The Power of the Pulpit-Mohammed Hanif

The Power of the Pulpit


By Mohammed Hanif




The Saudi-isation of Pakistan


Maulvi Karim, who taught me to read the Quran and led prayers in our village mosque for 40 years, was one of the most powerless men in our community. The only power he assumed for himself was that of postman. The postman would deliver the mail to him and then he would walk from house to house distributing it. He would, of course, have to read the letters for a lot of families who couldn’t read.

He was also a dog lover.

I joined him a number of times as he played with his little Russian poodle outside his house, then walked to the mosque, did his ablutions and led the prayers. After prayers he would hang out at the door of the mosque exchanging gossip with regulars. There would be people loitering outside the mosque when he went in. They would still be around as he finished the prayers and came out. It never occurred to him to ask these people to join him. It never occurred to the people who hung outside the mosque to feel embarrassed about not joining the prayers. They all lived on the same streets, not always in harmony, but religion in any of its forms was not something they discussed on the street. What was there to discuss? Wasn’t faith a strictly private business? Something that happened between a man and his god and not something that had to be discussed in your living room.

A minority went regularly to the mosques, another minority opened a bottle of something in the evening, but most people had secular pastimes like watching soap operas on TV and placing small bets on cricket matches.

He may sound like a character from the early 20th century but Maulvi Karim died only about a decade ago, and till his last days he had not given up his routine. In the social hierarchy he was somewhere between the barber and the cobbler. His basic functions were limited to being present at births, death and weddings. If he had been alive today and watched an episode of Alim Online, I wonder what he would have made of it. I wonder if he would have felt envious of all the celebrity maulanas who have become a staple of satellite television programming. Not only do they crop up on every discussion on every topic on earth but now they have their own TV channels as well, where they can preach 24/7, interrupted only by adverts for other mullahs.

The mosque imam, who served an essential social function, has given way to another kind of mullah: the power mullah, who drives in a four-wheeler flanked by armed guards; the entertainer mullah, who hogs the airwaves; and the entrepreneur mullah, who builds networks of mosques and madrassas and spends his summer touring Europe. And then there is the much maligned mullah with his dreams of an eternal war and world domination.

Since “mullah,” when pronounced in a certain way, can be read as a derogatory term, and since we don’t want to offend them (because we all know that they do get very easily offended) we should call them evangelists or preachers.

Mullahs, maulvis, imamas, or ulema-i-karam as many of them prefer to call themselves, have never had the kind of influence or social standing that they enjoy now. A large part of Pakistan is enthralled by this new generation of evangelists. They are there on prime time TV, they thunder on FM radios between adverts for Pepsi and hair removing cream. In the past few years, they have established fancy websites with embedded videos; mobile phone companies offer their sermons for download right to your telephone. They come suited, they come dressed like characters out of the Thousand and One Nights, they are men and they are women. Some of them even dress like bankers and talk like property agents offering bargain deals in heaven.

I grew up during the time of General Zia, the first evangelist to occupy the presidency in Pakistan. But even he had the good sense to keep the beards away from prime time television. But the ruthless media barons of today have no such qualms. They have turned religion into a major money-spinner. Pakistan’s economy remains in its endless downwards spiral, but it certainly seems there is a lot of money still to be made in televised preaching.

They have also tailored their message to the aspiring middle classes. Recently on his show on Haq TV, Tahirul Qadri (and he has gone from being a maulana to Allama to Sheikh-ul-Islam) thundered that religion doesn’t stop us from adopting new fashions. You can change your furniture every few years, there is nothing wrong with getting the new car models, but it should all be done in good taste. The man could had have given his lecture on Fashion TV. “But you shall never question the basic tenets of religion,” he went on. The implication was clear: you shall never question what he has to say. The message is even clearer: make money, spend it and it’ll all turn out to be okay if you keep tuning in to my programme.

And the message is being taken seriously by the upper classes of Pakistan. I walked into a new super store in Karachi’s Clifton area and was pleasantly surprised to see what looked like a books section. It was a books section indeed, but it was called “Islamic Books Section” and all the books in it were about Islam.

I went to a Nike store, and it was no different from any Nike store in any part of the world: over-priced, shiny sneakers and branded football shirts. But in the background instead of the loud gym music, the hallmark of such stores, speakers played recitation from the Quran.

The multinational companies, sensing the mood of the people, have also joined the bandwagon. Mobile phone companies offer calls to prayers for ring tones, and Quranic recitations and religious sermons as free downloads. During the month of Ramadan a number of international banks were gifting their preferred clients fancy boxes containing rosaries, dates and miniature Qurans.

It’s the perfect marriage between God and greed.

Traditionally, what a preacher needed was a pulpit. For the pulpit he needed a mosque, and to get to a mosque he needed to do a long apprenticeship in which he had to prove his worth to the community before he could be allowed to sit at that pulpit. With the arrival of satellite TV channels, evangelists provide the most cost-effective programming and, as a result, have found a pulpit in every living room.

Even the Sindhi and Seraiki language channels, which were known for their liberal political approach and sufi messages, have found their own evangelists to fill the slots.

And their influence has changed our social landscape beyond recognition. Twelve years ago, an old friend from school tried to recruit me into a militant anti-Shia organisation. After dropping out from high school, Zulfikar Ahmad had started a motorcycle garage and joined one of the sectarian organisations that were flourishing in the area. We had a heated discussion over his politics, and I reminded him of a number of common friends who were Shias and were as good or bad Muslims as any of our other classmates. Visibly unconvinced, Zulfikar gave up on me and wished me luck in my godless life.

Zulfikar’s attempt at converting me was one of the many signs of religious intolerance creeping into our lives. Taliban-ruled neighbouring Afghanistan and many middle class Pakistanis, while enjoying the relative freedoms of a fledgling democracy, hankered for a more puritanical, Taliban-style government. But these zealots, despite their high profile, remained marginal to society as religion was a personal affair, not something you discussed in your drawing room.

As I moved back to Pakistan a few months ago, I was overwhelmed by the all pervasive religious symbols in public spaces and theocratic debates raging in the independent media as well as in the drawing rooms of friends and relatives. The graffiti on the walls of Karachi, blood-curdling calls for jihad, adverts for luxury Umrahs are omnipresent. And for those who can’t afford to go all the way to Mecca, neighbourhood mosques offer regular lectures and special prayers sessions.

