12-01-2006, 11:56 PM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Death to all </b>
pioneer.com
Ghulam Yazdani
Faith-based terror is here but as Malegaon showed, there is no guarantee that innocent Muslims won't be hit. The way out for them: Join fellow countrymen of other faiths to fight Islamist fascists
<b>Malegaon was not the first instance when a mosque or a Muslim shrine was targeted by Islamic terrorists in India</b>. Yet, <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>when it happened, the media and chatterati clubs pretended as if Muslim terrorists can never quite be atrocious enough to kill fellow Muslims. Curiously, they argued so after having grudgingly conceded that Muslim terrorists may kill just anybody. Godhra was a case of mass suicide and Jama Masjid and Malegaon were Bajrang Dal operations! The dementia that has seized our secularist-Communist friends encompasses too many processes of diseased thinking to recall. </span>What must be addressed urgently is that today lopsidedly argumentative polity is today the Establishment.
In today's feature, Kanchan Lakshman, an expert with the Institute of Conflict Management analyses the true nature of jihad in the age of terrorism and points out that there is no evidence that Islamist fascists spare innocents found amidst their faith. The LTTE has killed more Tamilians in Sri Lanka than Sinhalese.Academician Khwaja Ekram, however, reiterates that terror knows no religion.
<b>The Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), which has been found guilty of masterminding Malegaon blasts, is not the only disruptive group involved in such attacks. Various other Islamic and jihadi organisations, with support from ISI and terror groups in Pakistan, have shown scant regard for religious places of any religion and lives of innocent devotees. Such mindless attacks cannot be described as jihad and no religion justifies such bloodshed.</b>
Be it Hazaratbal in Jammu & Kashmir or Delhi's Jama Masjid, or the mosque at Malegaon, none are immune to terror groups. <b>At Malegaon, those who masterminded the blasts timed the attack to have maximum impact possible in two ways: Casualties and inflamed Muslim sensitivities. The day of the attack was Friday and Shab-e-Barat (Night of Salvation), a festival when Muslims visit graveyards to offer nightlong prayers for their dead relatives. The brains behind the blasts also chose the targets carefully. The bombs went off in the Noorani Mosque in the Bada Qabristan (graveyard) area at Malegaon where people had come to pray for the dead. The attack was aimed at creating communal tensions, which fortunately did not occur.</b>
SIMI has a wide network across Indian States. Almost all terrorists arrested recently have links with SIMI, an organisation set up in the late 1970s in Aligarh Muslim University. It had begun as a student wing of the Jamat-e-Islami, but under the influence of Wahabis, the group adopted an extremist ideology and broke away from the parent body. <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>Before the ban on it, SIMI boasted of an active membership of 10,000 all over India.</span>
Investigations into the recent terrorist attacks have revealed a growing alliance between jihadi groups operating from Pakistan and Bangladesh with the help of ideological allies. This development signals a new phase of terrorism in India where international terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Tayyeba (LeT) and Harkat-ul Jihadi al Islami (HuJI) are likely to exert influence over a small and diffused group of individuals to take up arms against the state in the name of religion.
<span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>Terror is not the only agenda these groups profess. As revealed in attacks at the Jama Masjid and also at Hindu pilgrim sites in Varanasi and Ayodhya, the primary objective was to trigger communal riots and widen the historical divide and suspicion between communities. The worst manifestation of this policy was the Diwali bombings in Delhi in October 2005. The bombs were timed to go off during the hour of iftar when everybody knew that the Muslims would be indoors and only Hindu revellers would be hit.</span>
On April 14, again on Friday, two blasts immediately after the Arsa namaz injured more than 15 people at Jama Masjid, Delhi. Although, it created initial panic and sent the security apparatus into a tizzy, the Maqrib namaz which followed saw undeterred devotees offer their prayers, and the next day was no exception when there was usual attendance to offer prayers. <b>Shahi Imam Syed Ahmad Shah Bukhari's statement, "Emulate the people of Varanasi, who did not react in anger and defeated the plans of communal forces," helped calm the feelings of the devotees.</b>
The misguided Muslims who claim that their version of jihad is "true" Islam are proving a burden for the Muslim world in general. After the recent terror strikes across India, there have been demonstrations against terrorism by various Muslim groups. In Delhi, the activists of Shia-Sunni Muslim front protested against terrorism by signing with their blood. But Indian Muslims need to do more. They should maintain a strict vigil over members of their community who are increasingly getting influenced by external jihadi elements. Non-Muslims should encourage the liberal Muslims, to come out boldly against Islamist terrorists and criticise the trend of misusing religious freedom and public places of worship for spreading extremism.
According to National Security Advisor MK Narayanan, "faith-based" terrorism was the biggest challenge facing the international community as most groups engaged in violent conflicts "tend to have a radical Islamic visage". Under such circumstances, mere force would not be enough to crush terror.
