Noordin Mohammed Top (born August 11, 1968) aka Noordin Mohammad Top is one of the most wanted men in Asia.Born in Kluang Johor, Malaysia, he is thought to have been a key bomb maker and/or financier for Jemaah Islamiya (JI) and to have now left JI and set up a splinter group. Top was reported by the United States Department of Justice’s FBI to be “an explosives expert.” The FBI also has reported him to be “an officer, recruiter, bombmaker, and trainer for the Jemaah Islamiah (JI) group.”
Noordin and Azahari Husin were thought to have masterminded the 2002 Bali bombing, the 2003 JW Marriott hotel bombing in Jakarta, the 2004 Jakarta embassy bombing and the 2005 Bali bombings.Noordin, nicknamed the “Moneyman”, was an indoctrinator who was good in recruiting militants into becoming suicide bombers and collecting funds for militant activities.
Having long since been wanted by Malaysian and Indonesian authorities, in 2006, he also became listed on the FBI’s third major “wanted” list, the FBI Seeking Information – War on Terrorism list.His aliases, as reported by the FBI, include: Noordin Muh Top, Noordin Mat Top, and Noordin Din Moch Top.[1]Officials believe the former accountant has orchestrated a series of attacks across Indonesia.Noordin was thought to be a key recruiter and financier for regional Islamist militant group, Jemaah Islamiah, but analysts say he has now formed his own militant group.
The Indonesian government has managed to stifle militant strikes since September 2005 – the second major attack on Bali, which left 23 dead.The man thought to have been Noordin’s closest ally, Malaysian bomb-maker Azahari Husin, was killed in 2005.Two self-proclaimed JI leaders were then jailed in April 2008 and three Bali bombers were executed in November that year.[2]
***
FBI also considered him to be the most wanted terrorist. Here’s a data from FBI’s website about Noordin Top
DESCRIPTION
Date of Birth Used: August 11, 1968 Hair: UnknownA
Place of Birth: Johor, Malaysia Eyes: Unknown
Height: Unknown Sex: Male
Weight: Unknown Complexion: Unknown
Remarks: Top is reported to be an explosives expert. Additionally, he may wear glasses and have facial hair.
DETAILS
Noordin Mohammad Top is reportedly an officer, recruiter, bombmaker, and trainer for the Jemaah Islamiah (JI) group that was involved in the bombings of a Bali nightclub, a Jakarta hotel, and the Australian Embassy in Indonesia between 2002 and 2004.[3]
–
Note:
[1] Wikipedia.org
[2] BBCNews.com
[3] FBI.gov
Friday, July 31, 2009
NOORDIN M TOP PROFILE AND BIOGRAPHY
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Statement Of Noordin M Top (Terorist From Malaysia) II
KETERANGAN RESMI DARI TANDZIM AL QO'IDAH INDONESIA
ATAS AMALIYAT JIHADIYAH ISTISYHADIYAH
DI HOTEL RIZT CALRTON JAKARTA
Ini adalah keterangan resmi dari Tandzim Al Qo'idah Indonesia untuk ummat Islam dengan Amaliyat Jihadiyah Istisyhadiyah di Hotel Rizt Calrton Jakarta, pada hari Jum'at pagi, tanggal 17 juli 2009 M./24 Rojab 1430 H. yang dilakukan oleh salah satu ikhwah mujahidin terhadap antek-antek Amerika yang berkunjung di Hotel tersebut.
Sesungguhnya Allah menganugerahkan kepada kami jalan untuk menyerang Hotel termegah yang dimiliki oleh Amerika di Ibukota Indonesia di Jakarta, yaitu Rizt Calrton. Yang mana penjagaan dan pengamanan di sana sungguh sangatlah ketat untuk dapat melakukan serangan seperti yang kami lakukan pada kali ini.
"Mereka membuat Makar dan Allah pun membuat Makar. Dan Allah itu Maha Pembuat Makar". (QS. Ali Imron : 54).
Adapun sasaran yang kami inginkan dari amaliyat ini adalah :
1. Sebagai Qishoh (pembalasan yang setimpal) atas perbuatan yang dilakukan oleh Amerika dan antek-anteknya terhadap saudara kami kaum muslimin dan mujahidin di penjuru dunia
2. Menghancurkan kekuatan mereka di negeri ini, yang mana mereka adalan pencuri dan perampok barang-barang berharga kaum muslimin di negeri ini
3. Mengeluarkan mereka dari negeri-negeri kaum muslimin. Terutama dari negeri Indonesia
4. Menjadi pelajaran buat ummat Islam akan hakikat Wala' (Loyalitas) dan Baro' (Permusuhan), terkhusus menghadapi datangnya Klub Bola MANCESTER UNITED (MU) ke Hotel tersebut. Para pemain itu terdiri dari para salibis. Maka tidak pantas ummat ini memberikan Wala'nya dan penghormatannya kepada musuh-musuh Allah ini
5. Amaliyat Istisyhadiyah ini sebagai penyejuk dan obat hati buat kaum muslimin yang terdholimi dan tersiksa di seluruh penjuru dunia
Yang terakhir ….. bahwasanya Amaliyat Jihadiyah ini akan menjadi pendorong semangat untuk ummat ini dan untuk menghidupkan kewajiban Jihad yang menjadi satu-satunya jalan untuk menegakkan Khilafah Rosyidah yang telah lalu, bi idznillah.
Dan kami beri nama Amaliyat Jihadiyah ini dengan : "SARIYAH JABIR"
Amir Tandzim Al Qo'idah Indonesia
Abu Mu'awwidz Nur Din bin Muhammad Top
Hafidzohullah
From : http://mediaislam-bushro.blogspot.com/
Statement of Noordin M Top (Terorist From Malaysia)
KETERANGAN RESMI TANDZIM AL QO'IDAH INDONESIA
ATAS AMALIYAT JIHADIYAH ISTISYHADIYAH
DI HOTEL JW. MARRIOT JAKARTA
Ini adalah keterangan resmi dari Tandzim Al Qo'idah Indonesia untuk ummat Islam dengan Amaliyat Jihadiyah Istisyhadiyah di Hotel JW. MARRIOT Jakarta, pada hari Jum'at pagi, tanggal 17 juli 2009 M./24 Rojab 1430 H. yang dilakukan oleh salah satu ikhwah mujahidin terhadap "KADIN Amerika" di Hotel tersebut.
Sesungguhnya telah sempurna pelaksanaan Amaliyat Istisyhadiyah dengan karunia Allah dan karomah-Nya setelah melakukan survey yang serius dan pengintaian yang mendalam terhadap orang-orang kafir sebelumnya.
Dan sungguh benar firman Allah :
"Maka (yang sebenarnya) bukan kamu yang membunuh mereka, akan tetapi Allahlah yang membunuh mereka, dan bukan kamu yang melempar ketika kamu melempar, tetapi Allah-lah yang melempar. (Allah berbuat demikian untuk membinasakan mereka) dan untuk memberi kemenangan kepada orang-orang mukmin, dengan kemenangan yang baik. Sesungguhnya Allah Maha mendengar lagi Maha mengetahui". (QS. Al Anfal : 17).
Ini juga sesuai dengan firman Allah Ta'ala :
"Perangilah mereka, niscaya Allah akan menghancurkan mereka dengan (perantaraan) tangan-tanganmu dan Allah akan menghinakan mereka dan menolong kamu terhadap mereka, serta melegakan hati orang-orang yang beriman". (QS. Attaubah : 14).
