Deoband and Terrorism
The Ulema, Deoband and the (Many) Talibans
By : S Akbar Zaidi
Historical scholarship tends to see a continuity in the Ulema of south Asia – from the Deoband seminary in the 19th century down to the Taliban of Afghanistan and north Pakistan today. Such an assessment unfortunately ignores the discontinuities and breaks that have taken place in the traditions of Pakistani Islam. It also ignores the fact that Pakistan is increasingly influenced more by the religious influences to its west than by a south Asian identity.
An assumption is made in much of the academic and scholarly literature, usually implicitly and mostly by historians (all eminent and highly respected) that there is a line of continuity amongst the traditions of the ulema (religious scholars) of 19th century south Asia, through the seminary at Deoband (now in the Uttar Pradesh), which links them to the numerous militant movements, which bear the name of the Taliban in the northern regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
I will argue that for far too many reasons, there is little, if any, continuity and there is far greater rupture which rides through any such assumed linkages and formulations. By presenting a different set of arguments, I will also argue that these ruptures also suggest that Pakistan has, finally, separated from many Indian Islamic traditions, and Muslims in India are not a “divided nation” any longer, if ever they were. Moreover, my arguments also question the use of terms such as “ulema” from one context and century to a very different set of conditions. I also argue that the issues and problems related to contemporary developments regarding militant and religio-political Islam in the early 21st century in Pakistan and Afghanistan present very different analyses and solutions than does a more historical and scholarly assessment which creates a link between tradition, learning and religious practice from 19th to the 21st century. By arguing that this is a very different nature of political Islam, analysis and solutions to address contemporary issue of “talibanisation” or militancy will have to be very different.
Time and Context
The two main aspects on which the assumption of continuity is based revolve around the term ulema and the fact that many of those who are said to belong to many forms of the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan , subscribe to a “Deobandi-form” of interpretation and practice of Islam. Some scholars even draw the lineage of the new madrasas in Pakistan and Afghanistan from the founder of the madrasa at Deoband in 1867, Maulana Qasim Naunatvi, arguing that his “vision of a great network of madrasas” meant to “revitalise Islamic society”, seems to have been realised through the hundreds of madrasas across north Pakistan and Afghanistan . This argument is apparently reinforced when scholars emphasise the fact that the Taliban who took over Afghanistan at the end of the 1990s were students (talib singular; taliban plural) of madrasas in the North West Frontier Province in Pakistan .
The use of the term ulema (alim singular) with such ease and with such impunity is, perhaps, far more problematic than is appreciated, and, I think, underlines the main problem with this strand of analysis. Historians of languages and of society and culture are aware that the meanings of words change over time and in different contexts. The term alim, or ulema, in the 1850s and 1860s is bound to have a different meaning and connotation even in the same locality and geographical context a century-and-a-half later. The Islamic religious scholars in British India who were well-versed in literature and traditions of Islam represent a different form and being compared to those who run seminaries in modern-day Pakistan and Afghanistan , and even in India . Moreover, the social and cultural context and position of the alim in a primarily pre-modern rural society is very different from that of the religious scholars trained at seminaries today. The all encompassing term “ulema” of the 19th century does not carry the same meaning as the alim or ulema of the 21st century.
There is insufficient recognition of this transformation in the work of some scholars, who link early manifestations of Islam and its institutions – such as the madrasa and the alim – with religious learning and the representation of Islam today. Treating the term ulema largely as an unchanging category or not appreciating the extent of change, scholars have continued to use the term comparing 19th century Islam and its representation with Islam today, without sufficiently marking this change. They are using a 19th century category in a completely changed context misrepresenting the meaning of that category. In one case, this has led one scholar to imply that some of the many talibanesque militant movements in Pakistan, many of which, under a different set of definitions, have been called “terrorist” organisations, such as the Sipah-i-Sahaba, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Lashkar-e-Toiba, are led by the ulema. Clearly, the “alim” of the Lashkar-e-Toiba is not the same as the alim of the 19th or even early 20th century. The alim as a religious scholar is a very different category and entity from the “alim” as politician or jihadi.
Sectarianism
Moreover, in some cases, using a largely religious paradigm, in which the notion of the ulema plays a key role, scholars have tried to look at sectarianism in Pakistan, where theoretical or literalist arguments are presented, supposedly suggesting why the Shias and the Sunnis have been at war with each other for some years in parts of Pakistan. While there is no doubt that there are huge religious differences between the Shia and the Sunni in modern Pakistan , the manifestation and form of sectarianism is based less on theological disputation and far more on modern politics, often very petty and localised. In the context of Pakistan at least, and presumably in Afghanistan as well, Shia-Sunni differences, or sectarianism, can be easily understood in their local political, often turf-related, contexts, rather than in debates following the succession of the Prophet of Islam. This is particularly so in parts of the Pakistani Punjab where sectarianism has been particularly violent and brutal, often fought out in running gun battles between “militant” Sunni and Shia armed squads. While the mantle of the alim is often used to spur on such hatred, it is often a political feud which is fought through these means rather than primarily a religious or theological one.
Furthermore, in Pakistan , there is ample documentary evidence which shows quite conclusively, that religious groups are led and run not by the ulema, but by leaders trained by the military. The role of the Inter-Services Intelligence and other covert state actors in fermenting sectarianism and giving financial and military support to numerous jihadi outfits is well known. It is not the ulema who lead or inspire these movements, but arms, money and military training. Of course, one cannot deny the religious zeal and fanaticism which brings young men to such organisations, but it is improbable that it is merely the training given by “religious scholars” which does so. And indeed, if they are religious scholars who are urging their students to wage jihad, they certainly are not the ulema of the 19th century mould.
Flawed Assumptions
The third major problem with this line of analysis has been that it refers to the Taliban and their many off-shoots, as “Deobandi Islam”. Arguing that the curriculum of these madrasas is still based on a form of the 18th and 19th century Dars-i-Nizamiyya curriculum of what later became Deobandi Islam, the suggestion that this tradition continues has made scholars and historians argue that the Taliban are Deobandis. In some, very basic and elementary ways they are right. There are ample traces of the Deobandi form of Islam in the teachings of madrasas in Pakistan , despite the fact that a larger proportion of Pakistanis follow the less austere, Barelwi Islam. Nevertheless, one must recognise that while the different Taliban groups may have had some access and pedagogic training in madrasas, the Deobandi component of whatever training they would have received would have been minimal. From the few studies that have been conducted of madrasas and their curriculum in Pakistan, the evidence clearly shows a hotchpotch of what is taught, ranging from elements of theological teachings originating in the Dars-i-Nizamiyya, but also including “modern” education, as well as what can only be called indoctrination and the spreading of hatred against other religious factions. To call such pedagogy Deobandi is correct only in a very broad, general, sense, and while many of the jihadis may still call themselves Deobandi, the assumption that this type of teaching is related to the original madrasa at Deoband is overstretched.
Moreover, a fact recognised by many scholars, but perhaps not enough, is the impact of the Gulf and especially of Saudi Arabian Wahabi Islam on these jihadi movements. In terms of funding andindoctrination, Wahabi Islam now seems to dominate the more militant elements in the broad spectrum of Pakistani Islam. Again, perhaps it is less the theological part of Wahabi Islam that is transmitted, and the more militant and jihadi characteristics are passed on as knowledge and training.
I will maintain that as Pakistan ’s politics and economy have moved towards west Asia and away from an Indian history and past, its various Islams have also been influenced by these trends. Pakistan ’s version of Deobandi Islam is affected by Saudi Wahabism, and hence it becomes difficult to argue that these madrasas are still, in any real sense, Deobandi. Moreover, while it is true that many of the Deobandi madrasas in Pakistan were set-up after Partition by Deoband-trained scholars of the 1930s and 1940s, given Pakistan ’s and India ’s political and diplomatic relationship over the last 60 years. Deobandi Islam in Pakistan today is bound to be very different from Deobandi Islam in Deoband, or anywhere else in northern India .
The final point that needs to be made in any line of reasoning which looks at continuity is the ruptures that have taken place in the form and notion of religio-political Islam, from the early 20th century of Maulana Maudoodi or Maulana Abul Kalam Azad to the militant and political Islam of the 21st century of Mulla Omar, Osama bin Laden, or Maulana Mahmood Azhar of the Lashkar-e-Toiba. Islam, even Pakistani and Afghani Islam, is now globalised, Wahabiised, as well as affected by geopolitical influences which have a far-reaching impact on local and domestic Islam. In a post-11September 2001 world and in the region, Islam’s forms, politics as well as its religious and perhaps even theological components would have undergone huge change and reinterpretation as well.
The ruptures in the streams of ideas related to the continuities in history need to be rethought and the use of terms better contextualised, if at all one is to learn any lessons from the past.
We shouldn’t forget the Dirty Role Played by Pakistani Establishment [Secular Mostly] who exploited this Religiosity to attain Strategic Depths????
Major General (Retd) Naseerullah Khan Babar, Scandals & Shenanigans
http://chagataikhan.blogspot.com/2009/06/major-general-retd-naseerullah-khan.html
Mr Bhutto had already seen me as IG FC and was keen to have me in the province as a Governor since the province was a political trouble spot and he wanted to integrate the tribal areas and organise the nascent Afghan resistance, a task, commenced by me in October ’73 as IG FC resistance.
35. So how was this stint?
We did well. During this period there were a large number of bomb blasts in the NWFP with Ajmal Khattak and Azam Hoti sitting in Kabul indulging in anti-Pakistan speeches and activity.
In order to convey a message to Sardar Daud that we could play the same game and to assess the training level of the resistance an operation was initiated in Panjsher Valley in August 1975.
The operation was a total success. The Afghans suffered heavily in men and equipment and Daud sought peace and accepted the Durand Line. He initiated an agreement in mid-1976. However, the formal agreement was not signed in view of Zia’s take over.
36. When did Pakistan enter the Afghan scenario as a party, which was assisting the anti-Daud insurgents in Afghanistan?
In October 1973 while I was serving as IG FC an Afghan named Habibur Rahman (Shaheed) came and contacted me about setting up a resistance movement in Afghanistan with active military assistance of Pakistan. I conveyed the same to Mr Bhutto, who accepted my proposal in view of the changed situation in Afghanistan and asked me to organise training of Afghans.
37. What was the political and military aim of the Pakistani govt of that time?
From 1947 till that date all Afghan governments had generally not been friendly towards Pakistan. They raised the bogey of Pakhtunistan but refrained from acting against us in 1965 and 1971 when at war with India because of the political environment after the Liaquat Bagh meeting.
There were a large number of bomb blasts. Mr Z.A Bhutto was very clear even in 1973 after Daud’s coup. An analysis of the regional environment was undertaken, highlighting the break in the Afghan system of continuity; the impending generational change in the leadership in the USSR and China (Chou had died). The inability of continuity/stability in Iran with removal of Shah of Iran from the scene. Being the last of the party ideologues it looked likely that the USSR leadership may take the opportunity to move once more and invade Afghanistan, a step towards the fulfilment of Peter the Great’s will (1777). Thus we established the base of Afghan Mujahideen resistance in 1973.
38. What type of assistance was provided to the Afghan resistance and which Pakistani agencies were involved?
We gave them basic infantry weapons, some specialised training in how to conduct guerrilla warfare under an SSG team until it was discontinued 05 July 1977 by Gen Zia, who lacked the strategic vision.
39. At what stage did the SSG enter the scene as the principal agency that trained the Afghan resistance?
They (a team) imparted training in the belief that they were training Frontier Corps personnel (all trainees were enlisted in the Frontier Corps before training)
A.H AMINS NOTE:– THIS ASSERTION OF BABAR IS FACTUALLY INCORRECT.
40. What was theISI role in Afghanistan in the period 1974-77?
It was a top secret affair and the ISI had no role. The secret was shared between Mr Bhutto, myself, Aziz Ahmad and the then Army Chief Tikka Khan. This was for obvious reasons. The Foreign Office could with, nonchalance deny if raised at un or any other forum.
41. Who were the pioneers of the anti-Daud Afghan resistance?
These were Ustad Rabbani, Hikmatyar, Ahmad Shah Masood and a host of others who came to Pakistan after October 1973.
42. You have been a committed member of the PPP?
At what stage did you decide that you must join Mr Bhutto’s party? I was impressed by Mr Bhutto’s progressive policies since 1972. On 27 July 1977 after Martial Law Mr Bhutto personally requested me to join the PPP. I did so out of conviction once Mr Bhutto was out of power.
43. Why did Mr Bhutto select Zia as a COAS?
There were a number of reasons and these were discussed with me personally by Mr Bhutto, while in detention at Murree. One was the pretended humility and this disarmed Mr Bhutto into the belief that he would pose no threat to the nascent democracy. Secondly, his performance when he invited Mr Bhutto to the centenary celebrations of 11 cavalry at Kharian.
He took pains to ascertain Mr Bhutto’s tailor in Karachi (Hamid Khan) and had a Blue Patrols as Colonel-in-Chief of Armoured Corps. On entering the room, Mr Bhutto found a suitcase on his bed and on inquiry was told that it contained the Blue Patrol. The next day, Mr Bhutto was requested to climb a tank and engage a target. Quite obviously the target was hit. Then was his performance while on deputation in Jordan, where he killed a large number of Palestinians (Black September), Mr Bhutto was led to the belief that if he was so loyal to Jordan, he would be even more loyal to Pakistan. His prime performance came at Multan, where he invited Mr Bhutto as Colonel-in-Chief.
After the function, when Mr Bhutto had barely returned to Mr Sadiq Qureshi’s house, when he was informed that General Zia requested to meet him. Mr Bhutto was surprised, having met him in the mess a little earlier. However, he called him into Mr Sadiq Qureshi’s study/library.
Gen Zia on entrance went round the Almirah, looking for something and on inquiry he revealed that he was looking for a copy of the Holy Quran. On finding a copy he placed his hand on and addressing Mr Bhutto he said, “You are the saviour of Pakistan and we owe it to you to be totally loyal to you”.
Then was the fact that there was little to pick and choose amongst the other aspirants. The only other suitable candidate was General Majeed Malik who was Mr Bhutto’s favourite as a sound professional. Unfortunately was involved in the International Hotel Scandal where he was caught with Mustafa Khar. He was sent as Ambassador to Libya.
Finally, of course was the American angle. They had picked Zia as suitable material at Fort Leavenworth, followed his career progress and possibly lobbied in his favour. They made it known to friends months in advance that he would be appointed COAS.
Zia’s obsequeous behaviour made Mr Bhutto think that he was a non-political man. Pakistani democracy was at an infant stage and could not afford an Army Chief with political ambitions. Then there was not much choice. Gen Sharif was considered politically unreliable since he had been very close to Ayub Khan. Jillani had no command experience and was the head of isi. Akbar Khan had not performed well as a GOC 12 Division in Kashmir in 1971 war.
Gen Aftab and AB Awan had no command potential and were not suitable.
44. How would Mr z.a Bhutto have behaved had he been in power when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan?
Mr Bhutto laid the foundation of the Afghan resistance in 1973. He had the foresight and vision to do it. As a matter of fact we created the organisational network which was used by Zia and the usa to oppose the Soviets. Zia had a short term vision and ignored the political angle of organising an Afghan government in exile with ulterior aims of gobbling us aid. Had Mr Bhutto been in chair he would not have deliberately neglected the political angle like Zia. Even Daud was convinced by Mr Bhutto in 1976 and said “Pakistan and Afghanistan are in the same boat. If it is the threat from the North (USSR) it is Afghanistan today and Pakistan tomorrow. If it is the threat from the South (India) it is Pakistan today and Afghanistan tomorrow”. You see after 1971 Indian strategists had placed Pakistan and Afghanistan in the same category as the next target.
Mr Bhutto laid the foundation of the Afghan resistance for reasons discussed earlier. However, being a political animal, he also continued with a political alternative/solution. In November 1976, in consultation with the resistance leadership two individuals, namely Wakil Azam Shinwari and Yunus Khugiani were selected to proceed to Rome and request King Zahir to return and as his father had done earlier, to lead a movement into Afghanistan.
The caveat was that Zahir Shah could return as a constitutional monarch under the Constitution drafted by Mr Musa Shafiq, a former Prime Minister and the mentor/founder of the Hizb in Afghanistan. However, Zahir Shah indicated that he was willing to play his role but he would first visit Saadat (Egypt), then visit the Shah of Iran and finally arrive in Pakistan.
Mr Bhutto was confident that King Zahir Shah could act as a rallying point and play his historical role. Events, however, took a different turn and martial law was imposed in Pakistan. The other aspect was the negotiations with Sardar Daud. Even Daud as earlier discussed had accepted the Durand Line in 1976 and wanted peace with Pakistan.
45. How would you assess Zia’s Afghan policy?
It was based on sheer opportunism and personal interest. Initially, he lacked the vision and, therefore, suspended financing the movement. This resulted in break-up of movement from one to seven groups — each leader fending for himself. Secondly, when the Soviet invasion took place he did not form a government in exile, which could gain experience during the Jehad and be available when the Geneva talks took place.
Also all the us/Saudi and other assistance would have been routed through institutional organisations (Ministries) rather than individuals and would have prevented heart burning and divisive tendencies.
Finally, he opposed the Geneva talks and visualised only a military solution – the bane of all our subsequent military leadership — Hamid Gul, Beg etc. We were very deliberate. Every resistance is based on a political centre, a hierarchy, like the DeGaulle government in exile, the Algerian and Yugoslav Government in exile etc. Zia deliberately kept the Afghan Mujahideen divided into various groups in order to ensure that the bulk of the us aid could be embezzled. The future events thus led to the post-1988 civil war in Afghanistan.
46. What was the role of the COAS General Mirza Aslam Beg and the President Ghulam Ishaq Khan in the period 1988-90 in destabilising the PPP Government?
