India Must Guard Itself against Spread of ISIS Ideology
By Ali Khan
21st Mar 2015
Last month the Indian government officially banned the terrorist organisation ISIS. This announcement came alongside statements by senior members of the intelligence community about how Indian Muslims are relatively safe from ISIS propaganda and penetration. Alok Joshi, ex-chief of RAW said, "There is no widespread pull of ISIS in India. At least, we didn't see that kind of spread when I was there (in RAW)." Various estimates put the number of Indians working and fighting for ISIS between 40-50 people. Apart from this, there have been a number of cases of people either being stopped from entering Syria through Turkey, like the three men from Telangana, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu or actually returning to India, like Areeb Majeed, because of disappointment with their working conditions.
At the moment, the pattern of people seeking to go and join ISIS seems to point at predominantly young educated males between the ages of 20-30 and according to V. Sudarshan, author of Anatomy of an Abduction: How the Indian Hostages in Iraq Were Freed, 80-85% of these people are engineers and have a middle-class educated background. One of the main ways that ISIS recruits people is through the internet and the propaganda that it disseminates through its magazine, Dabiq, as well as the gruesome videos and use of other social media. The arrest of Mehdi Biswas in Bangalore, as well as many of the other individuals, points to the fact that one of ISIS' main recruitment tools is the internet. However, by focusing solely on young, educated Muslims from a middle-class background as potential recruits our security agencies might be looking in the wrong place.
ISIS is very much an end product of the political, social and economic context of Iraq, post 2003. It is highly unlikely that it will simply replicate itself in India and one main reason that an Al-Qaeda type organisation actually may be more successful in India is because it operates in a clandestine manner, whereas ISIS' very existence is tied to the physical control of land. An example of this is the rise of Boko Haram, which, although similar in ideological terms to ISIS, is nonetheless a product of the context of Nigeria. Therefore, although there is no reason to fear ISIS making inroads amongst Indian Muslims, the more pressing issue is whether the ideology that informs ISIS is present in a different form in India. This ideology bears striking resemblances to some factions of Wahhabi and Salafi thoughts, which have been the main interpretations of Islam promoted both domestically and internationally by Saudi Arabia.
In February, Pakistani English daily the Express Tribune reported that Pakistani Punjab police has found that almost 1,000 madrasas in the state were receiving foreign funding. A report written by the Interior Ministry in Pakistan stated that Qatar and Saudi Arabia contributed almost 198 million and 42 million Pakistani rupees to Pakistani madrasas. Experts have written that much of the money coming into South Asia is actually carried physically, as it is not possible to send large bank transfers. This is facilitated by the flow of migrant labour coming back from the Gulf and Saudi Arabia. There are almost seven million Indians working in the Gulf region. It is, therefore, increasingly important to monitor the flow of both cash and ideology from various Arab countries to India in order to prevent the spread of the very ideology that has contributed to producing ISIS.
The effect of the increasing clout of Salafism and Wahhabism can be seen down to the village level, with deep fractures existing within the Muslim community. Sufism and its related practices are a major target of Wahhabis and Salafis, because they view the visiting of shrines and the role of saints as diluting the monotheism of Islam. The other major targets of these groups are the Shias. One particularly pronounced internal rift amongst Sunnis is between Barelvi and Deobandi groups, with the latter bearing close ideological resemblance to aspects of Wahhabi thought, with one main difference being that Deobandis follow the Hanafi jurisprudence, whereas Wahhabis are Ghair-Muqallideen — in other words, they do not follow any school of thought. Another group that has wrongly been thought of as completely apolitical is the Tablighi Jamaat, which was founded by a graduate of Deoband, Maulana Ilyas Khandalwi, in 1927 as a missionary movement. Today, the Tablighi Jamaat is an international organisation with a strong presence in 213 countries.
Known for the groups of bearded young men dressed in white who travel to remote areas in order to spread the message of true Islam, the Tablighi Jamaat is an organisation that has drawn the praise of Abd al-Aziz ibn Baz, one of the most influential Saudi Wahhabi clerics of the 20th century. Normally, the Wahhabis condemn all those Muslims who disagree with their particular interpretation of Islam. The vast majority of India's Salafi and Wahhabi population are quietest in their approach, but the fact is that they are fundamentally altering the religio-social landscape and therefore leading to intra-Muslim sectarianism.
Both Deoband and the Tablighi Jamaat, although not entirely homogenous, are often viewed as organisations that were anti-Muslim League and pro-Congress and therefore are assumed to be patriotic organisations. They still use their role in the freedom struggle as proof of this. However, their rejection of Pakistan is less to do with patriotism and more to do with the fact that both organisations reject the very idea of borders and the nation-state. On 19 February 2015, Abdur Rahman Rashed, former GM of Al-Arabiya channel ended a column in Arabic daily Asharq al-Awsat saying that "although the Tablighi Jamaat did not urge killing but they did intellectually lay the groundwork for people to be recruited by extremist groups".
Cultural, religious and social conservatism, as preached by Deobandis, Salafis, Tablighis and Wahhabis are the precursors to potential political radicalism. Controversial and prominent preacher Zakir Naik is one visible face of a version of Wahhabism. The founder of the Islamic Research Foundation, he was recently given the King Faisal award for services to Islam. Part of the reason for the success of these individuals and groups is that they bring with them the promise of Saudi and Gulf petro-dollars. This financial help is all the more alluring for a community that is on the margins of society according to most socio-economic indicators and as observed in the Justice Rajindar Sachar report. Although the hopes of a few engineers of welcoming ISIS to India might be pipe-dreams, the fact is that the ideology that fuels ISIS is already present in India and it is imperative that the government starts to take appropriate steps to counter this trend.
Ali Khan is a freelance journalist
Source: http://www.sunday-guardian.com/
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-terrorism-jihad/india-guard-itself-spread-isis/d/102056