Agar ummat ini mengetahui bahwasanya Amerika, khususnya orang-orang yang yang berkumpul dalam majlis itu, mereka adalah para Pentolan Bisnisman dan Inteljen di dalam bagian ekonomi Amerika. Dan mereka mempunyai kepentingan yang besar dalam mengeruk harta negeri Indonesia dan pembiyaan tentara kafir (Amerika) yang memerangi Islam dan kaum muslimin. Dan kami akan menyampaikan kabar gembira kepada kalian wahai ummat Islam, bi idznillahi Ta'ala dengan mengeluarkan cuplikan-cuplikan film dari Amaliyat Istisyhadiyah ini insya Allah.
Dan kami beri nama Amaliyat Istisyhadiyah ini dengan : "SARIYAH DR. AZHARI".
Kami ber-Husnu Dhon kepada Allah bahwa Allah akan menolong kami dan menolong kaum muslimin dalam waktu dekat ini.
Amir Tandzim Al Qo'idah Indonesia
Abu Muawwidz Nur Din bin Muhammad Top
Hafidzohullah
From : http://mediaislam-bushro.blogspot.com/
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Where is Osama Bin Laden? An analysis
By Robert Windrem, NBC News Producer
It isn’t a comforting assessment.
A "Western military analyst" was asked earlier this month about reports that Osama Bin Laden was seen on the slopes of K2, the world’s second highest mountain on the Pakistan-China border, or in the Khost Province of Afghanistan.
His response was stunning in both its honesty and its frustration.
"We don't have a clue where he is or even may be,” the Western analyst said. “We have had NO credible intelligence on OBL since 2001. All the rest is rumor and rubbish either whipped up by the media or churned out in the power corridors of western capitals." In fact, say U.S. officials, the last time U.S. operatives saw Osama Bin Laden--other than in his own videos--was in the famous Predator video shot in August 2000 where he is seen walking with a security contingent near his compound at Tarnak Farms in eastern Afghanistan. The Predators had not been armed yet.
The last time the U.S. heard Osama Bin Laden was at the battle for Tora Bora, when an NSA operative overheard him giving orders on a frequency not normally monitored and not recorded. There were some initial concerns about the identification but the agency later learned from other sources and materials that indeed that had been him.
But that unfortunately is it.
There have been suggestions Bin Laden was wounded, and some speculation he has died. One piece of evidence that suggested he had been hurt was the long interval between videotaped messages from him, but those were a long time ago. A tape released around Christmas 2001--and thus after the Tora Bora battle--was later determined (through time references in the tape) to have been made about November 17, 2001. After that, there were no contemporaneous videos until the October 29, 2004, tape, the infamous one released just before the U.S. presidential election. (Don’t be surprised if he does that again; al-Qaida is very cognizant of election dates.)
Still, the US is confident about some aspects of Bin Laden’s life on the run, drawn from interrogations of other high value targets as well as notebooks and computer hard drives captured with al Qaeda officials or found after they were killed.
Where does he live?
Not in caves. The general belief, gleaned from interrogations of his compatriots, is that Bin Laden lives in one of the many mud-walled compounds that can be found along the border with Pakistan and Afghanistan. If you fly in a chopper, you will see them--large multi-walled buildings that are continually expanded. The largest ones are those of the clan leaders.
How often does he move?
Bin Laden is NOT believed to move that often, either. He does not normally change locations every night or even very frequently. He is believed to stay long periods of time--months in some instances--in one place. In some cases, al-Qaida security personnel have married into local tribes and clans, making them part of the extended family and giving Bin Laden and others additional protection. When he does move, it is not with a large convoy of trucks. (He used to be driven around in a white Mitsubishi Pajero, accompanied by white Toyota Tundras, but those days are long gone.) The latest information--and it is not current--is that he moves on motorbikes. One reason is that cars and trucks can be spotted by the roving “J-Stars” aircraft. Motorbikes cannot be as easily seen. According to Pakistani officials, Bin Laden and other al-Qaida officials move mostly late at night. In the hours after the sunset prayers, they will move into a village and take over a guesthouse in a large compound.
How is his health?
As for his health, he is 50 years old, turning 51 (according to the best estimates) in July. He does NOT have kidney failure and does NOT need dialysis. He has had kidney stones. He is also seen as somewhat of a hypochondriac. He is missing a toe, lost in a battle against the Soviets. He reportedly has an enlarged heart and chronically low blood pressure, which he treats with drugs. There is even some dispute over his height. Is he tall? Yes. Is he 6’5”? Maybe not. As one intelligence official told me, “If you see a guy who is 6’4” tall and looks like him, kill him.”
Who are his bodyguards?
His security personnel are directed by his brother-in-law and believed to include Chechen and Uzbeks as well as Arabs. And yes, there are reports that if he is about to be captured, his bodyguards have orders to “martyr” him. However, the default position of U.S. forces has always been to kill him, not capture him. Don’t expect heroic efforts to save him, as in the case of Abu Musab al Zarqawi. The same holds true for Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Bin Laden’s deputy. The U.S. has Bin Laden’s DNA, which the Saudis provided. It’s always helpful when you have 52 siblings.
How important is he now?
The U.S. believes that OBL is more of a titular, inspirational leader, with Zawahiri as CEO and the leading philosopher. There has been some tension, the U.S. believes, between their Saudi and Egyptian underlings. The Egyptians are in charge, but virtually every counter-terrorism official we talk to notes that North Africans, particularly Libyans, are rising within what they call al-Qaida Central.
Do Bin Laden and Zawahiri travel together?
OBL and Zawahiri have not traveled together since mid 2003, for security reasons. Although the U.S. does not have a clue where OBL is, they have been able to track and target Zawahiri multiple times, by his own accounts. The most recent targeting was January 13, 2006, in Damodola in Pakistan. The U.S. fired volleys of Hellfire missiles at two guesthouses, but Zawahiri had already left. U.S. and Pakistani officials have told us that they believe he was tipped off. Zawahiri himself has admitted he was there.
Who is the next most important leader?
The U.S. has deliberately put a high priority on taking out al-Qaida’s Number Threes, killing or capturing five of them since September 11. They are the directors of international operations, the men who would organize attacks against the United States and United Kingdom. The big prize in each takedown are the computer hard drives, phonebooks and notebooks. To maintain operational security, al-Qaida requires that new courier and computer networks be formed. This obviously slows down planning. Moreover, the U.S. believes such takedowns are one of the few things that can push OBL’s security team to pick up and move. The hope is that U.S. spy planes see some of that movement.
Al Qaida’s current No. 3 is Sayed Sheikh, an Egyptian confidante of Zawahari.
Editor's note: NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams reports from Afghanistan this week to report on the region.
From : http://deepbackground.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/06/13/1138296
MAS SELAMAT KASTARI
Mas Selamat bin Kastari (born 23 January 1961), an Indonesian-born Singaporean, is Singapore's most-wanted fugitive who escaped from detention on 27 February 2008. The search for him has been described as the largest manhunt ever launched in Singapore.[2] He was eventually recaptured in Johor Bahru, Malaysia on April 1, 2009, over a year after his escape.[3]
Mas Selamat was allegedly the head of the Singapore branch of militant group Jemaah Islamiah (JI), and he had previously escaped custody twice in Indonesia. Singapore authorities have alleged that he planned to crash seven bomb-filled trucks at various locations around the city-state.[4] In January 2006, Mas Selamat was arrested by Indonesian anti-terror squads in Java and deported to Singapore. He was suspected of plotting to bomb Singapore Changi Airport in 2002,[5] and, according to the Singapore Police Force, he had initially planned to do so by crashing a plane into the airport.[4] However, Mas Selamat has never been formally charged with any terrorism-related offences[1]; instead, he was detained under the country's Internal Security Act, which allows indefinite detention without trial.[6]
Childhood
Born on 23 January 1961, in Kendal, Central Java, Mas Selamat grew up in Kaki Bukit leading a typical childhood kampung life. He attended the Kaki Bukit Primary School, and was known simply as "Selamat" to his neighbors. In the early 1980s, Mas Selamat moved to a flat in Bedok Reservoir and became married with five children.[7][8][9]
Involvement with JI
Mas Selamat was believed to begin his involvement in the 1990s when he joined Darul Islam, a precursor movement to the Jemaah Islamiah (JI) group. By 1992, he had joined the Singapore JI cell and was sent to Afghanistan for training a year later. In 1998, he studied the Taliban system of government and returned home 'deeply impressed'.[10]
According to Singapore intelligence authorities, Mas Selamat has met Hambali, the leader of JI, and discussed various terror plots including hijacking a plane from Bangkok and crashing it into Singapore Changi Airport.[11][12] He escaped from Singapore in 2001 before authorities conducted a massive operation to arrest 13 suspected JI members in December 2001.
