India’s Communal Gamble

MFarooqi,

{{Most people who question Islam, bring up the question of women, and also as you have done regarding Aisha, the girl he married when she was only 6. She had already been betrothed, that being the custom in Arabia at the time. She was then formally given to Mohammed (swth) in a ceremony in which she was not present.}}

I`m glad you bought that up. Such a custom was not just prevalant in muslim societies; but in hindu societies as well. Its very unfair & to pass judgement by today`s cultural/ethical standards to what used to happen a few centuries ago. Every culture & religion had practices that would be considered abhorrent by today`s standards.

My own brahmin grandma was married to my grandpa at the age of 9. As an idealistic & immature teenager, when I learned of that, I announced to her that ``you were sold to my grandpa like animals were sold!``. My poor grandma burst into tears. Needless to say, I got my butt tanned for it:) Ironically, it happened on the day my granda & grandpa were celebrating their 53rd wedding anniversary.

I`ve never seen two married people who were more devoted to each other:)

Re: scout

``One being that India is less secular in nature than it pretends to be.``

How do you measure how secular India ``pretends`` to be? India`s constitution is secular, governments are forced to conform to it, and much of society reveals itself to be secular. Even the much maligned BJP is forced to temper itself and has a Christian for Defense Minister (George Fernandes) and Muslims for External Affairs Minister (Omar Abdullah), Head of Missile/Nuclear Program (APJ Kalaam), and Aviation Minister (Shahnawaz Hussein).

India is not perfect; no country that size can ever be perfect.

Just because the KKK causes racial violence in the US, one can`t deny that the US is still THE single best country for blacks to live and prosper in.

Can you make sense of that analogy? Difference between institutionalized ills vs social ills?

Romair:

``lets assume from the get-go that Indians are better and more civilized than Pakistanis.``

Arrey boss, yahin to galti kartey ho. We are not more civilized than you. Hum log bhee utney hee harami hain. When an Indian says India is better than Pakistan, it does not refer to Indians being better than Pakistanis. Those are two different things.

America is a pluralistic society. American ideals are liberal and democratic, and its laws are not biased. This does not mean all Americans are free of bigotry and racism. It refers to the ideals of the nation state.

Indians believe, in vast numbers, in secularism. They don`t want religion, any religion, shoved into their faces. That is an ideal. But, under siege, it is usually the base emotions that come out. I read this article and I agree with the author on some things, but not on all.

India is becoming more right wing, yes, I think so. Will it become a Hindutva oriented theocracy. I don`t think so. In its present form as a soft state, India will remain in its current form of controlled chaos. If there is a shift towards the extreme right, it wll only be possible with the active participation of the elites of India. However, once the elites have made their rightward shift, they will turn their guns with equal alacrity on the Hindutva types. More than caste, religion etc, the bedrock of India is the class system. The lumpens of Hindutva will never be allowed real power. In that sense, Hinduism, because of its flexibility makes it easier for religion to be defined in different ways according to different circumstances.

I woudn`t be surprised, if upon acheiving political power in absolute terms, the religious types are the first to get the heave ho, from the essentially non-religious elites.

Reason

It was very interesting reading your post. I am struck that you saw Muslim college students wanting to go to the Middle East. Was this becausing of better opportunities?, then why not go to America? or was it that they did not see a future for themselves in India? And was this ``their`` mistake?

Zafar 81

You must know by now that I wish you no injury, yet persistently, you offer injury to all those who point the absurd proportions of the sense of injury that very significant numbers of Indian Muslims feel.

I think I understand your politics, and many times appreciate the subtlty and nuance with which you have kept some at bay - till when will you remain so close to the fence?

the author has a point of view or agenda? don`t we all? ego? sure. Not the complete picture? well sure; But how complete does it have be, truth on the altar of an interpretation of secularism that bans a SIMI, while RSS, VHP and Shiv Sena enjoy freedom in the corridors of power?, while an entire history is rewritten to make the caste system a response against foreign invaders?

