The Embers Continue To Simmer

The recent banning of the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) by thegovernment has created a considerable stir all over the country.

Several lives have been lost in police firing on Muslims protesting againstthe ban in Lucknow. Human rights activists as well as Muslim leaders have beenquick to accuse the government of hounding Muslims, using the SIMI ban as apretext to stoke anti-Muslim passions and to derive political mileage therefrom.

The government has been assailed for ignoring completely similarterror-spewing groups among the Hindus, such as, for instance, the Bajrang Dal,VHP and the RSS, while focussing its attention on Muslim fundamentalist outfitsalone.

While the logic in this argument is indeed compelling, it is, in my view, noreason to ignore the very real danger that groups such as the SIMI pose athreat, not just to the country as a whole but, equally, to the Muslims of Indiathemselves.

The SIMI is a hitherto little-known Muslim student organisation, set up in1977 as the students' wing of the Jama'at-i-Islami Hind. Owing partly tointernal differences on the one hand and to the growing radicalism of the SIMI,on the other, the Jama'at soon decided to disassociate itself with it, and setup another students' wing of its own, the Students Islamic Organisation (SIO).Since then, the SIMI has been an independent body.

Exact figures of SIMI membership are unavailable, but it is estimated that ithas some four hundred "ansars" or full-time cadres and some 19,000ordinary members all over the country. It is particularly strong in parts ofUttar Pradesh and Bihar, but in recent years it has managed to make inroadsamong Muslim students in southern India as well. Muslim students up to the age of thirty are eligible as members.

The SIMIalso has a wing for school-going children, the Shaheen Force, and a separatesection working among female students as well. It also has a department formissionary work (da'wah) among non-Muslims, trying to impress them with its ownversion of Islam. It operates essentially through personal networks, meetings,conferences as well as the numerous magazines that it publishes in English aswell as several Indian languages.

The SIMI sees Islam as a complete world-view and ideology, governing everyaspect of a Muslim's personal as well as collective life. Islam, it believes,has laid down a complete code of conduct for Muslims to follow, with detailedrules regulating such private matters as dress and food habits as well ascollective affairs such as politics, economics and international relations.

God, it believes, has set out a complete legal system for governance, ascontained in the Qur'an and the Hadith, or traditions of the Prophet Muhammad."Success" (falah) in this life and the world to come, it insists, canonly be had if human beings are ruled by the laws of Islam. Hence, the necessityof setting up an Islamic state, not just where Muslims are in a majority but allover the world, including India, home to the world's largest population ofMuslims after Indonesia.

For the SIMI, nationalism is a ploy hatched by the West to divide theMuslims. Hence, it is seen as a poisonous ideology, which must give way to aworldwide Islamic polity, the Khilafat, a pan-Islamic state ruled by a singleCaliph (Khalifa).

Secularism, which implies equal treatment of all religions by the state orthe privatisation of religion, is seen as un-Islamic, for Islam is said to beall-embracing in its scope and to be far superior to other faiths. Likewise,democracy is fiercely condemned, for it  is seen as replacing the"rule of God" with the "rule of Man".

Religions other than Islam are all declared to be "false" (taghuti),to be struggled against till the whole world embraces Islam. This involves along drawn-out movement and because of the stiff opposition that non-Muslim"enemies" are expected to put up, violent "jihad" is to bewaged if necessary.

Islam is thus reduced to, what, for practical purposes, seems little morethan a military programme. As the SIMI slogan so strikingly puts it: "Allahour Lord Mohammed (peace be upon him) our Commander, Qur'an our Constitution,Jihad our Path, Shahadat (martyrdom) our Desire".

Among the major concerns of SIMI has been the mounting spate of attacks onMuslims in India and elsewhere. It has been vocal in its protest against thekillings of Muslims in India, the destruction of mosques, moves to impose auniform civil code on all Indian citizens and so on, and in this it has sharedthe concern of other Muslim organisations in the country.

