Muslims world over condemn Mumbai Terror, worry about image

Islam,Terrorism and Jihad

02 Dec 2008, NewAgeIslam.Com

Muslims world over condemn Mumbai Terror, worry about image

Hindus, Jews, and Jihad Terror in Mumbai by Andrew G. Bostom Washington: US, India face Pak blackmail on terror by Chidanand Rajghatta Pakistan makes troops threat over India standoff Mumbay Massacre: 300 feared dead as full horror of the terrorist attacks emerges Actress Gul Panag clarifies her controversial views on roots of Terrorism -----------------   Muslims world over condemn Mumbai attacks, worry about image Dec 01, 2008 By KARIN LAUB Ramallah, West Bank (AP) — Muslims from the Middle East to Britain and Austria condemned Sunday the Mumbai shooting rampage by suspected Islamic militants as senseless terrorism, but also found themselves on the defensive once again about bloodshed linked to their religion. Intellectuals and community leaders called for greater efforts to combat religious fanaticism. Indian police said Sunday that the only surviving gunman told them he belongs to the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba. The group is seen as a creation of Pakistani intelligence to help fight India in the disputed Kashmir region. Another group, Jaish-e-Mohammed, has also operated in Kashmir. Both are reported to be linked to al-Qaida. Ten gunmen attacked 10 targets in the three-day assault including a Jewish community center and luxury hotels in India's commercial hub. More than 170 people were killed. Many Muslims said they are worried such carnage is besmirching their religion. "The occupation of the synagogue and killing people in hotels tarnishes the Muslim faith," said Kazim al-Muqdadi, a political science lecturer at Baghdad University. "Anyone who slaughters people and screams `Allahu Akbar' (God is Great) is sick and ignorant." In Britain, home to nearly two million Muslims, a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, Inayat Bunglawala, said that "a handful of terrorists like this bring the entire faith into disrepute." A previously unknown Muslim group, Deccan Mujahideen, claimed responsibility for the attacks. The name suggests origins in India. Pakistan has denied involvement and demanding that India provide proof. In Pakistan, Jamaat-ud Dawa, an Islamist group believed to have ties to Lashkar-e-Taiba, denounced the killing of civilians. In Islamic extremist Web forums, some praised the Mumbai attacks, including the targeting of Jews. A man identified as Sheik Youssef al-Ayeri said the killings are in line with Islam. "It's all right for Muslims to set the infidels' castles on fire, drown them with water .... And take some of them as prisoners, whether young or old, women or men, because it is one of many ways to beat them," he wrote in the al-Fallujah forum. In the Gaza Strip, the territory's Islamic militant Hamas rulers declined comment. Hamas has carried out scores of suicide attacks in Israel, killing hundreds of civilians in recent years. However, Hamas has said it does not want to get involved in conflicts elsewhere. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad referred to the attacks as terrorism, but added that the violence is rooted in "unjust policies" aimed at destabilizing the region. He did not elaborate. India is seen by many in the Arab and Muslim world as a Western ally. For example, Israel has become an important arms supplier to India, angering Muslim Pakistan. Saudi Arabia said in a statement carried earlier this week by the Saudi Press Agency that it "strongly condemns and denounces this criminal act." An editorial Friday in Saudi's English-language Arab News said that "no civilized person ... can be anything but revolted and sickened by the terrorist attacks in Mumbai." However, Jonathan Fighel, an Israeli counterterrorism expert, said Saudi organizations have been funnelling money to Muslim militants in Kashmir. "This demonstrates exactly the double game and, I would say, the hypocrisy of the Saudi regime," said Fighel of the Israel-based International Institute for Counter-Terrorism. Throughout the Muslim world, the attacks set off soul-searching. "I think that Muslims should raise their voice against such actions. They should forge a coalition to fight such phenomena, because it harms them and damages their image," said Ali Abdel Muhsen, 22, a Muslim engineering student in the West Bank city of Nablus. Muslims and Arabs must confront the violence "that is taking place in our name and in the name of our (Islamic) tenets," wrote Khaled al-Jenfawi, a columnist for Kuwait's Al-Seyassah daily. "Unfortunately, we have yet to see a distinguished popular condemnation in the traditional Arab or Muslim communities that strongly rejects what is happening in the name of Islam or Arab nationalism," wrote al-Jenfawi. Source:http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jmYQYFZDeAoSVdNlEFffh6HvOT-QD94PH2B00 -------- Hindus, Jews, and Jihad Terror in Mumbai By Andrew G. Bostom, November 30, 2008 Sixty hours of jihadist terror depredations throughout India's financial capital, Mumbai -- during which nearly  200 innocent victims were murdered, and 300 wounded -- apparently ceased this Saturday, November 29, when Indian commandos slew the last three gunmen inside a luxury hotel, while it was still ablaze. Mainstream media coverage of these rampaging, cold-blooded murderous acts of jihad terrorism -- perpetrated by a self-professed "mujahideen" organization (i.e., "The Deccan Mujahideen") -- consistently ignored the clear ideological linkage to Islam. Simply put, "mujahideen" are Muslim jihadists, "holy warriors," because there is just one historically relevant meaning of jihad, despite present day apologetics. The root of the word jihad, appears 40 times in the Koran and in subsequent Islamic understanding to both Muslim luminaries -- from the greatest jurists and scholars of classical Islam, to ordinary people -- meant and means "he fought, warred or waged war against unbelievers and the like." As described by the seminal mid-19th century Arabic lexicographer E.W Lane, "Jihad came to be used by the Muslims to signify wag[ing] war, against unbelievers." A contemporary definition, relevant to both modern jihadism and its shock troop "mujahideen" was provided at the Fourth International Conference of the Academy of Islamic Research at Al Azhar University, Cairo -- Islam's most important religious educational institution-in 1968, by Muhammad al-Sobki:    ...the words Al Jihad, Al Mojahadah, or even "striving against enemies" are equivalents and they do not mean especially fighting with the atheists...they mean fighting in the general sense...   