On March 4, 2006, I had written an article, The Smiles & TheScars, on the visit of President George Bush to India and its likely impact on the minds of the Indian Muslim youth.
Inter alia, I wrote as follows in that article:
"The way the present government has handled India's relations with the US has left scars in the hearts of the Indian Muslim minority. Its muted silence on issues angering the Muslims and its insensitivity to their feelings over issues such as Falluja, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Gharaib etc have created growing pockets of anger in our Muslim community, particularly the youth, which do not bode well for the future. Alienation of the Indian Muslim youth outside Jammu & Kashmir and driving it to identify itself with the anti-US and pan-Islamic ideologies of Al Qaeda and the International Islamic Front (IIF) is an imminent danger due to the ill-advised insensitivity of the government towards the hurt feelings of the Indian Muslims. The countrywide demonstrations seen during the visit of Mr Bush are an external manifestation of the seething anger inside the hearts of growing number of our Muslim youth. The government's ill-advised silence and actions have sown the seeds of pan-Islamism in the Indian Muslim community, which had in the past kept away from it."
Advertisement
The international community is today confronted with two kinds of jihaditerrorism--the bread and butter jihadi terrorism and the elitist jihadi terrorism. The bread and butter jihadi terrorism, which is essentially domestic in character with no international ramifications, is motivated by bread and butter issues, which affect the poor Muslims in allsocieties--poverty, unemployment, perceptions of social and economic discrimination, violation of their human rights, the perceived anti-Muslim mindset of the Police and other security forces etc. The leadership and the foot soldiers of this terrorism largely come from lower and middle class families, who are not much concerned about what is happening in the rest of the world. Their terrorism is existential. The terrorism of Al Ummah of Tamil Nadu is a typical example of this.
The elitist jihadi terrorism is hardly concerned about bread and butter issues. It is more concerned over the state of Islam in the world and over foreign policy issues, which, in its perception, affect the Muslims of the world. Its leadership and foot-soldiers very often come from the middle, upper middle and affluent sections of Muslim societies in different countries of the world. They are highly educated, have a keen sense of understanding issues other than purely bread and butter problems and focus on foreign policy issues in order to promote thesolidarity of the Muslims of the world.
The Al Qaeda and the pro-Al Qaeda organisations belong to this category of elitist jihadi terrorism. Osama bin Laden himself is a civil engineer and came from a highly affluent family of Saudi Arabia.Dr.Ayman al-Zawahiri, his No. 2, is an MBBS doctor of Egypt. Abu Zubaidah, presently in US custody, is supposed to be an Indian-trained expert in information technology. Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM) was anengineering student. One of the terrorists involved in the Bali bombing ofOctober, 2002, was stated to have done his doctorate in chemical engineering from the Reading University of the UK. One had heard of the so-called Hamburg Cell, which constituted the hard-core of the 19 perpetrators of the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US. This was a reference to some of them studying in the Hamburg University of Germany before taking to terrorism. One is now talking of a Cambridge Cell with reference to the joint Arab-Indian cell, which is under investigation by the British and Australian police, inconnection with the recent terrorist incidents in London and Glasgow.
These elitist terrorist leaders--whatever be their nationality-- rarely speak of bread and butter issues affecting the Muslim communities in the world. How many statements of bin Laden and Zawahiri you have seen in which he speaks of poverty, misery and unemployment among the Muslims, social and religious discrimination against them etc? They speak only of foreign policyissues--Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Palestine, the US, Israel, discrimination against the Hamas, the right of the Muslims to have a military nuclear capability etc.
They look upon the US and Israel--and not the non-Muslim class of economic and socialexploiters-- as the source of all the problems faced by the Muslims of the world. An international jihad against the US, Israel and other countries supporting them is, therefore, their first priority. They want to defeat the US and Israel and their supporters first. Bread and butter issues can wait.
Thinking sections of educated Indian Muslim youth were not attracted to this elitist approach in the past. Even though highly educated and well-informed on foreign policy issues, till about three years ago, they agitated mainly on bread and butter issues. Thanks to the way the US, in their perception, has been carrying on the so-called war against jihadi terrorism, they are now coming round to accepting the elitist view that the first priority has to be to defeating the US and Israel and thestates supporting them. Previously, the elitist jihadi organisations did not look upon India as a US-fellow-traveller, but now as a consequence of the policies pursued by the presentgovernment in Delhi, they have started viewing India too as an American fellow-traveller. Yesterday, they attempted terrorist strikes in London and Glasgow in order to punish the West. Tomorrow, they can do it in India for the same reason.
However, one should not over-state the problem. The number of Indian-grown Jihadis, who have gravitated towards global jihad and joined their Arab co-religionists, is very small. But if we are not careful, the number cangrow. Highly educated Indian Muslims gravitating towards Al Qaeda and pro-Al Qaeda organisations would be a bonanza for the globaljihadis. In the past, their main non-Arab supporters were members of the Pakistani diaspora in the UK, who constitute the largest group of Muslim migrants from the Indian sub-continent. Their level of education is low. Not many of them belong to professionalclasses.
Compared to the Pakistani community in the UK, the Indian Muslim community is much smaller in number, but their level of education is much higher. Many of them are professionals and blue chipMuslims--doctors, engineers, IT experts, scientists, academics etc. Al Qaeda wants surrogates from this class for the next 9/11.
Advertisement
B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai.