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pioneer.com
Ghulam Yazdani
Faith-based terror is here but as Malegaon showed, there is no guarantee that innocent Muslims won't be hit. The way out for them: Join fellow countrymen of other faiths to fight Islamist fascists
<b>Malegaon was not the first instance when a mosque or a Muslim shrine was targeted by Islamic terrorists in India</b>. Yet, <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>when it happened, the media and chatterati clubs pretended as if Muslim terrorists can never quite be atrocious enough to kill fellow Muslims. Curiously, they argued so after having grudgingly conceded that Muslim terrorists may kill just anybody. Godhra was a case of mass suicide and Jama Masjid and Malegaon were Bajrang Dal operations! The dementia that has seized our secularist-Communist friends encompasses too many processes of diseased thinking to recall. </span>What must be addressed urgently is that today lopsidedly argumentative polity is today the Establishment.
In today's feature, Kanchan Lakshman, an expert with the Institute of Conflict Management analyses the true nature of jihad in the age of terrorism and points out that there is no evidence that Islamist fascists spare innocents found amidst their faith. The LTTE has killed more Tamilians in Sri Lanka than Sinhalese.Academician Khwaja Ekram, however, reiterates that terror knows no religion.
<b>The Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), which has been found guilty of masterminding Malegaon blasts, is not the only disruptive group involved in such attacks. Various other Islamic and jihadi organisations, with support from ISI and terror groups in Pakistan, have shown scant regard for religious places of any religion and lives of innocent devotees. Such mindless attacks cannot be described as jihad and no religion justifies such bloodshed.</b>
Be it Hazaratbal in Jammu & Kashmir or Delhi's Jama Masjid, or the mosque at Malegaon, none are immune to terror groups. <b>At Malegaon, those who masterminded the blasts timed the attack to have maximum impact possible in two ways: Casualties and inflamed Muslim sensitivities. The day of the attack was Friday and Shab-e-Barat (Night of Salvation), a festival when Muslims visit graveyards to offer nightlong prayers for their dead relatives. The brains behind the blasts also chose the targets carefully. The bombs went off in the Noorani Mosque in the Bada Qabristan (graveyard) area at Malegaon where people had come to pray for the dead. The attack was aimed at creating communal tensions, which fortunately did not occur.</b>
SIMI has a wide network across Indian States. Almost all terrorists arrested recently have links with SIMI, an organisation set up in the late 1970s in Aligarh Muslim University. It had begun as a student wing of the Jamat-e-Islami, but under the influence of Wahabis, the group adopted an extremist ideology and broke away from the parent body. <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>Before the ban on it, SIMI boasted of an active membership of 10,000 all over India.</span>
Investigations into the recent terrorist attacks have revealed a growing alliance between jihadi groups operating from Pakistan and Bangladesh with the help of ideological allies. This development signals a new phase of terrorism in India where international terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Tayyeba (LeT) and Harkat-ul Jihadi al Islami (HuJI) are likely to exert influence over a small and diffused group of individuals to take up arms against the state in the name of religion.
<span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>Terror is not the only agenda these groups profess. As revealed in attacks at the Jama Masjid and also at Hindu pilgrim sites in Varanasi and Ayodhya, the primary objective was to trigger communal riots and widen the historical divide and suspicion between communities. The worst manifestation of this policy was the Diwali bombings in Delhi in October 2005. The bombs were timed to go off during the hour of iftar when everybody knew that the Muslims would be indoors and only Hindu revellers would be hit.</span>
On April 14, again on Friday, two blasts immediately after the Arsa namaz injured more than 15 people at Jama Masjid, Delhi. Although, it created initial panic and sent the security apparatus into a tizzy, the Maqrib namaz which followed saw undeterred devotees offer their prayers, and the next day was no exception when there was usual attendance to offer prayers. <b>Shahi Imam Syed Ahmad Shah Bukhari's statement, "Emulate the people of Varanasi, who did not react in anger and defeated the plans of communal forces," helped calm the feelings of the devotees.</b>
The misguided Muslims who claim that their version of jihad is "true" Islam are proving a burden for the Muslim world in general. After the recent terror strikes across India, there have been demonstrations against terrorism by various Muslim groups. In Delhi, the activists of Shia-Sunni Muslim front protested against terrorism by signing with their blood. But Indian Muslims need to do more. They should maintain a strict vigil over members of their community who are increasingly getting influenced by external jihadi elements. Non-Muslims should encourage the liberal Muslims, to come out boldly against Islamist terrorists and criticise the trend of misusing religious freedom and public places of worship for spreading extremism.
According to National Security Advisor MK Narayanan, "faith-based" terrorism was the biggest challenge facing the international community as most groups engaged in violent conflicts "tend to have a radical Islamic visage". Under such circumstances, mere force would not be enough to crush terror.
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