Arrests
Mas Selamat had earlier been arrested in February 2003 in the island of Bintan, Indonesia, to assist Indonesian police in their investigations of several bombings in Indonesia in 2001 and 2002. Mas Selamat had changed his identity, assuming the name of Edy Heriyanto and obtained an Indonesian passport. Found in his possession was literature on making bombs and the virtue of suicide. He was jailed for 18 months in 2003 for immigration offences.[5] He was, however, not handed over to Singapore upon his release, since Indonesia and Singapore do not yet have an extradition treaty. During this period of imprisonment, he broke his left leg in a botched attempt to escape when he jumped from a high floor, resulting in him walking with a permanent limp.[7][10].On 20 January 2006, he was arrested again for using a fake identity card in Java, where he was visiting his son who was said to be studying at a religious school there. Singapore requested Mas Selamat's extradition and he was handed over to Singapore on February 3, 2006,[13] where he was detained in Singapore under the Internal Security Act without trial.[14] The Malaysian intelligence authorities also wanted to question Mas Selamat who had made frequent visits to Johor before fleeing to Indonesia.[5]
Escape in February 2008
At 4:05 pm on Wednesday, February 27, 2008, the JI leader escaped from the Internal Security Department's Whitley Road Detention Centre where he was being detained.[4][15] His family were visiting him at the time, and he was being led to a room to meet them when he asked to go to the toilet. He then fled.[16][17] A massive manhunt comprising personnel from the Singapore Police Force, the Gurkha Contingent, the Police Tactical Unit and the Police National Service Key Installation Protection Unit were deployed in the vicinity of the area immediately after the escape. They were later aided by members of the Singapore Guards and the Singapore Armed Forces Military Police Command, before the operation was wound down over 17 hours later without success in locating the fugitive, who was believed to be unarmed.[18]
Authorities said security was very tight at the detention centre and conducted an independent study to determine how the fugitive escaped.[11] Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kan Seng acknowledged that a security lapse led to his escape, and that everything was being done to recapture Mas Selamat.[16][9] The Onraet Road facility has armed guards, high wire fences and CCTV cameras. Reactions to the escape were filled with surprise and disbelief in what Western observers describe as a country where "security breaches are virtually unheard of".[19][20] It brought serious embarrassment to the Singapore government,[21][22] and many questions raised by the public and the press.[21][22] Security around the schools in the area was also beefed up to assure worried parents.[23][24] Indonesia and Malaysia announced that they stepped up their own border security in the wake of this incident.[25][26]. Government authorities received more than 1100 calls on sightings of Mas Selamat. The earliest sighting of him was in a back road near MacRitchie Reservoir leading to Toa Payoh Lorong 1 right behind Braddell View Estates.
An urgent worldwide security alert, or Orange Notice, was issued by INTERPOL to each of its 186 National Central Bureaus following a request from Singapore.[27][28][29][11] The alert was later changed to red.[30] Wanted posters of Mas Selamat were put up in shopping centers, buses, train stations and even schools islandwide to appeal for the public to inform police should they spot him, and leaflets given out by volunteers to members of the public.[8] The three telecommunications companies in Singapore sent out Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) messages starting on 1 March 2008 to all 5.5 million subscribers with Mas Selamat's photograph, as well as email messages to SingNet Internet users.[31] The MMS read "Please call 999 immediately if you see Mas Selamat bin Kastari. He is short (1.58m tall) and limps on his left leg. Thank you." Lockdowns at border and immigration checkpoints also resulted in much longer queues for people leaving Singapore.There were conflicting reports on the whereabouts of Mas Selamat. While Singaporean police initially believed that he remained in Singapore,[32] others such as Malaysia's The Star reported that he may have fled to Indonesia via a speedboat ride.[20][33]On 21 July 2008, a cash reward of one million dollars was offered for information leading to the apprehension of Mas Selamat. The million dollar reward was put up by two private individuals who had approached the Home Affairs Ministry, wishing to remain anonymous. [34]
Public reaction
Response from certain sectors of the public has been sharply critical, particularly on the internet.[35][36] Agence France-Presse noted how "Terrorism is usually no laughing matter, especially not in security-conscious Singapore, but the escape from custody of a limping Islamist extremist suspect has led to scorn on the Internet."[21] Online critics also accused the pro-government media of trying to play down the incident and skirting key issues.[37] Speculations abound in the internet chatrooms and blogs, sometimes bordering on the incredulous. Some of them attributed the escape to black magic or insider collaboration. Claims of conspiracy theories, such as that Mas Selamat had died in detention or that he was let out to allow authorities to sniff out other terrorists, were also put up by the online community.[38]
Criticism has been directed towards Wong Kan Seng, the Minister of Home Affairs in Singapore, with regards to the fact that news of Mas Selamat's escape was not disseminated to the public until four hours after its occurrence. The public were not given any details until the next day at a parliamentary session. Wong then had cited a serious security lapse as the reason for the escape and revealed that Mas Selamat escaped when he was being taken to the toilet before a meeting at the Family Visit Room.[39]On 2 March 2008, it was announced that an independent Committee of Inquiry, chaired by former judge Goh Joon Seng, would be set up to find out how the escape occurred.
Findings of investigation
On 21 April 2008, the only findings of the Committee of Inquiry were released in a Parliament of Singapore session. It was announced that he escaped through an unsecured bathroom window. The Committee attributed the escape to three critical factors – first, the lack of grilles where the window was located; second, Mas Selamat being allowed to close the toilet door on the guards, thus avoiding detection during his escape and third, a physical weakness at the perimeter fencing outside the visitation centre.[40]
Additionally, the report stated that a re-enactment of the potential escape route would have taken 49 seconds to escape through the window and clear the perimeter fencing, with another 2 minutes and 44 seconds to reach the Pan Island Expressway located next to the detention centre. Mas Selamat had turned on the water tap after closing the toilet door and the guards on duty only acted on their suspicions 11 minutes after this incident. It is believed that Mas Selamat could have been gone for some time at that point.[41]It was later revealed that Mas Selamat had used an improvised flotation device to cross the Straits of Johor into Malaysia.[42]
On 7 August 2008, a man 'limping like' Mas Selamat was arrested by Indonesian police at Buluh Tumbang Airport in Tanjung Pandan, Belitung.[43]The man claimed to be an educational book salesman and not the Singapore fugitive person.[44] The man was later released.[45]On 8 May 2009, the media in Singapore reported that Mas Selamat had been captured by Malaysian authorities in Johor, Malaysia.[46] This report was later confirmed by both the Singapore and Malaysian governments, with the date of capture given as 1 April 2009.[47] Malaysian Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein confirmed that Mas Selamat is being held under the Internal Security Act, saying that he was "planning something, which allowed us to arrest him".[48] Hishammuddin declined to give details, since the case is sensitive as it involves intelligence agencies of Singapore, Indonesia as well as Malaysia.[48] Inspector-General of Malaysian Police Tan Sri Musa Hassan said that the arrest was made possible as the involved parties had been sharing intelligence reports since his escape.[49]
According to the media, Mas Selamat was captured in a secluded house in Skudai, 25 kilometres (16 mi) northwest of Johor Bahru.[49] Several people who had helped Mas Selamat to hide in the country were arrested along with him, and the news of the arrest was undisclosed for weeks to enable investigations into his network in Malaysia.[48]
References
1. ^ a b Agence France-Presse (2008-03-08). "Singapore should brace for attack if JI suspect flees island: Lee". http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hLa7OfclvB6XTxompK0tla4Wl--w. Retrieved on 2008-03-22.