Initially Ghulam Ishaq was very grateful to the ppp for having elected him as the President. After about three months he changed into his true colours and actively started conspiring with the then coas General Beg & IJI to destabilise the PPP government.
47. What is your opinion about limiting or totally finishing the ISI’s political role?
They should have no political role as ISI. It is an Inter Services Intelligence agency.
48. How would you define your Taliban policy?
The Taliban was a purely indigenous movement. We came in where we rightly assessed that the Taliban were restoring peace in Afghanistan and our chief interest being that there would be no peace in Pakistan unless there was peace in Afghanistan. Our policy was based on purely humanitarian grounds and the cornerstone being the unity and integrity of Afghanistan. We were not interested in individuals but the well being of the Afghan people.
In September they entered Kabul and in October we commenced negotiations between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. A formal draft was prepared. It was to be finalised on 5 November 1996, because of an important clause (political) was removed by Dr Hulls, the un representative on Afghanistan. On 4 November President Sardar Farooq Leghari dissolved our government.
Secular blunders Nadeem F. Paracha Sunday, 05 Jul, 2009 | 01:44 AM PST
The late President Anwar El-Sadat of Egypt was assassinated in 1981 by a faction of Egypt’s leading Islamist organisation, the Muslim Brotherhood. The irony is that this was the same organisation that Sadat had purposefully patronised.
He had replaced the charismatic Egyptian leader, Gamal Abdul Nasser as the President of Egypt after Nasser died in 1970. Nasser had ruled the country as a popular president between 1952 and 1970, leaving behind a legacy of staunch secular/socialist Arab nationalism.
Though Nasser remained popular till his death, the glow of his influence across assorted Muslim and Third World countries was somewhat dimmed when Egyptian and Syrian armed forces backed by the Soviet Union were decimated in the 1967 war against Israel. Though Sadat had helped Nasser in toppling the Egyptian monarchy in 1952, and was also an integral part of Nasser’s socialist/secular policies, he initiated a shift. In Sadat’s view, Nasser’s socialist model could not sustain the new sombre realities that had surfaced after the 1967 war.
Sadat’s move towards the western economic model was welcomed by the country’s urban bourgeoisie, but it was vehemently challenged by the pro-Nasser and left-wing student groups and the Arab media. To neutralise the pro-Nasser and left-wing challenge to his shifting policies on campuses and in the print media, Sadat brought back to life one of the staunchest anti-Nasser and anti-left forces in Egypt: the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Brotherhood had been greatly radicalised by its second generation leadership led by the teachings of Syed Qutb. He had posed the biggest challenge to Nasser’s socialism and the regime’s pro-Soviet and secular make-up. However, after Nasser’s death, Sadat tactfully let loose the Brotherhood, using state power to help the organisation infiltrate campuses and the media.
To appease the organisation, Sadat instructed the state-owned radio and TV channels to not only start regular religious programmes, but to also show as many images as possible of him saying his prayers at a mosque. Sadat also lifted the ban on various Muslim Brotherhood magazines and newspapers. All this was done to soften Egypt’s pro-Soviet and Nasserite image and to mollify concerns of the West and Egypt’s new allies such as the oil-rich Saudi Arabia.
Immediately after Egypt’s 1973 war with Israel — in which Sadat (falsely) claimed to have defeated the enemy — he completely pulled Egypt out from the Soviet camp. However, in 1977 when Sadat, in an unprecedented move, agreed to make formal peace with Israel, the Brotherhood became Sadat’s biggest enemy. Eventually, in 1981, he was assassinated by members of the Brotherhood — ironically the very organisation he had encouraged to nullify the perceived communist threat to his regime.
Something similar happened in Pakistan as well. In the 1970 elections, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party had routed the Islamic parties. But by 1973 Bhutto was under pressure from the PPP’s leading ideologues, asking him to hasten the regime’s socialist agenda. In response, Bhutto purged the PPP of its radical founding members. He then came under the influence of the party’s ‘conservative wing’ that encouraged him to appease his staunchest opponents, the Islamists, (especially the Jamat-i-Islami), which had declared the PPP’s socialism as ‘un-Islamic.’
Though in private, Bhutto accused the Islamic parties of being ‘anti-socialist American stooges,’ in public he went along with some of his advisers’ counsel and declared the Ahmaddiyya community non-Muslim, naively believing this concession would appease and contain his Islamist opponents. The truth is, the Islamists were only emboldened by this gesture.
Also, while purging the left-wing radicals in the PPP (from 1974 onwards), Bhutto is also said to have ‘allowed’ the student-wing of the Jamat, the IJT, to establish a strong foothold on campuses which, till then, were mostly dominated by radical left-wing student groups such as the NSF.
Bhutto, like Sadat, had ignored the Islamist challenge to his regime, and seemed more concerned about imaginary ‘Soviet/ Indian-backed groups.’ His pragmatic indulgence in this regard had the reverse effect. Instead of containing the Islamist parties, his constitutional concessions only emboldened them. Not surprisingly, he was toppled by a reactionary general whom he had handpicked himself, shortly after the Islamist parties unleashed a countrywide movement against the PPP regime in 1976, calling for Sharia rule.
These are just two brief examples of the blunders committed by certain leading secular Muslim leaders that annihilated the over-blown left-wing and secular challenges by regenerating and using Islamist forces against them. This created daunting political and ideological vacuums in societies that were eventually filled by reactionary military regimes, rejuvenated Islamist forces and, eventually, a new breed of extremism — the sort that now worked towards grabbing state power and carving out a theological hegemony, based on mythical and Utopian illusions about an eternal ‘Islamic State.’
Pakistan and Egypt are prime examples; two of the many Muslim republics now desperately trying to reinvigorate moderate and secular forces to open a consensual front against extremism that was once state-sanctioned, to bludgeon opposing secular forces.
One wonders if it is already too late to do that; or if there are any worthwhile progressive sections in society today, in these countries, who can once again demonstrate the same boldness and imagination that they exhibited in the construction of their respective countries’ nationalism before their downfall. (Dawn, 5 July 2009)
Deoband Fatwa against Terrorism:
http://www.deeneislam.com/ur/horiz/halate_hazra/DEOBAND_FATWA_1/article.php?CID=166
http://www.deeneislam.com/ur/horiz/halate_hazra/DEOBAND_FATWA_1/DEOBAND_FATWA_1_1.gif
Gathering of Indian Muslims declare terrorism un-Islamic
25 February 2008 – 10:21pm.
By TwoCircles.net staff reporter
Deoband (UP): A large gathering of Muslim scholars representing different schools of thoughts and Muslims organizations unanimously declared that terrorism has no place in Islam and all terror activities are un-Islamic.
The anti-terrorism conference organized by Darul Uloom Deoband and attended by about 10,000 scholars from all over India issued a declaration at the end of the conference, here today. “Killing of innocents is not compatible with Islam. It is anti-Islamic,” read the declaration.
Maulana Marguburrehman, Maulana Salim Qasmi, and Mufti Hilal Usmani at the Anti-Terrorism Conference
Declaration stated that “Islam is a religion of mercy for all humanity. Islam sternly condemns all kinds of oppression, violence and terrorism. It has regarded oppression, mischief, rioting and murder among severest sins and crimes.”
Various fatwas have been issued in the past against terrorism but this is the first time that such a large gathering of scholars have came out strongly against terrorism. This is also a first attempt to define terrorism in light of Islam.
The gathering defined terrorism as “any action that targets innocents, whether by an individual or by any government and its agencies or by a private organisation anywhere in the world constitutes, according to Islam, an act of terrorism.”
Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)’s 2005 fatwa against terrorism did not define terrorism. In the absence of any universal definition of terrorism, this attempt by Darul Uloom Deoband can be a useful guide for Muslims to confront terrorist and terror groups.
Deoband conference condemned attempts by government agencies and media to associate terrorism with Islam and madrasas.
Maulana Abdul Khaliq Madrasi addressing the confrence
The declaration raised the issue of innocent Muslims being arrested and forced to spend years behind bars while guilty are not being caught or their activities stopped.
“And those spreading terror, attacking police stations, killing the police in broad daylight and having illegal arms are roaming about freely with no effective and preventive steps being taken by the government to check their acts of terrorism and violence.”
“This partial attitude has put a big question mark on the secular character of the government, posing great threats to the country.”
“The administrative machinery should be asked to conduct impartial investigation in activities disturbing public peace in the country and to punish only those found guilty,” the declaration demanded.
Representatives of many different Muslim schools of thought and Muslim organizations attended the conference. Apart from madrasas following Darul Uloom Deoband’s school of thought, the representatives and Ulama of Baraelwi, Ahl-e-Hadith, Jama’at-e-Islami and Shi’ah schools of thought, as well as Sajjada Nashins of various Dargahs attended the conference.
The heads and representatives of All India Muslim Personal Law Board, Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind, Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat(Salim Qasmi), Milli Council and the Darul Uloom Deoband’s Old Boys Association also participated in the conference.
http://www.twocircles.net/2008feb25/gathering_indian_muslims_declare_terrorism_un_islamic.html
Deoband’s Anti-Terrorism Convention: Some Reflections
12 March 2008 – 12:07am.
By Yoginder Sikand, TwoCircles.net
The mammoth ‘Anti-Terrorism Convention’ organised at Deoband late last month, which brought together ulema from all over the country, has received wide media coverage. While smaller conventions of this sort have been organized by other ulema bodies in recent years, this one, unlike others, caught the attention of the media particularly because it was organized by the Dar ul-Ulum Deoband, probably the largest traditional madrasa in the world, which large sections of the media have been unfairly berating as the ‘hub’ of ‘terrorism’.
The speeches delivered at the convention have been considerably commented on in the press. By and large, the non-Muslim press has focused almost wholly on the resolutions that were passed that labeled ‘terrorism’ as ‘anti-Islamic’, leaving out other crucial issues that were raised by numerous ulema who spoke on the occasion, particularly about Western Imperialism and Zionism as major factors behind global ‘terrorism’, and the hounding of Muslim youth and mounting Islamophobic offensives across the world, including India, in the name of countering ‘terror’. Muslim papers have dealt with these issues fairly extensively, but, following most of the speakers at the convention, they have placed the blame for ‘terrorism’ almost entirely on what they identify as ‘enemies of Islam’, thus presenting a very one-sided picture. In short, media reporting about the convention, by both the Muslim and non-Muslim media, has been inadequate and somewhat imbalanced. The same can be said of several of the speeches made at the convention.
The presidential address to the convention, which was also circulated as a printed document, was delivered by the conference’s organizer and rector of the Deoband madrasa, Maulana Marghubur Rahman. ‘We condemn all forms of terrorism’, he insisted, ‘and in this we make no distinction. Terrorism is completely wrong, no matter who engages in it, and no matter what religion he follows or community he belongs to’. ‘Islam’, he announced, ‘is a religion of mercy and peace’. Hence, terrorism or the killing of innocent people ‘is totally opposed to Islam’. He evoked the Quran to argue that Islam exhorts Muslims to behave well with people of other faiths if they do not oppress them, to abide by their treaties and agreements with non-Muslims and not to let the injustice of any community cause them to deviate from the path of justice.
Maulana Marghub ur-Rahman argued that far from being ‘anti-national’, numerous ulema and madrasas were in the forefront of India’s freedom struggle. Dismissing charges that madrasas were used for fomenting ‘terrorism’, he insisted that they ‘promote love, peace, tolerance and patriotism’. He appealed to the madrasas to provide ‘proper guidance to their students so that they are not misused as agents to engage in any illegal activity in the name of Islam’, an obvious reference to certain radical Islamist outfits that have sought, largely unsuccessfully, to make recruits among Indian Muslim youth. He suggested that in order to counter the misapprehensions that many non-Muslims have about madrasas, the managers of the madrasas must establish good relations with government officials and people of other faiths living in their vicinity. ‘We must not unnecessarily make or consider others as our enemies’, he stressed. ‘Instead’, he advised, ‘we must spread our message of love’. He also suggested that madrasas should improve their system of functioning, maintain proper accounts and focus on the character-building of their students.
Indians, Muslims as well as others, the Maulana declared, are ‘brothers’, and they have ‘jointly sacrificed for and contributed to the country’. He appealed to all Indians to join hands to work for India’s ‘peace and development’. If the government of India is really serious about combating terrorism, he stressed, it should be neutral in its approach to various communities, not suspect or target anyone simply because of his religion, and cease hounding innocent people, an obvious reference to the growing number of cases of police arresting and even killing Muslims in the name of countering ‘terrorism’. He lambasted what he termed as ‘Zionist forces’ for spreading terrorism throughout the world as a means for promoting Western and Israeli expansionism and imperialism, and even suggested that these forces might well be behind many terrorist attacks in India, which, he insinuated, had been deliberately, but wrongly, attributed to Muslims. He refused to acknowledge that Indian Muslims might engage in terrorist activities, claiming that because this would hurt Muslims more than others ‘it is unrealistic and even impossible for them to be terrorists’.
Several other speakers at the convention repeated many of the points that Maulana Marghub ur-Rahman had made. Like him, all of them argued that Islam did not sanction terrorism or the killing of innocents. Some used this argument to make the specious claim that, by definition, Muslims could not be terrorists, thus placing the entire burden of global terrorism on what they called ‘anti-Islamic forces’, particularly ‘Western Crusader’ and ‘Zionist’ groups. These forces, they alleged, were engaged in a global conspiracy to defame Islam and wrongly brand it as a violent religion, while at the same time engaging in state-sponsored terrorism on a large-scale, as in the case of the American devastation of Iraq and Afghanistan, or masterminding blasts and violent attacks which they had, so they alleged, wrongly blamed on Muslims simply to give them and Islam a bad name.
This, for instance, was the burden of the argument made by Maulana Noor Alam Khalil Amini, editor of the Deoband madrasa’s Arabic magazine ‘Ad-Dai’, in a booklet commissioned by Maulana Marghubur Rahman specially for the convention, which was distributed to those present on the occasion. In a similar vein, Maulana Khalid Rashid Firanghi Mahali, a noted Islamic scholar from Lucknow, declared that ‘America is sowing the seeds of terrorism all over the world’. ‘Anti-Islamic forces’, he claimed, ‘are scared of the increasing influence of Islam. That is why they claim that Islam and terrorism go with each other’. Likewise, Maulana Mahmood Madani, senior leader of the Jamiat ul-Ulema-e Hind, denounced George Bush as ‘the world’s biggest terrorist’. He castigated America and other Western powers for ‘spreading hatred against Muslims and Islam’.
The final declaration of the convention ran on similar lines. It denounced the killings of innocents as completely ‘anti-Islamic’, no matter who the perpetrators were, Muslims or non-Muslims. It insisted that Islam ‘teaches peace, equality, justice and service to others’. It failed, however, to recognise the very existence of terrorism in the name of Islam engaged by some self-styled Islamist groups. Instead, it appeared to put the burden of terrorism entirely on the shoulders of those whom it saw as inimical to Islam. ‘Governments of most countries’, it announced, ‘are toeing the line of Western and imperialist powers, and in order to please them are behaving in a despicable manner with their citizens, particularly Muslims’. It rued the fact that India’s internal and external policies were being increasingly shaped by these anti-Islamic powers, who ‘have unleashed untold terror’ in countries as far as Afghanistan, Iraq and South America. It condemned the hounding of innocent Indian Muslims and their religious institutions in the name of countering ‘terrorism’, while lamenting that the Indian state took no action against the real perpetrators of crimes against humanity. It appealed to the Muslims of India to ‘follow their established tradition of love and respect for the country and be alert so that no anti-Islamic and anti-national forces could use them as agents’. Finally, it called for all Indians to unite ‘for upholding justice, the rule of law and secularism’.
The significance of the Deoband convention can be gauged from the fact that various Muslim organizations (including several non-Deobandi groups), as well as Hindu and secular bodies have welcomed it, although some have rightly expressed the wish that it should have been organized much earlier. The announcement by the organizers of the convention that similar meetings will be held across the country is indeed a very heartening development. One wishes this step would be reciprocated by Hindu religious organizations, who, too, need to take a clear stand against the terrorism being actively stoked by hardliner Hindu groups. One also hopes that the appeals for cooperation with secular non-Muslims that have been made at the convention are accepted by the state and civil society groups and movements, who can explore creative ways of engaging with the ulema for working for Muslim empowerment, inter-communal harmony, improving India’s relations with Muslim countries (particularly Pakistan), promoting dialogue with Kashmiri groups and countering radical Islamist forces from across the borders.
That said, some burning questions still remain. Writing in the Urdu “Hindustan Express”, Shakeel Rashid asks, ‘Why is it that the ulema were silent for the last two decades when Muslim youth were being hounded in the name of combating terrorism and when communal violence, which is also a form of terrorism, was being unleashed on a massive scale?’. For an explanation, which he obviously does not agree with, he refers to Syed Arshad Madani, till recently the President of the Deobandi Jamiat ul-Ulema-e Hind, as having declared at the convention that despite widespread anti-Muslim violence in India for the last 60 years, the Deoband madrasa ‘had not brought the community together’, but that now it was forced to, in the form of the convention, because madrasas are being increasingly targeted. What Shakeel Rashid was probably suggesting was that the ulema were coming into the open to protest mainly because now, unlike before, their own institutions are under attack and that they themselves are being branded as ‘terrorists’.