I sympathise with those Indian Muslims, who are conscious and proud of being Muslims and also concious and proud to be Indians. Must they suffer on the account of these conscience and attachments? or remain silent while other Muslims seek to opt out of India? Sadly, under these circumstances, the answer seems to be that terrorism is at the root of the problem.

I generally felt sad at reading this article. you must know that it is confirmation for me, but I still hold your advice from earlier conversations and renew my respect for the patience some exercise, yet is difficult for me: how much longer this walking on egg shells? when will it be OK to call a spade a spade? when will enough be enough? when will someone stand up to say ``no more``? - you are more sensible than I, you see further than I. But of course there are so many other problems to focus on.

Be happy.

In case you haven`t read this yet...

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2001/10/18/muslimmemo/index.html

A memo to American Muslims

It`s time for us to search our souls. How can the message of Muhammad become a source of horror and fear? How can Islam inspire thousands of youth to dedicate their lives to killing others?

Editor`s note: The heartfelt and brave missive below, which is circulating on the Web, comes as a bolt of reason in an increasingly unhinged time. Written by an American Muslim scholar who was born in India, educated at Georgetown University and now teaches political science at a Michigan college, the open letter calls upon fellow Muslims to cast aside violent passions and superstitions and embrace Islam`s higher calling. The memo is a direct challenge to Islamic intellectuals and clerics like Egyptian sheikh Muhammad Al-Gamei`a, imam of the Islamic Cultural Center and Mosque of New York City, whose wild-eyed descriptions of the Sept. 11 terror attacks as a Jewish plot deserve the emphatic condemnation of thinking people everywhere.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

By M. A. Muqtedar Khan

Oct. 18, 2001 | In the name of Allah, the most Benevolent and the Most Merciful. May this memo find you in the shade of Islam enjoying the mercy, the protection and the grace of Allah. I am writing this memo to you all with the explicit purpose of inviting you to lead the American Muslim community in soul searching, reflection and reassessment.

What happened on Sept. 11 in New York and Washington will forever remain a horrible scar on the history of Islam and humanity. No matter how much we condemn it, and point to the Quran and the Sunnah to argue that Islam forbids the killing of innocent people, the fact remains that the perpetrators of this crime against humanity have indicated that their actions are sanctioned by Islamic values. The fact that even now several Muslim scholars and thousands of Muslims defend the accused is indicative that not all Muslims believe that the attacks are un-Islamic. This is truly sad.



Even if it were true that Israel and the U.S. are enemies of the Muslim world, a response that mercilessly murders thousands of innocent people, including hundreds of Muslims, is absolutely indefensible. If anywhere in your hearts there is any sympathy or understanding with those who committed this act, I invite you to ask yourself this question: Would Muhammad sanction such an act?

While encouraging Muslims to struggle against injustice (Al Quran 4:135), Allah also imposes strict rules of engagement. He says in unequivocal terms that to kill an innocent being is like killing entire humanity (Al Quran 5:32). He also encourages Muslims to forgive Jews and Christians if they have committed injustices against us (Al Quran 2:109, 3:159, 5:85).

Muslims, including American Muslims, have been practicing hypocrisy on a grand scale. They protest against the discriminatory practices of Israel but are silent against the discriminatory practices in Muslim states. In the Persian Gulf one can see how laws and even salaries are based on ethnic origin. This is racism, but we never hear of Muslims protesting against them at international forums.

The Israeli occupation of Palestine is perhaps central to Muslim grievance against the West. While acknowledging that, I must remind you that Israel treats its 1 million Arab citizens with greater respect and dignity than most Arab nations treat their citizens. Today Palestinian refugees can settle in the U.S. and become American citizens, but in spite of all the tall rhetoric of the Arab world and Quranic injunctions (24:22), no Muslim country except Jordan extends this support to them.