Contemporary validation of the central principle of jihad terrorism -- rooted in the Koran -- (for example, verses 8:12, 8:60, and 33:26)-i.e., to terrorize the enemies of the Muslims as a prelude to their conquest -- has been provided in the mainstream Pakistani text on jihad warfare by Brigadier S.K. Malik, originally published in Lahore, in 1979. Malik's treatise was endorsed in a laudatory Foreword to the book by his patron, then Pakistani President Zia-ul-Haq, as well as a more extended Preface by Allah Buksh K. Brohi, a former Advocate-General of Pakistan. This text -- widely studied in Islamic countries and available in English, Urdu, and Arabic -- has been recovered from the bodies of slain jihadists in Kashmir. Brigadier Malik emphasizes how instilling terror is essential to waging successful jihad campaigns:     Terror struck into the hearts of the enemies is not only a means, it is the end in itself. Once a condition of terror into the opponent's heart is obtained, hardly anything is left to be achieved. It is the point where the means and the end meet and merge. Terror is not a means of imposing decision upon the enemy (sic); it is the decision we wish to impose upon him...     "Jihad," the Koranic concept of total strategy... demands the preparation and application of total national power and military instrument is one of its elements. As a component of the total strategy, the military strategy aims at striking terror into the hearts of the enemy from the preparatory stage of war...Under ideal conditions; Jihad can produce a direct decision and force its will upon the enemy. Where that does not happen, military strategy should take over and aim at producing the decision from the military stage. Should that chance be missed, terror should be struck into the enemy during the actual fighting.     ...the Book [Koran] does not visualize war being waged with "kid gloves." It gives us a distinctive concept of total war. It wants both, the nation and the individual, to be at war "in toto," that is, with all their spiritual, moral, and physical resources. The Holy Koran lays the highest emphasis on the preparation for war. It wants us to prepare ourselves for war to the utmost. The test of utmost preparation lies in our capability to instil terror into the hearts of the enemies. The Islamic correctness of most mainstream media outlets -- which refused to consider such ideological motivations, rooted in jihad -- did not apply, however to Hindus, or Jews-targeted infidel victims of the attacks. Blithely ignoring obvious Islamic and Muslim connections -- credit taken for the attacks by a mujahideen organization; or testimony from a Turkish Muslim couple briefly apprehended, and then released unharmed by the jihadists because, "...[w]hen the (Muezzinoglus) said they were Muslims, their captors told them that they would not be harmed" -- some media (at Fox; NPR) even voiced their own "speculations" about the possible culpability of "Hindu extremists," an absurd calumny, stated in full paranoid transference mode by the Muslim Brotherhood:     A photograph published in Urdu Times, Mumbai, clearly shows that Mossad and ex-Mossad men came to India and met Sadhus and other pro-Hindutva elements recently. A conspiracy was clearly hatched. Yet these same media offered no speculation about Islamic Jew hatred as an obvious potential motivation for the transparently selective attack on Mumbai's Chabad House -- a focal point symbol of the miniscule Jewish community of 5000 (or 0.03%) in a city of some 15 million inhabitants. More egregiously, this neglect of any hateful Islamic motivations for the targeted murder of such innocent Jews -- including a young Lubavitcher Rabbi and his wife -- was accompanied by consistently dehumanizing and demeaning references to these victims as "Ultra-Orthodox," and their entirely false characterization as "missionaries." This current Jewish tragedy within a much larger non-Muslim, primarily Hindu tragedy, reminded me of the Indian Sufi "inspiration" for The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, Ahmad Sirhindi. Nearing completion of my first book compendium, The Legacy of Jihad, in early 2005, specifically the section about jihad on the Indian subcontinent, I came across a remarkable comment by the Indian Sufi theologian Sirhindi (d. 1624). Typical of the mainstream Muslim clerics of his era, Sirhindi was viscerally opposed to the reforms which characterized the latter ecumenical phase of Akbar's 16th century reign (when Akbar became almost a Muslim-Hindu syncretist), particularly the abolition of the humiliating jizya (Koranic poll tax, as per Koran 9:29) upon the subjugated infidel Hindus. In the midst of an anti-Hindu tract Sirhindi wrote, motivated by Akbar's pro-Hindu reforms, Sirhindi observes,     Whenever a Jew is killed, it is for the benefit of Islam. The biographical information I could glean about Sirhindi provided, among other things, no evidence he was ever in direct contact with Jews, so his very hateful remark suggested to me that the attitudes it reflected must have a theological basis in Islam -- contra the prevailing, widely accepted "wisdom" that Islam, unlike Christianity was devoid of such theological Anti-Semitism.  Having originally intended to introduce, edit, and compile a broader compendium on dhimmitude in follow-up to The Legacy of Jihad, this stunning observation inspired me instead to change course and focus on the interplay between Islamic Anti-Semitism, and the intimately related phenomenon of jihad imposed dhimmitude for Jews, specifically. Of course Jew-hatred was merely a sidelight to Sirhindi's hatemongering Islamic "ethos." He was an intensely anti-Hindu bigot, as revealed by these words:     Cow-sacrifice in India is the noblest of Islamic practices. The kafirs [Hindus] may probably agree to pay jizya but they shall never concede to cow-sacrifice...The real purpose in levying jizya on them [Hindus] is to humiliate then to such an extent that, on account of fear of jizya , they may not be able to dress well and to live in grandeur. They should constantly remain terrified and trembling. It in intended to hold them under contempt and to uphold the honour and might of Islam... Completely uninformed about (and stubbornly resistant to any informed discussion of) the motivating Islamic ideology for the Mumbai attacks, the media "meta-narrative," repeated ad nauseum, is also oblivious to the living historical legacy of jihad on the Indian subcontinent. Thus journalists and even policymaking elites appear to accept at face value, and uncritically, the "rationale" for this wantonly murderous jihadism as stated, for example, by one of the Muslim perpetrators:     Are you aware how many people have been killed in Kashmir?...Are you aware how your army has killed Muslims? The Muslim supremacist, jihad-inspired conflict in Kashmir -- really a tragic ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Hindus