"Islam is our nation," thundered MohammadAmir Shakeel Ahmad at the Students Islamic Movement of India's (SIMI's) 1999convention in Aurangabad, "not India."
Ahmad was one of hundreds of SIMI cadre who, at that decisive meeting of thenow-proscribed Islamist group, joined in the terrorist networks which have sincecarried out strikes across India. He was arrested in 2005 for smuggling inmilitary-grade explosives and assault rifles for a planned series of attacks inGujarat, along with over a dozen other SIMI-linked Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT)operatives.
Listening in the audience that day in 1999, was a slight, soft-spoken man whowas moved enough by the speech to give his life for SIMI. Mohammad Abrar Qasim,then a Wardha-based student of dentistry, had been recruited into SIMI in 1993,after attending his first meeting at the Jamia Masjid mosque in Mominpora -- theMumbai slum where the first Lashkar networks in India had formed.
Six years later, fired by what he heard at the Aurangabad conference, Qasimbecame a full-time SIMI worker, using his earnings as a dentist to serve as itsNagpur 'in-charge' and then its Bihar 'chief'. He even married Amara Qasim, thedaughter of Ziauddin Siddiqi -- the SIMI leader whose inflammatory speeches ledto criminal charges first being filed against the organisation.
But somewhere along the line, the stories of Ahmad and Qasim diverged. Lastmonth, Qasim walked into a Nagpur court, and announced that he wished tosurrender to the authorities. Startled court clerks listened as Qasim announcedthat he had been wanted by the Maharashtra Police ever since the Mumbaiserial bombings of July 11, 2006, but now wished to clear his name.
In the weeks since he surrendered, Qasim has been telling officials that SIMI'slinks with terror are the work of a hardline minority. Most of SIMI'srank-and-file, he claims, wish to emerge from the shadows. "Moderates inSIMI want to come overground," Qasim told one Police official whointerrogated him, "because we have nothing to hide."
Back in January 2006, former SIMI president Shahid BadrFalahi called a meeting of core SIMI activists -- Qasim among them -- at Aluva,Kerala.
Under the cover of a summit of the National Urdu Promotion Council, the groupelected new office-bearers, who it tasked with lobbying politicians andreligious leaders to have the 2001 ban on SIMI revoked. Most of the team led bythe new SIMI President, West Bengal resident Mohammad Misbah-ul-Haq, wereanti-jihad political Islamists. Key office-bearers, such as Kalim Akhtar,Shahbaz Husain, Abdul Majid, Noman Badr, Saif Nachan and Minaz Nachan, believedthat SIMI's jihad links had hurt both the organisation and Muslims as whole.
But one team member didn't share their beliefs. Shibly Peedical Abdul, acomputer engineer from Kerala, who escaped the February 2008 Police sweepagainst terror suspects in Karnataka, was among the jihadist SIMI operativesthought to have helped organise the July 2006 serial bombing of Mumbai. Thebombings killed 209 people and injured 704. Abdul fled Bangalore hours after thearrest of SIMI operative Ehtesham Siddiqui, who police say helped execute thebombings. So, too, did SIMI political Islamists.
It wasn't until January 2007 that the political Islamists were able to meetagain. A senior New Delhi-based Jamaat-e-Islami leader was in attendance thistime, attempting to persuade the new leadership to surrender. "Misbah-ud-Dincalled Abdul in the middle of the meeting," one participant told SAIR,"and demanded to know why SIMI cadre had participated in the Mumbaiattacks. Abdul admitted the jihadists had met in Ujjain just a week before theterror strikes. He said the jihadists would continue their activities, andaccused us of selling out."
With no hope a compromise could be reached, SIMI political Islamists met againat Calicut in Kerala, from November 12-14, 2007. If SIMI was to ever function asa political organisation, Misbah-ud-Din said, its leaders would have to faceprosecution. Qasim, fed up with life on the run, offered to go first. "Theidea," says a senior SIMI functionary, "was to see if it would opensome doors."
Will it? While one faction within SIMI is rethinking itsfuture, so too are the terrorists. Abdul's case -- and that of the networks hecommanded in Bangalore -- is instructive.
If Bangalore needed a face to advertise the new India it represents, the cityneedn't have looked beyond Abdul: now its most wanted terrorist. From small-townorigins in Kerala, Abdul built a successful career at a multinational companyand even set up his own firm.
But when police arrested Lashkar-linked Andhra Pradesh resident Raziuddin Nasirin January 2008 and Kerala-origin computer engineer Yahya Kamakutty in Febuary2008 -- key operatives, Police say, of a terror cell planning bombings in Goa,Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mumbai -- it has become evident he represented a verydifferent kind of project to reinvent India.
