07-23-2006, 09:26 PM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Mumbai blasts and menace of Islamist terrorism </b>
Sazzad Hussain
The reasons behind the quick inroads of the Jehadi forces like the LeT among the Indian Muslims are not only the communal riots or the anti-Muslim policies of some political organisations. There has been a fertile ground already though inadvertently prepared by Indian Muslims for the practice of their faith in various forms.
7/11, another addition of that dubious term of the date in use since 9/11 of the US and 7/7 of UK. This time the target was India and the victim was again Mumbai city. Mumbai has been in the terror map since 1993 serial blasts perpetuated by the underworld mafias with the help of Pakistani agencies who used the sentiments of the riot victims of the post-Ayodhya carnage of late 1992 to carry out that terror act. After that there were blasts in sub-urban Ghatkopar station in 2000 and several small explosions in Byculla and in BEST buses as well as the blast of Gateway of India in 2003. But the 7/11 blasts in local trains which killed hundreds of lives are the worst of its kind where helpless and innocent commuters were targeted. Initial findings of the blast suggests LeT hand which is really a matter of great concern for us as this Pakistan based terror group has waging a war against India in the name of the faith practised by the largest minority of our country. This terror act has again shifted our attention to the terrorism spread world wide known as the Islamist terrorism or Jehadi terrorism. The terrorism which has devastated places like Afghanistan, Iraq and parts of the West Asia and has brought havocs to the social life of the Muslims around the world has nothing to do with Islam, the great faith. It was they who ask to kill people or perform ghastly works by misinterpreting the religion and the Holy Quran.
Though Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism are not synonymous but all Islamist terrorist are fundamentalists. They use the puritanical form of Islam for easily spreading their networks and functions. Islam was known for its application of science and academic pursuits in the middle age when Europe was enlightened by the Islamic Arab world that had brought oriental lights from India in mathematics and astronomy. This glorious form of Islam in the Arab world extended up to the Iberian peninsula were lost to the abysmal point when the Ottoman Turks established and expanded their empire by annexing Arab land from the Persian Gulf to the Atlantic coast of Maghreb (North Africa). The Turkish Sultans only taught the Arab subjects to follow the ritualistic form of Islam by their appointed clergyâ the Mufti. In the early twentieth century the European colonial powers, mostly Britain and France helped different Arab groups to fight for liberation from the Ottomans which only made them to be governed by the colonials. Later against those European friend-turned foes the Arabs formed religious resistance movement known as Whabism in Arabian Peninsula and Muslim brotherhood in Egypt. This Wahabism and Muslim brotherhood pan-Islamic ideology was applied by the CIA to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan in the late twentieth century which was also the origin of all Islamic terrorism menacing the world today.
America created the Afghan Mujahideen in Pakistan to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan that had entered in 1978. It took all the financial and human resource help from its ally Saudi Arabia and Pakistan was the launch pad. In the Pak-Afghan border CIA set up Madrassas to groom fighters to fight the atheist Soviets by misinterpreting Islam through some Saudi and Pakistani Mullahs of the orthodox Wahabi Sunni sect. They called Muslims around the world to come forward and sacrifice lives for the Jehad (holy war) against the Communists. Thus fellows like Osma bin Laden and Dr Zawahari came to Pak-Afghan border and the rest was history that we know. These veteran Afghan Jehadis have been waging a brutal war against the world of their dislike, including their creator America since 1989 and India is one of their targets for the secession of Kashmir. After their success in Afghanistan, these Jehadis have been fighting in Chechnya, Sudan, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Kashmir, Indonesia, the Philippines and Yemen and presently in war-torn Iraq.
The menace of Islamic terrorism is so schoking and ghastly that no world is appropriate to condemn it. Apart from the 9/11 terror strike this form of terrorism had devastated blasts in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam (1999), Bali (2002), Riyadh and Dhahran (2003-04), Casablanca and Istanbul (2004), Beslan and Moscow (2004), Cairo and London in 2005 besides daily killings in various parts of Iraq. The Taliban era in Afghanistan is another shocking reminder to this menace. The execution of foreign hostages by their kidnappers before video cameras and various such cruel acts have already made the Islamist terrorist as one of the most oppressing forces that the world already have had. They have not only created mayhem across the world but hijacked the religion called Islam. Islam is in seige by these terror groups and many around the world are now thinking that Islam and terrorism are synonymous.