Another critical issue raised by the commentator Yusuf Ansari, also in the “Hindustan Express”, is that none of the ulema who condemned terrorism at the Deoband convention ‘named a single terrorist organization and condemned it’. Ansari sees it as unfortunate that the ulema failed to explicitly mention, leave alone condemn, Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and similar groups in Pakistan and Kashmir, some of which have also now reportedly extended their activities into India, who are ‘misusing the name of Islam to spread terror’. ‘The question arises’, Ansari writes, ‘as to why those ulema who condemn terrorism as anti-Islamic did not say a thing about these groups’. ‘Is it’, he asks, ‘that in their eyes their actions do not constitute terrorism?’ ‘Every speaker at the convention’, he notes, ‘condemned America for its terrorism’, but why, he asks, ‘did they not themselves also introspect and look within?’. Further, he rightly adds, while the ulema denounced the massive killings of Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine by America and American-backed regimes, they remained curiously silent on the massacre of Muslims by fellow Muslims, be it by the late Saddam Hussain in Iraq, or in Darfur, Sudan, where several hundred thousand Muslims have been killed and rendered homeless in a devastating intra-Muslim civil war.
In conclusion, Ansari aptly comments, ‘It cannot be logically sustained that, on the one hand, terrorism is condemned as anti-Islamic, and, on the other hand, silence is maintained about those [Muslims] engaged in such anti-Islamic activities’. ‘It is not enough’, he insists, ‘to denounce terrorism as anti-Islamic. Terrorist organizations must also be specifically named and explicitly and sternly condemned’. Their failure to do so, he suggests, had kept madrasas in ‘suspicion’.
Yet, despite these apt comments by critics, the Deoband ‘anti-terrorism’ convention is indeed a very welcome development. One hopes it is not just a one-time event, but that, as the organizers have promised, it is but the first of a series of such meetings to be held across the country in order to galvanise a truly popular movement involving people from different communities jointly struggling against all forms of terrorism, whether by the state, groups or individuals, and irrespective of the religious or communal affiliation of its perpetrators. As one of the speakers at the convention, Maulana Abdul Alim Faruqi, very appropriately put it, the struggle against terrorism demands that ‘Hindus and Muslims should unitedly work to take the country forward in a spirit of love, brotherhood and unity’.
http://www.twocircles.net/2008mar11/deobands_anti_terrorism_convention_some_reflections.html
Dear Friend Abdul,
The writers above ignorantly praising Deobandis while completely forgetting a Fact as to what kind of Filthy Language these very Deobandis used against Late. Ms. Fatimah Jinnah during her Election Campaign against Ayub. Deobandis in particular and Mullahs [every sect] in general is one bunch of the most confused lot, read the same Deobandis under Musharraf with Libyans in Peshawar before 911 [LOL:) A DEOBANDI CONFERENCE UNDER THE LATER BECOME ENLIGHTENED FRAUD MUSHARRAF] – General Musharraf, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, Brigadier [R] Usman Khalid & Deobandi Taliban. http://chagataikhan.blogspot.com/2009/02/general-musharraf-colonel-muammar.html
Let me help you in opening your eyes to face the harsh realities of Ruthless International Politics which is made of National Interests [read Vested Interest and Pakistan and Saudi Arabia also follow these Rules]. Shariah, Rule of Muslim Ummah, Muslim Brotherhood, Quran and Hadith and Islami Khilafa are just Cheap Slogans raised to attain certain goals during the Cold War by the USA and every Islamic Country was part and parcel in it to counter the Socialism. These slogans of Islam were raised to make Chootiya [Fool] out of so-called Muslim Ummah and the UMMAH came forward to prove that they are the biggest Chootiya in the universe, now face the result and read that before 9/11 the same General Musharraf and Military Junta allowed the following to happen on Pakistani Soil with the active participation of the Deviant and Anarchist Religious Movement i.e. Darul Uloom Deoband of India…
Darul Uloom Deoband of India
General Pervez Musharraf [Before 911 Pro Taliban – US Backed Military Dictator of Pakistan – 1999 – 2008]
Read and enjoy AS TO HOW GENERAL MUSHARRAF AND COMPANY ACCOMODATED MULLAHS AND TALIBAN UNDER THEIR VERY NOSE WHICH THE VERY SAME MUSHARRAF AND HIS MILITARY BRUTALLY CRUSHED AFTER A SINGLE TELEPHONE CALL FROM WASHINGTON, USA AFTER 911. I would take back you to the Past of this Col. Mu’ammar al-Qadhafi has been ruling Libya under the nomenclature of Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya but his diplomats attending Radically Deviant Deobandi’s [the Godfathers of Cutthroat Talibans} Conference.
“QUOTE”
Colonel. Mu’ammar Abu Minyar al-Qadhafi
Mu’ammar Abu Minyar al-Qadhafi with Women Guards [where is the Shariah of Taliban]
On September 1, 1969, a small group of military officers led by then 28-year-old army officer Mu’ammar Abu Minyar al-Qadhafi staged a coup d’etat against King Idris, who was exiled to Egypt. The new regime, headed by the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), abolished the monarchy and proclaimed the new Libyan Arab Republic. Qadhafi emerged as leader of the RCC and eventually as de facto chief of state, a political role he still plays. The Libyan government asserts that Qadhafi currently holds no official position, although he is referred to in government statements and the official press as the “Brother Leader and Guide of the Revolution.”
The new RCC’s motto became “freedom, socialism, and unity.”
Strange isnt it that the so-called and much Islam is nowhere in the motto of Libyan Government and our Mullah visit Libya for what?
And that is not the end as per BBC:
US resumes relations with Libya
Relations with Gaddafi were frozen for more than two decades The United States has formally resumed diplomatic tieswith Col Muammar Gaddafi’s government in Libya after 24 years, US officials announced. Assistant Secretary of State William Burns revealed the news after talks with Colonel Gaddafi and his ministers in the Libyan capital, Tripoli.
Mr Burns was in the city to formally open a new US liaison office.
Libya’s ties with the West have blossomed since it renounced weapons of mass destruction in December.
Mr Burns added that Libya would be “taking its own steps to establish diplomatic representation in the US”.
Saudi ‘plot’
At his talks with the veteran Libyan leader, he passed on a letter from President George W Bush which was quoted by the Libyan state news agency.
Mr Bush hailed co-operation between US and Libyan experts on scrapping the North African country’s weapons of mass destruction programmes, the agency said.
At his talks with Col Gaddafi, Mr Burns also raised the issue of recent allegations that Libya had planned to have Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, a key US ally, assassinated.
US state department spokesman Adam Ereli said later that Washington had “made clear [its] concerns about the story as well as reminding Libya of its assurances not to use violence for political objectives”.
Comprehensive Coverage of the Three-day Deobandi Conference Held in Pakistan on April 9, 2001
April 25, 2001
An estimated half a million delegates recently attended the International Deoband Conference at Taro Jaba near Peshawar. While the bulk of the delegates came from madrassas in Pakistan, there were also a number of them from Afghanistan and India.
The conference was organised by the Jamiat Ulema-I-Islam of Pakistan headed by Maulana Fazlur Rahman, a cleric from the North West Frontier Province. Libya had sent a high-ranking envoy, Abdullah Jibran, to the conference. He read out a special message from Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Qadhafi. According to reports from Pakistan a number of Deobandi leaders from India attended the conference including the highly respected Maulana Asad Madni and the vice-chancellor of the Dar ul Uloom, Deoband, Maulana Marghoob-ul-Rahman.
The organisers of the conference, the JUI, have a continuing history of support for terrorist groups made up of fundamentalist, religious fanatics. They came into prominence during the CIA and ISI-supported struggle against Soviet troops in Afghanistan.
They were somewhat marginalised by General Zia-ul Haq, who extended greater support to groups close to the Jamat Islami, then headed by a relative of General Zia — Mian Tufial Ahmed. But, when the Benazir Bhutto government decided to arm and train a new force for the ISI’s Afghan jehad in 1996, they turned to their coalition partner Maulana Fazlur Rahman to provide the cadres and leadership of the Taleban from the madrassas the JUI controlled in the NWFP and Baluchistan.
The Taleban emerged from these madrassas to take control of most of Afghanistan with the active support of the ISI that provided arms, training and even officers and men from the Pakistan army, to participate in its military operations.
The JUI has not confined its activities to supporting the Taleban alone. When the ISI decided that secular groups like the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front had to be sidelined in Jammu and Kashmir, it started supporting fanatical Jehadi terrorist groups like the Harkat-ul Ansar, which is now known as the Harkat-ul Mujahideen. It is well known that the supporters of the Harkat are linked to the JUI and that they have camps in Pakistan and in Taleban controlled areas of Afghanistan.
The hijacking of IC-814 to Kandahar was organised by the Harkat-ul Mujahideen. The detained Harkat leader Maulana Masood Azhar, who was released and taken to Kandahar in the wake of the hijacking, of IC-814, was and is a close friend and associate of Maulana Fazlur Rahman. The hijackers including the brother of Maulana Masood Azhar were all supporters and members of the Harkat.
Azhar has now set up a new terrorist outfit called the Jaish-e-Mohammad. The UP police recently gunned down three terrorists of the Jaish near Lucknow. Maulana Rahman has also made no secret of his sympathy and support for Chechen separatists and their jehad against Russia. Thus, the conference near Peshawar was organized by people who are internationally known as being religious extremists, given to supporting Jehadi causes and terrorism across the world.
The highlight of the three-day conference near Peshawar from April 8 to April 11 was the prominence given to the messages of Colonel Qadhafi, the Taleban leader Mullah Omar and the international terrorist, Osama bin Laden. In his message read out by Taleban Deputy Foreign Minister Mullah Ahsan Akhund, Mullah Omar slammed the United Nations as a western tool and claimed that Muslims were being oppressed in Palestine, Kashmir and Chechnya. He asserted that Muslim countries were being subjected to all forms of aggression by non-Muslim powers, with the United Nations doing nothing to help Muslims and Muslim countries. Osama bin Laden described Mullah Omar as a “champion leader” because of his actions like the destruction of the statues of the Buddha in Bamiyan and for resisting armed attacks from “anti-Muslim elements”.
The delegates from India quite obviously did not want to be drawn into the controversies that were bound to arise because of the rhetoric of Mullah Omar, Osama bin Laden and Maulana Fazlur Rahman. Maulana Asad Madni, who was the chief guest at the concluding session, confined himself to praying for Allah’s religion to be observed by Muslims. Maulana Marghoobul Rahman made a scholarly speech referring to the educational, literary and political achievements of Dar-ul-Uloom in Deoband. He urged Muslims to refrain from aggression so that they are not labeled as terrorists or fundamentalists.
In marked contrast, their host Maulana Fazlur Rahman strongly criticised the United Nations for its alleged hostility to the Muslim world. He poured venom on the United States and voiced support for the “oppressed Muslims” in Kashmir, Palestine, Bosnia and Chechnya.
The resolutions adopted by the International Deoband Conference have far reaching implications. One resolution expressed concern over the presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia and called on the Saudi government to expel the troops of the US and its allies from the Muslim holy land. This is a demand that has been consistently been voiced by Osama bin Laden. The conference thus became a tool of extremists who would not hesitate to criticize and destabilize the governments of Gulf Arab States. Another resolution called for the formation of a united Muslim bloc outside the United Nations to “liberate” Palestine and Jerusalem.
Given the close association of the JUI with virulently anti-Shia groups like the Sipah-e-Sahiba in Pakistan and the Taleban in Afghanistan, even Iran is not going to welcome the causes espoused by the conference, despite its strongly anti-American overtones. More importantly, such a conference could never have been held in Pakistan that is ruled by a military dictatorship, without the support and encouragement of the military government itself.
General Pervez Musharraf’s government has, after all, banned political gatherings and even prevented foreign travel by political leaders whenever it found it necessary to do so. The permission accorded to the JUI to host the conference clearly indicates that General Musharraf has signaled to people in Pakistan that he understands and supports the causes espoused by the Taleban and Osama bin Laden.
Despite the rhetoric of Mullah Omar and Maulana Fazlur Rahman, the resolution on Kashmir adopted by the conference is balanced. This resolution merely calls on the political leadership of India and Pakistan to find a peaceful and just solution to the Kashmir problem to save the sub-continent and Asia from nuclear confrontation.
This resolution must have been something of a disappointment to the organizers, the fundamentalist Jehadi groups in Pakistan and to General Musharraf and his government. It is quite obvious that neither Maulana Madni nor Maulana Marghoob-ul Rahman would have countenanced the sentiments voiced by their hosts and Mullah Omar about Kashmir being reflected in the conference resolution. It is to their credit that this was made abundantly clear to their hosts.
The Dar-ul-Uloom and the Deobandi leadership are held in high regard not only in India, but also throughout their world, primarily because they have sought to emphasise the egalitarian and spiritual values of Islam. Their role during India’s struggle for independence when they rejected proposals for partition of the country gives them a place of honour
and respect in India.
But the leaders in Deoband would have to ask themselves honestly whether it is not a fact that religious bigots like Maulana Fazlur Rahman, Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden have tarnished the name of Deoband and the tenets of Islam, by their practices and the policies they espouse. Was not the name of Deoband hijacked by such people to organise a conference that extolled bigotry and violence and seriously sought to undermine the policies of governments in friendly Arab countries like Saudi Arabia?
It is time for those who cherish the values that Deoband has consistently stood for and espoused, to openly disassociate themselves from the resolutions passed and the extremist and bigoted views expressed at the conference they attended.
Tuesday, April 10, 2001 — Moharram Ul Harram 15,1422 A.H
‘Muslims suffering due to West’s conspiracies’ The News International, Pakistan By Rahimullah Yusufzai
PESHAWAR: Speaking at a largely-attended conference dedicated to the achievements of Darul Uloom Deoband in India during the past 150 years, religious scholars from Pakistan and abroad said Muslims were suffering all over the world due to disunity in their ranks and on account of Western conspiracies against Islam.
The three-day conference, which began here on Monday in a huge open ground at Taru Jabba town near Peshawar, is being attended by members and supporters of Maulana Fazlur Rahman’s Jamiat Ulema-i-Islami (JUI) from all the provinces. A huge tented village has sprung up in the sprawling, under-construction Wapda Colony where the event is being staged. Vehicles flying the JUI-F flags brought thousands of party workers, many carrying their beddings, to the venue even after the formal opening of the conference.
Elaborate arrangements for seating and feeding the participants were made by the organisers, who claimed rather unconvincingly that the attendance was one million strong. Also attending are delegations from India, Afghanistan, Iran, UK, UAE, Libya and Saudi Arabia. The Indian delegation included Darul Uloom Deoband’s head Maulana Marghoobur Rahman and his deputy Qari Mohammad Usman and Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind leader Maulana Asad Madni. Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban were represented by a deputy minister Mulla Mohammad Hussain and Badghis province governor Mulla Abdul Mannan. An Iranian delegation comprising Maulana Ishaq Madni and Syed Mohammad Rizvi, both advisers to President Mohammad Khatemi, as well as Peshawar-based consul general Abbas Ali Abdullahi, also attended the conference.
Among Pakistani politicians, only Alliance for Restoration of Democracy (ARD) president Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan and Maulana Samiul Haq, who heads a rival faction of JUI, were invited to speak. Others like Jamaat-i-Islami leader Qazi Hussain Ahmad, National Awami Party Pakistan president Ajmal Khattak, Tanzim-i-Islami head Dr Israr Ahmad and former ISI chief Lt Gen (Retd) Hamid Gul sat on the stage listening to the large number of speakers.
Almost all known Ulema and JUI politicians were present at the conference but only Maulana Fazlur Rahman, Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri, Maulana Hasan Jan, Maulana Mohammad Amir Bijlighar, Maulana Dr Sher Ali Shah, Maulana Mohammad Khan Sherani, Maulana Izzatullah Shah, etc got the opportunity to speak on the opening day. The different sessions were presided by Maulana Marghoobur Rahman from India, the JUI-F patron Maulana Khan Mohammad Kundian Sharif and the party’s NWFP head Maulana Amanullah.
Narrating the services of Darul Uloom Deoband, Maulana Fazlur Rahman said its ulema and students were in the forefront of the freedom struggle against the British Raj and in spreading the light of religious education in the subcontinent. He said the Ulema of Deoband set up madaressah to educate Muslims and defend Islam.
Criticising the US-led Western countries, he said Muslims were at the receiving end in all conflict zones in the world such as Kashmir, Palestine, Chechnya, Kosovo, Bosnia, etc and they were justified in fighting back to protect their rights. Other JUI leaders said it was due to the struggle and sacrifices of Deoband Ulema and their followers that India and Pakistan won freedom from the British colonialists, the Tableegh movement was launched and the Taliban captured power and enforced Shariah in Afghanistan.
Qari Mohammad Usman, deputy head of Darul Uloom Deoband, reminded that it was due to the campaign by Ulema and students of Deoband that the Qadiani movement couldn’t succeed. He said Deoband graduates spread all over the world were busy serving Islam and Muslims.
Iran’s Maulana Ishaq Madni regretted that Muslims and the Islamic countries were never so weak and vulnerable despite the big increase in their numbers and the accumulation of resources and military hardware by the Muslim states. He made an impassioned plea for unity in Muslims ranks and the shunning of factionalism and sectarianism to combat the conspiracies against Islam by anti-Islamic forces.
Nawabzada Nasrullah also praised the contribution by Darul Uloom Deoband in the freedom struggle in undivided India. However, he soon reverted to his favourite subject by demanding holding of elections in Pakistan to elect a popular government that is capable of solving the problems of the people and fighting American imperialism.
Analysis: Muslim radicals flex muscles Monday, 9 April 2001 21:44 (ET) By ANWAR IQBAL
WASHINGTON, April 9 (UPI) — Weeks after destroying Afghanistan’s Buddhist relics, the Taliban and their supporters are meeting other Muslim radicals in Pakistan this week to seek a greater alliance of Muslim activists.
The conference began with a major success for the organizers; bringing together the Taliban and their Iranian adversaries to discuss options for removing their differences. The Taliban belong to the Deobandi school of Muslim jurisprudence, named after a small town in northern India, while the Iranians are Shiites. The two groups have major theological differences that have often led to violent clashes in the past.
