from the pdf file found at http://www.epw.org.in.

Visit that page and scroll down a little you will find "Free Speech – Hate Speech: The Taslima Nasreen Case by Iqbal A Ansari".

After visiting the site you will know that a link to the pdf file cant be given. The site is designed in that way and it's not G Subramaniam fault.

[Gerard]

But in India, Deoband is understood as a conservative but nationalist school. It had opposed the Partition and does not advocate a political or radical Islam as promoted by Islamist movements emanating from the Arab world.

Nationalist?
I'll believe that when they issue a fatwa declaring that Jammu and Kashmir is Indian, that India is Dar ul-Islam, and that any violence against the Indian state is against Islam.

[G Subramaniam]

This article is a classic whine fest
However, I have edited out the whines and simply tried to pick out the relevant texts by Taslima

What is the source/source url.
You seem to have edited out that as well.

It is the current edition of epw.org.in

It has a poor URL system like Dailypioneer

[Tilak]

Election Time Special : UPA/Left's master's have spoken, now it's time to bend over ...

Muslim law board demands ouster of Taslima
2 Mar 2008, 2127 hrs IST,PTI

KOLKATA: Demanding ouster of controversial writer Taslima Nasreen, the All India Minority Forum on Sunday accused the government of trying to protect her though she has hurt sentiments of Muslims in the country.

"Taslima has not only hurt the sentiments of Muslims, but she has defamed the Indian Constitution. The government should not extend her visa and she should move out of this country immediately," president of the Forum Idris Ali told a rally organised by the All India Muslim Personal Law Board.

Nearly 500 delegates from all over the country spoke in the open session in front of 1.5 lakh people gathered to hear them after the completion of the two-day all India seminar organised by the Board after a gap of 23 years in the city.

Some speakers emphasised the need to preserve the Shariat law which, they maintain, only can preserve the identity of the Muslims in general.

"There has been several attacks against the Muslim personal law. This is not at all desirable. The Muslims in this country have their own identity and that can only be preserved by the law framed according to Holy Koran," assistant general secretary of the Board Md Abdur Raheem Quraishi said.

[AniB]

Hurt sentiments.

A.Roy, S. Bose, evangelists and JUI also hurt Indic sentimentrs. Protecting the freedom of expression is more important than pandering to special vocal groups.

Tasleema is not a male Kufr warrior, she was a Mohammedan. This is time for Islam to show their ‘Toleranceâ€

[Sumeet]

A student takes part in a martial arts training demonstration at a school in Hyderabad. Sixty students encouraged by their parents and scholl officials are learning the art of self-defence using sword and sticks during school hours. The world celebrates International Women’s Day on March 8.

Empower Muslims women, that will be one check on Islamism.

Women take sex education to madarsa

[quote]
New Delhi, March 08, 2008


Women’s empowerment is getting a new resonance in an underdeveloped Bihar district. Kishanganj, which didn’t have a district hospital till a few years back, is witnessing a revolution with an NGO teaching reproductive and sexual healthcare to teenage girls in a madarsa.

On International Women’s Day, the tale of attitudinal change through innovation and conviction is worth recounting.

The adolescent reproductive and sexual healthcare programme — Project Sanjivini, which began in 2004, was carried out in 15 villages, addressing girls between 10 and 19.

Convincing village elders in a predominantly Muslim district to allow young girls to attend classes on sex education wasn’t easy. It took Azad India Foundation (AIF) two-and-half years to gain the confidence of the people. But there is significant attitudinal change now, says AIF executive director Yuman Hussain.

“An old lady who attended one of the health classes in Mohiuddinpur came back with both her daughters-in-law to have them operated so that they don’t have more children,â€

[shiv]

Praveen Swamy's Jihad series:
[quote] Date:08/03/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/03/08/stor ... 911200.htm
Back
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Jihad in the cyber city
Praveen Swami
Inside SIMI’s terror networks in Karnataka
BANGALORE: If Bangalore needed a face to advertise the new India it represents, it needn’t have looked further than Shibly Peedicaal Abdul.
From small-town origins in Kerala, Abdul built a successful career at a multinational and even set up his own firm. Now, though, he is one of India’s top terrorists: a key player in the Students Islamic Movement of India-linked networks that have carried out a string of terror strikes across southern India since 2003.
Ever since last month’s arrests of Andhra Pradesh resident Raziuddin Nasir and Kerala-origin computer engineer Yahya Kamakutty — leaders, police say, of a terror cell planning bombings in Goa, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mumbai — analysts have been struggling to explain the growth of the jihad in India’s cyber-capital.
SIMI in Karnataka
Police in Bangalore began paying serious attention to SIMI’s network after the 2006 Mumbai serial bombings. Ehtesham Siddiqui, SIMI’s Maharashtra general secretary and one of the alleged architects of the Lashkar-e-Taiba-organised attacks, told police he had been in regular contact with three Bangalore residents.
All the three, it transpired, were successful professionals — very different from stereotypical SIMI recruits. One of Siddiqui’s contacts, computer technician Muzammil Ata-ur-Rehman Sheikh, is now being tried for his role in the serial bombings along with his brother, Faisal Sheikh. Siddiqui also named Kamakutty and Abdul.
Operating through Sarani, a religious front-organisation, Abdul had recruited over a dozen local men — the core of the cell discovered last month. In one e-mail, Abdul demanded members observe the fajr namaaz, or dawn prayers. In another, he asked them to avoid debates with rival Islamists. Just how much the recruits knew about Abdul’s real agenda is unclear.
Behind the scenes, though, Abdul was preparing for war. In 2004, investigators later found, he delivered at least one consignment of weapons in preparation for terror strikes. Rashid Husain, a Bihar-based SIMI activist who also had links to the Jammu and Kashmir-based Islamist leader, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, is thought to have organised the operation.
Later, Abdul is believed to have participated in a conclave of SIMI members at Ujjain from July 4-7, 2006, where plans to revitalise the jihad in India were discussed. Several members of the cell which executed the Mumbai serial bombings later that year participated. Abdul also set up an independent company, which police suspect laundered terror funds.
Soon after Siddiqui’s arrest, though, Abdul disappeared. Police now had to make a difficult call. Although Kamakutty had long been known to be involved with SIMI’s terror cells — notably having worked with Muhammad Faisal Khan, who helped organise the 2003 serial bombings in Mumbai — he was left untouched, in the hope he would lead police to Abdul.
After Nasir’s arrest last month, Yahya was finally held. Of Abdul, though, there is still no trace. Nor have at least two dozen men thought to have attended the Islamist groups they founded been detected.
Nasir’s own plans were at an early stage — he possessed only crude pistols and some low-grade explosive — but others may be further down the road to a strike.
Roots of the jihad
Unlike Maharashtra or Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka has no history of large-scale communal pogroms, nor a Muslim underclass whose resentments Islamist groups can tap. Yet, the State has fed cadre to SIMI’s operations in southern India — and, as the case of Glasgow airport suicide bomber Kafeel Ahmed demonstrates, even the global jihad.
Why has the jihad flourished here? During his interrogation, police sources say, Nasir argued he was an “extremist,â€