I spent the Eid holidays in my village in Punjab and attended prayers at the mosque, which Maulvi Karim used to run. My village folk are very wary of radical mullahs and have appointed an imam who is Maulvi Karim’s son and has spent most of his youth in Birmingham. His sermon was probably the most progressive I have ever heard. He advised his male congregation to share household work with their women. He gave examples from Prophet Mohammed’s life and said that he used to clean his own room even when he had more than one wife. “You must attend to your stock yourself. It doesn’t matter if you have servants, feed your buffaloes,” he said. I looked around in amusement, trying to imagine these men, steeped in centuries of male chauvinistic tradition, going home to do their dishes.

What puzzled me in the end was that his prayer included get-well-soon wishes for Baitullah Mehsud, who according to local TV channels, was ill. I couldn’t reconcile the imam’s message for equality of the sexes and his good will for Mehsud, whose crusade against women is as well known as his anti-American jihad.

For answers I turned to my old friend Zulfikar. He still sports a long, flowing beard but his conversation is peppered with Punjabi expletives which I found quite refreshing amidst the wall-to-wall piety in my hometown. “I have left all that jihad-against-Shias business behind,” he told me. “I have college-going daughters now. Bringing up children in these times is a full-time jihad.”

He told me that he was worried about the others. “I look as if I am a Taliban supporter but I am not. But these clean-shaven people you see here,” he pointed to some clients and workers at his garage, “inside they are all Taliban.” He explained that with Pakistan coming under repeated US attacks even people who have voted for moderate political parties are looking towards the Taliban for deliverance.

In Karachi, there are frequent warnings that the Taliban are headed this way. There are posters warning us about Talibanisation. Altaf Hussain thunders about them at every single opportunity. But nobody seems to warn us about the preachers who are already here: the ones wagging their fingers on TV always tend to precede the ones waving their guns, smashing those TVs and bombing poor barbers.

Preaching is also turning out to be an equal opportunity business. Driving my son to his new school one day, I listened to a woman talking with a posh Urdu accent on a local FM radio. With a generous smattering of English, she was trying to persuade her listeners to dress properly. “When you prepare for a party, how much do you fuss over a dress? You select a piece, then you find something matching, then you have second thoughts. All because you want to look your best at the party. You want to flatter your host. And do you prepare like this when you know that one day very soon you are going to go to the ultimate party, where your host will be Allah?”

The speech, we were told, was brought to us by al-Huda Trust, which is located in the upscale Defence Housing Authority and has its own website.

Later, I ran into a relative, a mother of two who was wearing jeans and a shirt, and who asked our opinion about her new hairdo. She was fasting, I was not. She quoted me some rules for fasting: situations in which one is allowed not to fast, along with some more injunctions for lapsed ones like myself. When are you going to start wearing the hijab? I asked her jokingly.

Probably never, she said. “The Book tells us only to wear something loose, not to draw attention, not to wear anything tight. There are so many rapes, abductions. We must not provoke.”

“How do you know all this religious stuff?” I asked her.

“I have read it in books,” she said nonchalantly, as if it was the most normal thing for a liberated working mother to pore over religious texts to decide the length of the hem of her skirt or the size of her blouse.

“Where does it say?” I challenged her. “In the Quran. I have read it myself.” She started another mini-lecture, which ended with these words: “The point is that Allah doesn’t want a woman to draw attention to her bosom.”

Listening to these preachers, people in Pakistan today seem to believe that God is some kind of lecherous old man who sits there worrying about the size of a woman’s blouse while American drones bomb the hell out of the Pashtuns in the North. You can blame the Pashtuns for many things, but no true Pashtun has ever been accused of wearing tight dresses.

Pakistan’s president, Asif Zardari, stumbling from one crisis to another, has been accused of many things, but nobody has ever accused him of having a political philosophy. He was asked about this a while ago in an interview, and he parroted some clichés about Sindhi Sufi poetry and world peace. “I am a great admirer of Sindhi Sufi poetry,” but I doubt Zardari would get very far reciting it to one of the thousands of evangelists unleashed on this hapless nation. Because if Zardari has read Sindhi Sufi poetry – or, for that matter, Punjabi, or Pushto Sufi poetry – he would know that it is full of more warnings about mullahs than all the CIA’s country reports lined end-to-end. Sometimes I am also puzzled at my own reactions to these preachers: why do these overt symbols of religion bother me when I myself grew up in a family where prayers, Quran, and rosaries were a part of our everyday life. One reason could be that the kind of religion I grew up with was never associated with suicide bombings and philosophies of world domination. Religion was something you practiced on your own, between meals and going to school. It didn’t involve blowing up schools, which seems to be the favourite pastime of Islamist militants in today’s Pakistan and something that our televangelists never talk about. Maybe people are just buying into the symbolism as a way of expressing their defiance towards the Pakistan government’s policies that many of them see as a mere extension of the US. Maybe, like many other expats, I just hanker for those good old days when saints and sinners, believers and sceptics and preachers and their bored victims could live side by side without killing each other.

2,000 Afghan youths ready to go to Gaza

2,000 Afghan youths ready to go to Gaza

MPs Dawn (Pakistan)KABUL, Jan 6: Lawmakers in Afghanistan said on Tuesday that 2,000 Afghan youths were ready to go to Gaza to defend Palestinians from Israeli attacks, warning the strikes could lead to a worldwide Muslim uprising. A declaration drawn up by the legislators, who are not sitting but met in a special session to discuss the situation in the Gaza Strip, was read out to journalists by the secretary of the Lower House, Abdul Satar Khawasi. Lawmakers called the strikes, which began on Dec 27 in response to rocket attacks from Gaza, “barbaric and tyrannical.” “Some 2,000 youths from different provinces of our country are ready to go to the Gaza Strip and defend the helpless Palestinian Muslims,” the statement said, without giving details. It warned that if “invasions” of Palestinian territory were to continue, the defence of Muslim lands would grow into a “worldwide uprising by... Muslims of the world against infidels.” The lawmakers also accused US President George Bush of “justifying this horrifying Israeli crime” by refusing to stand against it, and chided other world leaders for keeping silent. There have been protests for several days across Afghanistan against Israel’s military offensive, in which more than 580 Palestinians, including nearly 100 children, have been killed. The protesters have also criticised Israel’s ally, the United States, Afghanistan’s main provider of military and financial support in its fight against an Islamic insurgency and attempts to rebuild after decades of war.—AFP

“My Guantanamo Diary: The Detainees and the Stories They Told Me” by M. R. Khan,

A Guantanamo Diary

Reviewed by

Beej K Singh

January 7, 2009


“My Guantanamo Diary: The Detainees and the Stories They Told Me” by M. R. Khan, ISBN: 978-1-58648-498-9 was published by Public Affairs, New York.