The Deobandis lead Pakistan’s Sipah-i-Sahaba group which has killed thousands of Shiites during the last five years. The Iranians provide weapons and financial assistance to the rebels fighting the Deobandi Taliban in Afghanistan.
The conference also brings another radical Muslim group, the Jamaat-i-Islami, face to face with the Deobandi clerics, who otherwise strongly dislike the Western-educated Islamists of the Jamaat.
“They have certainly been encouraged by, what they see as, the Taliban’s victories against the West,” says Farhat Huq, who teaches political science at the Monmouth College in Illinois. “Although not all of them endorse the Taliban decision to demolish Buddhist statues, they admire the way the religious militia ignored the Western demand to stop the destruction.”
The 150-year old Deoband seminary in India has trained hundreds of thousands of Muslim clerics in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan who vehemently reject “Western cultural and social influences over the Islamic world,” says Nasir Zaidi, a Pakistani journalist flogged in the early 1980s for demanding a free press in Pakistan.
“Stop your aggression against the Muslims or face the consequences,”warned Maulana Fazlur Rahman of the Jamiat Ulama-i-Islam party which organized the conference.
The former chief of Pakistan’s military intelligence, General Hameed Gul, urged the participants “not to allow the West to destroy the Taliban” as the West hated the religious militia “for enforcing an Islamic code of life in Afghanistan.”
To strengthen their demand for replacing Pakistan’s Western-inspired judicial system with the Islamic courts, the conference has set up its own courts to deal with the crime committed during the three-day meeting.
“If the Muslims adopt the real spirit of Islam, there is no reason why they remain behind any other nation in the world,” said Maulana Ishaq Madni, an adviser to the Iranian president who came especially from Iran to attend the conference.
Delegations have also come from Libya, Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian territory and other Muslim countries and those representing Muslim minorities in the West.
Food kiosks are observing a ban on American products, signs advertising Coca-Cola have been painted over and posters depicting burning U.S. flags are on sale.
The boycott is said to be in protest at U.N. sanctions imposed on the Taliban over its refusal to hand over suspected Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden.
“The powers responsible for the oppression of Muslims in the Middle East, Chechnya, Kosovo, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Kashmir should realize that the Muslims are beginning to understand their game,” said Rahman, one of the leaders responsible for gathering various Muslim sects at the conference.
“If their aggressive trend persists, we have the full right to defend ourselves against their aggression,” he said.
The organizers also endorsed Rahman’s demand for the creation of an Islamic state in Pakistan similar to the Taliban’s regime.
BBC News Online Tuesday, 10 April, 2001, 10:13 GMT 11:13 UK
Bin Laden urges support for Taleban
The exiled Islamic militant Osama bin Laden, who is wanted on terrorism charges in the United States, has called on the Muslim world to support the Taleban regime in Afghanistan.
The people [of Afghanistan] are waiting for your decisions. Do not be afraid. Speak loudly and implement the Islam system Osama bin Laden
The recorded statement by the Saudi dissident was played to tens of thousands of Muslims who had gathered for a rally near the Pakistani town of Peshawar. He told them that Afghanistan was the only country in the world with a real Islamic system, and that all Muslims should show loyalty to the Afghan Taleban leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar.
He also urged the gathering to influence young people to go to Afghanistan for military training.
Allegiance
“Allah Almighty and you should be witnesses that I, Osama bin Laden, am giving allegience to Mullah Omar” he said.
And he added: “The people [of Afghanistan] are waiting for your decisions. Do not be afraid. Speak loudly and implement the Islamic system”.
The infidel world is not letting Muslims form a government of their own choice Afghan Taleban chief Mullah Omar
The Taleban have been sheltering Osama Bin Laden in defiance of demands by the US for his extradition to face charges in connection with bomb attacks on US embassies in East Africa.
The military government of Pakistan has denied showing favouritism towards Islamic groups by allowing the huge three-day gathering, despite a ban on rallies.
A government spokesman said it was a purely religious gathering and these were permitted.
The three-day conference is paying tribute to the Deoband School of Islam, which has inspired the organisers of the gathering, Pakistan’s Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam as well as the Taleban in Afghanistan.
Islamic front
During the conference, Mullah Omar attacked the United Nations as a Western tool and urged resistance from a united Muslim front, state radio reported.
“The infidel world is not letting Muslims form a government of their own choice,” he was quoted as saying in a message to the conference. “They want to resist Jihad [holy war] and destroy the Islamic system,” he said. “Therefore, under the present critical situation, Muslim unity is needed.”
Organisers of the conference pledged their support for Taleban and blamed Western conspiracies for discord among Muslims.
Theological centre
The Deoband school is a leading Islamic theological centre in north India which propagates a puritanical and orthodox Islamic outlook and orders women to be veiled and men to keep their beards untrimmed.
Followers of the 143-year-old seminary arrived from all over the Islamic world to attend the gathering. Vendors boycotted American products and sold posters depicting burning US and Israeli flags.
“We want to send the message that only Islam has the capability of bringing peace and stability in the world. The West has failed,” said conference organiser Mohammed Rahim Haqqani.
Thursday, April 12, 2001 — Moharram Ul Harram 17,1422 A.H
Deoband moot ends condemning US hegemony The News International, Pakistan By Rahimullah Yusufzai
PESHAWAR: The three-day international Deoband Conference on Wednesday concluded after adopting resolutions challenging the hegemony of US and its allies in world; demanding end to UN sanctions against Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya and early withdrawal of US-led Western troops from Arab lands.
The conference called for formation of a united Muslim block outside the “pro-Jewish” UN to liberate Al-Quds and rest of Palestine from Israeli occupation and protect the rights of Muslims.
Another resolution urged the political leadership of India and Pakistan to find a peaceful and just solution to the Kashmir problem to save the subcontinent and Asia from a nuclear confrontation.
The sixth resolution accused international media of being biased and anti-Islam and called upon the Muslim Ummah to establish its own information network to break free from the Jewish-controlled medias.
The resolutions were read by JUI leader Maulana Abdul Majeed Nadeem in the concluding session of the conference, and were adopted. The anti-US and anti-West tone of the conference, which continued all three days, peaked on Wednesday when US was described in one of the resolutions as “man-eater” who for the first time dropped atomic bomb on another country.
The resolutions demanded end to US hegemony on weapons in the world so that humanity could be saved from such exploitative forces. The conference was declared closed after a 20-minute prayers led by Darul Uloom Deoband’s deputy head Qari Mohammad Usman during which he sought Almighty’s blessings for Muslims.
Earlier, Dastarbandi of Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI) leader Maulana Fazlur Rahman was performed by Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind President Maulana Maulana Syed Asad Madni and Darul Uloom Deoband head Maulana Marghoobur Rahman. Several JUI office bearers were also honoured by tying turbans on their heads in recognition of their efforts to successfully organise the conference.
On the concluding day, the largely-attended conference at Taru Jabba town near Peshawar was addressed by Maulana Fazlur Rahman, Maulana Asad Madni, Maulana Marghoobur Rahman, former Afghan mujahideen leader Maulvi Mohammad Nabi Mohammadi, Afghanistan’s Ambassador to Pakistan Mulla Abdul Salam Zaef, Maulana Ajmal Khan, Maulana Gul Nasib Khan, Maulana Niamatullah Azmi and Mufti Habibur Rahman Khairabadi. The last-named two were from India, as were Maulanas Madni and Marghoobur Rahman.
A taped message of the Pashto-speaking Taliban supreme leader, Mulla Mohammad Omar, was read out at the conference and simultaneously translated into Urdu. Mulla Omar condemned the UN Security Council sanctions against Afghanistan as unjust and unwarranted and alleged that the Taliban were being punished for enforcing Shariah in their country. He complained that the good deeds of the Taliban like restoring peace in Afghanistan and banning opium poppy-cultivation were ignored while human rights issues were wrongly and deliberately highlighted to malign the Taliban.
He argued: “The infidels consider Islam a threat to their worldwide interests. So every effort is made to weaken Muslims. In Afghanistan we control 95 per cent of the country but we are referred to as one of the factions and denied recognition.” He stressed the Taliban-led Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan would never abandon Islamic principles and would accept no compromise if it clashed with their religious beliefs.
Maulana Asad Madni, who was chief guest during the concluding session, excused himself from making a speech by saying he wasn’t a fire-spitting orator. He just prayed for Allah’s religion to be enforced on Allah’s land.
The 80-year old Maulana Marghoobur Rahman, who wasn’t feeling well, haltingly read out part of his long speech and later allowed a colleague to complete it for him. His was a scholarly speech and it focused on the educational, literary and political achievements of Darul Uloom Deoband. He said the Deoband religious school in India had 3,500 students, 80 teachers and 250 other staffers and its yearly annual budget pooled through donations was Rs 52.4 million.
The Maulana urged the Muslims to refrain from aggression as preached by the Deoband Ulema so that the anti-Islam forces are unable to describe them as terrorists and fundamentalists. Maulana Fazlur Rahman noted that the mammoth gathering of Muslims at the Deoband Conference was a clear signal to the world, especially to the US and its allies, to either accept the hands of friendship extended to them by the Muslims and give up the policy of confrontation against Islam or be ready for the consequences.
“In case the US continues to speak in the language of force, the Muslims would be constrained to fight back and defend themselves,” he warned. The Maulana, who claimed the Deoband Conference attracted between one million to 1.5 million, stressed the need for constituting an Islamic coordiation council to jointly struggle for Islamic causes and against West’s anti-Islam conspiracies and non-governmental organizations.
He said the UN sanctions imposed against Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya were unjust and cruel and, therefore, unacceptable. Reuters adds: Condemning international sanctions against Muslim nations and demanding immediate withdrawal of Western forces from Saudi Arabia, the conference also slammed the United States and its allies as being “anti-human”.
“This meeting condemns the anti-human and anti-peace cruel attitude of the United States and its allies,” its resolution, approved by people waving their hands in the air, said. “Sanctions against Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan are open aggression against Muslims; they should be immediately lifted.
“The presence of American and European armed forces in Saudi Arabia is the biggest tragedy of our times. We demand of our Arab brothers to arrange an early removal of these forces,” the resolution concluded.
“UNQUOTE”
This is how Deobandis are used [and they never knew what hit them]!
Before 911:
Four months ago, U.S. officials announced that Washington was giving $43 million to the Taliban for its role in reducing the cultivation of opium poppies, despite the Taliban’s heinous human rights record and its sheltering of Islamic terrorists of many nationalities. Doesn’t this make the U.S. government guilty of supporting a country that harbors terrorists? Do you think your obsession with the “war on drugs” has distorted U.S. foreign policy in Southwest Asia and other regions?
When the CIA was busy doling out an estimated $2 billion to support the Afghan mujahadeen in the 1980s, Osama bin Laden and his colleagues were hailed as anti-communist freedom fighters. During the cold war, U.S. national security strategists, many of whom are riding top saddle once again in your administration, didn’t view bin Laden’s fanatical religious beliefs as diametrically opposed to western civilization. But now bin Laden and his ilk are unabashed terrorists. Definitions of what constitutes terror and terrorism seem to change with the times. Before he became vice president, Dick Cheney and the U.S. State Department denounced Nelson Mandela, leader of the African National Congress, as a terrorist. Today Mandela, South Africa’s president emeritus, is considered a great and dignified statesman. And what about Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, who bears significant responsibility for the 1982 massacre of 1,800 innocents at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon. What role will Sharon play in your crusade against international terrorism?
13 Questions for Bush about America’s Anti-terrorism Crusade By Martin A. Lee, AlterNet. Posted September 28, 2001.
Even Much before 911:
In 1995, the Unocal oil company signed a tentative agreement with the Turkmenistan government to research the possibilities of constructing an oil pipeline to Pakistan by way of Afghanistan.
As the project developed, Unocal began to seek the agreement of the Taliban, who had seized power in Kabul in September 1996. On two separate occasions, in February and December 1997, Taliban officials were flown to the US to meet with, and be wined and dined by, Unocal executives.
Up until 1998, when it became clear that the Taliban were in alliance with the al Qaeda terrorist network, Clinton administration officials actively lobbied Taliban officials on behalf of Unocal.
In 1997, Zalmay Khalilzad, at that time a consultant with Cambridge Energy Research Associates, conducted risk assessments for Unocal on their proposed 1440 kilometre pipeline project to transport natural gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan through Afghanistan.
A member of the Project for a New American Century lobby group set up by current US Vice-President Dick Cheney and US war secretary Donald Rumsfeld in 1997, Khalilzad was appointed by President George Bush in December 2001 to be the US Special Envoy to Afghanistan, supervising the creation of Karzai’s regime.
“QUOTE”
The following chronology tracks Unocal’s involvement in the pipeline project:
October 1995 Unocal and Turkmenistan signed an agreement to give Unocal the right to buy natural gas, transport it to Pakistan, and market it. Unocal and Turkmenistan also signed an agreement in 1995 to develop an oil pipeline through Afghanistan.
August 13, 1996 Unocal and Delta Oil Company announced they had signed a memorandum of understanding with Gazprom and Turkmenrusgaz as additions to a consortium to build a pipeline that would cost an estimated $2 billion. Unocal and Delta were to hold 85 percent of the project.
September 26, 1996 Taliban forces took the capital city of Kabul. The United States initially expressed optimism about the possibility of new stability in the country, with a State Department spokesman reportedly expressing hope that “the new authorities in Kabul will move quickly to restore order and security and to form a representative interim government that can begin the process of reconciliation nationwide.” The State Department backed away from this position within days, calling the situation “quite murky.” Similarly, a Unocal executive reportedly told wire services that the pipeline project would be easier to build with the Taliban’s control of Kabul; Unocal quickly retracted this statement. Sources: Elaine Sciolino, State Dept. becomes cooler to the new rulers in Kabul, New York Times, October 23, 1996. Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil & Fundamentalism in Central Asia (Yale University Press, 2001).
February 1997 Taliban representatives visited Washington D.C., where they met with State Department officials and Unocal. Source: Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil & Fundamentalism in Central Asia (Yale University Press, 2001).
October 1997 The Central Asia Gas (CentGas) pipeline consortium was formed, with Unocal serving as its development manager. Source: here.
November 1997 Taliban representatives met with Unocal in Houston. According to a report by Caroline Lees of the Telegraph, the Taliban representatives visited the Houston zoo, NASA space center, a Super Target store, and the home of a Unocal vice-president. Source: Caroline Lees, “Oil barons court Taliban in Texas,” Sunday Telegraph, December 14, 1997
August 1998 The United States launched a cruise missile attack against a training camp affiliated with Osama Bin Laden. Immediately afterwards, Unocal announced that it had suspended all activities involving the proposed pipeline project, citing “sharply deteriorating political conditions in the region.” “We have consistently informed the other participants that unless and until the United Nations and the United States government recognize a legitimate government in Afghanistan, Unocal would not invest capital in the project. Contrary to some published reports, Unocal has not – and will not – become a party to a commercial agreement with any individual Afghan faction.”
December 4, 1998 Unocal announced that it had withdrawn from the CentGas consortium for “business reasons” and that it “no longer has any role in supporting the development or funding of this project.”
February 16, 1999 Unocal reiterated that it had no role with CentGas.
May 20, 2002 Unocal’s chairman reiterated that it had no plans to become involved in any projects with Afghanistan.
Source: Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil & Fundamentalism in Central Asia (Yale University Press, 2001). Elaine Sciolino, State Dept. becomes cooler to the new rulers in Kabul, New York Times, October 23, 1996. Caroline Lees, “Oil barons court Taliban in Texas,” Sunday Telegraph, December 14, 1997. The U.S. Energy Information Administration’s report on Afghanistan is on-line here.
“UNQUOTE”
Pakistan: The Myth of an Islamist Peril By Frederic Grare Publisher: Carnegie Endowment Policy Brief #45, February 2006 – Click on link for the full text of this Carnegie Paper http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/45.grare.final.pdf
“How Afghanistan’ s Stern Rulers Took Power,” by JOHN F. BURNS and STEVE Levine, New York Times, December 31, 1996 [LINK IS DEAD]
When neighbors came to Mullah Mohammed Omar in the spring of 1994, they had a story that was shocking even by the grim standards of Afghanistan’ s 18-year-old civil war.
Two teen-age girls from the mullah’s village of Singesar had been abducted by one of the gangs of mujahedeen, or ”holy warriors,” who controlled much of the Afghan countryside. The girls’ heads had been shaved, they had been taken to a checkpoint outside the village and they had been repeatedly raped.
At the time, Mullah Omar was an obscure figure, a former guerrilla commander against occupying Soviet forces who had returned home in disgust at the terror mujahedeen groups were inflicting on Afghanistan.
He was living as a student, or talib, in a mud-walled religious school that centered on rote learning of the Koran.
But the girls’ plight moved him to act. Gathering 30 former guerrilla fighters, who mustered between them 16 Kalashnikov rifles, he led an attack on the checkpoint, freed the girls and tied the checkpoint commander by a noose to the barrel of an old Soviet tank. As those around him shouted ”God is Great!” Mullah Omar ordered the tank barrel raised and left the dead man hanging as a grisly warning.
The Singesar episode is now part of Afghan folklore. Barely 30 months after taking up his rifle, Mullah Omar is the supreme ruler of most of Afghanistan. The mullah, a heavyset 38-year old who lost his right eye in the war against the Russians, is known to his followers as Prince of All Believers. He leads an Islamic religious movement, the Taliban, that has conquered 20 of Afghanistan’ s 32 provinces.
Mullah Omar’s call to arms in Singesar is only part of the story of the rise of the Taliban that emerged from weeks of traveling across Afghanistan and from scores of interviews with Afghans, diplomats and others who followed the movement from its earliest days in 1994. It is a story that is still unfolding, with the Taliban struggling to consolidate their hold on Kabul, the capital. The city fell three months ago to a Taliban force of a few thousand fighters, who entered the city with barely a shot fired.