by Muslim jihadists which began in earnest during the 14th century -- re-emerged in late June of this year when the Indian government had the "temerity" to want to transfer 99 acres of land to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board, a trust running the popular Hindu shrine (including the cave that houses a large ice stalagmite itself, revered by Hindus as an incarnation of Siva, the god of destruction and reproduction). Hundreds of thousands of Hindus visit the area as part of an annual pilgrimage to the cave. Please view the poignant, elegantly produced video by Kashmiri filmmaker Ashok Pandit, "And the World Remained Silent," (linked here, Parts 1 and 2) which chronicles in gory detail the brutal ethnic cleansing of some 350,000 indigenous Hindus from Kashmir during early 1990, orchestrated by Pakistan. and it's Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto. (Focus on the time period 2:15 to 4:00 minutes, from Part 1 above, and witness the jihadist speech of the late, much ballyhooed "modernist reformer" Ms. Bhutto. She was a jihadist, plain and simple; the head of what remains a jihadist state.) Despite the brutal Islamization of India -- dating back to the initial 8th century Arab Muslim jihad ravages, and the subsequent more extensive campaigns under the Ghaznavids (Islamized Turkic nomads who annihilated the indigenous Hindus of Afghanistan by the mid-9th century), through the Delhi Sultanate period (1000-1525 C.E.) during which an estimated 70-80 million Hindus were slaughtered -- due largely to bowdlerized educational and public discourse on Islam, even many modern Hindus remain ignorant of both this history, and the Koranic injunctions which inspired the brutal waves of jihad conquest, and Muslim colonization of India. The Muslim chroniclers' al-Baladhuri (in Kitab Futuh al-Buldan) and al-Kufi (in the Chachnama) include enough isolated details to establish the overall nature of the conquest of Sindh (in modern Paksitan) by Muhammad b. Qasim during 712 C.E. These narratives, and the processes they describe, make clear that the Arab invaders intended from the outset to Islamize Sindh by conquest, colonization, and local conversion. Baladhuri, for example, records that following the capture of Debal, Muhammad b. Qasim earmarked a section of the city exclusively for Muslims, constructed a mosque, and established four thousand colonists there. The conquest of Debal had been a brutal affair, as summarized from the Muslim sources by the renowned Indian historian R.C. Majumdar. Despite appeals for mercy from the besieged Indians (who opened their gates after the Muslims scaled the fort walls), Muhammad b. Qasim declared that he had no orders (i.e., from his superior al-Hajjaj, the Governor of Iraq) to spare the inhabitants, and thus for three days a ruthless and indiscriminate slaughter ensued. In the aftermath, the local temple was defiled, and "700 beautiful females who had sought for shelter there, were all captured". The capture of Raor was accompanied by a similar tragic outcome.     Muhammad massacred 6000 fighting men who were found in the fort, and their followers and dependents, as well as their women and children were taken prisoners. Sixty thousand slaves, including 30 young ladies of royal blood, were sent to Hajjaj, along with the head of Dahar [the Hindu ruler]. We can now well understand why the capture of a fort by the Muslim forces was followed by the terrible jauhar ceremony (in which females threw themselves in fire [they] kindled...), the earliest recorded instance of which is found in the Chachnama.  Practical, expedient considerations lead Muhammad to desist from carrying out the strict injunctions of Islamic Law and the wishes of al-Hajjaj by massacring the (pagan) infidel Hindus of Sindh. Instead, he imposed upon the vanquished Hindus the jizya (Koranic poll-tax, pace Koran 9:29) and associated restrictive regulations of dhimmitude. As a result, the Chachnama records, "some [Hindus] resolved to live in their native land, but others took flight in order to maintain the faith of their ancestors, and their horses, domestics, and other property." Thus a lasting pattern of Muslim policy towards their Hindu subjects was set that would persist, as noted by Majumdar, until the Mughal Empire collapsed at the end of Aurangzeb's reign (in 1707):     Something no doubt depended upon individual rulers; some of them adopted a more liberal, others a more cruel and intolerant attitude. But on the whole the framework remained intact, for it was based on the fundamental principle of Islamic theocracy. It recognized only one faith, one people, and one supreme authority, acting as the head of a religious trust. The Hindus, being infidels or non-believers, could not claim the full rights of citizens. At the very best, they could be tolerated as dhimmis, an insulting title which connoted political inferiority...The Islamic State regarded all non-Muslims as enemies, to curb whose growth in power was conceived to be its main interest. The ideal preached by even high officials was to exterminate them totally, but in actual practice they seem to have followed an alternative laid down in the Koran [i.e., Q9:29] which calls upon Muslims to fight the unbelievers till they pay the jizya with due humility. This was the tax the Hindus had to pay for permission to live in their ancestral homes under a Muslim ruler. Regarding the Islamization of Hindu Kashmir, although Mahmud of Ghazni made brutal forays into Kashmir in the early 11th century, it was not until the mid-14th century when the ruling Hindu dynasty was displaced completely by Shah Mirza, in 1346, and Kashmir was brought under Muslim suzerainty. During the reign of Sikandar Butshikan (1394-1417), mass Islamization took place as described by the great historian K.S. Lal:     He [Sikandar Butshikan] invited from Persia, Arabia, and Mesopotamia learned men of his own [Muslim] faith; his bigotry prompted him to destroy all the most famous temples in Kashmir-Martand, Vishya, Isna, Chakrabhrit, Tripeshwar, etc. Sikandar offered the Kashmiris the choice [pace Koran 9:5] between Islam and death. Some Kashmiri Brahmans committed suicide, many left the land, many others embraced Islam, and a few began to live under Taqiya, that is, they professed Islam only outwardly. It is said that the fierce intolerance of Sikandar had left in Kashmir no more than eleven families of Brahmans. Lal also notes that,     His [Sikandar Butshikan's] contemporary the [Hindu] Raja of Jammu had been converted to Islam by [Amir] Timur [the jihadist, Tamerlane], by "hopes, fears, and threats." When the Moghul ruler Akbar annexed Kashmir in 1586, the majority of the population was already Muslim. Lal summarizes the chronic plight of the Kashmiri Hindus during a half millennium of