Mahvish Rukhsana Khan – a girl of Afghan heritage, an idealist, and a student at the Law School of the University of Miami – passionately felt that many of the detentions at the Guantanamo Bay facility (Gitmo) were illegal. On a day when she was rattling on and on to her fiancé about the perceived window.google_render_ad();injustice, he got tired and said – “Why don’t you stop complaining and get involved – if you feel so strongly about it?!”So, she did. She used Google to locate the key lawyers representing the Gitmo detainees. She interacted with them and soon found to her astonishment that since none of them spoke Pashto, many of the Afghan detainees had been simply unable to communicate with someone who would understand what they had to say. She sent out her resume, got through the process of getting a “Secret” security clearance, and was taken on as an interpreter by one of the lawyers. Over time, her role grew as she helped with more and more of the detainees – many of whom came to trust her as a “fellow Afghan” – someone who brought to them Starbucks “chai” (the beverage closest to the type of tea they would have had in Afghanistan). The older ones among them even addressed her using the term “bachai” (child) and she could connect with them as only an Afghan could. Later on, she visited Afghanistan to collect evidence needed to prove the innocence of individuals. Out of this experience and her related research comes her book “My Guantanamo Diary”.In her book, Khan chronicles accounts of ten or so Gitmo detainees and intersperses those accounts with a liberal dosage of her own observations on the circumstances surrounding those individuals and also her personal views on various Gitmo-related issues. Khan did not have access to any of the “high value” detainees at Gitmo. However, she appears to believe that a large number of the Gitmo detainees were like the ones she interviewed.Khan initially went to Gitmo with only a vague set of ideas of what she would encounter – perhaps expecting to run into hardened terrorists – the type that Donald Rumsfeld had called the “baddest of the bad”! Instead, the first inmate she met was the pediatrician Dr. Ali Shah Mousovi who – upon the fall of the Taliban – had returned to Afghanistan from an exile in Iran and had been picked up the very second night of his return. Some of the other detainees include an eighty year old partially paralyzed man, a goat herd (who seemed too smart to be a goat herd), a businessman, a Sudanese journalist, and a former police chief. As she met more and more of the Gitmo detainees and became familiar with their stories, Khan appears to have come to the conclusion – as would many readers of this book, that many of Gitmo’s Afghan inmates were individuals against whom there was no credible evidence of any wrongdoing – some were perhaps simply swept up by events around them, or they had been at the wrong place at the wrong time, or because a neighbor, or some enemy had made false complaints against them (possibly to obtain a bounty) – leading to an indefinitely long incarceration in a facility far away with virtually no access to any legal redress and no ability to prove their own innocence. Khan also drops some hints that some individuals may have been picked up in Pakistan and “groomed” in local jails (to grow a beard and other Taliban-like outward features) before being “sold” to the Americans.The question that comes through most strikingly from Khan’s remarkable accounts is – how can a system supposedly full of safeguards go so wrong so quickly – and stay that way for so long?! To quote Khan – “The Guantanamo cases raise lasting and fundamental questions about American willingness to abide by its principles and adhere to the rule of law, especially when under threat”.What also comes through rather strongly is that many of those individuals could have been cleared with a simple check of fact – available to even the most hardened criminals in the U.S. Such an opportunity was mostly denied. The incarcerators seldom sought out any witnesses of their own, even the “accusers” were often classified – and there was rarely an effort to find the witnesses that were requested by the detainees. Instead, those in charge saw it fit to merely put away those detainees by using one pretext or another, deny them their day in the court and hide from public view or scrutiny any accounts of what was happening. In the process, what appears to have been done was to go about deliberately creating an unreal zone – a space that was not the U.S. and yet was not, for all practical purposes, a part of the rest of the non-U.S. world either, a space where the executive exercised the unusual powers of wartime without the encumbrances of the Geneva convention, where those in charge had control to do whatever they pleased without the element of accountability, a space where tragically, human beings in charge of other human beings often turned into less than human beings and treated others as such. In this man-made space, while the detainees languished under U.S. control, they had no recourse to the protections guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. As Ms. Khan puts it so eloquently (if with some humor) even the Gitmo iguanas were protected by the U.S. wildlife laws – but its detainees had no protection whatsoever!Another part that comes through touchingly from this book is how – when some of these same detainees were eventually freed and were able to return to their interrupted lives –even though many had lost years to what turned out to be unjust incarceration, few if any hold a grudge against the Americans – and virtually none do so against the American people.It is unlikely that anyone but one of the Afghan heritage, like Ms. Khan, could write a book like this. The U.S.-born and brought up author, like any lawyer, knows the rights of individuals and the legal recourses for ensuring that those rights are respected – with the ability to interface with the legal community, if necessary, for the same. She also appears to be young enough to not have a vested interest in “protecting” a track record which could be attacked by an adversary, and idealistic enough to not care for such protection. Further, it is unlikely that a book like this could ever happen without at least some support from right-minded individuals in and around her – who believe that fundamental rights of citizens ought to be respected and not, as alleged, simply thrown away in the name of fighting terror. Ms. Khan has the benefits of having an insight into the Afghan mind and can make a distinction between mere cultural issues – like women being under a burqa – versus what constitutes a fundamental denial of human rights in a Taliban-like societal setup. She is no apologist for the latter but it is also important to her that in the name of fighting Taliban-like adversaries, the U.S. does not grab the right to ride rough-shod over what is among one of the most sacred features of the U.S. Constitution – a presumption of innocence on the part of the individual until the individual is actually proven guilty. Khan is not naïve enough to believe that Gitmo does not house evil characters. She also admits that since the detainees were themselves the primary source of information, some of the accounts could be less than accurate or embellished. The point she makes again and again is – while the Gitmo may house innocent as well as evil detainees, it is only through an honest examination of their records that can one separate one from the other.Some accounts of the detainee treatment – as reported to Khan by the detainees, are particularly disturbing. Khan notes that there are cultural attributes of Afghanis which make them very reluctant to discuss some of the humiliations they may have encountered. However, it is not possible to independently corroborate those accounts.Another touching part of the accounts is that of the two Pakistani poet brothers whose creativity Gitmo could not extinguish – and in fact one of whom wrote thousands of pieces of poems during his incarceration but – in a tragic irony, after being freed one brother disappeared in Pakistan (possibly picked up by its security agency) and then the other brother wrote no more – in the process, Pakistan “accomplishing” what even Gitmo had failed to do.In the touching finale, Khan is able to visit the pediatrician, her first interviewee, in Afghanistan and see him now reunited with his family after a lapse of many years. In spite of the apparent deep bonding that had formed between the two – he is only able to shake hands as an expression of his clear gratitude – Afghan culture precluding any acts of hugging between them. The book has plenty of humorous moments, too – like when Khan describes how she had the Gitmo Base Commander’s letter (of reprimand) framed and hung right above her toilet, or when one of the detainees asked her supervisor – a married but childless lawyer – what he “had been doing for the past fifteen years!” or how the Censors would not declassify any poetry or art in communications from Gitmo detainees because it might contain “coded messages”, or when a Habeus lawyer gets accused of slipping an Under Armour brief and a Speedo bathing suit to his client.“My Guantanamo Diary” is a book which needed to be written – not only to archive the sad events in the lives of the detainees it describes– but also to come to terms with the serious aberrations from due processes that the U.S. appears to have allowed itself to commit in that facility. It is a book which needed to be written so that it will be possible for successive generations to believe that even in the 21st century, in an age when all kinds of information stays at one’s fingertips and all kinds of accountability processes exist at every step, it is possible for the government to indeed trample over individual rights without serious hindrance from the judiciary or legislature and with only tacit support or even mere callousness on the part of its citizens. So the question remains – how could it all go so off-track so quickly?!It is not the fault of the U.S. Constitution – that ultimate document around which all our lives are centered and from which all our laws evolve. That document provides a set of iron-clad safeguards. It is simply that even iron-clad safeguards can be breached by those who are given the sacred task of guarding its provisions and just as important, of not violating its intents. The situation that prevailed in the U.S. post nine-eleven was unusual – it was unlike anything else the country had ever witnessed. However, because it was such an unusual situation, it was all the more important to guard the core values guaranteed to all. The basic fault of the approach seems to have been to adopt expediency at the expense of the presumption of innocence and claiming that such protection did not exist for a subset – and arrogate to oneself the power to decide who was worthy of that protection, and when. Khan attempts to capture an insight into such a mindset in describing how a Pentagon attorney tries to intimidate her when she approaches him to get the “Pentagon perspective” on what she had seen and recorded. The attorney (among other things) calls her Washington Post article of a couple of years earlier “strange”. To quote Khan:He and I have a different idea of what is “strange”. Strange is American soldiers torturing prisoners. Strange is giving rewards of $5,000 to $25,000 per prisoner, and stranger still is the U.S. making many arrests without first investigating allegations put forth by locals who stand to gain financially from them. Strange is holding men for over five years without charging them. Strange is military’s removal of organs from prisoners who committed suicide before sending their bodies home for burial. Strange is calling a paralyzed 80-year old man an “enemy combatant”. Strange is that while U.S. soldiers throw the Quran in buckets of feces, the administration had figuratively done the same to the U.S. Constitution.Khan’s book raises clear-cut questions. The questions remain – and they need to be answered through a comprehensive and honest examination – to be done by more than one party. Any acts of flinching from such an examination – and there is always an understandable reluctance to delve into the past (especially if it has unsavory aspects associated with it) would merely leave room for those same mistakes to repeat on a later day. There has always existed a fault line between the desire to administer justice fairly so as not to inadvertently punish the innocent and the desire to administer justice expeditiously so as to keep the country secure. Converting that fine fault line into an immense chasm was the real tragedy of the massive earthquake that the event called nine-eleven represented – and during the darkest days of Gitmo that chasm looked ever-widening and almost permanent!One can not predict earthquakes and one would hope there won’t be too many – but having been through one, it would be unacceptable not to prepare for the next one – to prepare for what to do if and when it comes. And also for what NOT to do – otherwise the lessons from the Gitmo tragedy would be lessons in vain!