But the Taliban, despite their protestations of independence, did not score their successes alone. Pakistani leaders saw domestic political gains in supporting the movement, which draws most of support from the ethnic Pashtun who predominate along the Pakistan-Afghanista n border.
Perhaps more important, Pakistan’s leaders, in funneling supplies of ammunition, fuel and food to the Taliban, hoped to advance an old Pakistani dream of linking their country, through Afghanistan, to an economic and political alliance with the Muslim states of Central Asia.
At crucial moments during the two years of the Taliban’s rise to power, the United States stood aside. It did little to discourage support for the Afghan mullahs both from Pakistan and from another American ally, Saudi Arabia, which found its own reasons for supporting the Taliban in their conservative brand of Islam.
American officials emphatically deny the assertion, widely believed among the Taliban’s opponents in Afghanistan, that the United States offered the movement covert support. American diplomats’ frequent visits to Kandahar, headquarters of the Taliban’s governing body, the officials insist, were mainly exploratory.
In fact, American policy on the Taliban has seesawed back and forth. The Taliban have found favor with some American officials, who see in their implacable hostility toward Iran an important counterweight in the region. But other officials remain uncomfortable about the Taliban’s policies on women, which they say have created the most backward-looking and intolerant society anywhere in Islam. And they say that the Taliban, despite promises to the contrary, have done nothing to root out the narcotics traffickers and terrorists who have found a haven in Afghanistan under the mujahedeen.
In its most recent policy statement on Afghanistan, the State Department called on other nations to ”engage” with the Taliban in hopes of moderating their policies. But the statement came as the Taliban were tightening still further their Islamic social code, particularly the taboos that have banned women from working, closed girls’ schools, and required all women beyond puberty to cloak themselves head to toe in garments called burqas that are the traditional garb of Afghan village women. The result, so far, is that not a single one of the member countries of the United Nations has recognized the Taliban government and none have come forward with offers of the reconstruction aid the Taliban say will be needed to rebuild this shattered country. In the words of Mullah Mohammed Hassan, one of Mullah Omar’s partners in the Taliban’s ruling council, ”We are the pariahs of the world.”
On the Rise
Catching the Tide Of Discontent
How the Taliban succeeded in pacifying much of a country that had spent years spiraling into chaos is not, as their progress from Singesar to Kabul attests, primarily a question of military prowess. Much more, it was a matter of a group of Islamic nationalists catching a high tide of discontent that built up when the mujahedeen turned from fighting Russians to plundering, and just as often killing, their own people. By 1994, after five years of mujahedeen terror, the Taliban was a movement whose time had come.
One man who has seen more of the Taliban than any other outsider, Rahimullah Yusufzai, a reporter for The News in Pakistan, put it simply: ”The story of the Taliban is not one of outsiders imposing a solution, but of the Afghans themselves seeking deliverance from mujahedeen groups that had become cruel and inhuman. The Afghan people had been waiting a long time for relief from their miseries, and they would have accepted anybody who would have freed them from the tyranny.”
In any case, Mullah Omar contends that the decision to act at Singesar was not, at the time, envisaged as a step toward power.
Although he is universally known in Afghanistan as mullah, or giver of knowledge, he is a shy man who still calls himself a talib, or seeker after knowledge. He has met only once with a foreign reporter, Mr. Yusufzai. Mullah Omar said at their meeting in Kandahar that the men at Singesar intended originally only to help local villagers.
”We were fighting against Muslims who had gone wrong,” he said. ”How could we remain quiet when we could see crimes being committed against women, and the poor?”
But appeals were soon coming in from villages all around Kandahar. At about the time the two girls were being abducted in Singesar, which is in the Maiwand district 35 miles to the west, two other mujahedeen commanders had confronted each other with tanks in a bazaar in Kandahar, arguing over possession of a young boy both men wanted as a homosexual partner.
In the ensuing battle, dozens of civilians shopping and trading in the bazaar were killed. After the Taliban took control of Kandahar, those commanders, too, ended up hanging from Taliban nooses.
With each new action against the mujahedeen, the Taliban’s manpower, and arsenal, grew. Mujahedeen fighters, and sometimes whole units, switched sides, so that the Taliban quickly came to resemble a coalition of many of the country’s fighting groups. The new recruits included many men who had served in crucial military positions as pilots, tank commanders and front-line infantry officers in the Afghan Communist forces that fought under Soviet control in the 1980’s.
After a skirmish in September 1994 at Spinbaldak, on the border with Pakistan netted the new movement 800 truckloads of arms and ammunition that had been stored in caves since the Soviet occupation, there was no force to match the Taliban. Moving rapidly east and west of Kandahar in the winter of 1994 and the spring of 1995, they rolled up territory. Sometimes, using money said to have come from Saudi Arabia, Taliban commanders paid mujahedeen commanders to give up.
But mostly, it was enough for Taliban units to appear on the horizon with the fluttering white flags symbolizing their Islamic puritanism. ”In most places, the people welcomed the Taliban as a deliverance, so there was no need to fight,” recalled Mr. Yusufzai, the Pakistani reporter, who has spent more time with the Taliban than any other outsider.
Another event in September 1994 gave the Taliban their most important external backer. Naseerullah Babar, Pakistan’s Interior Minister, had a vision for extricating his wedge-shaped country from the precarious position in which it was placed when it was created in 1947 by the partition of India from territories running along British India’s frontiers with Afghanistan.
Mr. Babar saw a Pakistan linked to the newly independent Muslim republics of what had been Soviet Central Asia, along roads and railways running across Afghanistan. He believed that stability in Afghanistan would mean a potential economic bonanza for Pakistan and a strategic breakthrough for the West. ”It was in the West’s overall interest,” he said in an interview in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital. ”Unless the Central Asian states have an opening to the sea, they will never be free from Russia.”
With the rise of Taliban power around Kandahar, Mr. Babar spied a chance to prove the vision’s practicability. Using Pakistan Government funds, he arranged a ”peace convoy” of heavily loaded trucks to run rice, clothing and other gifts north from Quetta in Pakistan, through Kandahar, and onward to Ashkhabad, the capital of Turkmenistan.
But outside the American-built airport at Kandahar, a mujahedeen commander guarding one of the thousands of checkpoints that had made an obstacle course of any Afghan journey seized the convoy, demanding ransom. Once again, the Taliban intervened, freeing the convoy and hanging, again from a tank barrel, the commander who hijacked it.
Mr. Babar’s subsequent enthusiasm for the Taliban gave rise to a widespread belief among the the group’s opponents that they were a Pakistani creation, or at least that their growing military power was sustained by cash, arms and ammunition from Pakistan. Because of Pakistan’s close ties with the United States, it was a short step for these Taliban opponents to conclude that Washington was also backing the Taliban.
After Kabul fell in September, Americans venturing into non-Taliban areas north of Kabul faced a common taunt from soldiers of the ousted Government of President Burhanuddin Rabbani. ”The Taliban are American puppets!” they said.
But while that was not accurate, there were ties between American officials and the growing movement that were considerably broader than those to any other Western country.
From early on, American diplomats in Islamabad had made regular visits to Kandahar to see Taliban leaders. In briefings for reporters, the diplomats cited what they saw as positive aspects of the Taliban, which they listed as a capacity to end the war in Afghanistan and its promises to put an end to the use of Afghanistan as a base for narcotics trafficking and international terrorism.
Unmentioned, but probably most important to Washington, was that the Taliban, who are Sunni Muslims, have a deep hostility for Iran, America’s nemesis, where the ruling majority belong to the rival Shiite sect of Islam.
Along the way, Washington developed yet another interest in the Taliban as potential backers for a 1,200-mile gas pipeline that an American energy company, Union Oil Company of California, has proposed building from Quetta, in Pakistan, to Turkmenistan, a former Soviet republic that sits atop some of the world’s largest gas reserves, but has limited means to export them.
The project, which Unocal executives have estimated could cost $5 billion, would be built in conjunction with the Delta Oil Company, a Saudi Arabian concern that also has close links to the Taliban. Among the advisers Unocal has employed to deal with the Taliban is Robert B. Oakley, a former American Ambassador to Pakistan.
American officials, however, denied providing any direct assistance, covert or otherwise, to the Taliban. Similar assurances were given to Russia and India, as well as indirectly to Iran, countries that were involved in heavy arms shipments of their own to the Taliban’s main opponents, the armies of Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum and President Rabbani that control the 12 northern provinces that continue to resist the Taliban.
”We do not have any relationship with the Taliban, and we never have had,” David Cohen, the Central Intelligence Agency official who directs the agency’s clandestine operations, told Indian officials in New Delhi in November.
Mr. Babar offered similar denials, asserting that ”there has been no financial or material aid to the Taliban from Pakistan.” But Western intelligence officials in Pakistan said the denials were a smokescreen for a policy of covert support that Mr. Babar, a retired Pakistani general, had extended to the Taliban after the convoy episode at Kandahar airport.
That support, the intelligence officials said, apart from ammunition and fuel, included the deployment at crucial junctures of Pakistani military advisers. The advisers were easy to hide, since they were almost all ethnic Pashtuns, from the same tribe that make up an overwhelming majority of the Taliban.
Gaining Support To U.S. Diplomats A Rosy Picture
American officials like Robin Raphel, the top State Department official dealing directly with matters involving Afghanistan, have placed heavy emphasis on the hope that contacts with the new rulers in Kabul will encourage them to soften their policies, especially toward women.
They also say that the United States sees the Taliban, with its Islamic conservatism, as the best, and perhaps the only, chance that Afghanistan will halt the poppy growing and opium production that have made Afghanistan, with an estimated 2,500 tons of raw opium a year, the world’s biggest single-country source of the narcotic. A similar argument is made on the issue of the network of international terrorists, many of them Arabs, who have set up bases inside Afghanistan.
But as the Taliban consolidate their power in Kabul, the signs of cooperation are not strong. In the week before Christmas, as bitterly cold winds from the 20,000-foot Hindu Kush mountains swept down on Kabul, senior Taliban officials seemed to be in a more pugnacious mood than in October, when a counteroffensive by the Rabbani and Dostum forces came within 10 miles of Kabul.
The attacking forces have since been driven back beyond artillery range, allowing the Taliban to concentrate on tightening their grip on Kabul’s restive population of 1.5-million.
The sense that those Taliban leaders now give is that they see little reason to accommodate the West. Reports from United Nations officials monitoring drug flows suggest the Taliban have done nothing to impede the trafficking and that in the key provinces of Helmand and Nangarhar — accounting for more than 90 per cent of the opium production — they are in league with the drug producers, taxing them, and storing some of the opium in Taliban-guarded warehouses.
Turning Away Elusive Positions On West’s Concerns
Confronted with these reports, Taliban leaders have a stock response. ”We intend to stop the drug trafficking, because it is against Islamic laws,” they have said. ”But until we can rebuild our economy, there are no other jobs, so now is not the time.”
The Taliban position on those who support international terrorists is still more elusive. According to Western intelligence estimates, as many as 400 trained terrorists are living in areas under Taliban control, some of them with links to the groups that mounted the bombing of the World Trade Center in February 1993 and other major attacks, including the attempted assassination of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt in Ethiopia in 1995 and attacks in France by Algerian militants.
One of the most-wanted men of all, Osama Bin Laden, a Saudi Arabian businessman who has been called one of the most significant financial sponsors of Islamic extremists in the world by the State Department, has been spotted within the past month at a heavily guarded home in the Afghan city of Jalalabad, held by the Taliban since early September.
But it is on their treatment of women that Western governments’ attitudes seem most likely to hinge, and on that matter the Taliban show no sign of relenting. After a Taliban radio bulletin earlier this month celebrated the fact that 250 Kabul women had been beaten by Taliban in a single day for not observing the dress code, an Australian working as a coordinator for private Western aid agencies in Kabul, Ross Everson, visited one of the city’s top Taliban officials, Mullah Mohammed Mutaqi, to appeal for a turn toward what Mr. Everson called ”the doctrine of moderation that the Islamic faith is famous for.” Mullah Mutaqi stood up and waved his fist in Mr. Everson’s face. ”You are insulting us,” he said, Then, snuggling back into the blanket that Taliban officials wear around their shoulders for warmth in the unheated offices of Kabul, he made his clinching argument. ”I must ask you, are you the Muslim here, or am I?” he said. ”If you Westerners want to help us, you are welcome. Otherwise you are free to leave Afghanistan. You may think we cannot survive without you, but I can tell you, God will provide the Taliban with everything we need.”
When A convention against Terrorism held at Daccan and 6000 clerics from all over India have endorsed the fatwa then a very few days later Mumbai massacre occured and the terrorists called themselves as “Deccan Mujahideen” to sabotage the consensus…
Watch and read…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=951iB8zW_wE
http://aliarqam.wordpress.com/2009/09/09/terrorism-deoband-stance/
Thanks Abdul:)
Time for Laugh:
“Maulana” Yousuf Bannuri writes: The Prophet told my father, Zakaria! When you fall sick I also fall sick. Hazrat Ali had come to conduct the marriage of my father and mother. (In the 19th century!) (Iman-e-Khalis, pp. 7 and 8, Hazrat Masooduddin Usmani, Fazil Uloom Deenia)
The Prophet laid the foundation of Darul Uloom, Deoband, India (in the 19th century!). He comes to check the accounts of the school. He has learnt Urdu from the Ulema of Deoband (Mubasshirat-e-Darul Uloom, and Deoband Number of the Darul Uloom). Was this tale made up to lend credence to the Deoband Mulla factory? You decide.
Some people told Shah Abdur Raheem (Shah Waliullah’s father) that they were trying to find God. My father said, “I am He!” They stood up and shook hands (reference same, p.93). Why didn’t they prostrate?!
Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti says, “What do you ask of the Mount Caucasus? This mountain is resting on the head of a cow. The greatness and size of this cow equals 30,000 years of travel. Her head is in the East and her tail is in the West. She has been standing since eternity praising the Lord.” Sheikh Uthman Harooni reports that after narrating this (insult to human intelligence), Sheikh Maudood Chishti and a companion sank into deep meditation. Both disappeared leaving their gowns behind. They had gone to take a stroll up the Mount Caucasus (Malfoozat Khwaja Chishti Ajmeri by Khwaja Bakhtiar Kaki, Daleelul Arifain pp.85-86). They should have disappeared from the planet.
“QUOTE”
The Ahrar Ulema — Ataullah Shah Bukhari, Habibur Rahman Ludhianawi and Mazhar Ali Azhar – seldom mentioned the Quaid-i-Azam by his correct name which was always distorted. Mazhar Ali Azhar used the insulting sobriquet Kafir-i-Azam (the great unbeliever) for Quaid-i-Azam. One of the resolutions passed by the Working Committee of the Majlis-i-Ahrar which met in Delhi on 3rd March 1940, disapproved of Pakistan plan, and in some subsequent speeches of the Ahrar leaders Pakistan was dubbed as “palidistan” . The authorship of the following couplet is attributed to Maulana Mazhar Ali Azhar, a leading personality of the Ahrar:
Ik Kafira Ke Waste Islam ko Chhora
Yeh Quaid-i-Azam hai Ke hai Kafir-i-Azam.
[Ref: Islamization of Pakistan by Afzal Iqbal]
“UNQUOTE”
The Jamiat-i-Ulema- i-Hind, the most prestigious organization of the Ulema, saw nothing Islamic in the idea of Pakistan. Its president, Maulana Husain Ahmad Madani, who was also Mohtamim or principal of Darul Ulum Deoband opposed the idea of two-nation theory, pleading that all Indians, Muslims or Hindus were one nation. He argued that faith was universal and could not be contained within national boundaries but that nationality was a matter of geography, and Muslims were obliged to be loyal to the nation of their birth along with their non-Muslim fellow citizens. Maulana Madani said: “all should endeavor jointly for such a democratic government in which Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians and Parsis are included. Such a freedom is in accordance with Islam.” He was of the view that in the present times, nations are formed on the basis of homeland and not on ethnicity and religion. He issued a fatwa forbidding Muslims from joining the Muslim League. Maulana Hussain Ahmad Madani accepted the doctrine of Indian nationalism with all enthusiasm and started preaching it in mosques. This brought a sharp rebuke from Dr. Mohammad Iqbal. His poem on Hussain Ahmad in 1938 started a heated controversy between the so-called nationalist Ulema and the adherents of pan-Islamism (Umma). [ Zamzam 17.7.1938 cited by Pakistan Struggle and Pervez, Tulu-e-Islam Trust, Lahore, p-614 p-314]
Mawdudi/Jamat-e-Islami on Pakistan – If Pakistan was going to be a state where Western Democracy prevailed, it “will be as filthy (NA-PAKISTAN) as the other part” of the subcontinent. [Musalman aur Maujuda Siasi Kashmakash, Vol. III]
Mawdudi/Jamat-e-Islami on Jinnah – He accused Jinnah of not knowing the rudiments of Islam and condemned him for misguiding the Indian Muslims. Nationalism was incompatible with Islam, [Process of Islamic Revolution].
Deobandi Mullahs often raise hell from pulpit of the Mosque that Secular Democracy, Anglo Saxon Courts and everything Western is Kufr [Disbelief] till it is not Islamised and that was not enough these very Deobandi Anarchists had issued Fatwa against Jinnah and Pakistan and even if that wasn’t enough they had a very queer definition of Ummah. Read and Enjoy about the Spiritual Deobandi Forefathers of Maulana Sufi Muhammad. These Deoabndis who have hijakced Pakistan now were the very people who opposed Pakistan tooth and nail.
“QUOTE”
High Courts and Supreme Court were ‘Ghair Sharaiee’ institutions and going for appeal in ‘Ghair Sharaiee’ institutions was ‘Haram’. He said Darul Qaza could be approached in case of any reservations on our verdicts, but the final decisions of Darul Qaza not allowed to be challenged in the High Courts and Supreme Court.