[sum]

Praveen Swamy's Jihad series

These will be what the IB feels on the issue given out through their "spokesman", Praveen Swami....

However,the attempt to link Gujarat riots(which is a non issue in these cases) is Swami's own going by his previous articles where RSS/Hindutva always finds a mention whether it is relevant or not...

[shiv]

Praveen Swamy's Jihad series:

Date:08/03/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/03/08/stor ... 911200.htm
Still, the success with which Abdul preyed on the fringes of Bangalore’s cyber dream poses difficult questions — with no easy answers.

"Poses difficult questions is journalistis rhetoric - of the sort i believe the BBC started using first decades ago.

Those "difficult questions" have some straightforward answers if people just look at Islam and see exactly what it teaches literally.

Those Muslims who deliberately ignore or remain ignorant of many of the most hate-inducing teachings of islam remain moderate Muslims. Educated Musliims who go and read the whole Quran and hadiths word for word and try to practice Islam to the letter reveal that literal Islam is full of hate for non Muslims.

Educated Muslims, and secular Indians who hear this may go into denial because of cognitive dissonance - and that is what makes them say "no easy answers"

The fact that needs to be accepted widely at least by concerned non Muslims that Islam, when practised literally as per the Quran and hadiths does not accept non Muslims and considers them an enemy. Moderate Muslims are those who practice a watered down version of Islam where they do not automatically hate and desire to kill or hurt or intimidate non Muslims.

The right to practice islam in India does not include the right to intimidate or kill non Muslims. Your right to swing your fist stops in front of my nose.

[SSridhar]

Moderate Muslims are those who practice a watered down version of Islam where they do not automatically hate and desire to kill or hurt or intimidate non Muslims.

It is this "watererd down version" that the salafists are sincerely trying to change. In fact, even the moderates have already been made receptive to such extreme thoughts by even the 'moderate' religion that they practice. By narrowing their minds, the extensive employment of social engineering, creating a sense of alienation and ensuring that generally Muslims do not integrate with the rest of the society, the Islamists already keep the ummah close to converting to extremism. It therefore becomes easier to get the recruits.

[Kalantak]

A student takes part in a martial arts training demonstration at a school in Hyderabad. Sixty students encouraged by their parents and scholl officials are learning the art of self-defence using sword and sticks during school hours.

Muslim women learn martial arts not for peace but for attacking police who arrest terrorists.

Muslim women attack police station after police arrest terror suspect
03-06-2008

HYDERABAD : Muslim Women activists of the Darsgah Jihad-o-Shahadat on Wednesday attacked a police station following the arrest of a youth, Mohtisam Billa, from Saidabad. Joint teams of the Task Force and Special Investigation Team arrested Billa at about 6.30 pm. Though the arrest was made in connection with some old cases, it is known that police suspect Billa to have terror links.

The Lumbini bomber, Mohammed Riyazuddin Nasir, had mentioned him as a “friendâ€

[Rye]

link

Going by this news item along with earlier ones, there are three sections of the Ulema in India:

1) The liberal shias of the Syed Kalbi variety who have their basics right and are not jihad oriented.

2) A faction of the deobandis led by pro-Congress Arshad Madni that owes allegience to India but tries to push the Shariat to be part of the Indian constitution

3) A faction of the deobandis that is against Arshad Madni and that sees India as a temporary state to be converted to dar-ul-islam -- these people are the Hurriyats, PDP, Hizbul Mujahideen and other "democratic" parties that sustain support from external islamic movements.

Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind on the verge of division
Submitted by Tarique on Sat, 03/08/2008 - 17:50.

* Indian Muslim

By TwoCircles.net staff reporter

New Delhi: Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind, which played a pivotal role in the freedom struggle of India, divided at that moment when its working committee dismissed its president Maulana Arshad Madni from his post on 6th March.