How a minority of US State Department officials were ignored by the Dulles Brothers in 1950s-Jihadism in 2009: The Trends Continue

How a minority of US State Department officials were ignored by the Dulles Brothers in 1950s-Jihadism in 2009: The Trends Continue

The use of religion against USSR which was opposed by a minority of US officials at the State Department in 1950s is leading to great chaos worldwide today.A small minority of US officials in 1950s dod express these apprehensions but their concerns were swept aside by dubious characters like the Dulles brothers and many others heading the US governmental bureaucracy.Today we see the fruits of the tree planted by myopic thinkers like Dulles brothers of USA.The threat to USA and to the world has increased.USSR was never a real threat.It was a percieved threat.The Islamists are a real threat and not a percieved threat.Actually the Islamist militant revival will sooner or later lead to rise of Christian extremism.The USA's anglo saxon dominance will collapse demographically within next 50 years with Latinos going in majority and the whole system would collapse.

Agha H Amin






Jihadism in 2009:

The Trends Continue

January 7, 2009

Global Security and Intelligence Report Stratfor:

By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart

For the past several years, we have published an annual forecast for al Qaeda and the jihadist movement. Since the January 2006 forecast, we have focused heavily on the devolution of jihadism from a phenomenon focused primarily on al Qaeda the group to one based primarily on al Qaeda the movement. Last year, we argued that al Qaeda was struggling to remain relevant and that al Qaeda prime had been marginalized in the physical battlefield. This marginalization of al Qaeda prime had caused that group to forfeit its position at the vanguard of the physical jihad, though it remained deeply invol ved in the leadership of the ideological battle.As a quick reminder, Stratfor views what most people refer to as “al Qaeda” as a global jihadist network rather than a monolithic entity. This network consists of three distinct entities. The first is a core vanguard, which we frequently refer to as al Qaeda prime, comprising Osama bin Laden and his trusted associates. The second is composed of al Qaeda franchise groups such as al Qaeda in Iraq, and the third comprises the grassroots jihadist movement inspired by al Qaeda prime and the franchise groups.As indicated by the title of this forecast, we believe that the trends we have discussed in previous years will continue, and that al Qaeda prime has become marginalized on the physical battlefield to the extent that we have not even mentioned their name in the title. The regional jihadist franchises and grassroots operatives pose a much more significant threat in terms of security concerns, though it is important to note that those concerns will remain tactical and not rise to the level of a strategic threat. In our view, the sort of strategic challenge that al Qaeda prime posed with the 9/11 attacks simply cannot be replicated without a major change in geopolitical alignments — a change we do not anticipate in 2009.2008 in ReviewBefore diving into our forecast for the coming year, let’s take a quick look back at what we said would happen in 2008 and see what we got right and what we did not.What we got right:* Al Qaeda core focused on the ideological battle. Another year has passed without a physical attack by the al Qaeda core. As we noted last October, al Qaeda spent a tremendous amount of effort in 2008 fighting the ideological battle. The core leadership still appears to be very intent on countering the thoughts presented in a book written in 2007 by Sayyed Imam al-Sharif, also known as Dr. Fadl, an imprisoned Egyptian radical and a founder (with Ayman al-Zawahiri) of Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Al-Sharif’s book is seen as such a threat because he provides theological arguments that counter many of the core teachings used by al Qaeda to justify jihadism. On Dec. 13, an 85-page treatise by one of al Qaeda’s leading religious authorities, Abu-Yahya al-Libi, was released to jihadist Web sites in the latest of al Qaeda’s many efforts to counter Dr. Fadl’s arguments.* Pakistan will be important as a potential flashpoint. Eight days after we wrote this, former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. Since then, Pakistan has become the focal point on the physical battlefield.* The November 2007 addition of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) to the global jihadist network will not pose a serious threat to the Libyan regime. The Libyans have deftly used a combination of carrots and sticks to divide and control the LIFG.* Jihadists will kill more people with explosives and firearms than with chemical, biological or radiological weapons. We saw no jihadist attacks using WMD in 2008.What we got mostly right:* The Algerian jihadist franchise, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), will be hard-pressed in 2008, but not eliminated. AQIM succeeded in launching a large number of attacks in the first eight months of 2008, killing as many people as it did in all of 2007. But since then, the Algerian government has been making progress, and the jihadist group has only conducted two attacks since August 2008. The Algerians also are working closely with neighboring countries to combat AQIM, and the group is definitely feeling the heat. On Dec. 23, 2008, the Algerian government reportedly rejected a truce offered by AQIM leader Yahia Djouadi. Djouadi offered that al Qaeda would cease attacks on foreigners operating in oil fields in Algeria and Mauritania if the Algerian security service would cease targeting al Qaeda members in the Sahel region. The group is still alive, and government pressure appears to have affected its operational ability in recent months, but it di d take a bit longer than we anticipated for the pressure to make a difference.* Syria will use Fatah al-Islam as a destabilizing force in Lebanon. We had intelligence last year suggesting that the Syrians were going to press the use of their jihadist proxies in Lebanon — specifically Fatah al-Islam. We saw a bit of this type of activity in late May, but not as much as anticipated. By November, Syria actually decided to cut ties with Fatah al-Islam.