Updated at: 1443 PST, Sunday, April 19, 2009
http://www.geo.tv/4-19-2009/40174.htm
‘Qazis’ verdict can’t be challenged in SC’ Thursday, April 16, 2009 : Sufi says appeals ‘tantamount to betrayal of Islam’
http://thenews.jang.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=21541
“UNQUOTE”
Whereas Head Pope of Deobandis [Hussain Ahmed Madni] was in Congress and consider Hindus and Muslim “A single Nation”:)
The ‘United Nationalism’ of Maulana Madni – i By Yoginder Sikand Dated Published in the 1-15 Aug 2004 print edition of MG
http://www.milligazette.com/Archives/2004/01-15Aug04-Print-Edition/011508200434.htm
Wrongly reviled today as the ‘epicentre’ of ‘Islamic terrorism’, the Dar ul-‘Ulum in Deoband, one of the largest madrasas in the world, played a leading role in spearheading India’s freedom movement. The active involvement of many Deobandi ‘ulama in the struggle against the British is today a little-remembered story. Indian school textbooks refuse to mention it, probably deliberately in order to reinforce the stereotypical, yet misplaced, image of Muslims as congenitally ‘anti-national’. At the same time, however, they extol the alleged exploits of Hindutva activists in the fight against the British, while records have proven beyond doubt that leading Hindutva spokesmen, in the Congress, the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha, actually collaborated with the British and worked against the freedom movement. In this they played a similar role as that of the Muslim League.
One of the leading figures of India’s freedom movement was Maulana Husain Ahmad Madni (1879-1957). Madni served for decades as the rector of the Deoband madrasa and as head of the Deobandi-dominated Jam’at ul-‘Ulama-I Hind (‘The Union of the ‘Ulama of India’). Madni was also a leading Muslim political activist, and was closely involved in the Congress Party in pre-1947 India. At a time when the Muslim League under Jinnah had raised its demand for a separate Muslim state of Pakistan, based on the so-called ‘two nation’ theory, Madni came out forcefully as a champion of a free and united India. He insisted, arguing against the claims of both the Muslim League and the Hindu Mahasabha (which, too, subscribed to a ‘two nation’ theory of its own version), that all the inhabitants of India were members of a ‘united nationality’ (muttahida qaumiyat) despite their religious and other differences. Hence, he argued, Muslims, Hindus and others must join hands to work for an independent, united India, where all communities would enjoy equal rights and freedoms.
Madni elaborated on his theory of ‘united nationalism’ in a book penned in the early 1940s as a reply to Sir Muhammad Iqbal’s critique of his own political position. By this time, Iqbal had turned into an ardent pan-Islamist and had clearly distanced himself from his earlier nationalist stance. Madni’s book ‘Muttahida Qaumiyat Aur Islam’ (‘United Nationalism and Islam’) was published before 1947, and long remained unavailable after that, being only recently reprinted by the Jami’at ul-‘Ulama-i Hind’s headquarters in Delhi.
Madni’s central argument is that Islam is not opposed to a united nationalism based on a common motherland (vatan), language (zaban), ethnicity (nasl) or colour (rang), which brings together Muslims and non-Muslims sharing one or more of these attributes in common. In the Indian context, a united nationalism that embraces Muslims and other peoples is, therefore, he says, perfectly acceptable Islamically. In making this argument he stridently opposed Iqbal and the Muslim League, as well as radical Islamists such as Sayyed Abul ‘Ala Maududi, founder of the Jama’at-i Islami.
As a Muslim religious scholar, Madni naturally sought to justify his argument in Islamic terms. He marshalled support from the Qur’an and from records of the practice (sunnat) of the Prophet in support of his thesis. He noted that the word ‘qaum’, which is used as synonymous with ‘nation’, appears some 200 times in the Qur’an. It is sometimes used in the Qur’an to refer to the ‘people’ of a particular prophet, such as the ‘qaum’ of Noah or the ‘qaum’ of Abraham, and in these contexts it applies to all the members of these communities, including both the followers as well as opponents of these prophets. In other words, these Qur’anic verses suggest that the prophets and their followers as well as those among their own people groups who opposed them were considered to be part of the same ‘qaum’, owing to a common land, language or ethnicity. This is further evident from the fact that the Qur’an mentions various prophets as addressing those among their own people who rejected them as members of their own ‘qaum’, exhorting them to heed God’s word. From this, Madni argues, it is clear that, in contrast to the claims of the Muslim League and Maududi, Muslims and non-Muslims cannot be considered to be members of two different ‘qaums’ if they share a common ethnicity, language or motherland. If they share these traits in common they can be said to belong to the same ‘qaum’. The ‘two nation’ theory (do qaumi nazariya) of the Muslim League, therefore, has no Qur’anic basis at all.
Having thus argued that Muslims and non-Muslims who share the same country or ethnicity should be considered to be members of a single ‘qaum’, Madni suggests that on issues of common concern Muslim and non-Muslim members of a particular ‘qaum’ can, indeed should, work together. This means, he says, that the Indian Muslims must join hands with non-Muslim Indians, on the basis of belonging to the same ‘qaum’, and work together for the unity, freedom and prosperity of the country. In seeking proper Islamic legitimacy for this argument, Madni draws upon the practice of the Prophet. When the Prophet migrated from Mecca to Medina, he writes, he entered into an agreement (mu’ahada, mithaq) with the Jewish tribes of the town. According to the terms of the treaty, the Muslims and Jews of Medina were to enjoy equal rights, including full freedom of religion. They were also to jointly work for the protection of Medina from external foes. Interestingly, the treaty identified the signatories to the treaty, the Jews and Muslims of Medina, as members of a single community or ‘ummat’. This suggests, Madni argues, that Muslims and non-Muslims of a particular state or country could be considered to be members of a common ‘ummat’ if they entered into a similar treaty.
ISLAMIC PERSPECTIVES
The ‘United Nationalism’ of Maulana Madni-ii By Yoginder Sikand Dated Published in the 16-31 Aug 2004 print edition of MG
http://www.milligazette.com/Archives/2004/16-31Aug04-Print-Edition/163108200472.htm
Each individual, Madni writes, has multiple identities. One can be a Muslim, an Indian, a trade unionist or a politician at the same time without these various identities being regarded as contradictory to each other in any way. While Islam binds together Muslims all over the world, this does not negate the ‘national’ or ‘qaumi’ particularity of different Muslim groups that binds them to non-Muslims from the same ‘qaum’. Following the example of the treaty of Medina, Muslim and non-Muslim members of the same ‘qaum’ can work together for the overall social, educational, economic and political progress of their common homeland, as well as for defending their country. The Jews and Muslims of Medina were, under the joint treaty that they entered to, required to jointly defend the town from external enemies. In the Indian case, both Muslims and non-Muslims face a common external enemy — the British —and hence, following the sunnat of the Prophet, they must jointly struggle to oppose them, based on a commitment to and consciousness of belonging to the same ‘qaum’ and ‘millat’.
By thus stressing the ‘Islamicity’ of his demand, Madni forcefully interrogates his Muslim opponents who claim that his theory of ‘united nationalism’ would result in Muslims losing their separate religious and cultural identity, and being absorbed into the Hindu fold in the name of a homogenous Indian nationalism. As elsewhere, here, too, Madni argues in strictly ‘Islamic’ terms to press his case. The British, he writes, are the greatest enemy of Islam and the Muslims. Most Muslim lands, he notes, have been occupied by the British, whom he also blames for having overthrown the Ottoman Caliphate. In India, the British deposed the last Mughal Emperor and brought centuries of what he (erroneously) calls ‘Muslim rule’ to an abrupt end. To add to this, British education and culture, he says, are exercising a pernicious influence on many young Muslims, causing them to abandon their faith and culture. In this sense, then, Britain is the greatest enemy of the Muslims the world over, including in India. This being the case, the future of Islam and the Muslims crucially depends on the Muslims’ ability to challenge British imperialism. In the Indian context, the British can be overthrown only if Muslims join hands with other Indians in a joint struggle. No single community can effectively challenge the British on its own. Hence, the necessity of Muslims joining hands with other Indians, based on a commitment to a ‘united nationalism’, to rid India of the British and thereby protect and promote what Madni sees as the larger interests of Islam.
Since ‘united nationalism’ is important not simply in itself, but also for the cause of Islam, Madni charges those Muslims, such as members of the Muslim League, who oppose his thesis as playing, inadvertently or otherwise, into the hands of the British, the most inveterate foes of Islam, and thereby working against the interests of their community and religion. The British, he says, are deliberately seeking to create confusion and scare Muslims into imagining that in a free India Muslims would lose their separate identity, and be absorbed into the Hindu fold. In this way, they aim at de-politicising the Muslims, weaning them away from the struggle for independence. Ultimately, this serves to further protect and entrench British imperialism. Hence, he suggests, the ‘two nation’ theory and the demand for Pakistan, which is supported by the British to divide the anti-imperialist movement, cannot be said to be ‘Islamic’ at all.
Madni insists that the fear that the advocates of Pakistan play on—the absorption of Muslims into the Hindu fold in a Hindu-dominated united India—is not warranted. He writes that when Muslims first came to India, they were very few in number. Yet, they did not fear being absorbed into the Hindu fold, and rather than abandoning the country, they stayed here and rose to the position of rulers. Today, he says, Muslims are much larger in number, and so the possibility of losing their identity if they live in a united India alongside other communities is even more remote. Taking a dig at the advocates of a separate Pakistan, he says that a Muslim majority state is no guarantee that Muslims would be able to preserve their Islamic identity. Egypt is a Muslim-majority country, but yet it is being swept by the winds of ‘irreligiousness’ and ‘atheism’. It is thus not the communal composition of the population of a country that can guarantee its religious identity. Muslims will be able to preserve their Islamic identity only if they make organised efforts to do so. This applies in the case of both Muslim-majority as well as Muslim-minority countries. It would, Madni says, apply equally to Muslims living as a minority in a united India as it would to Muslims living in the proposed Muslim-majority state of Pakistan to which he is firmly opposed.
In the united India that Madni envisages, communities would be defined essentially on a religious basis. Each community would be allowed full freedom to follow its own religion and personal laws and to preserve its culture, within the bounds of general morality and social peace. All communities would enjoy equal rights and no one would be discriminated against on the grounds of religion. While religious communities would, therefore, be culturally autonomous, in matters of common this-worldly concern their members would work together for the overall benefit of society. Madni argued that this was perfectly acceptable according to his understanding of Islam. The shar’iah, he wrote, had left several spheres of life open to new rules depending on changing conditions. In some other spheres, the rules that it lay down, such as punishments of certain crimes, were applicable only in an Islamic state, and could not be enforced in the absence of such a state. Hence, he argued, it was possible, even from the point of view of the shar’iah as he conceived it, for Muslims to live in a secular, united India as co-citizens, instead of rulers, along with people of other faiths. In such a state, Muslims need not fear the prospect of losing their identity. Since they would have full freedom of religion, they could set up organizations and schools of their own to preserve and promote their religion and culture and to ensure that these were transmitted to their children.
Six decades after Madni penned his plea for a united India much has changed, but much more seems to have remained the same. Despite Madni’s pleas, India was partitioned, thus fulfilling the dreams of the Muslim League and its Hindu counterparts, who were equally opposed to a common Indianhood. Far from solving the communal ‘problem’, Partition only exacerbated it by converting what was till then a domestic issue into an international one. In India itself, the Medina model of interfaith faith entente remains a far cry, with the rise of Hindutva fascism and Islamist militancy in Kashmir. And what could be a more telling sign of the way that we have headed that while in Pakistan Madni is remembered as a vehement foe, in India we have completely erased him from our history books? (Concluded)
Amir Sb….
Sorry for Ur copy pasting with closed eyes….U dont even know who Sufi Muhammad is…..Is he Deobandi????
Read the article from Amir Husaini and then reflect…..Avoid “Copy Paste”
For a healthy debate on the issue, Come up with a solid article on the issue….I will respond to U…
For a plural society and culture of debate and dialogue, the way is to reflect with some thoughtful ideas, Not to start a sectarian debate…I am not here to start such rubbish debates…
@Aliarqam
Dear Durrani Sahab,
I know very well who Sufi Muhammad is and who Sufi Muhammad was? This advice of stop copy paste better come from the Moderator and I think you are not Moderator.
Second paragraph of Amir Hussaini where he discuss the Arab Revolt against Ottoman Empire is Historically Incorrect.
British Conspiracy to divide the Ummah was conspired by Captain T E Lawrence [Seven Pillars of Wisdom aka Lawrence of Arabia] at the behest of British Government through Brigadier-General Allenby ofthe 4th Cavalry Brigade before and around 1909. They cultivated the Sherif of Macca [Belong to Banu Haashim] to use them against the Ottoman Empire.
T E Lawrence had sought help and helped Hashemites not Aal-e-Saud. Aal-e-Saud have many ills but T.E.Lawrence was helped by the Great Grand Father of Shah Hussain of Jordan who was then Sherif of Macca and Medina.
T. E. Lawrence was sent by the British to recruit the enlistment of the help of the Arab Muslim tribes of the western Arabian region. The British needed them to act as irregular raiders against the eastern flank of the Ottoman Turkish army, thus helping the British Army to defeat them in the greater Middle East region during WWI. The principle tribe Lawrence enlisted was known as the Hashemites, who were then the guardians of the holy Muslim sites of Mecca and Medina, until the rise of Ibn Saud.
T. E. Lawrence and his infamous treaty with the Hashemites would have been only an obscure and forgotten footnote in the British Middle East campaign of World War I if were not for the legends built up around the character, “Lawrence of Arabia.”By the time the Treaty of Sevres was negotiated in 1920, the British felt compelled to keep Lawrence of Arabia’s promise to the chieftains of an Arab tribe called the Hashemites.
The political structure of the Middle East today is the result of that promise. The Treaty of Sevres permitted the British to seize pieces of the Ottoman Empire, which had ruled the Middle East for centuries, but had allied themselves with the Germans in WWI. Instead of British colonies, the Ottoman territories were called League of Nations’ mandates, for which the British badly needed puppet rulers.
Thus the expanded rise of the Hashemite Royal family of Arabia.
Lawrence of Arabia persuaded the British Crown to put together three provinces of the old Ottoman Empire and make one country called Iraq and give it to a Hashemite prince named Feisal. The people of these three provinces have hated each other for centuries, and that is still evidenced today as America attempts to forge a new democratic state in Iraq.
Apart from a ruthless dictator like Saddam Hussein, no one has ever been able to mesh them together. Lawrence also was able to persuade the British to betray their mandate to create a homeland for the Jews.
When the House of Saud drove the Hashemites out of Mecca and Medina, Lawrence persuaded the British to give Prince Abdullah the land mandated to the Jews known as Trans-Jordan as a consolation prize. (a betrayal of the Balfour Declaration) Today, Transjordan is today is known as the Royal Kingdom of Jordan.
After enlistment Lawrence was posted to Cairo, where he worked for British Military Intelligence. In October 1916 he was sent into the desert to report on the Arab nationalist movements.
During the war, he fought with Arab irregular troops under the command of Emir Faisal, a son of Sherif Hussein of Mecca, in extended guerrilla operations against the armed forces of the Ottoman Empire. Lawrence’s major contribution to World War I was convincing Arab leaders to co-ordinate their revolt to aid British interests. He persuaded the Arabs not to drive the Ottomans out of Medina, thus forcing the Turks to tie up troops in the city garrison. The Arabs were then able to direct most of their attention to the Hejaz railway that supplied the garrison. This tied up more Ottoman troops, who were forced to protect the railway and repair the constant damage.
In 1917 Lawrence arranged a joint action with the Arab irregulars and forces under Auda Abu Tayi (until then in the employ of the Ottomans) against the strategically located port city of Aqaba. He was promoted to major in the same year. On July 6, after an overland attack, Aqaba fell to Arab forces. Some 12 months later, Lawrence was involved in the capture of Damascus in the final weeks of the war and was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1918.
As was his habit when travelling before the war, Lawrence adopted many local customs and traditions (many photographs show him in the desert wearing white Arab garb and riding camels), and he soon became a confidant of Prince Faisal.
During the closing years of the war he sought to convince his superiors in the British government that Arab independence was in their interests, with mixed success.
In 1918 he co-operated with war correspondent Lowell Thomas for a short period. During this time Thomas and his cameraman Harry Chase shot much film and many photographs, which Thomas used in a highly lucrative film that toured the world after the war.
Lawrence was made a Companion in the Order of the Bath and awarded the Distinguished Service Order and the French Légion d’Honneur, though in October 1918 he refused to be made a Knight Commander of the British Empire.
[Ref: Seven Pillars of Wisdom].
Aal-e-Saud [a brief History]
In 1902 at the age of only 22, Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud re-captured Riyadh, the Al-Saud dynasty’s ancestral capital, from the rival Al-Rashid family. Continuing his conquests, Abdul Aziz subdued Al-Hasa, Al-Qatif, the rest of Nejd, and Hejaz between 1913 and 1926. On 8 January 1926 Abdul Aziz bin Saud became the King of Hejaz. On 29 January 1927 he took the title King of Nejd (his previous Nejdi title was Sultan). By the Treaty of Jedda, signed on 20 May 1927, the United Kingdom recognized the independence of Abdul Aziz’s realm, then known as the Kingdom of Nejd and Hejaz. In 1932, the principal regions of Al-Hasa, Qatif, Nejd and Hejaz were unified to form the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
These are the Deobandis who made life a real hell for Shias and Ahmedis in Pakistan, and if you want more Spiritual Detail then I will reveal more of This Rampantly Deviant and Sectarian War Monger/Fatwa Monger Deobandis. Read their contribution to the Muslim Society in view of Imrana Rape Case.