While we loudly and consistently condemn Israel for its ill treatment of Palestinians, we are silent when Muslim regimes abuse the rights of Muslims and slaughter thousands of them. Remember Saddam Hussein and his use of chemical weapons against Muslims (Kurds)? Remember the Pakistani army`s excesses against Muslims (Bengalis)? Remember the mujahideen of Afghanistan and their mutual slaughter? Have we ever condemned them for their excesses? Have we demanded international intervention or retribution against them? Do you know how the Saudis treat their minority Shiis? Have we protested the violation of their rights? But we all are eager to condemn Israel; not because we care for the rights and lives of the Palestinians; we don`t. We condemn Israel because we hate ``them.``

Muslims love to live in the U.S. but also love to hate it. Many openly claim that the U.S. is a terrorist state but they continue to live in it. Their decision to live here is testimony that they would rather live here than anywhere else. As an Indian Muslim, I know for sure that nowhere on earth, including India, will I get the same sense of dignity and respect that I have received in the U.S. No Muslim country will treat me as well as the U.S. has. If what happened on Sept. 11 had happened in India, the world`s biggest democracy, thousands of Muslims would have been slaughtered in riots on mere suspicion and there would be another slaughter after the culprits` identity was confirmed. But in the U.S., bigotry and xenophobia have been kept in check by the media and political leaders. In many places hundreds of Americans have gathered around Islamic centers in symbolic gestures of protection and embrace of American Muslims. In many cities Christian congregations have started wearing hijab to identify with fellow Muslim women. In patience and in tolerance ordinary Americans have demonstrated their extraordinary virtues.

It is time that we acknowledge that the freedoms we enjoy in the U.S. are more desirable to us than superficial solidarity with the Muslim world. If you disagree, then prove it by packing your bags and going to whichever Muslim country you identify with. If you do not leave and do not acknowledge that you would rather live here than anywhere else, know that you are being hypocritical.

It is time that we faced these hypocritical practices and struggled to transcend them. It is time that American Muslim leaders fought to purify their own lot. For over a decade we have watched as Muslims in the name of Islam have committed violence against other Muslims and other peoples. We have always found a way to reconcile the vast distance between Islamic values and Muslim practices by pointing to the injustices committed upon Muslims by others. The point however is this -- our belief in Islam and commitment to Islamic values is not contingent on the moral conduct of the U.S. or Israel. And as Muslims can we condone such inhuman and senseless waste of life in the name of Islam?

The biggest victims of hate-filled politics as embodied in the actions of several Muslim militias all over the world are Muslims themselves. Hate is the extreme form of intolerance and when individuals and groups succumb to it they can do nothing constructive. Militias like the Taliban have allowed their hate for the West to override their obligation to pursue the welfare of their people and as a result of their actions not only have thousands of innocent people died in America, but thousands of people will die in the Muslim world.

Already, half a million Afghans have had to leave their homes and their country. It will only get worse as the war escalates. Hamas and Islamic Jihad may kill a few Jews, women and children included, with their suicide bombs and temporarily satisfy their lust for Jewish blood, but thousands of Palestinians then pay the price for their actions.

The culture of hate and killing is tearing away at the moral fabric of the Muslim society. We are more focused on ``the other`` and have completely forgotten our duty to Allah. In pursuit of the inferior jihad we have sacrificed the superior jihad.

Islamic resurgence, the cherished ideals of which pursued the ultimate goal of a universally just and moral society, has been hijacked by hate and calls for murder and mayhem. If Osama bin Laden were an individual, then we would have no problem. But unfortunately bin Laden has become a phenomenon -- a cancer eating away at the morality of our youth, and undermining the spiritual health of our future.

Today the century-old Islamic revival is in jeopardy because we have allowed insanity to prevail over our better judgment. Yes, the U.S. has played a hand in the creation of bin Laden and the Taliban, but it is we who have allowed them to grow and gain such a foothold. It is our duty to police our world. It is our responsibility to prevent people from abusing Islam. It is our job to ensure that Islam is not misrepresented. We should have made sure that what happened on Sept. 11 should never have happened.

