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Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Ideological founts that sustain and inspire Indian Mujahideen, SIMI

Islam,Terrorism and Jihad
22 Sep 2008, NewAgeIslam.Com

Ideological founts that sustain and inspire Indian Mujahideen, SIMI

 

The jihadi outfits have 'purist link'

 

By Rajeev Deshpande,TNN

22 Sep 2008, 0010 hrs IST,

 

NEW DELHI: The references in Indian Mujahideen's Delhi blasts email, and by its operatives held in connection with Friday's Batla House shootout, to two "original" 18th century martyrs opens a revealing window into the ideological founts that sustain and inspire the jihadi outfit.

 

The name Indian Mujahideen is apparently drawn from a book on a "jihad" waged by two Islamic warriors in north-west India around 1831 in Balakot, now Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, and which suited the terror mission devised by the banned Students Islamic Movement of India.

 

In its new garb, a SIMI faction found IM perfectly conveyed "home grown" militancy. The harkening to the two shaheeds — Sayeed Ahmad and Shah Ismail — marks a connection of a Delhi-based madrassa that attracted notice in the late 17th century under Shah Abdur Rahim as Madrassa Rahimiya. The school came up as part of a protest against the anti-orthodox views and policies of Akbar and was a centre of Hanafi learning.

 

The madrassa really came into its own under Rahim's son Shah Waliullah who is variously regarded as "reformer" or "hardliner". This apparent contradiction stems from his bid to rid Islam of "impurities" and "false beliefs" that had crept in. His views reflected the Muslim clergy's disquiet and anger but he gave it a sharper purpose, advocating "reform" of Islamic practices in line with those of early Muslims in Arabia.

 

Waliullah took a stringent view of Sharia and was pessimistic about the faith of converts. He advocated the need for persuasion to explain religion's superiority and scholars such as Sayyid Athar Rizvi and K S Durrany point to his injunctions against "polytheists and hypocrites" and opposition to influences of pre-Islamic Arabia and Greek philosophy in Islam.

 

He wrote in his 'Hujjat Allah al-Baligha' that religious rules were to be obeyed unquestioningly and emphasised aspects of Quran that stress "establishing the religion". He also saw Haridwar as a centre of evil that promoted polytheism and agreed with the tradition that held religious texts were not open to any reinterpretation.

 

It is this "purist" and two of his followers — Sayeed Ahmed and Shah Ismail — who are IM-SIMI's role models. The early "mujahids" were so upset by what they saw as un-Islamic accretions like local customs and sufic deviations that they left for what is today Pakistan's north-west frontier region and Kashmir to wage a "jihad" against the Sikh kingdom. The project was ill-conceived and both died.

 

Shah Ismail was a grandson of Waliullah and despite his lack of success, Waliullah's followers were active in 1857 and two of them, Maulana Qasim Nanatawi and Rashid Gangohi, are seen to be founders of the Dar-ul-uloom at Deoband. The objectives behind the Deoband school were underlined by Maulana Mahmood Hasan (1850-1920) who studied there and he wrote, "Was it founded just for education? Its main function was to avenge the defeat of 1857."

 

The task was to give a "mujahid enterprise" a cover of religious learning, fearing British retribution. But the goals of Waliullah remained Deoband's guiding principles. At all times, it strove to defend its tenets against what a leading light described as ploys by critics "to invent new arguments based on modern philosophy". It is this theological "inheritance" that led the IM-SIMI to believe its "war" against India and "non-believers" is just and fair. It allowed its leaders to recruit members by presenting them with a "divine" mission and using all manner of grievances — real and imagined, ranging from riots to conspiracies to keep minorities oppressed — to present their task as setting right a wrong.

 

While communal clashes swell extremist recruits, belief in an exclusivist philosophy helps preclude doubts and allows jihadi groups to identify with the global movement of al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden as was apparently the case with IM operative Bashir aka Atiq, seen as the brain behind the Delhi bombings. It also drives a deep hatred of innocent victims who are seen as undeserving of compassion.

 

The harder position on religious issues, seen to cover both the temporal and spiritual, saw belief as not merely a metaphysical concept. It is in the nature of a contract by which man barters his life in exchange for certainty of rewards in the hereafter.

 

Deoband has seen some churn recently with the seminary issuing a "declaration" against terrorism — not a fatwa — and some clerics arguing against the "Pakistan example". Waliullah's teachings, as the IM-SIMI have shown, are still spawning violence more than two hundred years after his passing. Until the theological repudiation of violence does not get louder, it remains a beacon for those who use the jihad doctrine as a vehicle for violence.

 Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Indian_Mujahideen_SIMI_have_purist_link/articleshow/3510433.cms

 

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Terror mail has cops in virtual fix

 

By Parth Shastri & Paul John,TNN

 22 Sep 2008, 0405 hrs IST,

 

AHMEDABAD: Who is sending the terror mails? Tauqeer is a name that crops up. But, police forces of Gujarat, Delhi and Mumbai are not yet sure.

 

A reason why police of the three states have not been able to make any headway in terror mail case is because the tech-savvy, new-age terrorists have covered their e-tracks well.

 

"Most of the software that were used to prepare texts were such that cannot be traced back to the user. This, apart from the fact that insecure Wi-Fi connections were used to send the mails. The tech-savvy terrorists have covered their tracks very well," said Gujarat police officials who are investigating the serial blasts case.

 

According to cyber experts, "The sender must have first prepared the Indian Mujahideen logo and graphic files and then embedded it into a Microsoft Word document to change the fonts to a very generic format that is easily available on the internet."

 

"After preparing the final draft, the sender must have used a converter software to change the format from Word to Adobe PDF which is easily available on sites such as www.exp-systems.com that give easy access to users for converting files," added senior police officials who are probing the terror mails.

 

"As the file is ready to be sent, it is saved in the hard disc or more likely, on a removable storage device such as a USB drive. The email id is created after the entire process is completed and then the date and time of blasts is decided," said police sources.

 

Gujarat police have found that the mail ids were generated just 10 to 15 minutes before the serial blasts in Delhi and Ahmedabad.

 

Till date, the mails were sent from al_arbi_delhi@yahoo.com, alarbi.alhindi@gmail.com and alarbi_gujarat@yahoo.com, in that order. Once the mail is sent, the id is never used again. Each of the terror ids are now full of mails sent by security agencies.

 

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Ahmedabad/Terror_mail_has_cops_in_virtual_fix/articleshow/3510982.cms

 

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'Professional hacker sent mails'

22 Sep 2008, 0404 hrs IST,TNN

 

AHMEDABAD: In the first e-mail sent minutes before the serial blasts in Ahmedabad on July 26, 2008, it took the security and intelligence agencies almost five hours to locate the exact place from where the mail was sent.

 

It was then that the cops zeroed in on the Wi-Fi connection of Kenneth Haywood, a resident of Sanapada, Navi Mumbai.

 

In the second mail, Guru Nanak Khalsa College's computer lab was used for sending the mail. The tech-savvy terrorists had outdone security agencies again. According to cyber experts, "The intruders had even hacked into the administrator's rights to wipe out the entire internet surfing history along with cookies, important e-links that could have led the cops back to the terrorists. The email sender is a professional hacker and knows his business."

 

The third mail received just before the Delhi blasts was no different. Designed in the same fashion, the mail even contained a video. However, considering the size of an attachment, the sender has used .wmv format that takes less space than traditional .mpg or .avi or .mov.

 

Officials have already seized the router used for sending the mail and sent it to experts to find out the Machine Access Code (MAC) of the machine used for sending the mail. This time, terrorists had used the vulnerable Wi-Fi connection of Kamran Power, a factory in Mumbai.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Ahmedabad/Professional_hacker_sent_mails/articleshow/3510979.cms

 

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Terror outfits go scouting for 'talent'

 

Medha Chaturvedi,TNN

22 Sep 2008, 0241 hrs IST,

 

NEW DELHI: DCP (south) H G S Dhaliwal says death gave the terrorists a high — Atif would often take pictures of the commotion following a blast from a distance of 30m. Some of these visuals had been saved in their computer in the same way as a sportsman would display his trophies. The visuals are now important evidences.

 

Also found in the same computer were pictures of the slain Sajid and the arrested Saif with bold captions like ''most wanted'. These visuals, shown to journalists by Joint CP Karnal Singh, gave a chilling indication of the ambitions of these otherwise normal youngsters with good academic careers. Saquib Nisar had won a gold medal in economics from Jamia Millia Islamia.

 

Says former cop and expert on terrorism related issues, K P S Gill, ''Influx of educated people into terror activities was rampant when Naxalism first appeared in India. Naxal cadre was drawn from the best colleges in the country. The phenomenon seems to be repeating itself in a different context.''

 

Experts said outfits like SIMI would often go scouting for ''talent''. ''They go to various parts of the country propagating their hate agenda and exhorting students and professionals to join terror activities,'' said a police officer.

 

(medha.chaturvedi@timesgroup.com)

 

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Delhi/Terror_outfits_go_scouting_for_talent/articleshow/3510894.cms

 

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