2. ^ Mas Selamat can hold out indefinitely: experts, ST, 4 March 2008
3. ^ http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_373899.html
4. ^ a b c "JI detainee Mas Selamat Kastari escapes from Singapore detention centre". Channel NewsAsia. 27 February 2008. http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/331477/1/.html.
5. ^ a b c "Singapore JI suspect nabbed in Java". The Star (Malaysia). 6 February 2006. http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2006/2/6/nation/13220557&sec=nation.
6. ^ The Associated Press (2008-03-01). "Security forces comb forests and seas for Singapore's escaped terror suspect". International Herald Tribune. http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/03/01/asia/AS-GEN-Singapore-Terror-Suspect.php. Retrieved on 2008-03-22.
7. ^ a b "Kampung boy, bus mechanic, bomb maker, wanted terrorist", Nur Dianah Suhaimi, The Sunday Times, 2 March 2008
8. ^ a b Fugitive hunt goes global, Leong Wee Keat & Rosnah Ahmad, Today (Singapore newspaper), 1 March 2008
9. ^ a b Singapore widen hunt for inmate, Al Jazeera, 29 February 2008
10. ^ a b JI leader broke leg in Bintan jail break: terror expert, The Straits Times, 29 February 2008
11. ^ a b c Interpol issues global alert for Singapore terror fugitive, Associated Press (International Herald Tribune), 29 February 2008 (Also see CNN)
12. ^ Qaeda Suspect Escapes, The New York Times, 28 February 2008
13. ^ "Indonesia sends terror suspect to Singapore-police". Reuters. 6 February 2006. http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/KLR276937.htm.
14. ^ "JI terror suspect sent back to Singapore after arrest in Indonesia". Channel NewsAsia. 6 February 2006. http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/191865/1/.html.
15. ^ Massive manhunt for escaped JI terror leader, The Straits Times, 27 February 2008
16. ^ a b JI leader escaped from toilet in detention centre due to 'security lapse', Chong Chee Kin, The Straits Times, 28 February 2008
17. ^ Singapore: Terror suspect fled toilet, Associated Press (CNN), 28 February 2008
18. ^ Ministry of Home Affairs - Ministry of Home Affairs News Release on Mas Selamat bin Kastari
19. ^ Escape of JI leader: How can this happen in S'pore?, The Straits Times, 28 February 2008
20. ^ a b Escape makes headlines overseas, Mavis Toh, The Straits Times, 2 March 2008
21. ^ a b c Singapore gov't butt of jokes after prison escape, Agence France-Presse, 3 March 2008
22. ^ a b Dangers of a bunker mentality, P N Balji, Today (Singapore newspaper), 3 March 2008
23. ^ SCGS steps up checks, security, Lee Pei Qi & Teh Joo Lin, The Straits Times, 28 February 2008
24. ^ Where is Mas Selamat?, Alicia Wong & Rosnah Ahmad, Today (Singapore newspaper), 29 February 2008
25. ^ Indonesia joins hunt for S'pore terror fugitive, The Straits Times, 28 February 2008
26. ^ M'sian police tighten border security with S'pore, The Straits Times, 28 February 2008
27. ^ INTERPOL issues global alert for suspected terror leader following escape from Singapore jail, INTERPOL, 28 February 2008
28. ^ Interpol Alert Follows Suspect Escape, Gillian Wong, The Associated Press (The Washington Post), 29 February 2008
29. ^ Interpol issues alert for escaped JI militant, Reuters (The Age), 29 February 2008
30. ^ Mas Selamat acted alone, still in S'pore: police, ST, 2 Mar 2008
31. ^ The face that launched 5.5 million cellphone alerts, Ben Nadarajan, The Straits Times, 2 March 2008
32. ^ JI terrorist Mas Selamat still in S'pore: police, The Straits Times, 2 March 2008
33. ^ Mas Selamat is said to know islands well, Interpol issues worldwide alert, Eddie Chua, The Star (Malaysia), 1 March 2008
34. ^ Channelnewsasia.com
35. ^ Bloggers’ reaction to JI leader’s escape, The Online Citizen, 28 February 2008
36. ^ JI Terrorist Escapes, The Singapore Daily, 3 March 2008
37. ^ Singapore faces blogging ire over militant escape, Reuters, 6 March 2008
38. ^ "Mas Selamat wins in blame game", ST, 15 Mar 2008.
39. ^ Security lapse led to escape of JI leader Mas Selamat, says DPM Wong, Channelnewsasia.com, 28 Feb 2008.
40. ^ [1], ChannelNewsAsia, 21 April 2008
41. ^ [2],International Herald Tribune, 21 April 2008
42. ^ http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/427768/1/.html
43. ^ [3], DetikNews - Pria Mirip Kastari Diincar Sejak di Jakarta, 8 August 2008
44. ^ [4], DetikNews - Pria Mirip Teroris Mas Selamat Kastari Ditangkap di Belitung, 8 August 2008
45. ^ [5], DetikNews - Polda Babel Lepas Pria Mirip Kastari, 8 August 2008
46. ^ "Singapore's JI leader Mas Selamat reportedly arrested in Malaysia". Channel NewsAsia. 8 May 2009. http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/427691/1/.html.
47. ^ "Singapore government confirms arrest of Mas Selamat". Channel NewsAsia. 8 May 2009. http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/427768/1/.html.
48. ^ a b c "'We will ensure Mas Selamat does not escape'". The New Straits Times. 9 May 2009. http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Saturday/Frontpage/2552561/Article/index_html.
49. ^ a b "Caught while sleeping". The Straits Times. 9 May 2009. http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_374488.html.
Friday, February 27, 2009
The Ideologies of South Asian Jihadi Groups
by Husain Haqqani
ALTHOUGH AN OVERWHELMING majority of South Asian Muslims has practiced several variations of Sufi Islam over history, the region has been home to minority puritanical movements resisting “un-Islamic influences” or non-Muslim rule. Most jihadi movements in South Asia have grown out of these Islamic revivalist movements. In recent years, jihad has been used by the fragile Pakistani state to bolster its national identity against India. Pakistan’s crucial role as the staging ground for the anti-Soviet Jihad in Afghanistan created a nexus between Pakistan’s military and secret services, which was heightened by the state sponsorship of jihad against India in the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir. Several jihadi groups have emerged over the last two decades in Pakistan and Kashmir, occasionally spreading operations into parts of India. Some offshoots of radical Islamist movements in Bangladesh have also embraced jihadi ideology and rhetoric in recent years, increasing the prospect of militancy and terrorism in Bangladesh.
Sources of Islamism in South Asia
Until the decline of the Mughal Empire in the eighteenth century, Muslim rulers presided over South Asian kingdoms in which the majority of their subjects were Hindus. The exigencies of Muslim ascendancy in a non-Muslim environment demanded religious tolerance by the rulers and resulted in syncretism in the religion as practiced by local Muslims. Unlike in the Middle East, enforcement of Shariah in historic India was never complete. But Muslim ulema, muftis and qadis as well as laymen enjoyed a position of relative prestige as co-religionists of the rulers.