It is time the leaders of the American Muslim community woke up and realized that there is more to life than competing with the American Jewish lobby for power over U.S. foreign policy. Islam is not about defeating Jews or conquering Jerusalem. It is about mercy, about virtue, about sacrifice and about duty. Above all it is the pursuit of moral perfection. Nothing can be further away from moral perfection than the wanton slaughter of thousands of unsuspecting innocent people.

I hope that we will now rededicate our lives and our institutions to the search for harmony, peace and tolerance. Let us be prepared to suffer injustice rather than commit injustices. After all, it is we who carry the divine burden of Islam and not others. We have to be morally better, more forgiving, more sacrificing than others, if we wish to convince the world about the truth of our message. We cannot simply be equal to others in virtue, we must excel.

It is time for soul searching. How can the message of Muhammad, who was sent as mercy to mankind, become a source of horror and fear? How can Islam inspire thousands of youth to dedicate their lives to killing others? We are supposed to invite people to Islam, not murder them.

The worst exhibition of Islam happened on our turf. We must take first responsibility to undo the evil it has manifest. This is our mandate, our burden and also our opportunity.

About the writer

Muqtedar Khan is a political science professor at Adrian College in Michigan. He is on the board of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy.

Welcome bhai :-) Assalamu alaykum! Such accounts of the Indian brethrens suffering in India really moves me and makes me sad. May Allah protect the followers of His Prophet and Habib (sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam) everywhere. Unfortunately, I think that India will become, eventually, a Hindu state and even drop its claims to secularism which does not bode well for India`s minorities; IF it does become properly secular than your future might be okay but i am not optimistic. Having said that I think that to an extent Muslims in India are as much to blame for their relative backwardness in wordly terms as Muslims in Pakistan and elsewhere in the Muslim world are.

We have turned away from Islam. Allah says, enter Islam completely and learning knowledge is an essential part of Islam too. This INCLUDES wordly [scientific] knowledge as well as Deeni knowledge. Unfortunately we have lost a lot of our Islamic scholarly heritage and are also not learning wordly knowledge. To blame Hindus and other kafirs is the easy way out. Indeed, they are not our well-wishers,on the contrary, but we have ourselves to blame too. What India`s Muslims have to do is the following. This plan was indeed put forward as early as 1904 by ala Hazrat Imam Ahmad Raza Khan quds sirruhu; alas, neither Pakistani Muslims nor Indian Muslims have paid heed. It is simple.

1. Muslims have to become ECONOMICALLY independent. This means being educated now. So to get technical and modern education is a must. This does not mean we abandon the deeni education either.

2. Muslims must form communities based around a Sufi saint and awliya; rich and educated Muslims must then live together in little communities, trading with other Muslims and doing business with each other, helping their less-fortunate brethren/sisters so they in turn can benefit from education e.g by building private schools etc. A good example of this is the way the Chinese community form little Chinatowns wherever they go.

3. In short you will have islands of Islam in an ocean of kufr.

4. Eventually the economic might of such communities and their education and knowledge and know-how will become influential enough to make the Hindu majority take notice of its demands.

This is not the exact wording of ala hazrat`s plan --i will try to seek it out--but it is based on the idea of economic independence of the Muslims and the idea of self-help, Muslims helping other Muslims etc. It is also a peaceful path. The centre of it is the love of Allah`s Messenger sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam expressed in its actual form of Muslim communities growing around a luminous spiritual guide or personality in each area who is the inheritor of the Prophetic grace. Thus this will have the added benefit of recapturing Islam from the terrorists belonging to the Wahabi/Deobandi sects who have hijacked Islam in recent years and months...

The same formula of a community of spiritually minded and spiritually growing Muslims centred around a real Sufi and becoming economically independent and powerful via education is the model for Muslims everywhere including Pakistan.

This way we can reclaim the centre ground for Islamic orthodoxy [as opposed to the extreme elements of Wahabism and its corrolaries] and also become prosperous again. Insha Allah. And THEN when people see our success they will WANT to become Muslims too insha Allah...