After walk-out of Maulana Arshad Madni from an urgent meeting called on the president’s office, a no-confidence motion was presented against him and it was accepted by 32 members of its working committee and 24 special invitees. The committee appointed Quari Mohammad Usman, deputy manager of Darul Uloom Deoband, as caretaker president. This was disclosed to the media on 7th March by Jamiat’s general secretary Maulana Mahmood Madni. He was accompanied by 10 members as well as special invitees. The managing committee has called a meeting on 26th March which will confirm the appointment of Quari Mohammad Usman as its next president.

The 6th March meeting was held at its office in a very tense atmosphere in which a resolution of loss of confidence was presented against Maulana Arshad Madni then he walked out with his supporters. After his walk out Khaleefa Shaikhul Islam Maulana Azhar, president : Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind (Bihar & Jharkhand) was appointed as president of the meet and Quari Mohammad Usman is appointed as caretaker president of Jamiat dismissing Maulana Syed Arshad Madni.

The working committee had arranged a meeting on 28th February to end misunderstandings between Maulana Arshad Madni, who was given the charge of president of Jamiat after the death of Maulana Asad Madni, and general secretary Maulana Mahmood Madni but this meeting failed to achieve its objective.

[G Subramaniam]

Article in dailypioneer

Don't defame a kind ruler

Brouhaha over Aurangzeb: N Jamal Ansari | Religious and political affairs commentator, Aligarh Muslim University

An exhibition of miniatures and firmans of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, organised by the Foundation Against Continuing Terrorism in Chennai, has initiated a debate on Aurangzeb. Often we forget that Aurangzeb led a simple life and fought to save India from rebels and terrorists. Before jumping into any conclusion, we should objectively analyse his conduct and rule.




No doubt, Aurangzeb destroyed many temples. But it was a general practice with other rulers, including Hindu Kings. In the 11th century, Chola king Rajendra I decorated his capital with idols he had seized from neighbouring kings. Similarly, Kashmiri King Harsha plundered many temples. In the 12th and 13th century, Parmar rulers plundered Jain temples in Gujarat.



Coming back to Aurangzeb's 'iconoclastic' tendencies, in 1667, a rebellion took place in Benaras. It was believed that Shivaji's escape from prison was facilitated by Jai Singh, the great grandson of Raja Man Singh, who had built Vishvanath temple. According to SN Sinha, it was due to this fact that Aurangzeb ordered the destruction of that temple in September 1669 (Subah of Allahabad under the Great Mughals). At the same time, Jat rebellion broke out in and around Mathura in which the Nazim of city's congregational masque was killed. In 1670, the leader of the Jat rebellion was captured; thereafter, Aurangzeb ordered the destruction of Keshav Dev temple.



We should not forget that in those days victory was generally celebrated by the destruction of temples and idols associated with enemies. In 1579, Murahori Rao destroyed popular Ahobilam temple and brought its Ruby-studded image to Golconda and presented it to the Sultan as a war trophy. So, the destruction of temples in those days was political - not religious - in nature.



Aurangzeb granted jagirs to several Hindu temples. He also constructed the Chitrakoot temple, besides giving an endowment of 200 acres of land to maintain it. Considering temples within his domain as state property, Aurangzeb punished disloyal Hindu officers by desecrating temples with which they were associated.



Aurangzeb is a victim of communal historiography. However, it's not just Aurangzeb who is seen with prejudice. In most books, Muslim rulers are portrayed as 'villains' and their Hindu counterparts are regarded as 'heroes' - be it Aurangzeb versus Shivaji, or Akbar versus Maharana Pratap. Their political struggle is substituted with the religious angle. It is never emphasised that Muslim rulers fought against each other as well. When Babar attacked India, he fought against Ibrahim Lodhi. In fact, he was supported by several Hindu rulers, including Rajputs.



It's an irony that Aurangzeb's struggle against Shivaji has been given a communal angle. Shivaji has been portrayed as champion of Hindu cause. This is a wrong depiction, considering the fact that Aurangzeb's confidant was Raja Jai Singh and Shivaji's trusted commander was Maulvi Haider Ali Khan. So, it was essentially a power struggle between Aurangzeb and Shivaji, not a fight for the defence of religion.



In 1659, Aurangzeb observed: "In these days information has reached our court that several people have out of spite and rancour harassed the Hindu residents of Benaras including a group of Brahmins who are incharge of ancient temples there. These people want to remove those Brahmins from their charge of temple keeping, which has caused them considerable distress. Therefore upon receiving this order, you must see that nobody unlawfully disturbs the Brahmins or other Hindus, so that they might remain in their traditional place." (Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1991.)



We should realise that Aurangzeb was a kind emperor who was fighting for saving his empire from rebellions. His political struggle should not be given the communal colour. So, any attempt to distort his life - through history books or paintings - should not be allowed.

[Prem]

Aurnabjeb was so kind then why did Guru Teg Bahadur sacrificed himself for the sake of Dharma ?
Who has more crdibility, Guru's words or jalim Aurangjeb and his admirers?

[Rye]

Jamal Ansari wrote:

e should realise that Aurangzeb was a kind emperor who was fighting for saving his empire from rebellions. His political struggle should not be given the communal colour. So, any attempt to distort his life - through history books or paintings - should not be allowed.

This islamist is another "moderate Indian Muslim" who wants to defend the murderous ways of islamism by defending Aurangazeb.

