[Reader-list] Kashmir's new Islamist movement

[TaraPrakash]

If Sanjay and Shuddha's mails were to go by, the blood bath was already 
going on, for years, or you decided to call it something else.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Sanjay Kak" <kaksanjay at gmail.com>
To: "sarai list" <reader-list at sarai.net>
Sent: Friday, September 17, 2010 1:43 AM
Subject: Re: [Reader-list] Kashmir's new Islamist movement


> Towards the end of his piece is Praveen Swami offering his readers a
> prophecy, or a threat to the protesters in Kashmir?
> Is a bloodbath being planned, I wonder, and are the trumpet bearers
> alerting us in advance?
> Best
> Sanjay
>
> On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 11:06 AM, Aditya Raj Kaul
> <kauladityaraj at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Kashmir's new Islamist movement*Praveen Swami, The Hindu
>>
>> Link* - http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article672980.ece
>>
>> Leaders of the protests see street violence as a crucible in which a new
>> generation of jihadists is being forged.
>>
>> Last week, on the Monday before Eid, Mohammad Shafi Wani opened his 
>> grocery
>> store in Srinagar's Karan Nagar neighbourhood. Each of his 
>> gestures —rolling
>> up the shutter, dusting off the shelves, opening the long-locked cash 
>> till —
>> was an act of defiance, perhaps even suicidal rashness.
>>
>> Kashmir's Tehreek-e-Hurriyat, the anti-India Islamist coalition 
>> spearheading
>> the protests that have claimed more than 80 lives in clashes with police
>> this year, had decreed that shops would remain shut until 2:00 pm; Wani 
>> had
>> opened for business at mid-day. “Get lost,” a local resident recalls Wani
>> saying to two young men who showed up to warn him, “I'm not having a 
>> bunch
>> of kids telling me what I can do.” The boys left — but returned with
>> reinforcements. Wani ended up in hospital; the police watched him being
>> beaten but did nothing.
>>
>> Early this week, the Tehreek decreed that day would henceforth be night. 
>> It
>> ordered that businesses and factories work through the hours of darkness 
>> to
>> make up for the time spent protesting. Many fear that September 21, when 
>> the
>> Tehreek-i-Hurriyat has called on volunteers to march on military 
>> outposts,
>> will see horrific violence. That is precisely what the New Islamists 
>> seek:
>> for them, Kashmir's streets are the crucible in which a new generation of
>> jihadists, who will wage a this-time successful war for independence, are
>> being forged.
>>
>> Islamist patriarch Syed Ali Shah Geelani's *Rudad-i-Qafas*, or ‘Records 
>> of
>> Jail,' an 800-page, two-volume reflection on politics and life written 
>> while
>> he was incarcerated at New Delhi, Jammu and Allahabad from 1990-1992, 
>> gives
>> some insight into the ideological underpinning of the street rebellion.
>>
>> In a 2004 appraisal of the *Rudad-i-Qafas*, scholar Yoginder Sikand 
>> pointed
>> to Mr. Geelani's concerns that the independence movement in Jammu and
>> Kashmir had “actually gone out of the control of the political leadership
>> and into the hands of militant youth who, though fired by a passionate 
>> sense
>> of zeal, have little understanding of the problem as well as the uphill 
>> task
>> of resolving it.” He argued that “the youth ought to have entered the
>> movement under the leadership of a truly Islamic and honest political
>> leadership.” Instead, Kashmir's young jihadists had acted “unfettered by 
>> any
>> authority above them as if they have ‘sworn not to accept any political
>> leadership at all'.”
>>
>> “They have,” he concluded, “apparently miscalculated the enormity of the
>> demands of the struggle and the strength of the power they are fighting
>> against, fondly imagining that their goal would be achieved in no time.”