Islamic rule, through 1819, which explains the modern demography of Kashmir:     When Kashmir was under Muslim rule for 500 years, Hindus were constantly tortured and forcibly converted. A delegation of Kashmir Brahmans approached Guru Teg Bahadur at Anadpur Saheb to seek his help. But Kashmir was Islamized. Those who fled to preserve their religion went to Laddakh in the east and Jammu in the south. It is for this reason that non-Muslims are found in large number in these regions. In the valley itself the Muslims formed the bulk of the population. There is also a modern era nexus -- rooted in jihad-between the Hindus of Islamized Kashmir, and the Jews of Islamized Palestine. Hajj Amin el-Husseini, ex-Mufti of Jerusalem, and Muslim jihadist, who became, additionally, a full-fledged Nazi collaborator and ideologue in his endeavors to abort a Jewish homeland, and destroy world Jewry, was also a committed supporter of global jihad movements. Urging a "full struggle" against the Hindus of India (as well as the Jews of Israel) before delegates at the February 1951 World Muslim Congress, he stated:     We shall meet next with sword in hand on the soil of either Kashmir or Palestine. And el-Husseini's jihadist, Koran (and hadith)-inspired Jew hatred was shared by a seminal modern Muslim ideologue from the Indian subcontinent, Maulana Mufti Muhammad Shafi (d. 1976), a major late 20th century Koranic commentator. An eminent scholar, Maulana Muhammad Shafi served as a professor and as a grand Mufti of Darul-Uloom Deoband, the well-known university of the Islamic Sciences in pre-partition India. In 1943, he resigned from Darul-Uloom, because of his active involvement in the Pakistan movement. When Pakistan came into existence, he migrated to Karachi devoting his life to the service of this new Muslim state. He also established Darul-Uloom Karachi, an renowned institute of Islamic Sciences patterned after Darul-Uloom Deoband, and considered today as the largest private institute of Islamic higher education in Pakistan. Here is Maulana Muhammad Shafi's commentary on the central anti-Semitic motif in the Koran, sura (chapter) 3, verse 112:     ...verse 112 speaks of the general condition of the Jews. They played the most virulent role against the Holy Prophet [Muhammad] and the movement of Islam. It was not strange that they were the most malignant against the Holy Prophet because they had played a similar role against the Prophets before the advent of Islam. They had slandered Jesus Christ, they had plotted to kill him, and they had slain so many Prophets before Jesus Christ. They had earned the wrath of Allah before the Holy Prophet by killing the Prophets and the Saints and by their vociferous opposition to the Divine Commands. This wrath increased when they deadly opposed the Holy Prophet and made treacherous and surreptitious plans to kill Muhammad and defeat Islam. They tried to harm the Muslims and prevented the common men from Islam. These activities enhanced the wrath of Allah, and curse became their eventual fate. The wrath of Allah manifested itself in conditional abasement, but permanent poverty. Their abasement could be suspended if they could cover a bond of Allah or they should be covered by a bond of the people. But the poverty and the general wrath of Allah was pitched without any suspension. Bond of God means adherence to some remnants of the Torah. Bond of men means either becoming the subjects of some Muslim State or some Christian State or some other constitutional State; or becoming a satellite or a protectorate of some powerful people, whoever they may be either Muslims, or non-Muslims, by means of some agreement, treaty, or merely political support. Their separate individual existence enjoying an inviolable sovereignty or commanding a good respect in the Comity of Nations is not implied in this verse because of the extreme wrath of Allah which is significant of their superlative Kufr [infidelity] against Allah and their extremely tremendous enmity against the Holy Prophet as compared to other non-Believers. For example, the modern State of Israel cannot survive if the Americans and Russians, etc., give up their support. [note: this commentary was written beginning in the 1960s] This is the bond of the people which has outwardly suspended their abasement. But so far as wretchedness (poverty) is concerned it is pitched on them permanently and the general wrath and anger of Allah surrounds them forever. Inner wretchedness can be reconciled with outer opulence. The Jews may have become billionaires but the wretchedness and poverty of hearts cannot leave them any moment. Parsimony has become a part and parcel of their internal self. Nearly six decades ago, Sir Jadunath Sarkar (d. 1958), the pre-eminent historian of Mughal India, wrote admiringly of what the Jews of Palestine had accomplished once liberated from the yoke of jihad-imposed Islamic Law. The implication was clear that he harboured similar hopes for his own people, the Hindus of India, and those of their Muslim neighbours willing to abandon the supremacist, discriminatory, and backward mandates of Islam:     Palestine, the holy land of the Jews, Christians and Islamite's, had been turned into a desert haunted by ignorant poor diseased vermin rather than by human beings, as the result of six centuries of Muslim rule. (See Kinglake's graphic description). Today Jewish rule has made this desert bloom into a garden, miles of sandy waste have been turned into smiling orchards of orange and citron, the chemical resources of the Dead Sea are being extracted and sold, and all the amenities of the modern civilised life have been made available in this little Oriental country. Wise Arabs are eager to go there from the countries ruled by the Shariat [Sharia; Islamic Law]. This is the lesson for the living history. The jihadist carnage in Mumbai, and some 12,327 other acts of jihad terrorism since 9/11/2001 -- motivated by supremacist Islamic doctrine, and the atavistic hatred of Hindus, Jews, and other non-Muslims it inculcates -- provides ugly living proof that Sarkar's wistful admonition from 1950 remains almost entirely unheeded. Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/11/hindus_jews_and_jihad_terror_i.html --- US, India face Pak blackmail on terror Chidanand Rajghatta, 1 Dec 2008, Washington: The United States and India face tactics bordering on blackmail from a militarized Pakistan - where civilian control is still very Dodgy - as they coordinate efforts to eliminate terrorism in the region, according to analysts and officials on both sides. In what is turning out to be an elaborate chess game in the region, Islamabad on Saturday made its "Afghan move" to counter the US-India pincer, telling Washington that it will have to withdraw some 100,000 Pakistani troops posted on its western borders to fight the al-Qaida-Taliban and move them east to the Indian front if New Delhi makes any aggressive moves. In Washington, Pakistan's ambassador to the US Hussain Haqqani said there is no movement of Pakistani troops right now, but if India makes any aggressive moves, "Pakistan will have no choice but to take appropriate measures." Stripped of complexities, Pakistan is conveying the following message to the US: If you don't get India to back down, Pakistan will stop cooperating with US in the war against terror. Consequently, this also means Pakistan will use US dependence on its cooperation to wage a low-grade, asymmetric, terrorism-backed war against India. Pakistan's withdrawal of troops from the Afghan front would obviously undermine the US/Nato battle in Afghanistan and allow breathing space for Taliban and al-Qaida. It would also ratchet up confrontation with India, which is at low ebb right now because Islamabad has been forced to engage on its western front and this minimizes Pakistan-backed infiltration into Kashmir, allowing India to tackle the insurgency in the state. In fact, some experts surmise that the terror strike on Mumbai may have been aimed at precisely this - taking the pressure off Pakistan on its Afghan front, where it is getting a battering from US predators and causing a civilian uprising on its border, and allowing Islamabad to return to its traditional hostile posture against India on its eastern front. The US-India-Pakistan tangle was the subject of intense debate among analysts on Sunday talk shows, with some analysts like former CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin expressing apprehension that al-Qaida could be achieving its objective of getting some relief through such proxy attacks. Vexed US officials have been in constant communication with their Indian counterparts to deal with the complex situation arising from what both sides privately agree has become a chaotic country dominated by rogue elements from its military and intelligence services. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been speaking with India's External Affairs Minister regularly to get a sense of India's mood and moves, worried that any overtly aggressive response by New Delhi will undermine US effort in Afghanistan. President Bush and President-elect Barack Obama have also spoken to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to show US support, but also to moderate Indian response. Both Washington and New Delhi are starting to realise that the Pakistani military still calls the shots in Islamabad behind the civilian façade, officials here concede privately. The weakness of Pakistan's civilian leadership was fully exposed on Saturday when the country's army chief once again overruled a civilian government decision - this time to send the Director General of its spy agency ISI to India to coordinate the investigation into the latest terror attack on Mumbai. Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari explained it away saying there was a miscommunication and Islamabad only meant to send a ''Director'' and not Director-General, at Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's request. But no one was fooled by the ''clarification'' -- the reversal of the earlier decision came after a midnight meeting Pakistan's Army Chief Pervez Kiyani, a former ISI chief himself, had with Zardari and Prime Minister Gilani. Pakistan's threat about troop withdrawals from the Afghan front also followed the Zardari-Kiyani-Gilani meeting, leaving little doubt about the real power center in Islamabad despite the recent return to democratic rule. The situation is made even more complex by the transition process in the US where President Bush is winding down from the White House and President-elect Obama is readying to take charge. Both sides have made the Pakistan problem a top priority as they coordinate response, tactics, and communication relating to developments in the region. The latest attacks on Mumbai also threatens to torpedo Obama's stated objective of promoting good ties between New Delhi and Islamabad, so that Pakistan can focus its energy on the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan that are controlled by Islamic extremists. But hardliners in Pakistan's military and strategic circles, who resent what they see as the country's civilian government doing Washington's bidding and fighting what they argue is a US war, are against this. The terror strike on Mumbai evidently has several objectives - one of them being to cause a rift between Washington and New Delhi and damage US-India ties. While Pakistan's fledgling civilian government has made all the right moves and noises about cooperation with India, officials here reckon it is being continuously undermined by the hard-line military whose importance, and lavish funding, depends on keeping up a hostile posture against India. Even in the political sphere, Pakistan's continued existence as a single entity is premised on enmity with India, the glue which keeps the country together. Some Pakistanis have suggested in recent months that take away animosity against India, then Pakistan's founding itself becomes questionable. Already, many Pakistanis are starting to question the relevance of a country where more people are killed in intra-religious warfare between Shias and Sunnis than in Hindu-Muslim communal riots in India. Two of Pakistan's four territories are wracked by insurgencies, and the intelligence community's reading is that resurrecting the hostile posture against India is one way the hard-line elements in Pakistan hope to contain this domestic conflagration. While Pakistan is playing its one desperate Afghan card, both India and US can separately bring Pakistan to its knees in no time. The US and its allies are dependent on Pakistan for supplies to its troops in Afghanistan, but they can also plug the economic plug on the country and cause it to collapse in no time. India controls Pakistan's lifeline and jugular with river waters that originate in India and flow into Pakistan. But punishing Pakistan with this lever would also throw the country into absolute chaos and bring extremists elements to the fore leading to a Somalia kind of situation -- with nuclear weapons in the mix. This is the fear that Pakistan is exploiting to stay afloat and stave off sanctions from the west and punishment from India. The solution, analysts say, is to get Pakistan's civilian leadership to exert control over its hard-line military and intelligence which functions on its own existential agenda. This is easier said than done. America's foremost strategic guru Henry Kissinger told Fareed Zakaria's GPS program on CNN, which devoted an entire hour to the crisis, that Pakistan's civilian government had