AMU is supposed to be "another moderate muslim" institution, but clearly consists of closet jihadis in the administration like this Jamal ansari.

This love for Aurangazeb should be a litmus test for Indian muslim support for islamic murders of hindus and destruction of hindu temples -- such Indian muslims clearly believe that killing of hindus is okay, as is the destruction of the temples....else they would not be claiming that the truth about Aurangazeb must not be revealed to the Indian public at large.

[SureshP]

I dont normally post here. If posted before my apologies

SIMI: A Bend in the Road
PRAVEEN SWAMI

"Islam is our nation," thundered Mohammad Amir Shakeel Ahmad at the Students Islamic Movement of India’s (SIMI’s) 1999 convention in Aurangabad, "not India."

Ahmad was one of hundreds of SIMI cadre who, at that decisive meeting of the now-proscribed Islamist group, joined in the terrorist networks which have since carried out strikes across India. He was arrested in 2005 for smuggling in military-grade explosives and assault rifles for a planned series of attacks in Gujarat, along with over a dozen other SIMI-linked Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) operatives.

Listening in the audience that day in 1999, was a slight, soft-spoken man who was moved enough by the speech to give his life for SIMI. Mohammad Abrar Qasim, then a Wardha-based student of dentistry, had been recruited into SIMI in 1993, after attending his first meeting at the Jamia Masjid mosque in Mominpora — the Mumbai slum where the first Lashkar networks in India had formed.

Six years later, fired by what he heard at the Aurangabad conference, Qasim became a full-time SIMI worker, using his earnings as a dentist to serve as its Nagpur ‘in-charge’ and then its Bihar ‘chief’. He even married Amara Qasim, the daughter of Ziauddin Siddiqi — the SIMI leader whose inflammatory speeches led to criminal charges first being filed against the organisation.

But somewhere along the line, the stories of Ahmad and Qasim diverged. Last month, Qasim walked into a Nagpur court, and announced that he wished to surrender to the authorities. Startled court clerks listened as Qasim announced that he had been wanted by the Maharashtra Police ever since the Mumbai serial bombings of July 11, 2006, but now wished to clear his name.

In the weeks since he surrendered, Qasim has been telling officials that SIMI’s links with terror are the work of a hardline minority. Most of SIMI’s rank-and-file, he claims, wish to emerge from the shadows. "Moderates in SIMI want to come overground," Qasim told one Police official who interrogated him, "because we have nothing to hide."

Back in January 2006, former SIMI president Shahid Badr Falahi called a meeting of core SIMI activists — Qasim among them — at Aluva, Kerala.

Under the cover of a summit of the National Urdu Promotion Council, the group elected new office-bearers, who it tasked with lobbying politicians and religious leaders to have the 2001 ban on SIMI revoked. Most of the team led by the new SIMI President, West Bengal resident Mohammad Misbah-ul-Haq, were anti-jihad political Islamists. Key office-bearers, such as Kalim Akhtar, Shahbaz Husain, Abdul Majid, Noman Badr, Saif Nachan and Minaz Nachan, believed that SIMI’s jihad links had hurt both the organisation and Muslims as whole.

But one team member didn’t share their beliefs. Shibly Peedical Abdul, a computer engineer from Kerala, who escaped the February 2008 Police sweep against terror suspects in Karnataka, was among the jihadist SIMI operatives thought to have helped organise the July 2006 serial bombing of Mumbai. The bombings killed 209 people and injured 704. Abdul fled Bangalore hours after the arrest of SIMI operative Ehtesham Siddiqui, who police say helped execute the bombings. So, too, did SIMI political Islamists.

It wasn’t until January 2007 that the political Islamists were able to meet again. A senior New Delhi-based Jamaat-e-Islami leader was in attendance this time, attempting to persuade the new leadership to surrender. "Misbah-ud-Din called Abdul in the middle of the meeting," one participant told SAIR, "and demanded to know why SIMI cadre had participated in the Mumbai attacks. Abdul admitted the jihadists had met in Ujjain just a week before the terror strikes. He said the jihadists would continue their activities, and accused us of selling out."

With no hope a compromise could be reached, SIMI political Islamists met again at Calicut in Kerala, from November 12-14, 2007. If SIMI was to ever function as a political organisation, Misbah-ud-Din said, its leaders would have to face prosecution. Qasim, fed up with life on the run, offered to go first. "The idea," says a senior SIMI functionary, "was to see if it would open some doors."

Will it? While one faction within SIMI is rethinking its future, so too are the terrorists. Abdul’s case — and that of the networks he commanded in Bangalore – is instructive.

If Bangalore needed a face to advertise the new India it represents, the city needn’t have looked beyond Abdul: now its most wanted terrorist. From small-town origins in Kerala, Abdul built a successful career at a multinational company and even set up his own firm.

But when police arrested Lashkar-linked Andhra Pradesh resident Raziuddin Nasir in January 2008 and Kerala-origin computer engineer Yahya Kamakutty in Febuary 2008 — key operatives, Police say, of a terror cell planning bombings in Goa, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mumbai — it has become evident he represented a very different kind of project to reinvent India.

Police in Bangalore began paying serious attention to the Abdul-led SIMI network after the 2006 Mumbai serial bombings. Siddiqui, who had served as SIMI’s Maharashtra general secretary, told police he had been in regular contact with three Bangalore residents. All three men, it transpired, were successful professionals — very different from stereotypical SIMI recruits. One of Siddiqi’s Bangalore contacts, computer technician Muzammil Ata-ur-Rehman Sheikh, is now being tried for his role in the serial bombings along with his brother, Faisal Sheikh. Siddiqui also named Kamakutty and Abdul.