* Jihadist operatives outside war zones will focus on soft targets. Major terrorist strikes in Islamabad and New Delhi were conducted against hotels, soft targets Stratfor has focused on as vulnerable for many years now. Other attacks in India focused on markets and other public places. While most of the attacks against hard targets came in war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan, there were a few attacks against hard targets in places like Pakistan, Yemen and Turkey. Granted, the Sanaa and Istanbul attacks were unsuccessful, but they were attacks against hard targets nonetheless.What we missed:* The jihadist franchises in Yemen resurged, and the al-Shabab in Somalia found success. While we quickly picked up on these trends in April and May respectively (and beat most others to the punch with some very good analysis on these topics), we clearly did not predict them in December 2007. We knew that the influx of fighters from Iraq was going to impact countries in the region, but we didn’t specifically focus on Yemen and Somalia.The Year AheadWe anticipate that we will see the United States continue its campaign of decapitation strikes against al Qaeda leadership. While this campaign has not managed to get bin Laden or al-Zawahiri, it has proved quite successful at causing the al Qaeda apex leadership to lie low and become marginalized from the physical jihad. The campaign also has killed a long list of key al Qaeda operational commanders and trainers. As noted above, we believe the core leadership is very concerned about the ideological battle being waged against it — the only real way the theology of jihadism can be defeated — and will continue to focus their efforts on that battlespace.As long as the ideology of jihadism survives (it has been around since the late 1980s), the jihadists’ war against the world will continue. It will continue to oscillate between periods of high and low intensity. In the coming year, we believe the bulk of physical attacks will continue to be conducted by regional jihadist franchise groups, and to a lesser extent by grassroots jihadists.With the lack of regional franchises in North America, we do not see a strategic threat to the United States. However, as seen by the recent convictions in the Fort Dix plot trial, or even in the late October case where a U.S. citizen apparently committed a suicide bombing on behalf of al-Shabab in Somalia, the threat of simple attacks against soft targets in the United States remains. We were again surprised that no jihadist attacks occurred in the United States in 2008. Given the vulnerabilities that exist in an open society and the ease of attack, we cannot rule out an attack in 2009.In Europe, where AQIM and other jihadist franchises have a greater presence and infrastructure, there is a greater threat that these franchises will commit sophisticated attacks. It must be recognized, though, that they will have a far harder time acquiring weapons and explosives to conduct such attacks in the United Kingdom or France than they would in Algeria or Pakistan. Because of this, we anticipate that they will continue to focus on soft targets in Europe. Due to differences between the Muslim communities in the United States and Europe, the grassroots operatives have been more active in Europe than they are in the United States. The May 22, 2008, attempted bombing at the Giraffe Cafe by a Muslim convert in Exeter serves as a good reminder of this.Jihadist FranchisesAfter failing last year to predict the resurgence of the jihadist franchises in Yemen and Somalia, we will be keeping a sharp eye on both for 2009. Somalia continues to be a basket case of a country, and the instability there is providing an opportunity for al-Shabab to flourish. There is currently an attempt under way to bring stability to Somalia, but we anticipate that it will not succeed, due to the militant factionalism in the country. The only thing working against al-Shabab and their jihadist brethren is that the Somalian jihadists appear to be as fractious as the rest of the country; al-Shabab is itself a splinter of the Supreme Islamic Courts Council (SICC), which ruled Somalia briefly before the Ethiopian invasion in 2006. There are currently as many as four different jihadist factions fighting one anot her for control over various areas of Somalia — in addition to fighting foreign troops and the interim government.In Yemen, things have been eerily quiet since the Sept. 17 attack against the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa and the government campaign to go after the group behind that attack. Six gunmen were killed in the attack itself, and the Yemenis have arrested numerous others whom they claim were involved in planning the attack. The Yemenis also killed or captured several significant jihadists prior to the September attack. But given the large number of Yemenis involved in the fighting in Iraq, the number of Saudi militants who have traveled to Yemen due to pressure at home, and the Salafist-jihadist influence within Yemen’s security and intelligence apparatus, it will be possible for the two jihadist franchises in Yemen to recover if the Yemenis give them breathing space.Meanwhile, though Iraq is far calmer than it was a few years back, a resurgence in jihadist activity is possible. One of the keys to calming down the many jihadist groups in Iraq was the formation of the Awakening Councils, which are made up of many Sunni former Baathist (and some jihadist) militants placed on the U.S. payroll. With the changes in Iraq, responsibility for these Awakening Councils has been passed to the Iraqi government. If the Shiite-dominated government decides not to pay the councils, many of the militants-turned-security officers might return to their old ways — especially if the pay from jihadist groups is right. Intelligence reports indicate that Baghdad plans to pay only a fraction of the approximately 100,000 men currently serving in the Awakening Councils. The Iraqi central government apparently plans to offer the bulk of them civilian jobs or job training, but we are skeptical that this will work.Elsewhere, Pakistan is once again the critical location for the jihadists. Not only is Pakistan the home of the al Qaeda core leadership as its pursues its ideological war, it also is home to a number of jihadist groups, from the Afghan Taliban and the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan in the northwest to Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed in the northeast, among several others. The coming year might prove to be pivotal in global efforts against the jihadists in Pakistan. Pakistan already is a country in crisis, and in some ways it is hard to imagine it getting much worse. But if Pakistan continues to destabilize, it could very well turn into a failed country (albeit a failed country with a nuclear arsenal). Before Pakistan becomes a failed state, there are a number of precursor stages it probably will pass through. The most immed iate stage would entail the fall of most of the North-West Frontier Province to the jihadists, something that could happen this year.This type of anarchy in Pakistan could give the jihadists an opportunity to exert control in a way similar to what they have done in places like Afghanistan and Somalia (and already in the Pakistani badlands along the Afghan border.) If, on the other hand, Pakistan is somehow able to hold on, re-establish control over its territory and its rogue intelligence agency and begin to cooperate with the United States and other countries fighting the jihadists, such a development could deal a terrible blow to the aspirations of the jihadists on both the physical and ideological battlefields. Given the number of plots linked to Pakistan in recent years, including the Nov. 26 Mumbai attack and almost every significant plot since 9/11, all eyes will be watching Pakistan carefully.