We have to help ourselves and stop blaimin others for our problems [even though we DO have enemies but we should expect that].

Ghairat baRi cheez hai jahaan e tag o do mein...



May Allah help us!

jay #71 ``regards and best wishes to YLh with the typical ylh ending

jay pakistan,

jay sheria courts

jay jay ``

Jay:

You are sort of funny most of the time (the times when you are dead serious in your hatred to Pakistan). You are pretty pathetic when you are trying to be funny, as above. But dont let me discourage you - keep trying to lighten up and maybe you will learn how.

God has been kinder to you than the hundreds of millions of hungry, homeless souls in South Asia (they exist, believe me, although you dont see them even as you walk among them): Try to lighten up a bit and thank God that you are not among them and have a full stomach and a keyboard at your command and this might help you shed your hatred.

RSaxena #101
Our neighbours are incredibly stupid, but we are even more so. We should stop trying to convince them about Indian secularism, because finally Pakistanis personal sense of safety comes from three things:

1. Indian Hindu protestations about secularism, which is the only thing which prevents Indian Hindus from nuking Muslims in Pakistan. Indian Muslims are cannon fodder or the first line of defence for Pakistanis like ali1 and Romair who know the preservation of their own skins and their own religious places depend on `1000-years of servitude` Hindus protesting that they CAN still amicably live with Muslims. The joke is they themselves scared themselves silly with the histories they themselves wrote.

2. Ideological prostitution of Indian Muslims attempted by those like Asif and hobbyt. This security paradigm with the more religious fervor of the JI school goes this way : as long as an anti-infidel TNT fervor can be kept alive in Indian Muslims, Pakistanis, with an army of ideologues at their disposal, are safe from the same enraged unconverted Hindus.

3. New-generation patriotic fervor among Pakistanis which for survival needs a manifestation of Indian Muslim pain which must be caused by Hindus. You see people like sarwari, scout and ylh desperate to see some of this pain, pins into a voodoo doll-style.


I pity Indian Muslims. With friends like these, who needs Hindus?

Zafar #93,

I really have to admit. You are that sane Indian if ever there is one.

Without you Pakistanis would just be dismissing all our arguments as typical Hindu rantings.

An excerpt from a story in today`s Washpost website:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32657-2001Oct22.html

Meanwhile, a refugee crisis was building at Pakistan`s sealed border with Afghanistan. An Afghan man died of wounds suffered when border guards opened fire to force back up to 15,000 trapped Afghan civilians pushing and pleading for entry.

My question: Is this soul also entitled to 72 gorgeous virgins and all the booze he can handle?

Re: Asif Naqshbandi

``...rich and educated Muslims must then live together in little communities, trading with other Muslims and doing business with each other... In short you will have islands of Islam in an ocean of kufr``

Absolutely brilliant! Why did I not think of it before? We should also evolve rules on how `rich and educated Muslims who live together in little communities` should become entirely self-sufficient `villages` like that kufr Gandhi`s dream for small scale industries in India. India is becoming a mighty industrial power today because of all the cotton yarn that the `little communities` spin is in great demand worldwide and the world cannot have enough of it, and India`s little communities have an overwhelming comparitive economic advantage. These little communities would not be complete without neurologists/cardiologists/architects/ accountants, who while practising various and sundry professions, would be tied together by a common religion. And of course, we will have to ensure that the colleges and universities that impart such professional education, are also entirely segregated -- Muslim teachers for Muslim students, Hindu teachers for Hindus, Sikh teachers for Sikhs...We shall struggle hard to fight mixing of religions, but we will not allow our `little communities` to become polluted.

Mr. Naqshabandi, when do we start work on this honorable project?

RE Asif Naqshbandhi

You cannot look forward if you continuously look back to the 7th century. If your idea of economic development is a 7th century economic model, you need all the help possible from Allah.