Operating through SARANI, a religious front-organisation, Abdul had recruited over a dozen local men—the core of the cell discovered in February. Most of SARANI’s work was religious. In one e-mail to Kamakutty, Abdul demanded members observe the fajr namaaz, or dawn prayers. In another, he asked them to avoid debates with rival Islamists. Just how much the recruits knew about Abdul’s real agenda is unclear.

Behind the scenes, though, Abdul was preparing for war. In 2004, investigators later found, he delivered at least one consignment of weapons in preparation for terror strikes. Rashid Husain, a Bihar-based SIMI activist who also had links to the Jammu and Kashmir-based Islamist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani, is thought to have organised the operation. Later, Abdul is believed to have participated a conclave of SIMI members at Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh from July 4-7, 2006, where plans to revitalise the jihad in India were discussed. Several members of the cell which executed the Mumbai serial bombings later that year participated. Abdul also set up Fatah Business Solutions, a firm suspected to have laundered terror funds.

Soon after Siddiqui’s arrest, though, Abdul disappeared. Police now had to make a difficult call. Although Kamakutty had long been known to be involved with SIMI’s terror cells—notably having worked with Muhammad Faisal Khan, who helped organise the 2003 serial bombings in Mumbai — he was left untouched, in the hope that he would lead the Police to Abdul. After Nasir’s arrest in February 2008, though, Yahya was finally held. Of Abdul, however, there is still no trace. Nor have at least two dozen men thought to have attended the Islamist groups they founded, been located.

Nasir’s plans were at an early stage — he possessed only crude pistols and some low-grade explosive — but others may be further down the road to a strike.

SIMI’s political Islamists and terrorists seem, then, to be running on parallel tracks — racing, as it were, to shape the outcome of the most successful contemporary mobilisation of the Muslim ultra-right in India. Who is likely to win?

In some senses, the political Islamists are fighting against the tide of history. Like many other south Asian Islamist movements, SIMI’s genesis lies in the Jamaat-e-Islami. Established in 1941 by the influential Islamist ideologue Syed Abu Ala Maududi, the Jamaat-e-Islami went on to emerge as a major political party in Pakistan, fighting for the creation of a Shariah-governed state.

In India, however, the Jamaat gradually transformed itself into a cultural organisation committed to propagating neoconservative Islam amongst Muslims. It set up networks of schools and study circles, devoted to combating the growing post-independence influence of communism and socialism. A student wing, the Students’ Islamic Organisation (SIO), was set up in 1956, with its headquarters at Aligarh. As Muslims in north India were battered by communal violence the Jamaat slowly moved away from Maududi’s hostility to secularism. It began arguing that the secular state needed to be defended, as the sole alternative was a Hindu-communalist state — an argument still made by Jamaat leaders in areas like northern Kerala.

SIMI was formed in April, 1977, as an effort to revitalise the SIO. Building on the SIO networks in Uttar Pradesh, SIMI reached out to Jamaat-linked Muslim students’ groups in Andhra Pradesh, Bengal, Bihar and Kerala. From the outset, SIMI made clear its belief that the practice of Islam was essentially a political project. In the long term, SIMI sought to re-establish the caliphate, without which it felt the practice of Islam would remain incomplete. Muslims who were comfortable living in secular societies, its pamphlets warned, were headed to hell.

Winds from the west gave this ideology an increasingly hard edge. Its leadership was drawn to the Islamist regime of General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq’s in Pakistan. SIMI threw its weight behind the United States-backed mujahideen fighting the Soviet Union and the socialist regime in Afghanistan, and the forces of Sunni reaction in west Asia. "SIMI’s rhetoric," the scholar Yoginder Sikand has recorded, "grew combative and vitriolic, insisting that Islam alone was the solution to the problems of not just the Muslims of India, but of all Indians and, indeed, of the whole world."

Alarmed at this course of developments, elements of the Jamaat leadership sought to distance themselves from SIMI. Others in the Jamaat, incensed at what they saw as the organisation’s betrayal of Maududi’s authentic Islamism, resisted the moderates. In 1982, a compromise was brokered: the Jamaat formally distanced itself from SIMI, but both organisations, in practice, retained a cordial relationship.

Part of the reason for SIMI’s spectacular growth after 1982 lay in the support it gained from Islamists in west Asia, notably the Kuwait-based World Association of Muslim Youth and the Saudi Arabia-funded International Islamic Federation of Student Organisations. Generous funding from west Asia helped it establish a welter of magazines – Islamic Movement in Urdu, Hindi and English, Iqra in Gujarati, Rupantar in Bengali, Sedi Malar in Tamil and Vivekam in Malayalam – that propagated the idea of an Islamic revolution. SIMI also set up a special wing, the Tehreek Tulba e-Arabiya [Movement of Students of Arabic], to build networks among madrassa students, as well as the Shaheen Force, which targeted children

Much of SIMI’s time was spent on persuading its recruits that Islam alone offered solutions to the challenges of the modern life. In 1982, for example, it organised an anti-immorality week, where supposedly obscene literature was burned. A year later, in an effort to compete with the left in Kerala, SIMI held an anti-capitalism week – but held out Islam, rather than socialism, as the solution. SIMI also worked extensively with victims of communal violence, and provided educational services for poor Muslims.