made good statements vis-à-vis ties with India, "but its capacity to implement them is questionable." Source:http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/US_India_face_Pak_blackmail_on_terror/articleshow/3777307.cms ------ Pakistan makes troops threat over India standoff November 30, 2008 Relations between India and Pakistan were on a knife edge today as Indian authorities combed through the wreckage of last week's attacks on Bombay and interrogated the one Pakistani militant captured. A senior Pakistani security official has warned that Pakistan would pull back troops fighting Islamist militants on the Afghan frontier if India builds up its forces on Pakistan's border, as it did after an attack by Pakistani militants on India's parliament in 2001. He said the next 48 hours would be crucial for the two nuclear-armed neighbours, which have fought three wars since winning independence from Britain in 1947, and almost went to a fourth after the Indian parliament attacks. "If something happens on that front, the war on terror won't be our priority," the senior security officer told journalists at a briefing. "We'll take out everything from the western border. We won't leave anything there." His threat was clearly designed to encourage the United States and its allies to temper India's response to the attacks, which it has blamed on "elements" in Pakistan – most likely the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba. U.S. President George W. Bush has pledged his support for India, now considered a U.S. ally, but Washington also has close ties to Pakistan, its key Muslim partner in the War on Terror. Pakistani troops are currently engaged in their biggest operation so far against al Qaeda and Taleban militants near the border with Afghanistan, where U.S. intelligence believes Osama bin Laden is hiding. India's coalition government, led by the Congress Party, is under enormous political pressure to respond to the Bombay attacks so that it does not appear soft on terrorism in the run-up to national elections due by May. It is convening an all-party meeting today to discuss the attacks and answer criticism of its response – particularly why it took seven hours for counter-terrorist National Security Guard commandos to arrive in Bombay. Indian Home Minister Shivraj Patil resigned early today, in the wake of the brutal Islamist attacks in Mumbai according to Indian television reports. Meanwhile, there were fears that more Britons may yet be found dead in the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in Bombay; hours after India commandos killed the three gunmen who were still holed up in the building to end one of the bloodiest terror strikes to hit India. The coordinated attacks began on Wednesday night, when terrorists struck ten sites including two luxury hotels, a backpacker bar, a Jewish community centre, and Bombay's main train station. Police had put the death toll at 195, but revised it down this morning to 174, including one Briton, with 239 more injured. This morning, security forces were still combing the Taj, searching for unexploded ordnance and corpses. The first pictures of the interior of the building showed a scene of smashed glass and splintered woodwork. Unexploded grenades littered the floor beside the hotel pool. National Security Guard commandos said they discovered 30 bodies in a single room after storming the Taj Mahal hotel. The British Deputy High Commissioner in Mumbai, Vicki Treadell, said she could not rule out further British fatalities. Asked if she could confirm whether all British nationals were accounted for, she said: "I can't confirm that because the picture has yet to be clarified. Indian security forces now believe that ten or eleven terrorists were involved in the attack. They are working on the assumption that the men sailed from Karachi in Pakistan before hijacking a fishing boat and slaying its crew about halfway to Bombay. That fishing vessel was found adrift off the city shore with the body of one dead man, his throat slit, and a satellite phone aboard. That the number of terrorist suspects has been dramatically lowered since Wednesday, when it was thought that there were about 25 gunmen, has triggered fears among the Bombay public that some terrorists may yet be at large. In the chaos of Wednesday night, police sources had said that several had escaped. Police sources have identified the one militant to be caught alive so far as Azam Amir Kasav, a 21-year-old from the town of Faridkot in the Pakistani province of Punjab. He was caught after he opened fire with an automatic rifle at Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus, Bombay's main train station, to kill indiscriminately. According to reports, he later pleaded not to be allowed to die after being shot by police. Indian officials are convinced that the attack on Bombay bears the hallmark of Lashkar-e-Taiba, which was also blamed for the 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament, where terrorists stormed the building with guns and grenades, taking hostages as part of a suicidal mission. They also believe that Lashkar-e-Taiba does not act without the sanction of some part of Pakistan's shadowy security services – though how far up the chain leads is a matter of intense debate. Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan's President, made an unprecedented offer on Friday to send the head of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency to India to help with the investigation. However, the ISI said it had not been consulted and Pakistan's government later reversed the decision and said it would send a lower-ranking official instead. The u-turn will again raise questions over how much control Pakistan's civilian government has over the ISI. Indian officials have denied reports that they had found evidence to suggest that two of the terrorists were British-born Pakistanis. However, they have not yet ruled out the possibility of a British link. A senior Indian intelligence source said that suggestions that British citizens of Pakistani origin had checked into the Taj Mahal Palace hotel some weeks before the attacks to reconnoitre the building were being taken seriously. Credit card and passport details of thousands of guests will be pored over by forensic computer experts, he said. Unconfirmed reports in the Indian media have suggested that the terrorists were able to stockpile explosives inside the hotel and intended to blow up the entire building. A Foreign Office rapid deployment team, including members of the British Red Cross specialising in trauma, has flown to Bombay to provide assistance. Source:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article5259622.ece?print=yes&randnum=1228100468072 ------------ Mumbai attacks: 300 feared dead as full horror of the terrorist attacks emerges The death toll in the Mumbai terror attack is expected to soar to nearly 300, Indian officials said, as details emerged of the highly-organised terror plot.  