Police in Bangalore began paying serious attention to theAbdul-led SIMI network after the 2006 Mumbai serial bombings. Siddiqui, who hadserved as SIMI's Maharashtra general secretary, told police he had been inregular contact with three Bangalore residents. All three men, it transpired,were successful professionals -- very different from stereotypical SIMIrecruits. One of Siddiqi's Bangalore contacts, computer technician Muzammil Ata-ur-RehmanSheikh, is now being tried for his role in the serial bombings along with hisbrother, Faisal Sheikh. Siddiqui also named Kamakutty and Abdul.
Operating through SARANI, a religious front-organisation, Abdul had recruitedover a dozen local men--the core of the cell discovered in February. Most ofSARANI's work was religious. In one e-mail to Kamakutty, Abdul demanded membersobserve the fajr namaaz, or dawn prayers. In another, he asked them to avoiddebates with rival Islamists. Just how much the recruits knew about Abdul's realagenda is unclear.
Behind the scenes, though, Abdul was preparing for war. In 2004, investigatorslater found, he delivered at least one consignment of weapons in preparation forterror strikes. Rashid Husain, a Bihar-based SIMI activist who also had links tothe Jammu and Kashmir-based Islamist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani, is thought tohave organised the operation. Later, Abdul is believed to have participated aconclave of SIMI members at Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh from July 4-7, 2006, whereplans to revitalise the jihad in India were discussed. Several members of thecell which executed the Mumbai serial bombings later that year participated.Abdul also set up Fatah Business Solutions, a firm suspected to have launderedterror funds.
Soon after Siddiqui's arrest, though, Abdul disappeared. Police now had to makea difficult call. Although Kamakutty had long been known to be involved withSIMI's terror cells--notably having worked with Muhammad Faisal Khan, who helpedorganise the 2003 serial bombings in Mumbai -- he was left untouched, in thehope that he would lead the Police to Abdul. After Nasir's arrest in February2008, though, Yahya was finally held. Of Abdul, however, there is still notrace. Nor have at least two dozen men thought to have attended the Islamistgroups they founded, been located.
Nasir's plans were at an early stage -- he possessed only crude pistols and somelow-grade explosive -- but others may be further down the road to a strike.
SIMI's political Islamists and terrorists seem, then, tobe running on parallel tracks -- racing, as it were, to shape the outcome of themost successful contemporary mobilisation of the Muslim ultra-right in India.Who is likely to win?
In some senses, the political Islamists are fighting against the tide ofhistory. Like many other south Asian Islamist movements, SIMI's genesis lies inthe Jamaat-e-Islami. Established in 1941 by the influential Islamist ideologueSyed Abu Ala Maududi, the Jamaat-e-Islami went on to emerge as a major politicalparty in Pakistan, fighting for the creation of a Shariah-governed state.
In India, however, the Jamaat gradually transformed itself into a culturalorganisation committed to propagating neoconservative Islam amongst Muslims. Itset up networks of schools and study circles, devoted to combating the growingpost-independence influence of communism and socialism. A student wing, theStudents' Islamic Organisation (SIO), was set up in 1956, with its headquartersat Aligarh. As Muslims in north India were battered by communal violence theJamaat slowly moved away from Maududi's hostility to secularism. It beganarguing that the secular state needed to be defended, as the sole alternativewas a Hindu-communalist state -- an argument still made by Jamaat leaders inareas like northern Kerala.
SIMI was formed in April, 1977, as an effort to revitalisethe SIO. Building on the SIO networks in Uttar Pradesh, SIMI reached out toJamaat-linked Muslim students' groups in Andhra Pradesh, Bengal, Bihar andKerala. From the outset, SIMI made clear its belief that the practice of Islamwas essentially a political project. In the long term, SIMI sought tore-establish the caliphate, without which it felt the practice of Islam wouldremain incomplete. Muslims who were comfortable living in secular societies, itspamphlets warned, were headed to hell.
Winds from the west gave this ideology an increasingly hard edge. Its leadershipwas drawn to the Islamist regime of General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq's in Pakistan.SIMI threw its weight behind the United States-backed mujahideen fighting theSoviet Union and the socialist regime in Afghanistan, and the forces of Sunnireaction in west Asia. "SIMI's rhetoric," the scholar Yoginder Sikandhas recorded, "grew combative and vitriolic, insisting that Islam alone wasthe solution to the problems of not just the Muslims of India, but of allIndians and, indeed, of the whole world."
Alarmed at this course of developments, elements of the Jamaat leadership soughtto distance themselves from SIMI. Others in the Jamaat, incensed at what theysaw as the organisation's betrayal of Maududi's authentic Islamism, resisted themoderates. In 1982, a compromise was brokered: the Jamaat formally distanceditself from SIMI, but both organisations, in practice, retained a cordialrelationship.