Brouhaha over a fatwa Yoginder Sikand July 21, 2005
http://www.rediff.com/news/2005/jul/21guest.htm
The fatwa issued by a mufti of the Deoband madrasa dissolving the marriage of Imrana, mother of five, for having been allegedly raped by her father-in-law has, predictably, set off a major controversy.
Several Muslims have voiced their opposition to the fatwa, arguing that it is not in accordance with Islamic law or shariah as they understand it. This points to the deeply contested nature of the shariah, there being considerable diversity of opinion as to precisely what it mandates on a range of issues.
While the ambiguity of the shariah might lend itself to theological anarchy on occasion, it also allows for alternate, more progressive interpretations to be articulated that can challenge what, to critics, are regressive and obscurantist prescriptions. This is precisely what seems to be happening as a fall-out of the Imrana controversy.
Edict on Imrana unfair: Law expert
Given the strong sectarian divisions within the broader Muslim fold, it is not surprising that there is no consensus among the ulama of different sects as to the ‘Islamicity’ of the fatwa. Most Deobandi ulama and their rivals, the Barelvis, both adherents of the Hanafi Sunni school of jurisprudence, probably believe that the fatwa is in accordance with their version of Islam because this is what is prescribed in the books of classical Hanafi law.
The fatwa is based in a ruling by Imam Abu Hanifa, putative founder of the Hanafi school, that when a woman has sex after marriage with her husband she becomes the mother of all his children and so cannot marry his son, even though that son may be from a previous marriage.
The ruling includes the possibility that a daughter-in-law and her father-in-law may have an illegal sexual relationship, in which case also her marriage to the man’s son would be invalid. It is on the basis of this argument that the Deoband mufti issued his fatwa annulling Imrana’s marriage to her husband.
The fatwa has been critiqued by several Muslim scholars for its literalist reading of Hanafi prescriptions, without taking into account the particular context surrounding the case. For instance, Yawar Baig, a Bangalore-based Islamic scholar, writes that Abu Hanifa’s ruling applies to a case of consensual sex, and not of rape. Hence, he says, Imrana cannot be punished for having been raped, and to do so would be to go against the intention of Abu Hanifa’s ruling.
Similarly, a Deobandi scholar, a close friend of mine, who chooses to remain anonymous for fear of being hounded by his fellow Deobandis, tells me that by punishing the victim the fatwa defies the basic ‘intention’ (maqsad) of the shariah, which is ‘justice’ (adl), and hence cannot be considered Islamically valid.
He is bitterly critical of the ‘blind following’ (taqlid) of the Hanafi school on the part of most Deobandis, even in cases where Hanafi jurisprudence departs from the clear prescriptions or the underlying spirit of the Quran, as is clearly evident in this particular fatwa. The books of Hanafi jurisprudence, he says, were written centuries after the death of the Prophet, and are based on the opinions of Hanafi ulama, and are not necessarily in accordance with the Quran on every issue. Hence, he says, to place Hanafi jurisprudence over the Quran, as this fatwa appears to have done, has ‘no justification at all’.
He insists that ‘half-baked mullahs’ with no understanding of social reality and contemporary demands should desist from issuing fatwas, and argues the need for ijtihad, or creative reinterpretation of Islamic jurisprudence in order to meet contemporary concerns. He laments that most of his fellow Hanafis, Deobandis and Barelvis, are loath to accept the need for ijithad, although ijithad is entirely in accordance with the commandments of Prophet Muhammad.
Notable ulama belonging to the Ahl-i-Hadith sect as well as some Shia scholars have argued that the fatwa has no sanction in the Quran or in the sayings attributed to the Prophet. Other scholars have pointed out that the fatwa does not receive support from the three other schools of Sunni jurisprudence, the Shafi, Hanbali and Maliki, which are regarded by the Hanafis as equally ‘orthodox’ in matters of belief.
According to the Shafi school, for instance, an act, such as rape, that is forbidden (haram) cannot establish or nullify something that is pure (halal), such as marriage. Critics of the fatwa have argued that no matter what the Hanafi position on the matter is, there is no harm if Imrana be allowed to resort to the equally ‘orthodox’ Shafi school for redress.
Resorting to another school of Sunni jurisprudence on a particular issue, they argue, would not constitute a radical innovation. After all, it was at the suggestion of the renowned Deobandi scholar, Ashraf Ali Thanvi, that the Muslim Dissolution of Marriage Act of 1939 was passed that bypassed the Hanafi rule that apostasy annuls a marriage in order to prevent Muslim women seeking a divorce from abandoning Islam.
The Act, which received the approval of most Indian Hanafi scholars, allowed a Muslim woman to obtain a judicial divorce on grounds permitted by the Maliki school without having to convert to another religion. There is thus no reason, critics of the fatwa argue, that in the Imrana case help cannot be sought from another school of Sunni law if it will help secure justice for her. Whether or not the Deobandis, strictly wedded to the Hanafi school, will concede this just demand remains to be seen.
While the opposition to the fatwa on the part of numerous Muslims is heartening to note, it is possible that, despite this, the controversy faces the risk of being turned into a communal issue, with Hindutva spokesmen using it in order to attack Muslim Personal Law.
Presenting themselves as ‘saviours’ of ‘oppressed’ Muslim women, they conveniently overlook their supporters’ role in the mass murder and rape of Muslim women and the Muslim women left widowed and destitute in one pogrom after another. The controversy is also being sensationalised all out of proportion by the ‘mainstream’ press, ever on the prowl for stories of the ‘oppressed’ Muslim woman, who is used as a foil to ‘prove’ to the world how ‘modern’ the Hindu woman is in contrast.
It is striking how mild, in comparison, the indignation of the press is to similar or worse stories of oppressed ‘Hindu’ women, to sati deaths, dowry-killings, girl child sacrifices to appease bloodthirsty goddesses, ‘low’ caste women killed or raped by ‘upper’ caste goons or spouses being killed by caste panchayats for daring to marry outside their caste.
In the brouhaha that the press, obdurate mullahs, Hindutva-walas and ‘secular’ politicians are all so taken up with, Imrana, like the hapless Gudiya and Shah Bano before her, risks being turned into a pawn in a larger, murky political game. And just as Shah Bano and Gudiya have long since been forgotten, Imrana and her plight might soon vanish from our conscience.
Yoginder Sikand has written several articles on Islam and Muslims in contemporary India. The views expressed are his own.
Deobandis are explained in details:
What is the Mullah? (By Fazil Deeniyat, Ghulam Jeelani Barq):
Mullah is a specific mentality with some telltale signs:
He is extremely closed-minded, has little tolerance for a follower of another religion. He hardly tolerates beardless Muslims, and belittles those who study the western sciences, or those who wear the western clothes. He is a staunch enemy of the Mullah in the neighborhood Masjid and takes pleasure in denouncing people as Kaafirs.
He self-invites. To please his followers, brings easy recipes for achieving Paradise. He knows little about history and current events. The Mullah is extremely arrogant despite being thoroughly ignorant. He is totally disabled from engaging in rational discussion and takes delight in vain argumentation.
He is a worshiper of the dead Ulama and “Imams” and reviles anyone critical of the dead Mullahs. The Mullah has very twisted, derogatory beliefs about women. His knowledge is good for neither this world, nor for the Next. And so on. That is why and how I hate the Mullah.
DARS-E-NIZAMI (Devised by ‘Imam’ Ghazali) :
Nizamul Mulk Toosi (1018-1092 CE) was the Prime Minister of the Suljuk King Malik Shah, and after him of King Alp Arsalan. Toosi was a Zoroastrian in Muslim disguise (Nihaayat-e-Tareekh-Abbasi, Sheikh al-Hafiz Yousuf Naishapuri). Toosi opened up the Great Nizamia University in 1067 CE in Baghdad. It was the foremost university of the Islamic world with satellites in Khurasan, Neshapur, Damascus, Bukhara etc. Smaller branches existed in Herat, Balkh, Merv, Tashkent and Isphahan in today’s Afghanistan, Iran and the former Soviet states. The center in Baghdad had as its principal no less than the top criminal of Islam, ‘Imam’ Abu Hamid Ghazali who primarily laid down the mindless Nizami syllabus in collaboration with Toosi. Ghazali grossly insulted the exalted Messenger and his noble companions. For example, he wrote that Hazrat Umar used to break his fast not by eating or drinking but by having sex with three concubines. Soon you will see many shining stars like this.
Since 1067 CE when the Nizamia University was founded, nearly a millennium has gone by. Until this day, the syllabus, Dars-e-Nizami, prescribed by these two Criminals of Islam (Toosi and Ghazali) is very much in force throughout the world in the so-called Islamic Madrasahs. It includes nothing but stupidities, and therefore, carries no room for understanding the Last Word of God, Al-Quran.
Chanting to repel the invaders:
To get a glimpse of the conspiracy of Nizamul Mulk Toosi, just one example should suffice. As the Prime Minister of the Suljuk Empire, he advised the two successive kings not to build any defenses for the Empire. He claimed that his students in the Madrasahs would work on rosary beads and do Wazifas (chanting of verses) and repel the enemy. Even today, the nonsensical sixteen ‘Uloom (sciences) prescribed by Nizamia consume eight years of the life of the Muslim youth rendering them useless for this world and the next. Ironically, ask any Mullah who has gone through these Madrasahs for eight years as to who the founder of Darse Nizami was, and there is a very good chance he won’t have an answer!
UNQUOTE”
@Aliarqam
If you want the survival of remaining Pakistan and Plural Society then lock Mullahs [of every sect] within the boundary wall of Mosques/Madressah/Imam Bargahs and their homes. Put a complete ban on their use of Loud Speakers [except Prayer Calls and Emergency Public Service Message]. Stop every kind of Evangelism which is bombarded from every TV Channel and restrict Religious Activities within the boundary walls of Mosques and Imam Bargahs.
Regarding Deobandis: Should I repeat the role Taqi Usmani, Rafi Usmani, Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai, Yousuf Ludhyanivi [all Deobandis] played from the days of General Zia till today? It was Rafi/Taqi Usmani [Deobandis] who were itching to arrange a deal between Lal Masjid Brigands and the Government and again when Swat Peace Deal was about to be broken again these Two got active and again whenever some tragedy takes place they raise their ugly finger on everybody but never take a look into their very souls. I know this Dirty Nexus of Deoband-Musharraf after 12 Oct 1999 these very Deobandis Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai, Yousf Ludhiyanvi, and Mufti Rasheed and Hakeem Akhter accepted Mawlana Masood Azher as ther Caliph and took of oath allegiance and accepted Masood Azher as a Caliph and arrange his Press Conference in their Madressahs [right under Enlightened Grunt Musharraf in the year 2000] and all that vanished right after 911 [or put under the carpet].
So please Mr Ali Arqam, when you raise alarm of Cut and Paste do your home work first.
What a tragedy that Mr Amir Hussaini is praising Abul Hasan Ali Nadvi aka Ali Mian. He should have read his book “Tareekh-e-Dawat-e-Azeemat” 7 Volumes and read his thoughts on Muhammad Bin Abdul Wahab, Shah Ismail Shaheed and Syed Ahmed Shaheed. If Mr Amir Hussaini belong to Shia Community then he should read what this “Ali Mian” used to say about Shias:)
Islam and Secularism/Islam and Democracy are two two different entities therefore lets not mix them to pervert both.
Since Deobandis are being praised right and left on this blog in [completely forgetting the Ugliest and Filthiest Role of Ghulam Ghaus Hazarvi (he used the word Randi, Awara and Fahisha for Fatima Jinnah and her colleagues) then I also hope that Amir Hussaini and Akber Zaidi would request Mufti Taqi Usmani to lead 10 Muharram Procession next year by Holding Alam Sadda in his hands and withdraw all his Fatwa issued on Bida’ats [Innovations] against Shias and Barelvis.
or Maulana Mahmood Azhar of the Lashkar-e-Toiba. [The Ulema, Deoband and the (Many) Talibans By : S Akbar Zaidi]
============================
If I am not wrong Mr. S Akber Zaidi is an Political Economist and he should have read some background and should have also checked some facts before writing an article [instead of copy pasting – Toiba is written by Indians and correct word is Tayyaba] and if that was not enough a very fatal mistake in above lines and i.e. Masood Azher is in Jaish-e-Muhammad not Lashkar-e-Tayyaba.
Mr Amir Hussaini should apply for the post of Chief Mufti in Binnori Town since he has found Lenin in Nizamuddin Shamzai:
“QUOTE”
He also extended support to the Taliban government in Afghanistan. He issued a Fatwa against the US when it launched an invasion of Afghanistan. In February 2001, he, along with the late Maulana Yousuf Ludhyanvi, pledged his loyalty to Maulana Masood Azhar of the Jaish-i-Mohammad. Maulana Shamzai remained associated with many religious parties, including Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (Fazlur Rahman group), Aalami Khatm-i- Nabowwat and Mufti Mahmood Academy. Maulana Shamzai leaves behind his widow, three sons and five daughters. Life-sketch of Shamzai By Our Staff Reporter 31 May 2004 Monday 11 Rabi-us-Saani 1425 http://www.dawn.com/2004/05/31/nat7.htm
“UNQUOTE”
Should we wait for another comparison between Marx, Hegel,Tolstoy with Qasim Nanotvi, Naqqan Mian, Maqbool Dehelvi, Abdul Quddoos Gangohi or Stalin with Ashraf Ali Thanvi or Tolstoy with Yousuf Binnori.
Dear,
You can also try for a position in Madressah Haqqania Akhora Khattak
“QUOTE”
This view is reinforced by the contradictory statements of Pakistani officials. On December 7, Pakistani authorities issued a statement that Azhar, the founder of the Jaish-e-Mohammad, had been placed under house arrested at his Bahawalpur residence in Punjab. But on December 17, first the Pakistan envoy to New Delhi and then Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi stunned everybody by saying that Azhar was at large and not in Pakistan. Azhar, a firebrand orator in favor of jihad although he has never been a combatant, was arrested in India in 1994 over his connections with the Kashmiri separatist group Harkatul Mujahideen. In December 1999, Azhar was freed along with separatist guerrillas Mushtaq Zargar and Omar Shiekh (the abductor of US reporter Daniel Pearl in Karachi in 2002) by the Indian government in exchange for passengers on the hijacked Indian Airlines Flight 814 that was held hostage in Kandahar, Afghanistan, under Taliban control. In 2000, Azhar, claimed by Pakistan to have never entered Pakistan, announced the formation of the Jaish-e-Mohammad, at a press briefing at the Karachi Press Club, along with the now slain Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai. Jaish was banned in 2002 under US pressure, but Azhar remained close to the Pakistani establishment, mainly because he refused to support al-Qaeda against the Pakistan military. Why Pakistan’s military is gun shy
By Syed Saleem Shahzad South Asia Dec 24, 2008 http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JL24Df03.html
“UNQUOTE”
DEOBANDI “LABOUR” LEADER SHAMZAI AND HIS TEACHINGS
“FROM DAILY DAWN 2000”
“QUOTE”
Hijackers get three freedom fighters released Week Ending : 01 January 2000 Issue : 06/01 http://www.lib.virginia.edu/area-studies/SouthAsia/SAserials/Dawn/2000/01jan00.html
KANDAHAR, Dec 31: The eight-day hijacking of an Indian airliner with 160 people on board came to a sudden end on New Year’s Eve after India bowed to demands to release three Kashmiri freedom Fighters. After five days of intense negotiations, the five hijackers gave up peacefully just after Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh arrived in Kandahar with the three Mujahideen whose release had been demanded by the hijackers. Wearing masks and armed with pistols, the five hijackers descended
from the Airbus A300, got into a van and were driven away from the airport.
Shortly afterwards the passengers, trapped and blindfolded for long
stretches inside the plane since Dec 24, began to emerge. The 160 passengers and crew were immediately driven in buses to two waiting Indian aircraft and flown to India. Those released included the widow of the only fatality during the
hijacking – a newlywed Indian who was stabbed to death, apparently for peeking at the hijackers through his blindfold when the plane was seized on Christmas Eve en route from Kathmandu to New Delhi. The plane eventually landed in Kandahar, the Taliban headquarters, on Saturday after crisscrossing South Asia and the Gulf. “As a result of the negotiations with the Taliban and the hijackers, there has been an agreement for the release of all the hostages in exchange for three militants,” Indian National Security Advisor Brajesh Mishra told reporters in New Delhi.
He identified the three Mujahideen as Maulana Masood Azhar, Mushtaq Zargar and Ahmad Umar Syed. One of the key issues in the negotiations had been the fate of the
hijackers. But Singh scotched rumours they would be given political asylum by
the Taliban in Afghanistan, saying they had just 10 hours to leave the country. It was not immediately clear what had happened to the three Kashmiris freed from Indian jails when they arrived in Afghanistan. Azhar, a charismatic scholar arrested in held Kashmir in 1994, was a senior leader of the Harkat-ul-Ansar, one of several hardline
Muslim groups fighting Indian occupation forces in Kashmir. India has accused the Harkat of staging the hijacking. Zargar is described by Indian officials as one of the founding fathers of “militancy” in held Kashmir.-AFP
“UNQUOTE”
I ask where was the Alleged Kashf [Influx or Sufi Trance and Deobandis Often have these Kashfs] to warn them.