The rise of British rule, culminating in the formal addition of India to the British Empire after 1857, marked the end of the privileged position of Muslims. The Muslim community’s response to the gradual decline in Muslim political power came in the form of revivalist movements seeking to sharpen an Islamic identity. South Asia’s Islamist political movements trace their inspiration back to Shaykh Ahmed Sirhandi’s challenge in the sixteenth century to the ecumenism of Mughal emperor Akbar.
In the nineteenth century, the first jihadi group emerged in India and operated in the country’s northwest frontier, including parts of present-day Pakistan and Afghanistan. This puritanical militant movement fought the region’s Sikh rulers. The rise of British power simply changed the militants’ target. The movement’s founder, Sayyid Ahmed of Bareili, organized cells throughout India to supply the frontier movement with men and money. Calling themselves “mujahidin,” the movement’s followers interpreted the Islamic concept of jihad in its literal sense of holy war. Sayyid Ahmed of Bareili (not to be confused with Sir Sayyid Ahmed Khan, the reformer) had been influenced by the ideas of Muhammad ibn-Abdul Wahhab, to which he had been exposed during his pilgrimage to Mecca. He called for a return to early Islamic purity and the re-establishment of Muslim political power. Sayyid Ahmed’s revival of the ideology of jihad became the prototype for subsequent Islamic militant movements in South and Central Asia and is also the main influence over the jihad network of al-Qaeda and its associated groups in the region.
The influence of Sayyid Ahmed’s ideas and practices on South Asian Islamists is visible in recent jihad literature in Pakistan, which invariably draws parallels between British colonial rule in the nineteenth century and U.S. domination since the end of the twentieth. Unlike in Sayyid Ahmed’s time, today’s jihad battlefield is not limited to a single geographic area. Nor are the various mujahid cells dependent on handwritten messages delivered by couriers riding (and hiding) for thousands of miles. Modern communications facilitate jihad without frontiers. After all, the enemy is also global in reach. And despite the differences in technology, the nineteenth-century mujahidin remain the role model for today’s jihadis, who make up an international network aimed at waging holy war at a time when the majority of Muslims seek to synthesize their faith with modern living.
But the revivalist ideas of Shaykh Ahmed Sirhandi and the jihadi ideology of Sayyid Ahmed of Bareili alone do not explain the rise of modern jihadis. Even the large number of South Asian Muslims who embraced western learning under British rule were influenced by revivalist ideas to the extent of seeking a separate identity from South Asia’s Muslims, a process that was somewhat accelerated by the demand for and creation of Pakistan.
The emergence of Pakistan as an independent state in 1947 was the culmination of decades of debate and divisions among Muslims in British India about their collective future. The concept of a Muslim-majority Pakistan rested on the notion that India’s Muslims constituted a separate nation from non-Muslim Indians. Although the Islamists did not like the westernized leadership that sought Pakistan, and in some cases actively opposed the campaign for Pakistan, the lack of religious orthodoxy among Pakistan’s founders did not prevent them from seeking the revival of Islam’s lost glory in South Asia. In fact, the creation of a Muslim-majority state provided them with a better environment to pursue their ideas.
Soon after independence, Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly declared in 1949 that South Asian Muslims had created Pakistan for the principal objective of “ordering their lives in accordance with the teachings and requirements of Islam.” Prominent individuals within the government mooted proposals for adopting Arabic as the national language, and of changing the script of the Bengali language from its Sanskrit base to an Arabic-Persian one. The president of the ruling Muslim League announced that Pakistan would bring all Muslim countries together into “Islamistan”—a pan-Islamic entity. In 1949, the Pakistani government also sponsored the World Muslim Conference presided over by the Grand Mufti of Palestine, Amin al-Husseini, to promote Pan-Islamism. This conference led to the formation of the Motamar al-Alam al-Islami (Muslim World Congress), which has since played a crucial role in building up the feeling of Muslim victimization that has subsequently fed the global Islamist movement.
Since the creation of Pakistan, Islamist groups have been sponsored and supported by Pakistan’s state machinery at different times to influence domestic politics and shore up Pakistani national identity, which is periodically threatened by sub-national ethnic challenges. The Islamists have also helped support the Pakistani military’s political dominance. Islamists have been allies in the Pakistan military’s efforts to seek “strategic depth” in Afghanistan—a euphemism for Pakistan’s efforts to make Afghanistan a client state of Pakistan—and to put pressure on India for negotiations over the future of Kashmir, the Muslim majority Himalayan region that has been disputed by India and Pakistan since their partition.
Pakistan’s state institutions, notably national security institutions such as the military and the intelligence services, have played a leading role in building Pakistani national identity on the basis of religion since Pakistan’s emergence. This political commitment to an “ideological state” gradually evolved into a strategic commitment to the jihadi ideology, especially during and after the Bangladesh war of 1971. Then, the Pakistani military used the Islamist’s idiom and the help of Islamist groups to keep elected secular leaders supported by the majority Bengali-speaking population out of power. A Bengali rebellion and brutal suppression of the Bengalis by the military followed. In the 1971 war the country was bifurcated, leading to the birth of an independent Bangladesh.
In the original country’s western wing, the effort to create national cohesion between Pakistan’s disparate ethnic and linguistic groups through religion took on greater significance and its manifestations became more militant. Religious groups, both armed and unarmed, have become gradually more powerful as a result of this alliance between the mosque and the military. Radical and violent manifestations of Islamist ideology, which sometimes appear to threaten Pakistan’s stability, are in some ways a state project gone wrong.
Given Pakistan’s status as an ideological state, Islamic political groups of all kinds have proliferated in the country and several of them have received state patronage at one time or another. Others have operated independently or with the support of fellow Islamist groups outside the country. The organized jihadi movements that have been militarily active since the anti-Soviet Afghan Jihad can be classified into three groups. The first of these groups is centered on the Jamaat-e-Islami (Islamic Society) founded by Islamist scholar Maulana Abul Ala Maududi in 1941. The second group includes the Deobandi movements that arose from the austere interpretations of Islam emanating from the Deoband madrasa of Northern India, which was founded in 1867 to protect Muslims from being seduced by Western materialism. The third group of South Asian jihadis is Wahhabi, which is influenced by the doctrine of Muhammad ibn-Abdul Wahhab and almost invariably funded by Saudi Arabia.
Jamaat-e-Islami and its Jihadi Offshoots
The Jamaat-e-Islami is an Islamist party similar to the Arab Muslim Brotherhood, with which it has both ideological and organizational links. It has operated over the decades as a political party, a social welfare organization, a pan-Islamic network and the sponsor of militant groups fighting in Afghanistan and Kashmir. For years, Jamaat-e-Islami was the major recipient of Saudi assistance in Pakistan, until its current leadership failed to support the Kingdom in the 1991 Gulf War. Although relations between the Saudi government and Jamaat-e-Islami have since been repaired, the disagreement between them in the early 1990s led the Saudis to divert support from Jamaat-e-Islami to Deobandi and Wahhabi groups for a period, somewhat diminishing Jamaat-e-Islami’s status as the dominant Islamist group in South Asia.
The founder of Jamaat-e-Islami, Abul Ala Maududi (1903-1979), was a prolific writer. In his books and pamphlets, running into over one hundred in number including a six-volume commentary on the Quran, Maududi laid out an elaborate ideological vision. He argued that Islam was as much a political ideology as it is a religion and that the basic division in the world was between “Islam and un-Islam.” Maududi critiqued all un-Islamic ideologies, including socialism, communism, secularism and capitalism. He described the political system of Islam as “theo-democracy”—a system in which o.-cials would be elected but would be subject to divine laws interpreted by the theologically learned.