Part of the reason for SIMI's spectacular growth after1982 lay in the support it gained from Islamists in west Asia, notably theKuwait-based World Association of Muslim Youth and the Saudi Arabia-fundedInternational Islamic Federation of Student Organisations. Generous funding fromwest Asia helped it establish a welter of magazines -- Islamic Movement in Urdu,Hindi and English, Iqra in Gujarati, Rupantar in Bengali, Sedi Malar in Tamiland Vivekam in Malayalam -- that propagated the idea of an Islamic revolution.SIMI also set up a special wing, the Tehreek Tulba e-Arabiya [Movement ofStudents of Arabic], to build networks among madrassa students, as well as theShaheen Force, which targeted children
Much of SIMI's time was spent on persuading its recruits that Islam aloneoffered solutions to the challenges of the modern life. In 1982, for example, itorganised an anti-immorality week, where supposedly obscene literature wasburned. A year later, in an effort to compete with the left in Kerala, SIMI heldan anti-capitalism week -- but held out Islam, rather than socialism, as thesolution. SIMI also worked extensively with victims of communal violence, andprovided educational services for poor Muslims.
SIMI's polemic appealed to the growing class of lower-middle class andmiddle-class urban men who felt cheated of their share of the rising economicopportunities opening up in India. Hit by communal bias and educationalbackwardness, this class of disenfranchised youth were drawn to SIMI's attackson Hindu polytheism and western decadence. The organisation's claims that therecould be justice for Muslims only in a Shariah-based order resonated withcommunities battered by decades of communal violence, often backed by the Indianstate. As Sikand has perceptively noted, the organisation provided "itssupporters a sense of power and agency which they were denied in their actuallives." By 2001, SIMI had over 400 Ansar, or full-time workers, and 20,000Ikhwan, or volunteers.
Towards the end of 1991, SIMI began its turn towards terror -- an eventprecipitated by the Ram Janambhoomi movement, but one for which the ideologicalfoundations had long been laid. Soon after the tragic events of December 6,1992, and the pogroms which followed it, SIMI president Falahi demanded that"Muslims organise themselves and stand up to defend the community."Another SIMI leader, Abdul Aziz Salafi, demanded action to show that Muslims"would now refuse to sit low."
What that meant in practice soon became evident. On the first anniversary of thedemolition of the Babri Masjid, SIMI-linked LeT operatives Jalees Ansari,Mohammad Azam Ghauri, Abdul Karim 'Tunda' and Mohammad Tufail Husaini -- thefirst in jail, the second dead, the third still missing, and the last now wantedfor his possible role in the November 23, 2007, serial bombings in Uttar Pradesh-- carried out a series of reprisal terror strikes across India. Theirorganisation, the Mujahideen Islam e-Hind, is thought to have been a precursorto the Indian Mujahideen, which claimed responsibility for the November 23,2007, attacks on Court premises across Uttar Pradesh.
Growing numbers of SIMI members followed in their footsteps, making their way toLeT, Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islami (HuJI) training camps,but SIMI leaders continued to insist their organisation itself had nothing to dowith terrorism. Its polemics, however, became increasingly bitter. In a 1996statement, SIMI declared that since democracy and secularism had failed toprotect Muslims, the sole option was to struggle for the caliphate. Soon after,SIMI posters called on Muslims to follow the path of the eleventh-centuryconqueror Mahmood Ghaznavi, and appealed to God to send down a latter-day avatarto avenge the destruction of mosques in India.
By the time of SIMI's 1999 Aurangabad convention, theground-level manifestations of this ugly polemic were only too evident. Many ofthe speeches delivered by delegates were frankly inflammatory. Among thoselistening to the speech was 1993 bomber Azam Ghauri who, by the accounts of someof those present, was offered the leadership of SIMI.
When 25,000 SIMI delegates met in Mumbai in 2001, at what was to be its lastpublic convention, the organisation, for the first time, called on itssupporters to turn to jihad. Soon after the convention, al-Qaeda carried out itsbombings of New York and Washington, D.C. SIMI activists organiseddemonstrations in support of al-Qaeda chief Osama bin-Laden, hailing him as a"true mujahid," and celebrating the demolition of the Bamiyan Buddhasby the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
Writing in 2001, in an article published just after the convention, thecommentator Javed Anand recalled seeing stickers pasted "in large numbersin Muslim shops and homes, a thick red 'NO' splashed across the words DEMOCRACY,NATIONALISM, POLYTHEISM.". And he added, " 'ONLY ALLAH!' exclaimsSIMI's punch-line."
Despite SIMI's proscription, the Bangalore arrests show, the terror networksfounded at that time continue to thrive--and grow. It is, most likely, too latefor the political Islamists to turn back the tide.
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Praveen Swami is Deputy Editor and Chief of Bureau, Frontline, NewDelhi. Courtesy, the South Asia Intelligence Review of the South AsiaTerrorism Portal