More Cheating, Plagiarism, and Cut and Paste to indulge in Rubbish Sectarian/Cultural Debate on Leftist Nationalist Deobandis:)
Masood Azher: An Apt Pupil/Khalifa of Leftist Humanist Deobandi Scholars Yousuf Ludhiyanvi, Mufti Rasheed, Nizamuddin Shamzai and many others:
“QUOTE”
He released a letter written in June 1996 by former interior minister Gen (retd) Naseerullah Babar, to the Indian High Commissioner in Islamabad seeking Masood’s release on humanitarian grounds. In the letter, Khan described Masood as a young “Pakistani journalist… (who) travelled to India in February 1994 on a Portuguese passport under the name of Essa bin Adam. Apparently he had gone to India to see the conditions in Jammu and Kashmir himself for some report for his magazine”. REFERENCE: Indian plane’s hijacking: Pakistan seeks Nepalese findings Week Ending : 8 January 2000 Issue : 06/02 http://www.lib.virginia.edu/area-studies/SouthAsia/SAserials/Dawn/2000/08jan00.html
Rubin further said Pakistan must assure the safety of US citizens, Indians and all foreigners in their country. “We would hold the government of Pakistan responsible for Masood’s activities which threaten the lives of our citizens. Masood Azhar is the secretary general of the renamed ‘terrorist’ organization. REF: US warns Pakistan over Azhar’s threats. Week Ending : 8 January 2000 Issue : 06/02 http://www.lib.virginia.edu/area-studies/SouthAsia/SAserials/Dawn/2000/08jan00.html
“LENINIST DEOBANDIS UNDER ENLIGHTENED GRUNT MUSHARRAF”
“QUOTE”
News item – “Leaders of religious organizations have said that Khatam-i-Nabuwat conference shall be held today at Mosque Aisha, Sector 11-B North Karachi, under any circumstances. And today evening, in an emergency meeting, central office bearers of Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam, Sipah-i-Sahaba, Pakistan Shariat Council, Sawad-i-Azam Ahl-i-Sunnat, International Khatam-i-Nabuwat, Tanzeem Ulema-i-
Pakistan, Jaish Muhammad, Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami shall declare strategy for resisting mosque demolition.
“Deputy Secretary General of Pakistan Shariat Council and head of Tehrik-i-Ansar-ul-Islam, Maulana Abdul Rasheed Ansari, has said in his statement that in the eyes of Mohtasib, liquor stores are sacred instead of mosque. Mohtasib has issued directions on the advice of English newspaper columnist Ardeshir Cowasjee and
minorities member of dissolved Sindh Assembly, Mehromal Jagwani. He said that his crime was that some weeks back he had taken a strong stand and made a speech against Cowasjee in a local hotel and asked Mohtasib Haziq-ul-Khairi to cancel licence of liquor stores established in Muslim neighbourhoods and the selling of liquor to Muslims.
“Mohtasib Sindh was given video film of liquor being sold to Muslims and was told that employees of these stores not only sold liquor to Muslims but these Hindu employees supply illegally to local five-star hotel. Cowasjee got out demolition order for Mosque Aisha by using his influence over Mohtasib Sindh, but licences for
these liquor stores have not been cancelled; instead these stores remain open on Shab-i-Barat also. “Moulana Abdur Rashid Ansari has said that today, November 13, in Khatam-i-Nabuwat conference, prominent religious scholars Maulana Manzoor Ahmed Chinioti, Maulana Fida-ul-Rehman Darkhuasty, Maulana Ajmal Qadri, Maulana Asas Thanvi, Maulana Qari Sher Afzal, Maulana Asfandyar, Maulana Ikram-ul-Haq Khairi, Qari Saeed Qamar Qasmi and other shall address the gathering. Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman, Maulana Azam Tariq and Maulana Masood Azhar have decided to come to Karachi. We want a peaceful demonstration but if administration
creates any trouble, then it shall be responsible for any consequences.” REFERENCE: Man bites dog Ardeshir Cowasjee DATED Week Ending : 25 November 2000 Issue : 06/45 http://www.lib.virginia.edu/area-studies/SouthAsia/SAserials/Dawn/2000/nov2500.html
“UNQUOTE”
Enjoy the picture of Leftist Deobandi Labour Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai with his Caliph Freedom Fighter Masood Azhar: and Guess what it was Karachi Press Club under General The Grunt Enlightened Musharraf’s tenure???
“QUOTE”
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2000/20000206/world.htm
Sunday, February 6, 2000, Chandigarh, India Masood Azhar, right, accompanied by leader of Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen Mufti Nizamuddin, speaks at Karachi press club on Friday. — PTI
“UNQUOTE”
While there is no doubt that there are huge religious differences between the Shia and the Sunni in modern Pakistan , the manifestation and form of sectarianism is based less on theological disputation and far more on modern politics, often very petty and localised. By : S Akbar Zaidi]
===============================
Excerpts from a book:
Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism: Allah, the Army and America’s War on Terror By Hassan Abbas published by An East Gate Book. M.E. Sharpe Armonk, New York, London England.
“The Khomeini revolution in Iran already bolstered the confidence of the Shias, and they were not about to take Sunni dictates in religious matters lying down. Hard-liners among Sunni, for their part, felt that such dictation was their right, and those on the extreme right of the Sunni spectrum simply cut the Gordian knot by taking a position that, correct or not, Pakistan had a Sunni majority and as such it should be declared a Sunni Muslim state in which Shia should be treated as a minority. Since achievement of this holy goal would likely to take some time, some of them decided that the interregnum ought not to be wasted. Thus in 1985 they formed Anjuman Sipah-e-Sahaba (ASS) – an organization piously dedicated to ridding the country of the nettlesome presence of the Shias by eliminating them physically. Later, when they realized what the organization’s acronym meant in English, they changed the name to Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP).”
“The zealous emissaries of the Iranian Revolutionary Regime started financing their organization Tehreek-e-Nifza- e-Fiqah-e- Jafaria (TNFJ – Movement for the Implementation of Jafaria Religious Law) and providing scholarships for Pakistani student to study in Iranian religious seminaries. For the Zia regime though, the problematic issue was Shia activism leading to a strong reaction to his attempts to impose Hanafi Islam (a branch of Sunni sect). For this he winked to the hard-liners among the Sunni religious groups in order to establish a front to squeeze the Shias. It was in this context that Jhangvi was selected by the intelligence community to do the needful. It is also believed that the JUI recommendation played the decisive part in this choice. The adherents of the Deobandi School were worried about Shia activism for religious reasons anyhow. State patronage came as an additional incentive. Consequently, in a well-designed effort, Shia assertiveness was projected as their disloyalty to Pakistan and its Islamic Ideology.”
“In a few months, Saudi funds started pouring in, making the project feasible. For Saudi Arabia, the Iranian revolution was quite scary, for its ideals conflicted with that of a Wahabi monarchy. More so, with an approximately 10% Shia population, Saudi Arabia was concerned about the expansion of Shia activism in any Muslim country. Hence, it was more than willing to curb such trends in Pakistan by making a financial investment to bolster its Wahabi Agenda. According to Vali Raza Nasr, a leading expert on the sectarian groups of Pakistan, the flow of these funds was primarily routed through the Pakistan Military and the ISI. It is not known whether American support for this scheme was readily available, but the Zia regime knew well that the United States would be glad to acquiesce, given the rising US – Iran hostility. However, some analyst believe that CIA funds were involved in the venture.”
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Deoband’s Anti-Terrorism Convention: Some Reflections
Submitted by Anonymous on 12 March 2008 – 12:07am
Articles Indian Muslim
By Yoginder Sikand, TwoCircles.net
The mammoth ‘Anti-Terrorism Convention’ organised at Deoband late last month, which brought together ulema from all over the country, has received wide media coverage. While smaller conventions of this sort have been organized by other ulema bodies in recent years, this one, unlike others, caught the attention of the media particularly because it was organized by the Dar ul-Ulum Deoband, probably the largest traditional madrasa in the world, which large sections of the media have been unfairly berating as the ‘hub’ of ‘terrorism’.
The speeches delivered at the convention have been considerably commented on in the press. By and large, the non-Muslim press has focused almost wholly on the resolutions that were passed that labeled ‘terrorism’ as ‘anti-Islamic’, leaving out other crucial issues that were raised by numerous ulema who spoke on the occasion, particularly about Western Imperialism and Zionism as major factors behind global ‘terrorism’, and the hounding of Muslim youth and mounting Islamophobic offensives across the world, including India, in the name of countering ‘terror’. Muslim papers have dealt with these issues fairly extensively, but, following most of the speakers at the convention, they have placed the blame for ‘terrorism’ almost entirely on what they identify as ‘enemies of Islam’, thus presenting a very one-sided picture. In short, media reporting about the convention, by both the Muslim and non-Muslim media, has been inadequate and somewhat imbalanced. The same can be said of several of the speeches made at the convention.
The presidential address to the convention, which was also circulated as a printed document, was delivered by the conference’s organizer and rector of the Deoband madrasa, Maulana Marghubur Rahman. ‘We condemn all forms of terrorism’, he insisted, ‘and in this we make no distinction. Terrorism is completely wrong, no matter who engages in it, and no matter what religion he follows or community he belongs to’. ‘Islam’, he announced, ‘is a religion of mercy and peace’. Hence, terrorism or the killing of innocent people ‘is totally opposed to Islam’. He evoked the Quran to argue that Islam exhorts Muslims to behave well with people of other faiths if they do not oppress them, to abide by their treaties and agreements with non-Muslims and not to let the injustice of any community cause them to deviate from the path of justice.
Maulana Marghub ur-Rahman argued that far from being ‘anti-national’, numerous ulema and madrasas were in the forefront of India’s freedom struggle. Dismissing charges that madrasas were used for fomenting ‘terrorism’, he insisted that they ‘promote love, peace, tolerance and patriotism’. He appealed to the madrasas to provide ‘proper guidance to their students so that they are not misused as agents to engage in any illegal activity in the name of Islam’, an obvious reference to certain radical Islamist outfits that have sought, largely unsuccessfully, to make recruits among Indian Muslim youth. He suggested that in order to counter the misapprehensions that many non-Muslims have about madrasas, the managers of the madrasas must establish good relations with government officials and people of other faiths living in their vicinity. ‘We must not unnecessarily make or consider others as our enemies’, he stressed. ‘Instead’, he advised, ‘we must spread our message of love’. He also suggested that madrasas should improve their system of functioning, maintain proper accounts and focus on the character-building of their students.
Indians, Muslims as well as others, the Maulana declared, are ‘brothers’, and they have ‘jointly sacrificed for and contributed to the country’. He appealed to all Indians to join hands to work for India’s ‘peace and development’. If the government of India is really serious about combating terrorism, he stressed, it should be neutral in its approach to various communities, not suspect or target anyone simply because of his religion, and cease hounding innocent people, an obvious reference to the growing number of cases of police arresting and even killing Muslims in the name of countering ‘terrorism’. He lambasted what he termed as ‘Zionist forces’ for spreading terrorism throughout the world as a means for promoting Western and Israeli expansionism and imperialism, and even suggested that these forces might well be behind many terrorist attacks in India, which, he insinuated, had been deliberately, but wrongly, attributed to Muslims. He refused to acknowledge that Indian Muslims might engage in terrorist activities, claiming that because this would hurt Muslims more than others ‘it is unrealistic and even impossible for them to be terrorists’.
Several other speakers at the convention repeated many of the points that Maulana Marghub ur-Rahman had made. Like him, all of them argued that Islam did not sanction terrorism or the killing of innocents. Some used this argument to make the specious claim that, by definition, Muslims could not be terrorists, thus placing the entire burden of global terrorism on what they called ‘anti-Islamic forces’, particularly ‘Western Crusader’ and ‘Zionist’ groups. These forces, they alleged, were engaged in a global conspiracy to defame Islam and wrongly brand it as a violent religion, while at the same time engaging in state-sponsored terrorism on a large-scale, as in the case of the American devastation of Iraq and Afghanistan, or masterminding blasts and violent attacks which they had, so they alleged, wrongly blamed on Muslims simply to give them and Islam a bad name.
This, for instance, was the burden of the argument made by Maulana Noor Alam Khalil Amini, editor of the Deoband madrasa’s Arabic magazine ‘Ad-Dai’, in a booklet commissioned by Maulana Marghubur Rahman specially for the convention, which was distributed to those present on the occasion. In a similar vein, Maulana Khalid Rashid Firanghi Mahali, a noted Islamic scholar from Lucknow, declared that ‘America is sowing the seeds of terrorism all over the world’. ‘Anti-Islamic forces’, he claimed, ‘are scared of the increasing influence of Islam. That is why they claim that Islam and terrorism go with each other’. Likewise, Maulana Mahmood Madani, senior leader of the Jamiat ul-Ulema-e Hind, denounced George Bush as ‘the world’s biggest terrorist’. He castigated America and other Western powers for ‘spreading hatred against Muslims and Islam’.
The final declaration of the convention ran on similar lines. It denounced the killings of innocents as completely ‘anti-Islamic’, no matter who the perpetrators were, Muslims or non-Muslims. It insisted that Islam ‘teaches peace, equality, justice and service to others’. It failed, however, to recognise the very existence of terrorism in the name of Islam engaged by some self-styled Islamist groups. Instead, it appeared to put the burden of terrorism entirely on the shoulders of those whom it saw as inimical to Islam. ‘Governments of most countries’, it announced, ‘are toeing the line of Western and imperialist powers, and in order to please them are behaving in a despicable manner with their citizens, particularly Muslims’. It rued the fact that India’s internal and external policies were being increasingly shaped by these anti-Islamic powers, who ‘have unleashed untold terror’ in countries as far as Afghanistan, Iraq and South America. It condemned the hounding of innocent Indian Muslims and their religious institutions in the name of countering ‘terrorism’, while lamenting that the Indian state took no action against the real perpetrators of crimes against humanity. It appealed to the Muslims of India to ‘follow their established tradition of love and respect for the country and be alert so that no anti-Islamic and anti-national forces could use them as agents’. Finally, it called for all Indians to unite ‘for upholding justice, the rule of law and secularism’.
The significance of the Deoband convention can be gauged from the fact that various Muslim organizations (including several non-Deobandi groups), as well as Hindu and secular bodies have welcomed it, although some have rightly expressed the wish that it should have been organized much earlier. The announcement by the organizers of the convention that similar meetings will be held across the country is indeed a very heartening development. One wishes this step would be reciprocated by Hindu religious organizations, who, too, need to take a clear stand against the terrorism being actively stoked by hardliner Hindu groups. One also hopes that the appeals for cooperation with secular non-Muslims that have been made at the convention are accepted by the state and civil society groups and movements, who can explore creative ways of engaging with the ulema for working for Muslim empowerment, inter-communal harmony, improving India’s relations with Muslim countries (particularly Pakistan), promoting dialogue with Kashmiri groups and countering radical Islamist forces from across the borders.
That said, some burning questions still remain. Writing in the Urdu “Hindustan Express”, Shakeel Rashid asks, ‘Why is it that the ulema were silent for the last two decades when Muslim youth were being hounded in the name of combating terrorism and when communal violence, which is also a form of terrorism, was being unleashed on a massive scale?’. For an explanation, which he obviously does not agree with, he refers to Syed Arshad Madani, till recently the President of the Deobandi Jamiat ul-Ulema-e Hind, as having declared at the convention that despite widespread anti-Muslim violence in India for the last 60 years, the Deoband madrasa ‘had not brought the community together’, but that now it was forced to, in the form of the convention, because madrasas are being increasingly targeted. What Shakeel Rashid was probably suggesting was that the ulema were coming into the open to protest mainly because now, unlike before, their own institutions are under attack and that they themselves are being branded as ‘terrorists’.
Another critical issue raised by the commentator Yusuf Ansari, also in the “Hindustan Express”, is that none of the ulema who condemned terrorism at the Deoband convention ‘named a single terrorist organization and condemned it’. Ansari sees it as unfortunate that the ulema failed to explicitly mention, leave alone condemn, Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and similar groups in Pakistan and Kashmir, some of which have also now reportedly extended their activities into India, who are ‘misusing the name of Islam to spread terror’. ‘The question arises’, Ansari writes, ‘as to why those ulema who condemn terrorism as anti-Islamic did not say a thing about these groups’. ‘Is it’, he asks, ‘that in their eyes their actions do not constitute terrorism?’ ‘Every speaker at the convention’, he notes, ‘condemned America for its terrorism’, but why, he asks, ‘did they not themselves also introspect and look within?’. Further, he rightly adds, while the ulema denounced the massive killings of Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine by America and American-backed regimes, they remained curiously silent on the massacre of Muslims by fellow Muslims, be it by the late Saddam Hussain in Iraq, or in Darfur, Sudan, where several hundred thousand Muslims have been killed and rendered homeless in a devastating intra-Muslim civil war.
In conclusion, Ansari aptly comments, ‘It cannot be logically sustained that, on the one hand, terrorism is condemned as anti-Islamic, and, on the other hand, silence is maintained about those [Muslims] engaged in such anti-Islamic activities’. ‘It is not enough’, he insists, ‘to denounce terrorism as anti-Islamic. Terrorist organizations must also be specifically named and explicitly and sternly condemned’. Their failure to do so, he suggests, had kept madrasas in ‘suspicion’.
Yet, despite these apt comments by critics, the Deoband ‘anti-terrorism’ convention is indeed a very welcome development. One hopes it is not just a one-time event, but that, as the organizers have promised, it is but the first of a series of such meetings to be held across the country in order to galvanise a truly popular movement involving people from different communities jointly struggling against all forms of terrorism, whether by the state, groups or individuals, and irrespective of the religious or communal affiliation of its perpetrators. As one of the speakers at the convention, Maulana Abdul Alim Faruqi, very appropriately put it, the struggle against terrorism demands that ‘Hindus and Muslims should unitedly work to take the country forward in a spirit of love, brotherhood and unity’.
____________________________________________________________________________
Yoginder Sikand is the author of ‘Bastions of the Believers: Madrasas and Islamic Education in India’ (Penguin, New Delhi, 2005). He writes mainly on Indian Muslim issues, and maintains a blog on Indian madrasas, which can be accessed on http://www.madrasareforms.blogspot.com
http://twocircles.net/2008mar11/deobands_anti_terrorism_convention_some_reflections.html
Darul Uloom Deoband ! The Source Of Wahabi Terrorism !
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