India was relatively free from this form of terrorism albeit we had the Khalistani and other terrorism affecting our national life. India became the target of the Islamist terrorism in 1989 when Pakistan engaged the Afghan Mujahideen veterans in Kashmir. Originally it was confined in the valley but taking advantage of the prevailing socio-political condition of our country they steadily made inroads in different parts of India. Particularly the post-Ayodhya communal riots across the country gave them the opportunity to take the advantage of the Muslim riot victims to mobilise their activities. The Indian Muslims who suffered collaterally during those riots were instigated to take revenge and its immediate outcome was the serial blasts of Mumbai of 1993. After that these terror groups established networks in Hyderabad, Coimbatore, Maharashtra, Gujarat, UP and in other places. After the defat of the Jehadi infiltrators in the Kargil war these groups mainly L-e-T (Lashkar-e-Taiba) vowed to wage the so-called holy war against India in 1999 to plunge the country into a civil war in Hindu-Muslim conflict. The 2002 post-Godhra communal pogrom in Gujarat provided them the opportunity to carry out their terror strikes and so we had the Akshawrdham shoot out in late 2002, Gateway of India blasts in 2003, attacks in the Ram temple in Ayodhya in 2004, blasts at New Delhi during the festival season in 2005 and blasts at Sankatmochan temple in Varanasi and at suburban trains in Mumbai this year.
The reasons behind the quick inroads of the Jehadi forces like the LeT among the Indian Muslims are not only the communal riots or the anti-Muslim policies of some political organisations. There has been a fertile ground already though inadvertently prepared by Indian Muslims for the practice of their faith in various forms. Since the Partition Indian Muslims have been living on the edge of the national mainstream and lagging behind in education and other social developments. They have been remaining in a ghetto like condition where besides other things they always have misinformation and misinterpretation relating to Islam in global perspective. They have been devoid of any conception like nationality or nationhood and cultural as well as linguistic identities. That is why anything that is Islam has been non-Indian to them. This led to the idea of denationalisation of Indian Muslims who feel familiar to a Pakistani or Arab Muslim though there is vast difference in linguistic or cultural terms with them. Such mentality was very much reflected in the celebration of victory for the Pakistani cricket team by the Indian Muslims and so on so forth. The function of the Tabligh Jammats and Estemas in our country, much in practice since 1980s, have thrown the Indian Muslims to the world of afterlife and of heaven and hell so much that they are hardly concerned by what the terrorists are doing in the name of Islam in Kashmir or elsewhere. The age old education systems of the Madrassas in India produce only good for nothing Mullahs who easily fall prey to the calls made by the Jehadis in the name of Islam. For these reasons terror groups are succeeding in recruiting Indian Muslims to the path of Jehad which has to be uprooted rigorously to avoid tragedies like the 7/11 of Mumbai.
For this the government has to be very stern in handling the terrorists. It also should give a strong message to Pakistan to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure in their soil. As India cannot make pre-emptive strike at those terror camps like Israel doing against the Hamas or Hizbollah in Palestine and Lebanon because it will escalate into a nuclear conflict, it can crush these elements within the country by super security system and by a strong legislature. The internal security and intelligence system and services need to be modernised and improved at part with those of America, Israel and west Europe. An advanced national database has to be developed to track and monitor all terrorist and disruptive activities by the intelligence bureau. Emergency services like 911 and the paramedics, relief and rescue and an agile police force will certainly minimise casualties in the wake of any terror strike.
The government should also undertake policies to bring the Indian Muslims to the national mainstream and improve their socio-economic condition including the development in education rather than increasing the quota for Haj subsidies and aiding the Waqf properties. It should also draw a master plan to create a generation of Indian Muslims who are very liberal and modern in outlook and systematically engage them in security services or in the intelligence agencies to fight the Jehadis. Muslims in Turkey, Egypt, Morocco, Iran, and Indonesia are fighting against the Islamist terrorism, so in India too it will be easier to fight the same enemy by engaging the people of the same faith. It will not only help in tackling the menace of Islamist terrorism but also make our country a strong secular democratic nation in the twenty first century.http://assamtribune.com
(The author teaches English at Lakhimpur Commerce College, Assam)
Assam Tribune Editorial
Guwahati, Saturday, July 22, 2006 <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Sazzad Hussain
The reasons behind the quick inroads of the Jehadi forces like the LeT among the Indian Muslims are not only the communal riots or the anti-Muslim policies of some political organisations. There has been a fertile ground already though inadvertently prepared by Indian Muslims for the practice of their faith in various forms.