SIMI’s polemic appealed to the growing class of lower-middle class and middle-class urban men who felt cheated of their share of the rising economic opportunities opening up in India. Hit by communal bias and educational backwardness, this class of disenfranchised youth were drawn to SIMI’s attacks on Hindu polytheism and western decadence. The organisation’s claims that there could be justice for Muslims only in a Shariah-based order resonated with communities battered by decades of communal violence, often backed by the Indian state. As Sikand has perceptively noted, the organisation provided "its supporters a sense of power and agency which they were denied in their actual lives." By 2001, SIMI had over 400 Ansar, or full-time workers, and 20,000 Ikhwan, or volunteers.

Towards the end of 1991, SIMI began its turn towards terror — an event precipitated by the Ram Janambhoomi movement, but one for which the ideological foundations had long been laid. Soon after the tragic events of December 6, 1992, and the pogroms which followed it, SIMI president Falahi demanded that "Muslims organise themselves and stand up to defend the community." Another SIMI leader, Abdul Aziz Salafi, demanded action to show that Muslims "would now refuse to sit low."

What that meant in practice soon became evident. On the first anniversary of the demolition of the Babri Masjid, SIMI-linked LeT operatives Jalees Ansari, Mohammad Azam Ghauri, Abdul Karim ‘Tunda’ and Mohammad Tufail Husaini — the first in jail, the second dead, the third still missing, and the last now wanted for his possible role in the November 23, 2007, serial bombings in Uttar Pradesh — carried out a series of reprisal terror strikes across India. Their organisation, the Mujahideen Islam e-Hind, is thought to have been a precursor to the Indian Mujahideen, which claimed responsibility for the November 23, 2007, attacks on Court premises across Uttar Pradesh.

Growing numbers of SIMI members followed in their footsteps, making their way to LeT, Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islami (HuJI) training camps, but SIMI leaders continued to insist their organisation itself had nothing to do with terrorism. Its polemics, however, became increasingly bitter. In a 1996 statement, SIMI declared that since democracy and secularism had failed to protect Muslims, the sole option was to struggle for the caliphate. Soon after, SIMI posters called on Muslims to follow the path of the eleventh-century conqueror Mahmood Ghaznavi, and appealed to God to send down a latter-day avatar to avenge the destruction of mosques in India.

By the time of SIMI’s 1999 Aurangabad convention, the ground-level manifestations of this ugly polemic were only too evident. Many of the speeches delivered by delegates were frankly inflammatory. Among those listening to the speech was 1993 bomber Azam Ghauri who, by the accounts of some of those present, was offered the leadership of SIMI.

When 25,000 SIMI delegates met in Mumbai in 2001, at what was to be its last public convention, the organisation, for the first time, called on its supporters to turn to jihad. Soon after the convention, al-Qaeda carried out its bombings of New York and Washington, D.C. SIMI activists organised demonstrations in support of al-Qaeda chief Osama bin-Laden, hailing him as a "true mujahid," and celebrating the demolition of the Bamiyan Buddhas by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

Writing in 2001, in an article published just after the convention, the commentator Javed Anand recalled seeing stickers pasted "in large numbers in Muslim shops and homes, a thick red ‘NO’ splashed across the words DEMOCRACY, NATIONALISM, POLYTHEISM. ‘ONLY ALLAH!’ exclaims SIMI’s punch-line."

Despite SIMI’s proscription, the Bangalore arrests show, the terror networks founded at that time continue to thrive—and grow. It is, most likely, too late for the political Islamists to turn back the tide.

The writer is the Deputy Editor and Chief of Bureau, Frontline, New Delhi.

http://www.kashmirherald.com/main.php?t=OP&st=D&no=367

[Rye]

Praveen Swami article on the difference betwen Indian and Pakistani J-e-I.

In some senses, the political Islamists are fighting against the tide of history. Like many other south Asian Islamist movements, SIMI’s genesis lies in the Jamaat-e-Islami. Established in 1941 by the influential Islamist ideologue Syed Abu Ala Maududi, the Jamaat-e-Islami went on to emerge as a major political party in Pakistan, fighting for the creation of a Shariah-governed state.

In India, however, the Jamaat gradually transformed itself into a cultural organisation committed to propagating neoconservative Islam amongst Muslims. It set up networks of schools and study circles, devoted to combating the growing post-independence influence of communism and socialism. A student wing, the Students’ Islamic Organisation (SIO), was set up in 1956, with its headquarters at Aligarh. As Muslims in north India were battered by communal violence the Jamaat slowly moved away from Maududi’s hostility to secularism. It began arguing that the secular state needed to be defended, as the sole alternative was a Hindu-communalist state — an argument still made by Jamaat leaders in areas like northern Kerala.

So the J-e-I in India only moved to secularism as a tactic to create a dhimmi political center and ensure that Hindus never gain political power?

Part of the reason for SIMI’s spectacular growth after 1982 lay in the support it gained from Islamists in west Asia, notably the Kuwait-based World Association of Muslim Youth and the Saudi Arabia-funded International Islamic Federation of Student Organisations. Generous funding from west Asia helped it establish a welter of magazines – Islamic Movement in Urdu, Hindi and English, Iqra in Gujarati, Rupantar in Bengali, Sedi Malar in Tamil and Vivekam in Malayalam – that propagated the idea of an Islamic revolution. SIMI also set up a special wing, the Tehreek Tulba e-Arabiya [Movement of Students of Arabic], to build networks among madrassa students, as well as the Shaheen Force, which targeted children

[pradeepe]

Denied entry to Kolkata, Taslima heads abroad

[derkonig]

Any bets on whether she would be allowed back in?
This is probably the opportunity the dhimmi UPA was looking for to bundle her out of the country.