The Islamic ideology, according to Maududi, carried forward the mission of the Prophets, which he described as follows:
1. To revolutionize the intellectual and mental outlook of humanity and to instill the Islamic attitude towards life and morality to such an extent that their way of thinking, ideal of life, and standards of values and behavior become Islamic;
2. To regiment all such people who have accepted Islamic ideals and molded their lives after the Islamic pattern with a view to struggling for power and seizing it by the use of all available means and equipment;
3. To establish Islamic rule and organize the various aspect of social life on Islamic bases, to adopt such means as will widen the sphere of Islamic influence in the world, and to arrange for the moral and intellectual training, by contact and example, of all those people who enter the fold of Islam from time to time. Maududi also laid out a stage-by-stage strategy for Islamic revolution in his many speeches and writings. His first major book, Al-Jihad fil-Islam (Jihad in Islam), defined the various ways and means of struggle for the perfect Islamic state. In other books, Maududi described the social, economic and political principles of Islam.
The Jamaat-e-Islami adopted a cadre-based structure similar to that of communist parties. It built alliances with Islamist parties in other countries, recruited members through a network of schools and hoped to serve as the vanguard of a gradual Islamic revolution. Though the party’s call for Islamic revolution did not have mass appeal, its social service infrastructure helped create a well-knit, nation-wide organization within a few years of partition in 1947. After the creation of Pakistan, Jamaat-e-Islami divided its organization into two entities—one based in India, the other in Pakistan. The Indian branch refrained from directly participating in electoral politics, and focused instead on developing pious cadres for the eventual transformation of the region into an Islamic state. In Pakistan, Jamaat-e-Islami participated in elections with poor results until 2002, when it formed an alliance with other Islamist groups and won a significant share of seats in parliament and two provincial legislatures.
The Jamaat-e-Islami’s real opportunity in Pakistan lay in working with the new state’s elite, gradually expanding the Islamic agenda while providing the theological rationale for the Pakistani elite’s plans for nation building on the basis of religion. Jamaat-e-Islami’s cadres among students, trade unions and professional organizations, as well as its focus on building its own media, made it a natural ally for those within the government who thought that Pakistan’s survival as a state required a religious anchor.
The Jamaat-e-Islami’s first foray into military jihad came in 1971, when its cadres sided with the Pakistan army in opposing independence for Bangladesh. Jamaat-e-Islami members were organized in two militant groups, Al-Badr and Al-Shams, and were trained by the Pakistani army to carry out operations against Bangladesh nationalists seeking separation from Pakistan. In the initial years after Bangladesh’s independence, this role of the Jamaate-Islami prevented the movement from assuming an overt political role in Bangladesh, but the organization has since revived and is now part of the ruling coalition in Bangladesh. Although the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami is occasionally accused of using its muscle against political opponents, it operates within the country’s political system and appears to have opted against direct participation in military jihad. Other Bangladeshi Islamist groups including some offshoots of the Jamaat-e-Islami have been alleged to have developed links with global terrorist networks such as al-Qaeda.
The collaboration with the Pakistan army in what turned out to be a lost battle in what was then Eastern Pakistan helped Jamaat-e-Islami forge closer links with the Pakistani military and intelligence services. These links led to the organization’s close identi.cation with the Islamizing military regime of General Ziaul Haq (1977-1988). Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan was directly involved in supporting the Afghan mujahideen operating out of Pakistan, maintaining close ties with Gulbeddin Hikmatyar’s Hizbe Islami (Islamic Party) and Burhanuddin Rabbani’s Jamiat-e-Islami (Islamic Society). Both of these Afghan Jihadi groups adopted the ideological precepts of Pakistan’s Jamaate-Islami, which influenced Hikmatyar’s anti-Western bent during and after the anti-Soviet struggle.
During the period of the war against the Soviets, Jamaat-e-Islami was able to build a significant infrastructure, including madrasas, businesses and charities with the help of generous financial contributions from the governments and private individuals in the Gulf States. Jamaat-e-Islami played host to many of the foreign, mainly Arab, mujahideen that came to Pakistan to participate in Afghanistan’s jihad. Jamaat-e-Islami’s own cadres also received training alongside the foreign and Afghan fighters and several Pakistani young men fought the Soviets inside Afghanistan. By the time of the Soviet withdrawal, Jamaat-e-Islami had developed ties with Islamist groups throughout the world. Islamist liberation movements seeking redress of perceived and real grievances in places remote from Pakistan, such as Chechnya, Bosnia and Southern Philippines congregated in Pakistan. The Jamaat-e-Islami raised funds for these groups and provided military training for their members, in addition to allowing its own younger members to participate in Jihad around the world.
From 1989, Jamaat-e-Islami has actively participated in the militancy in Jammu and Kashmir with the full backing of Pakistan’s inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Pakistan military. To maintain a distinction between Jamaat-e-Islami, the ideological-political group, and militant or terrorist out-.ts, several jihad-speci.c organizations were created. The most prominent of these is the Hizbul Mujahideen (The Party of Holy Warriors). For years, Hizbul Mujahideen avoided the terrorist label by taking care that its target in Kashmir could be identi.ed as military, as opposed to civilian, targets. Even the United States acknowledged this distinction and spared Hizbul Mujahideen from designation as a terrorist group. Post 9/11 developments have diminished such distinctions. Under pressure from the United States, the Pakistan government has restricted Hizbul Mujahideen’s freedom of operation in planning and executing attacks against India. There is no doubt, however, that Hizbul Mujahideen retains the capacity to attack targets in Indian-controlled Kashmir and Jamaat-e-Islami’s trained militant cadre remains intact.
Although Jamaat-e-Islami can be described as being sympathetic to the aims of various Jihadi movements, it has taken care not to cross the line from being primarily an ideological-political movement—“the vanguard of the Islamic revolution,” in Maududi’s words. The party’s ideological journal, Tarjuman al-Quran, explained the need for caution in approaching the issue of military jihad, implying that there was no sense in attracting massive military retaliation when political options were available. According to one editorial in the journal:
Muslim rulers sheepishly follow the steps of their Western masters. They ful.ll their political and economic interests. In retaliation if some people resort to force, they are branded as terrorists. These rulers are promoting non-Islamic culture and crushing Islamic forces in their own as well as their masters’ interests. How to work for the supremacy of [faith] is then a problem of universal extent. There has been an element of disunity in some movements on this issue, due to which some extremist-armed groups have sprung up in small niches. Excesses by such groups have sometimes been reported from some places. Using the excuse of these groups’ violations, the hostile rulers are crushing Islamic movements. At places where these movements are cautious and not providing any such opportunity, the antagonists are trying to create [an] atmosphere so as to crush them, e.g. in Pakistan … Confused thinking, particularly when it is based on despair instead of reasoning and thinking, diffuses strength for action. This can lead to disastrous consequences … for so long as doors are open for peaceful preaching of Islam’s message and the required result to bring change is satisfactory, and for so long as the public opinion for an Islamic revolution is not mobilized, one [does] not qualify to pick up arms for Jihad.
Aside from its involvement in the conflicts in Afghanistan and Kashmir, Jamaat-e-Islami appears unwilling to acknowledge any direct involvement in jihadi activities. But like the Muslim Brotherhood in the Arab world, the movement serves as an ideological inspiration for polarizing Muslims between “true believers” and “camp followers of the West.” The Jamaat-e-Islami has built a coherent ideological case for global Islamic revivalism—a revivalism that includes the defense of violent jihad, but without identifying Jamaate-Islami clearly with militant struggle.