The idea of islands/communities doing business with each other is next to impossible in today`s integrated global economy. So what are you little communities going to trade with each other: trinkets and prayer rugs? If you want to achieve economies of scale, you need to produce more and in order to achieve that, you have to deal and interact much more closely with your customers and where they live.

Religion is fine as long as it is a facet of life that provides one with morals etc. But when it takes over your life in totality, boy are you doomed to failure. All the praying on earth wont get you out of your pickle. A little more rational approach is what you guys need.

The Jihad Next Door

http://www.msnbc.com/news/645437.asp



The struggle for Kashmir helped fill the terror camps in Afghanistan—and now poses one of the most dire threats to stability in the region



By Joshua Hammer

NEWSWEEK INTERNATIONAL



Oct. 29 issue — Murad Khan’s journey from schoolboy to prisoner of war began in a dirt-poor village in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier province five years ago. At a government secondary school in Khanpur, he recalls, nearly all the boys in his class were pressured by Islamic militants to join the jihad in Indian-occupied Kashmir, where the mostly Muslim population has been waging a bloody war of independence against New Delhi since 1989. Bearded extremists often brought him and his friends to a meeting hall to watch lurid propaganda films like “Village in Flames,” depicting the alleged rapes of Kashmiri women by Indian soldiers. “It made me angry to see such things,” he says, “and the anger kept building.” Days after he turned 14, he ran away from home, signed up with the militant group Al Badr and soon found himself packed with 25 other boys in a bus with blackened windows, bound for Afghanistan.



FOR THE NEXT MONTH Murad’s home was a canvas tent he shared with dozens of aspiring guerrillas in a training camp near Khost. Rising before dawn, the teenagers prayed in the mosque, jogged in the arid hills, then devoted their afternoons to assembling and learning to shoot Kalashnikov assault rifles. In the evenings, the young recruits sat on the floor of the mosque as the camp commanders cited Quranic passages justifying global jihad. “We never saw Osama bin Laden, but we were told about him,” says Murad, a scrawny 19-year-old with jug ears and a wispy beard. “The commanders said he was a great emir, who was fighting for freedom for Muslims around the world.” Murad’s final stop before the front lines was a larger training camp known as Mansehra, set on an isolated hilltop in western Pakistan. He spent six months learning guerrilla tactics and playing brutal combat games; the climax was a course in booby traps, pipe bombs and other explosives, taught, he says, by a former officer in the Pakistani Army.

Today Murad sits in a tumbledown Indian Army camp in the village of Bandipura, within sight of the rugged Himalayan foothills where he lived in underground bunkers while fighting as a mujahedin. Last spring a radio transmission he was sending to comrades was intercepted by an Indian Army colonel in Bandipura, who over the next three months persuaded him to surrender. “One day Murad called me and said, ‘I’m coming down’,” the colonel says. Branded a traitor by his former comrades, knowing that he could be killed by his captors, Murad now dwells in a state of limbo. “He’s happy here because he knows that if he stayed in the mountains, he’d be dead,” insists the colonel, resting a hand on his frightened young prisoner. “He knows I was very close to finding him. I was almost touching his skin.”





An intensely personal conflict, Kashmir is also a front line in the war on global terror. Over the past several years this disputed territory controlled by India has become a bloody battleground for fundamentalist jihadis like Murad—and the freshest example of the kind of havoc that the nexus of Islamic extremism in Southwest Asia has spread around the world.

Just how volatile Kashmir has become was made clear earlier this month, when a four-man suicide squad attacked the State Legislature in the capital, Srinagar, killing 38 people. Jaish-e-Mohammed, a Pakistan-based militant group founded by three Pakistani radicals with close links to the Taliban, initially claimed responsibility for the strike, the deadliest in the 12-year conflict. Two weeks later Indian troops fired mortars and artillery shells at Pakistani positions across the Line of Control that divides Kashmir—the first deadly fire between the two nuclear powers in seven months. With Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf under attack for joining the U.S.-led coalition and under pressure to shore up his Islamic credentials, tensions in the region are likely to remain dangerously high.