[Rye]

link

There is a faction of the deobandis that is anti-jihad.

Power struggle threatens split in Jamiatul Ulema-e-Hind
Submitted by Tarique on Tue, 03/18/2008 - 04:49.

* Indian Muslim

By Faraz Ahmad, IANS

New Delhi : A seemingly ordinary family feud over wresting control of the Jamiatul Ulema-e- Hind (JUH), a 90-year-old Sunni Muslim organisation, may have larger implications.

Underlining the nasty spat between Arshad Madani, JUH president, and Mahmud Madani, his nephew and the organisation's general secretary, is a volatile debate over Islam and whether it condones terrorism.

"I can't say anything with certainty. All I can say is this is happening at a very inopportune moment. This could defeat the very purpose of the (Deoband) conference," Arshad said.

Last month a massive conference at Deoband ended with a strong condemnation of terrorism dubbing it un-Islamic.

Deoband, the country's leading seminary of Islam, has close links with the JUH. The JUH president is a leading scholar at Deoband and played a key role in delinking terrorism from Islam at the Deoband conference.

The JUH squabble is threatening to split the organisation. The warring Madanis are not willing to speak much on record. All that they are ready to say is that the JUH clash comes at an "inopportune time".

Mahmud points a finger at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and a known BJP supporter, whom the uncle has appointed on the JUH working committee, for "engineering the rift".

And Arshad believes the clash is aimed at belittling their anti-jehad campaign.

The differences between the two camps reached a flashpoint March 6 when the JUH working committee met in Masjid Abdul Nabi, a 350-year-old mosque in Delhi. At the top of the agenda was only one issue: the election of a new president.

"The first item on the agenda was a censure of the president," said Mahmud.

Arshad too confirmed this. "I was surprised to see the second item on the agenda was a no-confidence motion against the president and number three was to elect a new president."

He challenges the election. "Under the constitution, the working committee is not empowered to remove the president. As the president, I am empowered to appoint new members of the working committee," said Arshad.

Mahmud is not yielding to this argument. The 5,000-strong general body of the JUH has been summoned to decide this issue here March 26. And both sides are busy mobilising their respective supporters for the final showdown.

The JUH was formed in 1919 by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Maulana Kifayatullah, Maulana Hifzur Rahman and Maulana Asad Madani, all associated with the Congress party and the freedom struggle of India.

Arshad was nominated Jamiat president after the death of his elder brother Asad Madani, whose son Mahmud was nominated general secretary of the organization.

[ramana]

We need to understand the evolution of Indian Islam.

We have the Ajmeri school during the Delhi Sultanate era. We have the Deobandi school and the Aligarh school during the British Colonial period. While Aligarh was not a seminary in that it did not produce any mullahs it produced Western Suited and booted ones who hide their mullahness behind a Western veneer. They are the RAPE.

Right now we have a Western/UK view of that evolution. The Aligahr Movement died out as a factor with the collapse of the Khilafat movement in the mid 1920s.

The Deobandi movement split between those who stayed back in India and those who went over to TSP. Also we need to coin a new word for the Deobandi splitists who went over to TSP and have become Arabized. Some of them are still in India and have same attitude. There are minor movement like Ahl-e-Hadith in India which have their epynmous in the TSP.

Its incorrect to call them Deobandis for initially they might have been but they are as different from traditional Indian Deobandis as night and day.

Maybe we should call those radicalized/Arabized Deobandis as Maududdians.

[Rye]

http://www.outlookindia.com/pti_news.asp?id=554777

SIMI was planning serial blasts: Govt

NEW DELHI, MAR 18 (PTI)

Banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and its associates were planning to commit serial blasts and other serious offences in the country, the Lok Sabha was informed today.

"While there was no present input indicating any specific plans of SIMI to attack important installation, ...One arrested person disclosed that he along with his SIMI associates were planning to commit serial blasts and other serious offences," Minister of State for Home Sriprakash Jaiswal said in a written reply.

[indygill]

Here is the History of Jihad by Muslims against the non-Muslims. Hindus have suffered the longest continues Jihad in History. From 638 AD to 1857 AD. This should give us all some insight in the resort of Islamization and institution of Jiahd. Since these insitutions are once again becoming dominant and powerful one can easily conclude what lies ahead.


Jihad Against the

Arabs
622 – 634

Persians
634 – 651

Byzantines
634 – 1453

Hindus
638 – 1857

Egyptians
640 – 655

Berbers
650 – 700

Chinese
650 – 751

Turks
651 – 751

Spaniards
711 – 730

Franks
720 – 732

Reconquista
730 – 1492

Italians
812 – 940

Armenians & Georgians
1071 – 1920

Crusades
1096 – 1291

Mongols
1260 – 1300

Albanians
1332 – 1853

Serbs, Croats & Albanians
1334 – 1920

Romanians
1350 – 1699

Bulgarians
1350 – 1843

Croats &Slovenes
1389 – 1843

Poles
1444 – 1699

Russians
1444 – 1918

Greeks
1450 – 1853

Hungarians
1500 – 1683

Austrians
1500 – 1683

[Rye]

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fo ... simi&sid=1

Excellent Praveen Swami article.