The Jamaat-e-Islami’s leading ideologue, Professor Khurshid Ahmad, recently published a collection of essays in Urdu, Amrika: Muslim Dunya ki Bey-Itminani (America and the Unrest in the Muslim World). In this book, Ahmad argues that the United States “dreams of world domination, resolves to control the resources of other nations, wants to shape the world according to its ideas, and seeks to impose its values and ideology on others by force.” Only the Islamists, he says, offer a political force capable of resisting this Pax Americana.
Ahmad’s book comprises nine essays, four written before September 11, and five after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. In the book, he condemns the attacks but argues that the perpetrators are still unknown. “A glance at the history of Israel and [the] Zionist movement,” he suggests, “gives credence to the suspicion of Mossad’s role in the terrorist acts.” Like all Islamists, however, Ahmad was suspicious of Western intentions long before September 11. Two of his essays on the “new world order” that emerged following the end of the Cold War, originally published in 1991 and 1993, extensively cite influential U.S. conservatives such as Samuel Huntington, Francis Fukuyama, and Eliot Cohen as proof of an insidious plan to create a century of U.S. dominance at the expense of other nations.
The framework of this U.S.-led new world order, according to Ahmad, rests on “four pillars”: globalization, Western democracy, technological supremacy, and political alliances. Ahmad’s suspicions of U.S. intentions during the 1990s, even as the United States was leading a military campaign on behalf of Bosnia’s Muslims, can best be understood in the context of the U.S. abandonment of Afghanistan and Pakistan after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. Ahmad saw the end of U.S. support for the Afghan Mujahideen as a betrayal motivated by the United States’ need for a new enemy-an Islamic green menace to replace the defunct Soviet red threat. The U.S. ruling elite, he argues, in collusion with Zionist Israel and Hindu India (the Islamist “axis of evil”) is bent on plundering the Islamic world of its oil and denying Muslims their rightful place in the contemporary world.
Ahmad’s prescription for resisting U.S. subjugation is similar to such prescriptions from other Islamist groups: The Muslim Ummah—(the global community of believers)—must purify its ranks and become a homogenous community that can mobilize against the American-Zionist-Hindu plot. Ahmad also emphasizes Pakistan’s special role in this Islamic revival. As the only Muslim country with a nuclear capability, Pakistan must expand cooperation with Iran, China, and other nations that wish to oppose the U.S. hegemon. The Americans have let Pakistan down before, he says, because their interests converge with those of India. The Chinese, however, have been among Pakistan’s most reliable allies.
In effect, Ahmad advises the Islamists to reverse the mistake they made during the Cold War, when they sided with the West against godless communism in Afghanistan. The arrogance and triumphalism of the “American imperialists” require a closing of ranks among all those who oppose them. Ironically, Ahmad’s arguments for a proposed alliance between the Islamic world and China parallel Huntington’s prediction in his clash of civilizations thesis of an eventual “Sino-Islamic alliance” against the West.
The Deobandis
Unlike the Jamaat-e-Islami, South Asia’s Deobandi groups did not originate as a political movement. The movement takes it its name from a traditional madrasa established in 1867 in the North Indian town of Deoband. The school’s founder, Maulana Qasim Nanotvi, was concerned with the prospect of India’s Muslims adopting and accepting western ways. His madrasa, therefore, marked the beginning of a movement to adhere to a traditional religious way of life. The Deobandis explain the decline of Islamic societies in terms of their having been seduced by the amoral and materialist accoutrements of Westernization. According to them, Muslims have lost Allah’s blessings because they have deviated from the original teachings of Prophet Muhammad and the pristine ways of his earliest followers.
The tradition of Deoband was extremely hostile to British rule and committed to a literal and austere interpretation of Islam. Instead of organizing for political action, the Deobandis originally focused on establishing madrasas. During the struggle for independence from British rule, Deobandis were divided between those who supported Gandhi’s Indian National Congress because of their hostility to the British and those supporting the creation of an independent Pakistan.
After Pakistan’s creation, the Deobandis expanded control over the traditional religious education system and argued that a Muslim’s .rst loyalty is to his religion and only then to the country of which he is a citizen or a resident. Over the years, Pakistan’s Deobandis have insisted that Muslims must recognize only the religious frontiers of their Ummah and not the national frontiers. Jihad has always been central to Deobandi thinking and Deobandi scholars inspired and participated in militant campaigns against British rule throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In recent years, Deobandi ulema have articulated jihad as a sacred right and obligation, encouraging their followers to go to any country to wage jihad to protect the Muslims of that country.
The Deobandis gained considerable strength during the anti-Soviet Afghan Jihad, especially because General Ziaul Haq encouraged the establishment of madrasas for Afghan refugees as well as Pakistanis. Most of the new madrasas followed the Deoband model and had Deobandi teachers. The movement’s in.uence reached its peak when the Taliban, themselves students of Deobandi madrasas in Pakistan, assumed power in Afghanistan. The Afghan Jihad ended the previous isolation of Deobandi traditionalists, linking them with global Islamist movements. Groups such as the Harkatul-Jihad-al-Islami (Movement for Islamic Jihad) that were born during the Afghan war to assist in the recruitment and ideological motivation of Afghan peasant refugees created a wider presence in Pakistan, and later in Kashmir. Once jihad was expanded to Kashmir, several Deobandi militant groups appeared on the scene with initial assistance from Pakistani intelligence.
In addition to Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, prominent Deobandi groups include Harkat-ul-Ansar (Movements of Supporters of the Faith), which changed its name to Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (Movement of Holy Warriors) after being a declared terrorist group by the United States for its involvement in kidnapping of western tourists in Kashmir. The founder of Harkat-ul-Ansar and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, Fazlur Rehman Khalil, was one of the signatories of Osama bin Laden’s fatwa declaring war against the United States. Khalil worked closely with Pakistani intelligence, and until recently continued to lead jihadi groups after changing their names once the previous name appeared on the list of global terrorist organizations. He announced his ‘retirement’ in January 2005, passing the baton of leadership to less well-known followers.
Harkat-ul-Mujahideen was involved in hijacking an Indian Airlines aircraft in 1999 and secured the release of one its principal ideologues and organizers, Maulana Masood Azhar, from an Indian prison. Upon his release Azhar formed the Jaish-e-Muhammad (Army of Muhammad), which was involved in the killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and high profile suicide attacks on the Kashmir legislative assembly and the Indian parliament in 2001—a few days after the 9/11 attacks in the United States. Jaish-e-Muhammad was involved in several attacks on churches in Pakistan as well as in assassination attempts on Pakistan’s military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf. Although temporarily detained by Pakistani authorities under U.S. pressure, Azhar was subsequently released and is now at large, surfacing occasionally to make speeches exhorting global jihad.
The ideology of the various Deobandi jihadi groups is explained, among others, by Masood Azhar in three books: Ma’arka (The Struggle), Faza’il Jihad (The Virtue of Jihad) and Tuhfa-e-Saadat (The Gift of Virtue). Faza’il Jihad is Azhar’s translation of the thirteenth century classical text on jihad by Ibn Nahhas, believed to be a disciple of Ibn Taimiyah. The book romanticizes jihad and paints a somewhat sensuous portrait of the worldly and other-worldly benefits that await the mujahid. The fact that different versions of the Ibn Nahhas book have been found in circulation among jihadi groups—from Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan to Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) in Indonesia—seems to indicate that this is the favored text of al-Qaeda-related jihadi movements.