>>
>> Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, in the years that followed the
>> publication of the *Rudad-i-Qafas*, threw its resources behind the
>> Hizb-ul-Mujahideen — led, in the main, by figures drawn from the
>> Jamaat-e-Islami. But as the conflict dragged, the Jamaat sensed defeat — 
>> and
>> drew back. In 1997, the then Jamaat chief G.M. Bhat called for an end to 
>> the
>> “gun culture.” Three years later, dissident Hizb commander Abdul Majid 
>> Dar
>> declared a unilateral ceasefire. Although the ceasefire fell apart, the
>> Jamaat itself continued to marginalise Mr. Geelani. In May 2003, Jamaat
>> moderates led by Bhat's successor, Syed Nasir Ahmad Kashani, retired Mr.
>> Geelani as their political representative. In January 2004, the Jamaat's
>> Majlis-e-Shoora, or central consultative council, went public with a
>> commitment to a “democratic and constitutional struggle.”
>>
>> Mr. Geelani, cast out from the mainstream of the Jamaat, set about 
>> building
>> a new political movement; the kind of political movement he believed had 
>> led
>> to the failure of the jihad.
>>
>> Like others in the Jamaat-e-Islami, Mr. Geelani had long believed India
>> posed an existential threat to Islam in Kashmir. In the *Rudad-e-Qafas*, 
>> he
>> castigated India for its failure to hold a plebiscite on Jammu and 
>> Kashmir's
>> future; its violations of the democratic process; and its use of the 
>> armed
>> force after 1989-1990. But he underlined the growth of Hindu communalism
>> from the mid-1980s, seeing it as an enterprise to erase Islam. Mr. 
>> Geelani
>> even found evidence of this enterprise in prison: the ‘martyrdom' of 
>> Muslim
>> prisoners' beards at the hands of jailers and their being refused 
>> permission
>> to pray. “Cultural hegemony,” he concluded, “is a logical culmination of
>> political supremacy.”
>>
>> From 2003, Mr. Geelani turned to a new group of lieutenants to fight 
>> India's
>> growing “political supremacy”: among them lawyer Mian Abdul Qayoom,
>> activists like Mehrajuddin Kalwal and Jamaat apparatchiks like Mohammad
>> Ashraf Sehrai. It was Massrat Alam Bhat, however, who was to become the 
>> most
>> important figure in the new Islamic coalition.
>>
>> Born in old-city Srinagar's Zaindar Mohalla in July 1971, Bhat studied in
>> Srinagar's élite Cecil Earle Tyndale-Biscoe school before joining the Sri
>> Pratap college. He was first arrested by the Border Security Force in
>> October 1990, on charges of serving as a lieutenant to the then-prominent
>> jihadist Mushtaq Ahmad Bhat. He won a protracted legal battle in 1997 and
>> began working at a cloth store owned by his grandfather, graduating the 
>> next
>> year. From 1999, Bhat became increasingly active in the All-Parties 
>> Hurriyat
>> Conference. He drew much of his core cadre from one-time jihadists who 
>> had
>> been released — only to find they had neither prestige, power nor 
>> prospects.
>>
>> Bhat's Muslim League Jammu Kashmir's objective, its website explains,
>> “besides fighting Indian aggression, is to propagate Islamic teachings to
>> fight out socialism and secularism to remove *taguti* [false leaders;
>> traitors] rule and to extirpate the western ideology.”
>>
>> Just two of the Muslim League's eight-point charter of objectives are, as
>> such, concerned with the conflict in Jammu and Kashmir. It seeks the
>> “building up of public opinion about the issue of Jammu and Kashmir on 
>> [the]
>> international front,” and promises to “organise rallies and congregations 
>> to
>> achieve the right to self-determination.”
