The struggle for the establishment of the Islamic Caliphate can take various forms, peaceful as well as violent. Islam, the Lashkar admits, is 'a religion of peace and harmony', and seeks to 'eliminate mischief and disorder, and to provide peace, not only to Muslims but to the entire humanity'. However, Muslims are commanded to take to armed struggle, or jihad, to defend their co-religionists suffering from the oppression of others. Such a situation is said to prevail over much of the world today. While jihad in defence of Islam and of Muslims labouring under oppression is presented as a liberation struggle, it is also seen as a means for Islam to 'prevail on this earth', for Islam is seen as the only true religion.4 Armed jihad must continue 'until Islam, as a way of life, dominates the whole world and until Allah's law is enforced everywhere in the world'.5 The subject of armed jihad runs right through the writings and pronouncements of the Markaz/Lashkar and is, in fact, the most prominent theme in its discourse. Indeed, its understanding of Islam maybe seen as determined almost wholly by this preoccupation, so much so that its reading of Islam seems to be a product of its own political project.
Kashmir jihad
The Markaz sees its active involvement in the armed struggle in Kashmir as only one stage of a wider, indeed global, jihad against the forces of disbelief, stopping at nothing short of aiming at the conquest of the entire world. As the former amir of the Lashkar in Indian-controlled Kashmir, puts it, 'We will uphold the flag of freedom and Islam through jihad not only in Kashmir but in the wholeworld'. In Markaz/Lashkar discourse, the conflict in Kashmir is seen as a war between two different and mutually opposed ideologies: Islam, on the one hand, and disbelief[kufr], on the other. This is portrayed as only one chapter in a long a struggle between the two that is said to have characterised the history of Hindu-Muslim relations for the last 1400 years ever since the advent of the ProphetMuhammad. The Prophet is claimed on the basis of a hadith to have singled out India as a special target for jihad. 'Whosoever will take part in jihad against India', Markaz leader Muhammad Ibrahim Salafi claims that the Prophet had declared,'Allah will set him free from the pyre ofhell'.
India is a special target for the Markaz's mujahidin. According to the amir of the Markaz, Hafiz Muhammad Sa'eed, 'The jihad is not about Kashmir only. It encompasses all ofIndia'. Thus, the Markaz sees the jihad as going far beyond the borders of Kashmir and spreading through all of India. The final goal is to extend Muslim control over what is seen as having once been Muslim land, and, hence, to be brought back under Muslim domination, creating 'the Greater Pakistan by dint of jihad'. 6 Thus, at a mammoth congregation of Markaz supporters in November 1999, Hafiz Muhammad Sa'eed declared, 'Today I announce the break-up of India, Inshallah. We will not rest until the whole of India is dissolved into Pakistan'.7On the same occasion, Amir Hamza, senior Markaz official and editor of its Urdu organ, ad-Da'wa, thundered: 'We ought to disintegrate India and even wipe India out'.8 Those who take part in this anti-Indian jihad are promised that 'Allah will save [them] from the pyre of hell', and 'huge palaces in paradise' await those who are killed in fighting the 'disbelieving enemies'. 9
The Lashkar's Involvement in Kashmir
The Ahl-i-Hadith has not been able to take deep roots in Kashmir valley, primarily because of its opposition to Sufism and taqlid. Rather, it remains a largely elitist phenomenon, with its core support base among a limited section of the urban lower-middle and middle classes. Despite this limited support of Ahl-i-Hadith-style Islamic purism in Kashmir, the Lashkar has today emerged as the single most powerful militant group in the region, owing principally to the arms and resources that it commands.
The Lashkar's direct participation in the Kashmir conflict dates back to the end of the Afghan war in 1992, in which an estimated 1600 of its militants are said to have participated. After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Lashkar shifted its attention to Kashmir. In this, it was assisted by the Jama'at-i-Islami of Pakistan and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). In 1994, following the laying down of arms by the JKLF, the Lashkar began sending large numbers of its fighters into Kashmir, most of them from outside Kashmir, mainly Pakistanis and Afghans. It also began recruiting a small number of Kashmiris from the Valley as volunteers, probably through existing Ahl-i-Hadith networks. By mid-2001, the Lashkar claimed, it had killed 14369 Indian soldiers in Kashmir, losing in the process 1016 of its ownmen.