But where it differs from them is in its shrill radical rhetoric, which isguaranteed to ensure that even the most legitimate of Muslim demands go unheardby sympathetic non-Muslims. In the SIMI discourse, Hinduism is painted in themost lurid colours, and as an inveterate foe of Islam and its followers. Theonly way to salvation, then, is by converting to Islam.

The latest issue of SIMI's Urdu monthly, Islamic Movement, possiblythe last to come out since it has now been closed down following the ban, hasphotographs of angry-looking young men and bearded maulanas protesting againstatrocities on Muslims on Parliament Street, waving banners announcing, "Sudarshan,Singhal, Vajpayee, Advani, embrace Islam for eternal success".

Since nationalism is seen as an anti-Islamic concept, the SIMI regards allMuslims throughout the world as one unit, as members of one, indivisible "ummah".Reports about atrocities on Muslims in other countries, from Afghanistan toAlgeria, and from Bosnia to Burma, fill the pages of its magazines, and Muslimsare exhorted to take to the path of armed struggle to liberate themselves from"evil" non-Muslims.

According to intelligence reports, the SIMI is said to have established closelinks with various Islamist groups in several other countries, including Osamabin Laden's network in Afghanistan, the Hizb-ul Mujahidin in Kashmir, the WorldAssembly of Muslim Youth, Saudi Arabia, the International Islamic Federation ofStudents' Organizations, Kuwait, and with Islamist students' groups in Pakistanand Bangladesh.

Among the possible reasons for the government's decision to ban the SIMIcould be the mounting allegations of it having reportedly been involved infuelling communal tensions in the country. Giving its radical rhetoric, it wouldbe surprising if SIMI's attacks on other faiths and its strident championing ofthe dream of an Islamist Khilafat would not have further exacerbated the alreadytense communal situation in those parts of the country where it is active.

If the banning of the organisation was part of a broader effort of thegovernment to clamp down on all groups fanning communal hatred, the ban, then,may have well been justified. This, however, is not the case, for no such actionhas been taken against venom-spewing  Hindutva groups as well, whose closelinks with the government are well known.

The SIMI is now being accused of having been involved in some incidents ofcommunal strife, but, for the most part, these accusations have yet to besubstantiated.

On the other hand, despite the enormous amount of evidence indicting Hindutvaorganisations in the killing of vast numbers of Muslims, Christians and others,not only has the government chosen not to take any action against them, but iscontinuing to patronise them and assist them in their sinister designs.

Nothing more need be said to show the government's actual sincerity incombating all forms of religious terror for what it is worth.

While the outlawing of the SIMI may indeed serve a positive purpose, it mightjust as well boomerang, by further radicalising SIMI sympathisers for suchgroups are known to thrive in times of repression. It ought to be clear thatbans on organisations that promote inter-communal conflict can serve littlepurpose in the absence of a sustained struggle against the ideology that informsthem and that today threatens to transform itself into social common sense.

If the government is at all serious about countering the likes of SIMI, itwould do better to turn its attention to redressing the growing alienation andinsecurity of Muslims in this country, attacks on their institutions andmosques, anti-Muslim programmes and the like, all of which provide fertileground for organisations like the SIMI to take root and for their appeals tofall on receptive ears.

Never before has the need for seriously seeking to counter religious terror,Muslim, Hindu or of whatever other hue, been as urgent as it is today, but inthis, the BJP-led government can hardly be expected to play an honest role,subservient as it is to the dictates of the RSS.

It is for the Muslims themselves to take the lead in opposing groups such asthe SIMI, for they must realise that radical Islamists, with their promises of illusionary utopia, are their own most inveterate foes, only providingfurther fodder to rabidly anti-Muslim Hindutva forces.

On their part, Muslim and Hindu social activists, seriously concerned with theway the country is hurtling down the road to perdition, must turn their energiesto fashioning new ways of understanding their own religions so that they canplay a role in promoting peace, dialogue and social justice, issues anathema tothe SIMI and its Hindutva counterparts, but of central concern for the verysurvival of the country.