India's Leaders Need to Look Closer to Home

India's Leaders Need to Look Closer to Home


The Assault on Mumbai


By TARIQ ALI
The terrorist assault on Mumbai’s five-star hotels was well planned, but did not require a great deal of logistic intelligence: all the targets were soft. The aim was to create mayhem by shining the spotlight on India and its problems and in that the terrorists were successful. The identity of the black-hooded group remains a mystery.
The Deccan Mujahedeen, which claimed the outrage in an e-mail press release, is certainly a new name probably chosen for this single act. But speculation is rife. A senior Indian naval officer has claimed that the attackers (who arrived in a ship, the M V Alpha) were linked to Somali pirates, implying that this was a revenge attack for the Indian Navy’s successful if bloody action against pirates in the Arabian Gulf that led to heavy casualties some weeks ago.
The Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, has insisted that the terrorists were based outside the country. The Indian media has echoed this line of argument with Pakistan (via the Lashkar-e-Taiba) and al-Qaeda listed as the usual suspects.
But this is a meditated edifice of official India’s political imagination. Its function is to deny that the terrorists could be a homegrown variety, a product of the radicalization of young Indian Muslims who have finally given up on the indigenous political system. To accept this view would imply that the country’s political physicians need to heal themselves.
Al Qaeda, as the CIA recently made clear, is a group on the decline. It has never come close to repeating anything vaguely resembling the hits of 9/11.
Its principal leader Osama bin Laden may well be dead (he certainly did not make his trademark video intervention in this year’s Presidential election in the United States) and his deputy has fallen back on threats and bravado.
What of Pakistan? The country’s military is heavily involved in actions on its Northwest frontier where the spillage from the Afghan war has destabilized the region. The politicians currently in power are making repeated overtures to India. The Lashkar-e-Taiba, not usually shy of claiming its hits, has strongly denied any involvement with the Mumbai attacks.
Why should it be such a surprise if the perpetrators are themselves Indian Muslims? Its hardly a secret that there has been much anger within the poorest sections of the Muslim community against the systematic discrimination and acts of violence carried out against them of which the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in shining Gujarat was only the most blatant and the most investigated episode, supported by the Chief Minister of the State and the local state apparatuses.
Add to this the continuing sore of Kashmir which has for decades been treated as a colony by Indian troops with random arrests, torture and rape of Kashmiris an everyday occurrence. Conditions have been much worse than in Tibet, but have aroused little sympathy in the West where the defense of human rights is heavily instrumentalised.
Indian intelligence outfits are well aware of all this and they should not encourage the fantasies of their political leaders. Its best to come out and accept that there are severe problems inside the country. A billion Indians: 80 percent Hindus and 14 percent Muslims. A very large minority that cannot be ethnically cleansed without provoking a wider conflict.
None of this justifies terrorism, but it should, at the very least, force India’s rulers to direct their gaze on their own country and the conditions that prevail. Economic disparities are profound. The absurd notion that the trickle-down effects of global capitalism would solve most problems can now be seen for what it always was: a fig leaf to conceal new modes of exploitation.


Tariq Ali’s latest book, ‘The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power’ is published by Scribner.