A BEnd in the Road by Praveen Swami

"Islam is our nation," thundered Mohammad Amir Shakeel Ahmad at the Students Islamic
Movement of India's (SIMI's) 1999 convention in Aurangabad, "not India."

Ahmad was one of hundreds of SIMI cadre who, at that decisive meeting of the now-proscribed Islamist group, joined in the terrorist networks which have since carried out strikes across India. He was arrested in 2005 for smuggling in military-grade explosives and assault rifles for a planned series of attacks in Gujarat, along with over a dozen other SIMI-linked Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) operatives.

Listening in the audience that day in 1999, was a slight, soft-spoken man who was moved enough by the speech to give his life for SIMI. Mohammad Abrar Qasim, then a Wardha-based student of dentistry, had been recruited into SIMI in 1993, after attending his first meeting at the Jamia Masjid mosque in Mominpora -- the Mumbai slum where the first Lashkar networks in India had formed.

Six years later, fired by what he heard at the Aurangabad conference, Qasim became a full-time SIMI worker, using his earnings as a dentist to serve as its Nagpur 'in-charge' and then its Bihar 'chief'. He even married Amara Qasim, the daughter of Ziauddin Siddiqi -- the SIMI leader whose inflammatory speeches led to criminal charges first being filed against the organisation.

But somewhere along the line, the stories of Ahmad and Qasim diverged. Last month, Qasim walked into a Nagpur court, and announced that he wished to surrender to the authorities. Startled court clerks listened as Qasim announced that he had been wanted by the Maharashtra Police ever since the Mumbai serial bombings of July 11, 2006, but now wished to clear his name.

In the weeks since he surrendered, Qasim has been telling officials that SIMI's links with terror are the work of a hardline minority. Most of SIMI's rank-and-file, he claims, wish to emerge from the shadows. "Moderates in SIMI want to come overground," Qasim told one Police official who interrogated him, "because we have nothing to hide."

Back in January 2006, former SIMI president Shahid Badr Falahi called a meeting of core SIMI activists -- Qasim among them -- at Aluva, Kerala.

Under the cover of a summit of the National Urdu Promotion Council, the group elected new office-bearers, who it tasked with lobbying politicians and religious leaders to have the 2001 ban on SIMI revoked. Most of the team led by the new SIMI President, West Bengal resident Mohammad Misbah-ul-Haq, were anti-jihad political Islamists. Key office-bearers, such as Kalim Akhtar, Shahbaz Husain, Abdul Majid, Noman Badr, Saif Nachan and Minaz Nachan, believed that SIMI's jihad links had hurt both the organisation and Muslims as whole.

But one team member didn't share their beliefs. Shibly Peedical Abdul, a computer engineer from Kerala, who escaped the February 2008 Police sweep against terror suspects in Karnataka, was among the jihadist SIMI operatives thought to have helped organise the July 2006 serial bombing of Mumbai. The bombings killed 209 people and injured 704. Abdul fled Bangalore hours after the arrest of SIMI operative Ehtesham Siddiqui, who police say helped execute the bombings. So, too, did SIMI political Islamists.

It wasn't until January 2007 that the political Islamists were able to meet again. A senior New Delhi-based Jamaat-e-Islami leader was in attendance this time, attempting to persuade the new leadership to surrender. "Misbah-ud-Din called Abdul in the middle of the meeting," one participant told SAIR, "and demanded to know why SIMI cadre had participated in the Mumbai attacks.

Operating through SARANI, a religious front-organisation, Abdul had recruited over a dozen local men--the core of the cell discovered in February. Most of SARANI's work was religious. In one e-mail to Kamakutty, Abdul demanded members observe the fajr namaaz, or dawn prayers. In another, he asked them to avoid debates with rival Islamists. Just how much the recruits knew about Abdul's real agenda is unclear.

Behind the scenes, though, Abdul was preparing for war. In 2004, investigators later found, he delivered at least one consignment of weapons in preparation for terror strikes. Rashid Husain, a Bihar-based SIMI activist who also had links to the Jammu and Kashmir-based Islamist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani, is thought to have organised the operation. Later, Abdul is believed to have participated a conclave of SIMI members at Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh from July 4-7, 2006, where plans to revitalise the jihad in India were discussed. Several members of the cell which executed the Mumbai serial bombings later that year participated. Abdul also set up Fatah Business Solutions, a firm suspected to have laundered terror funds.

Soon after Siddiqui's arrest, though, Abdul disappeared. Police now had to make a difficult call. Although Kamakutty had long been known to be involved with SIMI's terror cells--notably having worked with Muhammad Faisal Khan, who helped organise the 2003 serial bombings in Mumbai -- he was left untouched, in the hope that he would lead the Police to Abdul. After Nasir's arrest in February 2008, though, Yahya was finally held. Of Abdul, however, there is still no trace.

[indygill]

Does anyone know about this one? I totally missed it.

It is interesting to note that neo-Hindu converts (still retaining their Hindu names) involvements in acts of jihad. It is not new. There were some arrests of Jihadis with Hindu names in England also (if i am not mistakened)

>>>
To refresh our memory, some months back in 2006, a terror plot that took Canadians by surprise involved the storming of Canada's parliament to behead officials, including the prime minister Stephen Harper. The demands of the terrorist were that Muslim prisoners in Canada and Afghanistan were to be released immediately.

Steven Vikash Chand, a 25-year-old restaurant worker from Toronto is a convert to Islam. He was one of 17 suspects in the case had plotted to take over media outlets such as the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.
>>>>

http://www.historyofjihad.com/canada.html