The “Talibanization” of the Kashmiri conflict is a relatively recent phenomenon. The roots of the struggle go back to 1947, when the maharajah of Kashmir allowed troops from newly independent India to enter his state and drive out Pakistani invaders; Kashmiri leaders say India reneged on its promise of a plebiscite to determine Kashmir’s future, while India insists that the numerous state elections held since ’47 are tantamount to a referendum. In the first stage of the armed struggle, the guerrillas were almost entirely indigenous Kashmiris fighting under the banner of secular independence movements. But the Indian Army crippled those groups in the mid-1990s; in their place arose a new crop of combatants, covertly supported by Pakistan, who embraced Islamic fundamentalism and global jihad and sought to annex Indian Kashmir to Pakistan.

This new jihad was sustained by a complex mix of forces and interests. In part, Islamabad was willing to risk the world’s ire by supporting the Taliban because of the training provided to Kashmir militants in Afghanistan. The cause also unified the Pakistani elite, who might otherwise have been disaffected by the country’s social and economic failures. Many of the jihadis have links to Pakistan’s powerful religious parties and schools of Islamic learning, or madrasas.

Among them: the founders of Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, or Army of the Pious, infamous for its suicidal infiltrations of Indian Army camps by heavily armed guerrillas (known as fedayeen) disguised in military uniforms. An even bigger fish is Masood Azhar, who first came to prominence as a leader of the militant group Harkat-al-Mujahedin, which was recently banned by the Pakistani government. In 1999 hijackers seized an Indian Airways flight, diverted it to the Afghan city of Kandahar and demanded the release of three militants, including Azhar, from Indian prisons. Flown to Afghanistan, Azhar crossed freely into Pakistan and later helped form Jaish-e-Mohammad. For the past two years Azhar’s headquarters has been the Binuri madrasa in Karachi, a Wahhabi-sect academy where Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar and Osama bin Laden reportedly first met. After the suicide attack on Kashmir’s State Legislature, he fled into hiding.

Now the militants have embarked on a sometimes brutal campaign to transform Kashmir’s predominantly secular society. Weeks before the World Trade Center attacks, a previously unknown Islamic group calling itself Lashkar-e-Jabbar ordered all women to wear the all-enveloping burqa and threatened to attack those who refused. Shortly afterward three young women in the capital, including a 14-year-old girl, were splashed in the face with acid and disfigured. Over the next few days, thousands of burqas were sold to terrified women in Srinagar. (The threats have since fizzled out.) Many secular independence advocates insist that the fundamentalists don’t represent the heart of the struggle. “The Kashmiris hate India, but they are not for this Talibanization either,” says Hamida Nayeem, a professor at the University of Kashmir and a leading secessionist. “They see the rebels as their guests. Once the goal is reached, they have no role. They cannot be tolerated.”

It may not be so easy to exclude them. At the Indian Army camp in Bandipura the commander, J. K. Sharma, shows off a stack of Jaish-e-Mohammed identity cards and photos he claims were seized from dead Pakistani militants in a recent sweep. He says there are “100 foreign militants” operating in his zone, a cluster of villages 60 kilometers north of Srinagar. The leaders, he says, are almost all Pakistani.





Newsweek International October 29 Issue



For three years Murad Khan was one of those fighters. After completing his training in Mansehra camp in Pakistan in the summer of 1998, Murad traveled by bus with other guerrillas to Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and a launching point for many Islamic militant groups. The mood on the journey was jubilant. “The commanders told us, ‘After Kashmir we will go to liberate Palestine’,” Murad says. In September 1998 he crossed the mountainous border for the first time—Indian Army officers say such infiltrations are often supported by cover fire from the Pakistani Army.