Pakistan’s Islamic Factor

July 2003

Pakistan’s Islamic Factor

A.H Amin


History proves that religion has been repeatedly used by various classes to secure their personal or class aims and objectives ! Religion as a political factor to unite Indians against the British was introduced in politics by Gandhi ! Gandhi represented the Hindu middle and professional classes funded by the business classes who were western educated , outwardly secular in outlook but relied on Hindu religious symbols to achieve their political ends ! When Gandhi sidelined Mr Jinnah from main congress leadership after 1921-22 Mr Jinnah also abandoned his initial ideology of Indian nationalism based on constitutionalism and adopted Islam as his slogan ! In most of his political speeches Mr Jinnah stressed on the fact that the Indian Muslims were a separate nation and their unique religious and social practices entitled them to have a separate country ! This slogan was convenient and politically expedient to unite the pre 1947 Indo Pak Muslims against the Hindu dominated congress ! In 1947 while addressing the constituent assembly of Pakistan Mr Jinnah clarified that his idea of Pakistan was a secular state where Muslims and non Muslims would politically speaking only be Pakistanis and religion would be a private matter ! Mr Jinnah’s line of reasoning was not immediately questioned by the religious right since Jinnah was an indisputed leader but the question whether Pakistan was a secular state or an Islamic state was hotly debated in the constituent assembly of Pakistan from 1948 till 1956 ! The Muslim League and most other parties of this time were dominated by the professional middle classes or landlords who had merely viewed religion as a slogan to galvanise the masses and never wanted a theological state ! The landlords wanted to get rid of a Hindu money lending class and a land reform threatening congress party while the middle classes enthusiastically supported Pakistan because they viewed the new state as one with greater opportunities of advancement for their class since the Hindus who were more educationally advanced were eliminated from the competition ! The religious parties which had initially opposed Pakistan’s creation based on the idea that partition would only divide Indian Muslims now turned the table on the Muslim League by demanding that since the Muslim League itself declared that the Indo Pak Muslims needed a separate country to practice Islam , the new country must be based on the Islamic Sharia ! The non religious feudal and middle class Muslim Leaguers led by Liaquat Ali Khan initially outmanoeuvred the Islamists by moving the Objectives Resolution which paid lip service to Islam while preserving Pakistan’s initially envisaged secular ethos ! The Islamists however were not pacified and the 1953 Anti Qadiani riots proved that the Islamists were a force to be reckoned with ! However massive US aid from 1954 to 1965 marginalised the Islamists and strengthened the secular forces under the military dictator Ayub Khan ! In 1970 the Islamists were again unable to gain much except in NWFP and Baluchistan and the neo-socialist PPP and the nationalistic Awami League swept West and East Pakistan ! Islamists parties were strengthened in between 1971-77 because of the 1971 defeat and because of some of Mr Bhuttos policies ! In 1977 the religious right gained a new benefactor in shape of USA who viewed the Islamist dominated anti Bhutto Pakistan National Alliance as a safer bet than an anti US charismatic leader like Bhutto ! Thus the 1977 agitation and the Zia military coup of 1977 which toppled Mr Bhutto ! Pakistan’s military dictator decided keeping in view the immense political strength of the anti Zia PPP that his best bet to survive was use of Islam as a political slogan ! Thus Zia’s Islamisation measures and the various stunts and ploys employed by the military junta to demonstrate that Zia was a true soldier of Islam ! The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan further strengthened Islamist forces not only in Pakistan but at an international level ! Out of the Afghan War of 1979-88 emerged a promiscuous alliance of convenience like a Mutah marriage ! Financed by the CIA and the Saudis , with Islam as slogan , and Jihad as the modus operandi ! The Islamists because of sheer expediency became the darlings of Pakistan’s ISI and USA’s CIA ! Many billions were pumped to support the anti Soviet Jihad ! Islamist forces were able to consolidate themselves with lavish funds,advanced weaponry and elaborate organizational networks ! All changed after the Soviet withdrawal from Afganistan ! The islamists now became a liability for USA and the Pakistani elite ! The dirty war was over ! The Islamists had done their job ! Now they must not be allowed to reap the harvest ! Thus a reversal of policies ! By 1991 however the Pakistani elite realized that USA no longer needed them and as a result Islamist forces once again received a boost ! Both Nawaz and Benazir governments made many efforts to endear themselves to the USA but the USA snubbed both ! Islamist forces as a result re-organised ! In 1994-96 Pakistan’s government once again used religion as a slogan once the Afghan Talibans were cultivated ! For some time the Americans also saw the taliban as a safe bet for oil pipelines ! However by 1998 the Americans realized that the Talibans were not good enough puppets and must be removed ! During all this time Pakistan’s economy rapidly weakened because of US embargoes and economic policies ! The politicians and the military and intelligence bosses once again fell back on Islamist forces which were used to fight the bloody undeclared wars in Kashmir ! The Kargil adventure of 1999 was the highpoint in this drama once regular Pakistan Army volunteers were employed in the name of Islam with diasastorous consequences ! By October 1999 once Musharraf usurped power Pakistan was a sidelined state till the 9/11 incident which proved a heaven sent opportunity for Pakistan’s military junta just like the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan had done for Zia the junta ! Pakistan’s military junta now made a U turn and collaborated with the USA in fighting a war against Islamists ! In 1979-89 the same military junta was with the Islamists because it meant US aid ! Now the same military junta viewed the Islamists as persona non gratas simply because it meant getting US aid ! The same state continues till to date ! The chain of historic events above mentioned demand analysis ! From 1937 till 1947 the pre 1947 Muslim elite employed “Islam” as a slogan to galvanise the Muslim masses based on the emotional Pakistan slogan based on Islam ! Once Pakistan was achieved the same elite immediately made a U turn and declared that Pakistan was a secular state without justifying why 1 million Muslims were sacrificed to create a Muslim state where religion would be a personal matter ! Thus HAFEEZ Jullundhri noted with sarcasm ‘ Qaafle lut gaiy barbad ho gayay to kia hooa , Mutmain hain Qaafla Salaar apnay Kaam Say ! Between 1947 and 1976 religion was ditched as US aid came and the middle classes and the higher classes enjoyed great prosperity partly because of international aid and more because of elimination of the rich Hindus by mass genocide and control of evacuee property ! In 1977 religion was employed as a slogan because the middle and higher classes united with the Islamists simply because Mr Bhutto’s policies were a threat for the urban classes in Karachi ,Multan and Lahore because of a variety of reasons including nationalization,quota system,liberal outlook etc ! The USA financed the Islamists against Bhutto because they thought that the Islamists were asafer bet than Bhutto ! Between 1977 and 1989 Pakistan’s military junta used Islam as a tool because it suited their political and economic ends i.e because of the PPP as a political threat and the US military and economic aid in Afghan War ! Between 1989 and 1999 the Islamists once again received a boost because US stopped their aid and the civil and military elite once again picked up the slogan of Islam in danger ! Between 2001 and to date Pakistan’s military junta once again made a U turn and adopted an anti Islamist policy simply because it meant US economic and military aid ! The elections of 2002 strengthened Islamists forces thanks to the U turn of Pakistan’s military government after 9/11 ! The resultant sense of betrayal strengthened the Islamists morally ! The Islamists for the first time emerged as a strong constitutional force which challenged Pakistan’s military junta in Pakistan’s parliament ! Thus the MMA stand on LFO and against Musharraf’s US appeasing policies ! There is no doubt that a storm is gathering in Pakistan Iran Afghanistan and the Arab world which this time will not subside ! This storm is gathering because the Muslim elite has repeatedly used Islam as a convenient slogan , picked up at will to get aid from USA and abandoned at whim once it meant not getting US Dollars ! The Islamists are on a strong footing today ! This the start of a drama that would carry on in many acts ! Since religion was used as a cheap slogan by the elite , now it appears that the elite would have a harder time in manipulating the common man ! Inflation , rising population , unemployment is strengthening the Islamists forces in Pakistan and Afghanistan by leaps and bounds ! The US invasion of Iraq ahs further strengthened the Islamist forces since it has proved to be a spur for forces of resistance led by Islamists! One Million dead in 1947 to create a country of Muslims !Two million dead in Afghanistan from 1978 till 2003 ! 100,000 dead in Kashmir from 1989 till to date ! 500 dead in Kargil ! The many thousands dead in Palestine,Algeria,Egypt , Iraq , all in the name of Islam ! To make the Islamic world a safer place for miltary dictators who order military volunteers in the name of Islam but pose as liberals to get US aid ! Kings and princes who gamble in Monaco and womanise in Paris but stage behaedings of small time drug dealers to give cheap thrills to the common man ! The day when the Muslim common man would question military dictators or kings about what they did to the aid money they got or the oil money they wasted in gambling or enjoying is not very far away ! Inshallah I hope ! In the next ten years a long bloody war would be fought between the Islamists and the opportunist forces in Muslim world which have agaian and again used Islam as a cheap tool to drug the masses ! Now the Muslim common man cannot be fooled or amused by cheap slogans or beheadings of petty criminals ! Now they want the heads of their rulers who have used Islam in the most Machiavellian manner for achieving their cheap personal and dynastic ends ! This the decade of the decisive war between Islamists and anti Islamists ! This war will not be won by superior weaponry or cheap slogans ! This war will be fought in the shadows , covertly and more motivated forces would finally carry the day ! Many Roman Empires and many great dynasties would be destroyed in the process ! When the common man fearlessly snipes at the US soldiers in Baghdad or when the common man defies Rangers and so many other military entities and goes on with suicide bombings , wars can no longer be won by conventional forces with better weapons bu t weaker hearts ! The human heart is the most decisive weapon and the USA alienated it after 9/11 !

