Taking global Jihad to Kashmir

Taking global Jihad to Kashmir

Due to the conflict and eruption of militancy in 1989 in Kashmir, Islam and Jihad were used for fighting the Indian occupation, due to which many Kashmiri youth joined the ranks of militancy (Hizbul Mujahedeen) to carry out the attacks against India. Pakistan also symbolized the martyrdom by preaching jihad through various religious organizations, like Jamat-i-Islami. Hence, much of the freedom struggle in Kashmir was religion inspired. Hizbul Mujahedeen wants the accession of Kashmir with Pakistan and hence will do anything to make it happen and for this the theory of jihad is justified by all militant organizations and Hurriyat Conference (G) in the valley. The glorification of jihad and the local support these Mujahedeen, as locals name them, get is overwhelming. The support for them is mainly because they are fighting a just war according to the majority of the Muslims in Kashmir. The doctrine of martyrdom is extracted from Quran and Hadith and hence an enthusiastic will to die for the sake of religion is developing as a trend among the new generation of Kashmir. However, in the academics debate of jihad is blistering and there is a lot of academic work available on Islam and it’s compatibility with peace and dialogue. The queries have been raised in the past whether Islam permits violence? And how far jihad in Kashmir has scriptural justifications? These questions are actually not dealt scholarly in Kashmir and one finds no substantial academic study of idea of Jihad in Kashmir. There is no intellectual debate on the idea of jihad, which is attracting youth, which makes this generation vulnerable to perceive jihad through their own understanding, which calls our attention to a number of threats beyond ones imagination. The interpretation of Jihad is coming from mosques and there is a dire need to bring the debate on intellectual forum. It is true that soon after the conflict began in the valley, people started to view conflict through the prism of religion. It is so because conflict has reached to a level where the life in Kashmir is exceedingly in jeopardy and in matters of life and death one often turns to religion.

Global Caliphate hints through media

Besides that there has been an ideological reinforcement, the impressions of which came mainly from Pakistan and also from Muslim reformative cadence ringing in the Muslim world in 1990’s. Soon after the September 2001 attacks, the neoconservatives’ aggression in Afghanistan and Jihadists endeavour to attract sympathizers became a dominant trend. George Bush’s policy of war against terror gave rise to more sympathizers of jihad around the world. The aggression of neocons triggered repression, which produced causalities, which created an imagination of “other” into the Muslim mind. The victims- women, children, dead and wounded, porn violence of Abu Gharib Jail, whose Muslim identity the Jihadists stressed was used for jihad. The purpose fulfilled the recruits. The Muslims came to know about these atrocities through social media and this was a major argument on the basis of which Al Qaeda could have well-thought-out the movement of global jihad. Internet was a new weapon. The Indian state and its repression was multiplied through internet. As it is put by an academician Gilles Kepel that new wars will neither be fought in Palestine or Iraq. They will be fought on internet. One imagines of 1980’s when it took weeks or months for a video tape of mujahideen battle to travel back to USA for viewing. The agendas of conflict are better passed through a flood of new information- through hash tags, twitter, Facebook etc.  All the fighting factions have turned to media a decade before. ISIS set up its first official twitter account under the name of al I’tissaamm, an Arabic reference to maintain Islamic traditions without deviations. There may not be an ISIS rise but there is a growing rise in tech-savvy militants in Kashmir. Burhan and Zakir Musa both took to social media for recruitments. The display of banner containing the logo Al Hurr with a tag line of Ansar Ghazwat Ul Hind along with an audio message of Zakir Musa represents a hypermedia connection of Musa with someone from global caliphate ideology.  

Ideological shifts and influences  

The first lot of Kashmiri youth, Ishfaq Majeed, began to look for violence as a major strategy to counter Indian occupation, where impressed by many world events like Iranian Revolution, the character of Umar Mukhtar, Afghan Jihad and  the rise of political Islam in sub-continent. The 9/11 had not happened when the first lot of young recruits in Kashmir went for jihad. They were mostly motivated by the partition theory and fought for the merger with Pakistan. The trend continued till Burhan wani.  Burhan also called for a global jihad, however, his focus was Kashmir and not beyond. It is, however, Zakir Musa who shifted the narrative. He speaks the language which is beyond two-nation theory and calls for a global jihad against India. In one of the videos he declared democracy haram (unlawful). It makes one hard to believe that Zakir Musa might have read that it were neocons who wanted to take democracy in every corner of the world, and they were the reason for devastating the middle-east. Bill Clinton rightly said “Beyond containment lies democracy”. As if Zakir Musa knew it. This was the major academic backlash of “war on terror” and Al Qaida knew it well. Zakir Musa in that case seems to be reading a script and acting as a mouth piece of Al Qaeda ideology.

But the hunt for Al Qaida took decades. The war against terror was virtually a failure. One does stretch the level of understanding to this point that there seems to be no success of global jihad before the state. The ISIS in Syria and their men are roaming on the borders of Turkey now. The question is being asked about their rehabilitation. There was a time when world got shocked by their internet terror. The major figures of Al Qaeda in Sub-continent (AQIS) are no more. Usama bin Laden was surgically eliminated. Abu Musaib Zarqawi, the brain child of ISIS, was killed by an air strike. But ideologies never die. The 2020 plan of Ghazwa-i- Hind is there in the books of Al Qaida which may came upfront and this time through Kashmir. One does hear the radicals like Zaid Hamid lecturing about Ghazwa-i-Hind. In all this Kashmir might be chosen as a base because there is a good amount of fuel available.

We have seen a very good support for Zakir Musa. Students in High schools and colleges may not know about the global conspiracies and ideologies but their frustration and vacuum is filled by these ideologies. The major problem and the war for the Muslim mind lies in this internet. A huge number of high school and college students are dependent on Internet. It multiplied the rise of ISIS. It may along with the future economic aspirations and expectations multiply the jihad in Kashmir. 

Three years before during the interviews and dinner chats we found that jihad in Kashmir was a reaction to the human rights violations done by the Indian army and state police, and it has substantially less to do with the greater frame of clash of civilisations.  However, after 2016 this perspective has changed. There are some areas where Jihad as a war against India has remained a soul purpose for the students, like the southern Kashmir -Tarigam and Bugam area of Kulgam have seen incessant rise in radicalism after 2016. Vast majority of the students, due to the non-availability of weapons, have resorted to stone pelting against Indian army and para-military forces, which has led to the killing of hundreds of teenagers since 2008.

 Some of the students in the colleges had now no hope in the judicial system of India, which has from last three decades hanged some of the influential Kashmiri leaders like Maqbool Bhat and Afzal Guru. This has developed a sense of hatred towards the judiciary. Moreover, the most importantly, Narinder Modi, Prime Minster of India, stood a criminal in the collective conscience of Muslims of Kashmir. Judiciary of India gave him a clean chit and people of India made him Prime Minster. This sent a wave of shock among the people of Kashmir.

Brimming with these events, the identity of a Muslim in Kashmir seems very distant from his past. The rise of rebels and fringe is always due to the bleakness of Judiciary and this vacuum is easily filled by radicalization. The emergence of a utopia and an endless caliphate gets into the mind which contains the idea of a just system. But its consequences are Iraq and Syria like situation, if radicalization increases. Kashmir is ideologically drifting. A positive role is to be played by Government of India with all its stake holders; whether be with fringe or mainstream. The separatist leaders need to count the growing aspirations of global caliphate as well. If it reaches to culmination, their agenda will cease to exist. So will be UN resolutions be out of equation.  

(Nazar Ul Islam is an Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies in the department of Higher Education, JandK. The ideas expressed is thought to be a part of my post-doc research)