Most contemporary Deobandi literature on jihad traces the history of Muslim grievances. According to this view, the world as shaped over the last two centuries is unfavorable to Muslims. Palestine has been taken over by the Zionists, Kashmir occupied by India, Chechnya devoured by Russia, and the Muslim sultanates in southern Philippines subjugated by Catholic Manila. The battle in each case, irrespective of the political issues involved, is one of Muslim against non-Muslim. And the Muslims’ disadvantage comes from their lack of effective military power vested in the hands of the righteous.
“Every Muslim must just turn to God” is the remedy for this imbalance, according to Maulana Masood Azhar, in the foreword of his third book, The Gift of Virtue. As a tribute to the nineteenth-century Wahhabis and Sayyid Ahmed of Bareili, Azhar penned the preface of The Struggle in the mountainous redoubt where Ahmed died in battle. The fundamental argument of each one of Azhar’s books, and many published speeches, appears to be that puritanical Islam faces extinction at the hands of an ascendant secular culture, just as the fledgling religion was challenged by unbelievers in its earliest days during the seventh century A.D. The Struggle is written as an invitation to young Muslims to join Jaish-e-Muhammad, complete with motivational anecdotes from the early history of Islam. For example, Azhar reminds readers of how the Battle of Badr, in A.D. 623, was won by the earliest Muslims with an ill-equipped army of 313 fighters facing Arabia’s pagan tribes numbering in the thousands.
The Prophet Mohammed was forced to fight those who sought to eliminate Islam, as were his early companions. To follow their example, the Deobandi jihadis argue that Muslims must define the contemporary detractors of Islam in similar terms and fight them in a similar manner. Azhar’s argument for fighting India in Kashmir is rooted in the same theological arguments that Osama bin Laden has cited in his declarations of war against the United States. The Indian military’s presence in Kashmir compromises the sovereignty of Muslims in a territory over which they should actually rule, Azhar argues. Bin Laden resents the United States because its troops defile the holy land of Saudi Arabia. Azhar expresses respect for bin Laden partly because of shared beliefs and partly because bin Laden has financed jihad with his inherited wealth. For Azhar, the struggle for sovereignty is also an existential struggle for Muslims. “Submission and slavery damage our faith and religion,” he writes in The Struggle. In his view, Islam risks being diluted as a system of belief unless it is politically ascendant. “The decline of Muslims,” one of his colleagues argues, “started with the fading of the spirit of jihad and sacrifice.”
The Wahhabis or Ahle-Hadith
Although Sayyid Ahmed’s nineteenth century efforts influenced the jihadi thinking of Deobandis and the Jamaat-e-Islami, his own Wahhabi movement did not gain a large following in South Asia until recently. The Wahhabis in South Asia described themselves as “Ahle-Hadith” (People of the Prophet’s Tradition). Their adoption of Hanbali religious rites and their strict condemnation of many rituals widely practiced by South Asian Muslims did not sit well with the vast Hana Sunni population.
In recent years, especially during and after the Afghan Jihad, the existing Ahle-Hadith groups were able to better organize themselves, increasing their numbers as well as their influence. A large number of Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi Muslims worked in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries and subsequently returned home with Wahhabi views. Wahhabi funding from the Gulf Arab region has also enabled Wahhabi missionaries to convert Sunni Muslims to their interpretation of Islam. More significantly, Sunni Muslims have cast aside their aversion to Wahhabi groups, creating a large number of traditional Sunnis who embrace Wahhabi political and jihadi ideas without necessarily giving up their rites and rituals.
The most significant jihadi group of Wahhabi persuasion is Lashkar-e-Taiba (The Army of the Pure) founded in 1989 by Hafiz Muhammad Saeed. Backed by Saudi money and protected by Pakistani intelligence services, Lashkar-e-Taiba became the military wing of Markaz al-Dawa wal-Irshad (Center for the Call to Righteousness). Saeed created a large campus and training facility at Muridke, outside the Pakistani metropolis of Lahore. After the U.S. froze Lashkar-e-Taiba’s assets and called for it to be banned, Saeed changed his organization’s name in Pakistan to Jamaat-ul-Dawa (the Society for Preaching). Pakistani authorities have been reluctant to move against either Lashkar, which continues to operate in Kashmir, or Jamaat-ul-Dawa, which operates freely in Pakistan. Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jamaat-ul-Dawa scaled down their military operations against India to help Pakistan honor its commitments to the U.S. and India. But Saeed remains free and continues to expand membership of his organization despite divisions in its leadership.
Under U.S. pressure, General Musharraf placed Jamaat-ul-Dawa on a watch list in November 2003.
Lashkar-e-Taiba has adopted a maximalist agenda for global jihad though its operations so far have been limited to Kashmir. The group justifies its ideology on the basis of the Quranic verse that says, “You are obligated to fight even though it is something you do not like” (2:216). Extrapolating from this verse, the group asserts that military jihad is a religious obligation for all Muslims. The group then defines the many circumstances in which that obligation must be carried out.
For example, a Markaz al-Dawa wal-Irshad publication titled Hum Jihad kyun Kar rahe hain? (Why Are We Waging Jihad?), declares the United States, Israel and India as existential enemies of Islam. It lists eight reasons for Jihad:
1) to eliminate evil and facilitate conversion to and practice of Islam; 2) to ensure the ascendancy of Islam; 3) to force non-Muslims to pay jizya (poll tax, paid by non-Muslims for protection from a Muslim ruler); 4) to assist the weak and powerless; 5) to avenge the blood of Muslims killed by unbelievers; 6) to punish enemies for breaking promises and treaties; 7) to defend a Muslim state; and 8) to liberate Muslim territories under non-Muslim occupation.
This list of itself is sufficient to justify a virtual state of permanent jihad. “Have all the obstacles to observing the faith in the world been removed?” the unnamed author asks rhetorically, adding that non-Muslim dominance of the global system makes jihad necessary. “Is the current world order that of kafirs (unbelievers) or of Muslims? Is the global economic system according to the wishes of Allah, which requires the end of interest and usury?” Jihad is described as essential to ensure ascendancy of Islam and to create circumstances whereby non-Muslims would either convert to Islam or pay jizya. Furthermore, all major powers have broken their pledges to Muslims made at one time or another, for which they must be punished, runs the argument. “Are Muslims not being mistreated all over the world? Are not weak Muslim men, women and children calling for help against oppression from India, Kashmir, Philippines, Chechnya, Russia, China, Bosnia and several other parts of the world? … Burma’s Muslims are under attack from Buddhists, who expel them from their homes … Israel has pierced the dagger of its existence in the heart of the Arabs.”
The Markaz/Lashkar/Jamaat-ul-Dawa movement construes Muslim territories under non-Muslim occupation in the broadest sense. “Muslims ruled Andalusia (Spain) for 800 years but they were finished to the last man. Christians now rule (Spain) and we must wrest it back from them. All of India, including Kashmir, Hyderabad, Assam, Nepal, Burma, Bihar and Junagadh were part of the Muslim empire that was lost because Muslims gave up jihad. Palestine is occupied by the Jews. The Holy Qibla-e-Awwal (First Center of Prayer) in Jerusalem is under Jewish control. Several countries such as Bulgaria, Hungary, Cyprus, Sicily, Ethiopia, Russian Turkistan and Chinese Turkistan … were Muslim lands and it is our duty to get these back from unbelievers. Even parts of France reaching 90 kilometers outside Paris and some of the forests and mountains of Switzerland were home to Muslim mujahidin but are now under the occupation of unbelievers.”
Some of the arguments and claims might appear historically incorrect or practically impossible but this does and will not deter a closely-knit jihadi group from raising funds, organizing cadres and fielding militants or terrorists in pursuit of a broadly defined global jihad aimed at the revival of Islam’s global ascendancy and eventual domination.www.futureofmuslimworld.com