Bangladesh Islamist party pledges military training in seminaries

http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/uncategorized/bangladesh-islamist-party-pledges-military-training-in-seminaries_100130003.html


Bangladesh Islamist party pledges military training in seminaries

December 12th, 2008 - 12:27 pm ICT by IANS -

Dhaka, Dec 12 (IANS) Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, the country’s largest Islamist party, has pledged the enactment of a blasphemy law and military training for students of Islamic seminaries (madrassas) in its manifesto for the Dec 29 general election, media reports said Friday. The blasphemy law is meant to prevent the criticism of religion in books, newspapers or electronic media and punishment for those responsible.

“All will enjoy religious rights, but criticism or making bad remarks about others’ religions is not acceptable. There is blasphemy law in the United Kingdom and nothing is wrong about it,” Jamaat chief Motiur Rahman Nizami said Thursday as he announced the party’s manifesto.

Blasphemy law exists in Pakistan where non-Muslims are brought before law, and there is no bail. The cases generally lead to conviction. Some judges who acquitted the accused were later killed.

“Madrassas and mosque-based mass education will be given priority. Mass education will also be introduced in all religious institutions,” the Jamaat manifesto reads.

Along with students at madrassas, arrangements will be made to give military training to citizens aged between 20 and 30 gradually under the supervision of the defence forces, it added.

The Jamaat, a key component of the four-party combine led by two-term prime minister and Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) chief Khaleda Zia, also promised to strengthen the liberation war ministry and the Freedom Fighters Welfare Trust and increase allowances for the freedom fighters’ families, The Daily Star newspaper said.

However, Jamaat had opposed the liberation war of 1971 that led to separation from Pakistan and emergence of Bangladesh, and its current top leaders stand accused of collaborating with the Pakistan forces in the killing of unarmed civilians and the intelligentsia.

Former freedom fighters and many parties campaigned against Jamaat’s recognition as a political party to contest the forthcoming election. However, the caretaker government and the Election Commission, having promised an all inclusive poll, ignored the protests.

The Jamaat, which wants to establish a rule in the country based on the ideals of Islam, said it would initiate measures to spread the ideals of Islam through all mediums, including radio, television and newspapers.

Measures will also be taken to ensure that other religious communities can perform their religious activities freely, Nizami said.

The manifesto, however, did not make it clear how the party would tackle religious terrorism or the global financial crisis.

Western think tanks have alleged that Islamist militancy has been on the rise in Bangladesh since 9/11. The Jama’at-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) and Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami (HuJI) were proscribed after protests at home and an international outcry.

On religious militancy, Nizami said Bangladesh has proved that terrorism can be uprooted within the shortest possible time.

“Some militants had started their activities in the country in the name of Islam, but the BNP-Jamaat alliance government resisted them strongly during its tenure”, he said, adding that the bans on JMB and HuJI were imposed when his party shared power with Zia.