7/11, another addition of that dubious term of the date in use since 9/11 of the US and 7/7 of UK. This time the target was India and the victim was again Mumbai city. Mumbai has been in the terror map since 1993 serial blasts perpetuated by the underworld mafias with the help of Pakistani agencies who used the sentiments of the riot victims of the post-Ayodhya carnage of late 1992 to carry out that terror act. After that there were blasts in sub-urban Ghatkopar station in 2000 and several small explosions in Byculla and in BEST buses as well as the blast of Gateway of India in 2003. But the 7/11 blasts in local trains which killed hundreds of lives are the worst of its kind where helpless and innocent commuters were targeted. Initial findings of the blast suggests LeT hand which is really a matter of great concern for us as this Pakistan based terror group has waging a war against India in the name of the faith practised by the largest minority of our country. This terror act has again shifted our attention to the terrorism spread world wide known as the Islamist terrorism or Jehadi terrorism. The terrorism which has devastated places like Afghanistan, Iraq and parts of the West Asia and has brought havocs to the social life of the Muslims around the world has nothing to do with Islam, the great faith. It was they who ask to kill people or perform ghastly works by misinterpreting the religion and the Holy Quran.
Though Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism are not synonymous but all Islamist terrorist are fundamentalists. They use the puritanical form of Islam for easily spreading their networks and functions. Islam was known for its application of science and academic pursuits in the middle age when Europe was enlightened by the Islamic Arab world that had brought oriental lights from India in mathematics and astronomy. This glorious form of Islam in the Arab world extended up to the Iberian peninsula were lost to the abysmal point when the Ottoman Turks established and expanded their empire by annexing Arab land from the Persian Gulf to the Atlantic coast of Maghreb (North Africa). The Turkish Sultans only taught the Arab subjects to follow the ritualistic form of Islam by their appointed clergyâ the Mufti. In the early twentieth century the European colonial powers, mostly Britain and France helped different Arab groups to fight for liberation from the Ottomans which only made them to be governed by the colonials. Later against those European friend-turned foes the Arabs formed religious resistance movement known as Whabism in Arabian Peninsula and Muslim brotherhood in Egypt. This Wahabism and Muslim brotherhood pan-Islamic ideology was applied by the CIA to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan in the late twentieth century which was also the origin of all Islamic terrorism menacing the world today.
America created the Afghan Mujahideen in Pakistan to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan that had entered in 1978. It took all the financial and human resource help from its ally Saudi Arabia and Pakistan was the launch pad. In the Pak-Afghan border CIA set up Madrassas to groom fighters to fight the atheist Soviets by misinterpreting Islam through some Saudi and Pakistani Mullahs of the orthodox Wahabi Sunni sect. They called Muslims around the world to come forward and sacrifice lives for the Jehad (holy war) against the Communists. Thus fellows like Osma bin Laden and Dr Zawahari came to Pak-Afghan border and the rest was history that we know. These veteran Afghan Jehadis have been waging a brutal war against the world of their dislike, including their creator America since 1989 and India is one of their targets for the secession of Kashmir. After their success in Afghanistan, these Jehadis have been fighting in Chechnya, Sudan, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Kashmir, Indonesia, the Philippines and Yemen and presently in war-torn Iraq.
The menace of Islamic terrorism is so schoking and ghastly that no world is appropriate to condemn it. Apart from the 9/11 terror strike this form of terrorism had devastated blasts in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam (1999), Bali (2002), Riyadh and Dhahran (2003-04), Casablanca and Istanbul (2004), Beslan and Moscow (2004), Cairo and London in 2005 besides daily killings in various parts of Iraq. The Taliban era in Afghanistan is another shocking reminder to this menace. The execution of foreign hostages by their kidnappers before video cameras and various such cruel acts have already made the Islamist terrorist as one of the most oppressing forces that the world already have had. They have not only created mayhem across the world but hijacked the religion called Islam. Islam is in seige by these terror groups and many around the world are now thinking that Islam and terrorism are synonymous.