>>
>> But the bulk of the Muslim League's objectives centres around forging a 
>> new
>> political culture. It promises to “inculcate [a] sense of religious 
>> duties,
>> character building and make the youth politically conscious;” to 
>> “safeguard
>> the youths against any anti-Islamic move;” “to make aware the Muslims 
>> about
>> the policies and plans of the aggressors and ensure that they follow the
>> path of the Quran and the Sunnah to become one entity; to resist
>> “misinformation campaigns against [the] Islamic system on the part of
>> various imperialistic forces;” and, more generally, “to work for the 
>> welfare
>> of the people.”
>>
>> Now serving a life sentence for the assassination of human rights 
>> campaigner
>> H.N. Wanchoo, imprisoned jihadist Muhammad Qasim Faktoo was key to 
>> shaping
>> Bhat's ideological vision. Faktoo, who acquired a doctorate in Islamic
>> studies while in prison, founded his religious beliefs on the teachings 
>> of
>> the neo-fundamentalist Jamiat Ahl-e-Hadith — not Mr. Geelani's
>> Jamaat-e-Islami. Long an anti-India political activist, Faktoo was led 
>> into
>> the Hizb by Mohammad Abdullah Bangroo who, many years later, presided 
>> over
>> the assassination of the influential Srinagar cleric Mirwaiz Mohammad 
>> Farooq
>> — father of the current chairperson of the APHC, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq. In
>> 1990, Faktoo and Hilal Mir, better known by the code-name Nasir-ul-Islam,
>> broke from the Hizb to form the Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen, upset with its
>> linkages to the Jamaat-e-Islami.
>>
>> From jail, the Jammu and Kashmir Police allege, Faktoo mentored a new
>> generation of jihadists. The police say he inspires two organisations — 
>> the
>> al-Nasireen and the Farzandan-e-Millat — responsible for the killings of
>> officers last August and September. The name al-Nasireen, a reference to 
>> the
>> companions of Prophet Mohammad, is thought to draw on the *nom de guerre* 
>> of
>> Faktoo's Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen co-founder. Farzandan-e-Millat, or sons of 
>> the
>> nation, mirrors that of the Dukhtaran-e-Millat, daughters of the nation, 
>> an
>> organisation run by Faktoo's wife, Asiya Andrabi.
>>
>> Ms Andrabi is the youngest child of the prominent Srinagar doctor, Sayeed
>> Shahabuddin Andrabi. The 1962-born Ms Andrabi has an undergraduate degree 
>> in
>> biochemistry, and hoped to study further in Dalhousie. Forbidden from
>> leaving home, she turned to religion. From 1982, she set up a network of
>> religious schools and campaigned against obscenity in popular television
>> programming.
>>
>> Both Bhat and Andrabi played a key role in organising protests against 
>> the
>> grant of land-use rights to the Amarnath shrine board in 2008 — a
>> communally-charged campaign that brought tens of thousands of people to 
>> the
>> streets. The networks used then were patiently built over years, in the
>> course of struggles against prostitution and alcohol-use; campaigns for 
>> the
>> enforcement of social morality targeting western cultural practices; and
>> human rights abuses by Indian security forces.
>>
>> In 1990, the *Time Magazine* carried an evocative account of the first
>> uprising, the failure of which Mr. Geelani so evocatively wrote of: 
>> “‘Brave
>> Kashmiris,' came the summons from loudspeakers in minarets throughout
>> Srinagar, summer capital of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, ‘the 
>> time
>> has come to lay down your lives. Come out and face the occupation forces 
>> as
>> true soldiers of Islam.' By the thousands, Muslim separatists answered 
>> the
>> call last week. Enraged by the detention of 400 locals accused of 
>> terrorism,
>> they surged through the narrow alleys of the decrepit city, chanting 
>> ‘Indian
>> dogs, go home!' and pelting the police and soldiers with stones. Security
>> forces replied first with tear gas, then with rifle fire. By the week's 
>> end,
>> at least 133 people had been killed, nearly doubling, to 279, the death
>> count since the latest round of trouble in Kashmir began 18 months ago.”
>>
>> Those words could also be a prophecy of what lies ahead.
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