Damien McElroy and Rahul Bedi in Bombay, and Andrew Alderson. Nov 30, 2008 Piles of bodies were found yesterday after commandos stormed the Taj Mahal Palace hotel, the last of three buildings that terrorists had occupied in the city. Three terrorists were killed in the battle. The end to four days of carnage came as tensions grew between India and Pakistan over the atrocity. It is believed that just 10 highly-trained terrorists took part in the attack. Nine were killed and one suspect is under arrest. British and Indian authorities were yesterday playing down reports that some of the attackers were British, although this had not been comprehensively ruled out. The Sunday Telegraph was given the details of a secret interrogation report based on an interview with the surviving terrorist. The 19-year-old suspect, who lived near the Pakistani city of Multan, is said to have joined Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the Islamist fundamentalist group, a year ago. He is alleged to have confessed that he received weapons instruction at a training camp in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. The plot is said to have been planned from there. A group then made a reconnaissance of Bombay earlier this year. India believes a Pakistani merchant ship was used to transport some, or all, of the terrorists before they seized control of a fishing trawler to reach Mumbai (Bombay). The final leg of their journey was completed in inflatable boats. Pakistan called an emergency cabinet meeting after announcing that it would not send the country's secret service chief to New Delhi. The Indian government had demanded the head of the ISI travel in person to respond to questions. Meanwhile, the former head of Britain's SAS has revealed that Britain is not adequately prepared for a Mumbai-style terror attack. He said hundreds of civilians would have been massacred if such an assault was carried out in this country. The official death toll stands at 174, but authorities acknowledge that scores of bodies have not been included in the total. At least 22 of the dead are not Indian nationals, including a Briton, five US citizens and six Israelis. At least 295 people have been injured. Of those, 23 are foreigners, including several Britons. A final death toll will not emerge until the end of operations to ensure the hotel rooms and corridors are cleared of booby traps. However, S Jadhav, from Mumbai's disaster management unit, predicted the figure would approach 300. More than 600 people escaped from the Taj Mahal Palace hotel, the Oberoi-Trident hotel and Nariman House, which were held by the attackers. Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Islamist fundamentalist group, is being widely blamed for the atrocity. Indian investigators claim to have obtained significant leads to synchronised strikes by gunmen from the testimony of the surviving terrorist. It is believed he and the other terrorists were instructed at the terror camp in Pakistan on how to maximise the number of casualties during an attack, using machine guns, hand grenades and other weapons. The terror suspect is said to have claimed that he was joined at his camp by four others, most of whom spoke his native Punjabi. All were allegedly given false names before travelling to the garrison town of Rawalpindi, where they were joined by more terrorists. At Rawalpindi, the 10-man group was allegedly briefed in detail on digitised images of their prospective targets that included Mumbai's two luxury hotels, the Jewish centre nearby and the teeming Victoria Terminus a short distance away. They were also made to memorise detailed street maps leading to these locations. The group is then alleged to have travelled by train to the eastern port city of Karachi, where they boarded a chartered merchant ship bound for Mumbai. Three different names have been used by the Indian media for the suspect, but none has been confirmed by city police. Indian commandos said the attackers had demonstrated professional techniques, firing in short bursts, setting traps and even stocking up with almonds and dried fruit to keep their energy up during the fighting. Commandos brought 300 people out of the five-star Taj Mahal Palace hotel, where the siege ended early yesterday. Some 250 others were rescued from the Oberoi-Trident hotel and 60 people were brought out of the Jewish centre. Those rescued included a British couple who were among a group of six people who hid for six hours in a toilet cubicle at the Taj Mahal Palace hotel. At one stage, the terrorists searched the darkened area with a torch but did not see or hear them huddled together. The Pakistani Government yesterday denied involvement in the terror plot and has promised to help in the investigation. However, Asif Ali Zardari, the President, pledged yesterday that he would act swiftly if given any evidence of involvement by Pakistani nationals. "As president of Pakistan, if any evidence comes of any individual or group in any part of my country, I shall take the swiftest of action in the light of evidence and in front of the world," he said. A team of British police and security officers is also in Mumbai to help with the inquiry, along with American FBI agents. Gordon Brown said yesterday that the attack had raised "huge questions" about how the world should address violent extremism. Speaking in London, the Prime Minister said: "A great multi-faithed democracy has been laid low by terrorists. It raises huge questions about how the world addresses violent extremism." Fires, explosions and gun battles during the siege devastated the 105-year-old Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. At the height of fighting, hundreds of people, many of them Westerners were trapped or taken hostage. Television pictures of a satellite telephone captured from a terrorist appeared to show a constant stream of calls to Pakistan during the operation. Officials also said they had traced the group's route from recorded GPS co-ordinates on the devices. All the dead terrorists, as well as the captured alleged gunman, appear to have been born in Pakistan. The group also sent eight operatives on a reconnaissance mission to Mumbai earlier this year, Indian officials have claimed. Security officials, Scotland Yard and diplomats in Britain played down reports yesterday of a British link to the terror plot. A spokesman for the Foreign Office said: "We have been speaking to the Indian authorities at a high level and they say there is no evidence that any of the attackers are British." The family of Andreas Liveras, 73, the only known British fatality, told The Sunday Telegraph how he courageously evaded gunmen for eight hours in the Taj Mahal Palace hotel as he frantically tried to reassure his family that he was safe. Dion Liveras, the victim's son, said: "Even now, we find it beyond belief that he went out for a quiet meal – and lost his life. "He had been able to contact us all by telephone and by text. All the time, he was reassuring us that he was okay. Eventually, however, the gunmen got into the room where my father was and sprayed bullets. He died from multiple wounds."  Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/3536220/Mumbai-siege-300-feared-dead-as-full-horror-of-the-terrorist-attacks-emerges.html ------ Gul Panag creates controversy with her remarks on Mumbai massacre: "Injustice to Muslims is the foundation of terrorism"   Monday, December 01, 2008   Gul Panag dropped an intellectual bombshell when we called her, surprising the nation with her vision and comment on the Mumbai bombings. She quoted, "I don't know how my comments will be taken by you but this had to happen and is not a complete surprise. Me and you only take notice of terror when it enters the malls or the hotels. But if the same thing happens in the slums we are ok with it. This is a much larger issue than it looks. Have you ever taken into consideration the Islamic population of India? It's in the region of 18 to 20%. The figures keep on varying. Do you know what percent of Islamic population is living below the poverty line? It's 40%. I am not a fundamentalist but I am looking at a much bigger picture. There are certain segments of the society which have not got its due, whether you agree or not. But if you look at the demographics, you'll understand. Whatever the population of Muslims in India, is that population proportionate and reflect in the jobs of this country? When people are poor and have nowhere to go, they have no choice but to turn into radicals. I hope my views and comments make people understand the broader picture".   Gul's comment ignited anger demanding an explanation to the above quote. While some demanded an explanation to her remark, others said it wasn't enough, and some even agreed to what she said. One of the replies to her quote on Bollywood Hungama said, "I do agree with what Gul is trying to say, people are just taking it wrongly. Islam doesn't teach violence and neither does it allow innocent killings and mass murders. When Muslims do something like this in terms of revenge, they are called terrorists but when Hindus, Jews and Christians do it, they are called Freedom Fighters". Debashri, one of the surfers of Bollywood Hungama who thinks that Gul's comment was a flaw, said, "It's not because of poverty that some Muslims take the fundamentalist route. Then we would have had an equal number of Hindu terrorists too. I think we have made a habit out of making terrorists look like victims! It is fashionable to side with them. Do we then take out guns and start killing people? No. The trouble is the indoctrination that takes place". Another surfer Roopa also disagrees. She said, "Poverty doesn't justify the birth of radicalism. Many terrorists are rich and come from educated backgrounds (Osama). If people feel the government isn't helping them, it is up to them to educate themselves and grow". A surfer with the user id 'Mamuh' who sides Panag, said, "I like Gul's view (as it) was very much well thought-out and accurate. We can't stump terrorism, until we see the root of it. Injustice like Gujarat Riots or Orissa Riots need to stop. When significant politician(s) turn a blind eye and something drastic happens. India just sucks if you're a poor or a minority".   So when the actress got up this morning and logged on to Bollywood Hungama, she was taken by surprise to read comments posted by users on her quote. This got Gul to write even more. Within 10 minutes, the actress sent us what she thought of the above reactions and many more posted their views on the website. This is what she had to say:   "Poor and disenfranchised Hindus/Sikhs/Christians are not the ones being radicalized. There is no planned sustained movement in place to do so. India has the second largest population of Muslims in the world. Yet their representation in all walks of public life remains dismal (whatever the reasons). A disproportionate chunk of the Muslim population lives below the poverty line. These people are the ones the radicals target as their recruiting ground.   Yes, there are rich who also get involved. The percentage is small. The machinery in place that goes about recruiting these people is very advanced and unscrupulous. They are highly motivated by people whose full time job is to mislead these people. Their modus operandi is to show videos of Muslims being tortured /killed/women being raped, and other forms of propaganda. In Punjab ( I am a Sikh from a village in Punjab called Mahadian, Distt Fategarh Sahib), many youngsters from well to do families after seeing their relatives/ kin burnt alive by mobs, tortured and raped by the forces were badly shaken up. Psychologically numb. And were ready when extremists came knocking on their doors to garner support. As for the security lapses, I am sure there are many loop holes. We apart from being a booming economy are also a country of the poor and homeless, (whose primary focus is two square meals). We are NOT the United States, where we can single-mindedly pursue security). But having said that, it's important to understand, that not even the best trained force in the world can be prepared for someone who is ready to kill himself. The terrorist wins by not losing/dying (for whatever short period he wreaks havoc) and the forces "lose" by not winning immediately (ultimately they do in a Mumbai like scenario, but not in J&K, Iraq). And how can I be biased? Because I am in Indian and believe that the same set of rules must apply to all? So Muslims who kill people are terrorists but Bajrang Dal/RSS activists who burn Christian homes, rape nuns are "angry misguided youth"?? My father is a serving army officer; he has 40 years of service to the nation and is currently posted as Army Commander Central Command, at the very tip of the army pyramid. He also served as Northern Army Commander. I have been brought up in the most secular way possible, where I have observed at close quarters what the army does for the Nation. And it pains me to read about people pointing fingers at the forces being "inefficient" when they constantly give away their today for us to be able to blog like this, sleep peacefully and enjoy life as we know it."    (Gul Panag is a Sikh from Punjab and is a Bollywood actress whose recent blog is translated and published by Inquilab in Urdu.) http://newageislam.org/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=1035