India was relatively free from this form of terrorism albeit we had the Khalistani and other terrorism affecting our national life. India became the target of the Islamist terrorism in 1989 when Pakistan engaged the Afghan Mujahideen veterans in Kashmir. Originally it was confined in the valley but taking advantage of the prevailing socio-political condition of our country they steadily made inroads in different parts of India. Particularly the post-Ayodhya communal riots across the country gave them the opportunity to take the advantage of the Muslim riot victims to mobilise their activities. The Indian Muslims who suffered collaterally during those riots were instigated to take revenge and its immediate outcome was the serial blasts of Mumbai of 1993. After that these terror groups established networks in Hyderabad, Coimbatore, Maharashtra, Gujarat, UP and in other places. After the defat of the Jehadi infiltrators in the Kargil war these groups mainly L-e-T (Lashkar-e-Taiba) vowed to wage the so-called holy war against India in 1999 to plunge the country into a civil war in Hindu-Muslim conflict. The 2002 post-Godhra communal pogrom in Gujarat provided them the opportunity to carry out their terror strikes and so we had the Akshawrdham shoot out in late 2002, Gateway of India blasts in 2003, attacks in the Ram temple in Ayodhya in 2004, blasts at New Delhi during the festival season in 2005 and blasts at Sankatmochan temple in Varanasi and at suburban trains in Mumbai this year.
The reasons behind the quick inroads of the Jehadi forces like the LeT among the Indian Muslims are not only the communal riots or the anti-Muslim policies of some political organisations. There has been a fertile ground already though inadvertently prepared by Indian Muslims for the practice of their faith in various forms. Since the Partition Indian Muslims have been living on the edge of the national mainstream and lagging behind in education and other social developments. They have been remaining in a ghetto like condition where besides other things they always have misinformation and misinterpretation relating to Islam in global perspective. They have been devoid of any conception like nationality or nationhood and cultural as well as linguistic identities. That is why anything that is Islam has been non-Indian to them. This led to the idea of denationalisation of Indian Muslims who feel familiar to a Pakistani or Arab Muslim though there is vast difference in linguistic or cultural terms with them. Such mentality was very much reflected in the celebration of victory for the Pakistani cricket team by the Indian Muslims and so on so forth. The function of the Tabligh Jammats and Estemas in our country, much in practice since 1980s, have thrown the Indian Muslims to the world of afterlife and of heaven and hell so much that they are hardly concerned by what the terrorists are doing in the name of Islam in Kashmir or elsewhere. The age old education systems of the Madrassas in India produce only good for nothing Mullahs who easily fall prey to the calls made by the Jehadis in the name of Islam. For these reasons terror groups are succeeding in recruiting Indian Muslims to the path of Jehad which has to be uprooted rigorously to avoid tragedies like the 7/11 of Mumbai.
For this the government has to be very stern in handling the terrorists. It also should give a strong message to Pakistan to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure in their soil. As India cannot make pre-emptive strike at those terror camps like Israel doing against the Hamas or Hizbollah in Palestine and Lebanon because it will escalate into a nuclear conflict, it can crush these elements within the country by super security system and by a strong legislature. The internal security and intelligence system and services need to be modernised and improved at part with those of America, Israel and west Europe. An advanced national database has to be developed to track and monitor all terrorist and disruptive activities by the intelligence bureau. Emergency services like 911 and the paramedics, relief and rescue and an agile police force will certainly minimise casualties in the wake of any terror strike.
The government should also undertake policies to bring the Indian Muslims to the national mainstream and improve their socio-economic condition including the development in education rather than increasing the quota for Haj subsidies and aiding the Waqf properties. It should also draw a master plan to create a generation of Indian Muslims who are very liberal and modern in outlook and systematically engage them in security services or in the intelligence agencies to fight the Jehadis. Muslims in Turkey, Egypt, Morocco, Iran, and Indonesia are fighting against the Islamist terrorism, so in India too it will be easier to fight the same enemy by engaging the people of the same faith. It will not only help in tackling the menace of Islamist terrorism but also make our country a strong secular democratic nation in the twenty first century.http://assamtribune.com
(The author teaches English at Lakhimpur Commerce College, Assam)
Assam Tribune Editorial
Guwahati, Saturday, July 22, 2006 <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->