Murad’s assignment was to serve as a guide for “attack” squads around Bandipura, furnishing the fighters—half Pakistanis, half Indian Kashmiris—with weapons and cash and leading them to a network of caves, bunkers and safe houses. Murad claims that local agents provided him with a student ID card and even a phony father and mother, Kashmiris who could vouch for him if he were questioned. But after two years in the field, he grew disillusioned with Al Badr. After fellow guerrillas threw a grenade into a Bandipura market, killing three and injuring 16, he says, “I told the commanders that I disagreed with killing civilians, that we had a purpose and we should not diverge from it.” Soon afterward, he claims, he made up his mind to flee the mountains. (His Indian captors think that homesickness and a long-running personality clash with other Al Badr guerrillas also played a role in his surrender.)

If the United States is serious about chasing down Afghan-trained “terrorists” wherever they are, it will quickly run into struggles like these—local jihads that are influenced by the money, training and personnel coming out of Afghanistan, but which do not lend themselves to easy good-versus-evil distinctions. India wants Washington to lean hard on Pakistan to shut down training camps, end covert government support and ban the militant groups. “As soon as Pakistan cuts off the weapons and the cash to these Islamic groups, the war will finish,” insists a top Indian officer in Bandipura. But the United States is reluctant to alienate a major ally in the counterterrorism war—and doesn’t buy India’s claim that the Kashmir insurgency is strictly a terrorist movement. The Indian Army, which now has about 300,000 troops stationed in Kashmir, is widely hated by the local population, and its animosity has helped keep the indigenous struggle alive.



A recent incident in the remote village of Jagarpura explains why. Two weeks ago Indian soldiers swept through the village searching for fedayeen who had attacked a nearby base; they molested a young woman and then shot dead her husband and father-in-law in their farmhouse when they attempted to intervene. Residents say seven boys have run off to the nearby mountains in the last couple years to join Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, Al Badr and other groups and more would certainly follow. “The Army is a brutal force,” says Abdul Rashid Dar, the brother of the younger victim. “We all have the urge to pick up a gun and fight them.”

As far as Murad Khan’s father is concerned, though, it is a fight that sons like his have no business being part of. At his modest brick house with empty window frames and no electricity, the aging farmer fights back tears as he describes his five-year battle to win back his son. “He called me last year from Kashmir and said he wanted to come home but the commanders wouldn’t let him,” he says bitterly. “He said they told him he had to stay for four years or give his life.” Another of his sons considered joining the jihad, but after learning of Murad’s experience, he changed his mind. Murad would doubtless approve of the choice.





With Juliette Terzieff in Chakdara, Pakistan

If you have real player please check the following out.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/cta/progs/panorama/latest.ram

Tells you what the moderates in Pakistan are thinking.

Also, pay particular attention to what Fareed Zakaria is saying. He is an Indian-American. Is that any wonder?

Asif Naqshbandi 106,

Kindly do not refer to `Pakistani Muslims` in your sermon. As if those who are not Muslims have less of a right to be Pakistani.

Gosh! This is the first time I have come across your post and have been reminded of how narrow Indian Muslim nationalist sprit really is. We have your kind in Pakistan too, and though I agree with some of what you say of the ``plight of Indian Muslims`` and how they should rise to the occasion and take charge of their destinies together. But such ideals appeal only ``to the ignorant and illiterate``. Why can`t you direct and wish that Indian Muslims succeeded for their own country instead of their religion? If you begin to break down the creation of a sound society on religion there will be no end to the fragmentation.

That is the problem I have with my relatives, the ones who call themselves Indians, interpret any pro-Pakistan thing as anti-Indian Muslim and are distrustful of the Indian government without even getting involved in it. We have a pretty large social circle in San Jose and have only come across one family of Indian Muslims who always complain that the top Managers are Pakistani and they are supervised and co-work by and with Hindus. Why does one have to approach everything as a double minority? Can`t it be taken as one`s right? Like Cowasjee does for example. Ever seen him appealing to the religious, communal or spiritual ideals of the Parsees in Pakistan? The focus is Pakistan and no one can dare question his being Pakistani as far as he is concerned and that is what will make the change. That is a simple opinion, I don`t wish to comment too much on Indian Muslims, and they are the least of my concerns.

Regards,

Aisha Fayyazi Sarwari.