Examining ISIS Threat to India through Its Magazine ‘Voice of Hind’ and How the State and Muslim Scholars Could Reduce Radicalization Risks across the Country
By
Ghulam Ghaus Siddiqi, New Age Islam
4 December
2021
IS
Recruiters Skilfully Use Growing Episodes Of Communal Violence Against Muslims In
India By Arguing That Sticking To ‘Jihad’ Is The Only Approach To Resolve The
“Perceived Injustice”
Main
Points:
1. Action Plans for State and Religious
Leaders to Reduce Radicalisation Risks in India
2. The excerpts
drawn from Voice of Hind infer that IS has an aptitude for exploiting sectarian
violence in India in order to legitimize retaliatory action.
3. IS seeks to
trigger an existential crisis in the minds of Muslims who wish to keep both
their national and religious identities.
4. Indian State
must curb any possible violence against Muslims in the country
5. Muslim
scholars and Ulama must make it their obligation to refute the narratives which
justify violence and disassociate Islam from the clutches of terrorism.
......
Despite the
fact that IS has lost territorial control in Iraq and Syria, its operations
targeting numerous countries, including India, continue. Through its flagship
publication of Voice of Hind, IS wishes to brainwash Indian Muslims by
referencing religious and sectarian tensions between Hindus and Muslims, the
political environment, and the notion of purported “invincible divides.” The
Muslim-Hindu conflict, political policies against Muslims, and lynching are all
used as arguments to incite Indian Muslims in Voice of Hind. Based on these
reasons, IS makes the following direct appeal to Indian Muslims:
“O Muslims
of Hind come rushing out of your houses and rebel against the unjust rule of
the disbelievers”, reads a statement from the Voice of Hind, a magazine of IS
focusing on India. (Voice of Hind, Shawwal 1441, “Lockdown Special”, p.5)
The
magazine was once widely accessible online, but it appears to have been blocked
or withdrawn, which is a good thing. However, as several studies have shown,
terror groups such as ISIS continue to print magazines in several languages
under various aliases. As a result, it is essential to devise some effective
counter-ISIS strategies, as ISIS is currently aiming to recruit Indian Muslims.
So, what should our strategies be? The simple solution to this menace is that
we Indians must consolidate our relationship of peaceful coexistence and work
together to remove any possible menace. However, in order to effectively combat
a danger, it is vital to first understand the risk.
In their
collaborative research-based analysis titled Can Communal Violence Fuel an ISIS Threat in India? An Analysis
of ‘Voice of Hind’, An Analysis of ‘Voice of Hind’, the joint authors Prithvi Iyer and Maya
Mirchandani discuss the radicalization risk in India, offering deep insights on
how the IS strategy differs from or corresponds to previous propaganda
strategies. This analysis does not suggest that exploiting communal unrest to
further the murderous goals of a transnational terrorist organization is a
novel technique. The authors simply examine the ISIS threat to India through
the prism of Voice of Hind, advising the state to put an end to Hindu-Muslim
confrontations as soon as possible in order to reduce the risks of
radicalization. In this piece, we will summarise a few key points from their
research, adding that Muslim scholars should also seek to refute the narratives
which justify violence and disassociate Islam from the clutches of terrorism on
a regular basis.
Key
Points from the Research-Based Analysis
Following
the February riots in Delhi, IS published an online poster calling for
“retaliatory action” in the “Indian Province” of its self-proclaimed “caliphate”. The poster that had previously been seen in Indian Media featured an
image of a Muslim man on his knees being thrashed by a crowd. 72 hours after
the poster was released, a pro-ISIS group produced the Voice of Hind, an
India-focused journal, ostensibly as a means “to radicalize and recruit young
Indian Muslims into its fold”.
To be true,
Al-Qaeda has made commitments in the name of God in the past to entice recruits
into terrorist violence. In an interview, a recruit is told, “Whoever offers
his life in the way of Allah lives eternally and gains a place in heaven for
seventy members of his family, to be selected by the martyr.” Transnational
jihadist groups usually emphasize the inextricable link between violence and
sacrifice, as well as accountability to Allah, as a persuasion strategy. In
India’s case, according to the authors’ analysis, a stronger sense of
marginalization and/or religious prejudice among Indian Muslims could drive
such persuasive tactics and the Jihadist recruiters can skilfully use growing
episodes of communal violence against Muslims in India by arguing that sticking
to the radical Wahhabi interpretation of Islam and ‘Jihad’ is the only approach
to cope with perceived injustice. The authors, for example, provide a quote
from Voice of Hind:
“O
Muslims of Hind! Has the time not come for you to wake up from the deep
slumber, which has overtaken all of you to the point of an intoxicated stupor?
Haven’t you yet realized that the idolatrous Hindus would never ever be pleased
with you until you renounce the Deen of Islam in its entirety?”
Commenting
on the quotation, the joint authors state that the IS magazine here questions a
Muslim's devotion to Islam and defines "moderation" as inappropriate,
implying that the Hindu majority will not accept anything less than a
renunciation of the Muslim faith in order to integrate Muslims into the
democratic system. IS anticipates that labelling Hindus as
"idolatrous" will exacerbate the "Us vs. them" split. As a
result, Mahmud Ghaznawi, the "idol destroyer," has a special place in
IS propaganda. According to IS, Ghaznawi dedicated his life to “waging jihad
against the Mushrik [polytheists] of India, destroying their idols, and
spreading Islam throughout their lands”. The magazine, according to the
authors, tries to emphasize what it sees as an unbridgeable separation between
Islam and Hinduism by warning readers that Hindus will not rest until Muslims
abandon “the Deen of Islam in its totality.”
By using
communal violence such as the Delhi riots, IS seeks to trigger an existential
crisis in the minds of Muslims who wish to keep both their national and
religious identities so that any naive Muslim can fall into their web of
horror.
The
excerpts drawn from Voice of Hind infer that IS has an aptitude for exploiting
sectarian violence in India. Before the emergence of IS, Al-Qaeda in the Indian
Subcontinent (AQIS) wanted to exploit the Gujarat riots in 2002, as well as
videos of Muslims being beaten by right-wing groups in the name of
cow-vigilantism, in order to demonize and legitimize retaliatory action against
“Hindutva groups”. Similar to AQIS's alleged aims, ISIS is attempting to
exploit religious divisions in India.
Image © Garudeya /Shutterstock.com
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Because
India is home to the third-largest Muslim population in the world, there was
considerable concern that Indian Muslims would become more radicalized and join
global, transnational extremist groups such as ISIS. This turned to be
incorrect, as India continues to be an outlier in terms of the percentage of
Indians engaging in ISIS-related activities. The fact that Islam in India has
traditionally been practiced in a multicultural manner and is largely viewed as
an inclusive religion with a pluralistic nature makes it difficult for ISIS to
persuade a significant number of Indian Muslims to join their cause.
Ideologies
of terrorist groups, such as ISIS, are known to be based on a strain of
Wahhabi-Salafism. However, most Indian Salafi groups, according to the authors,
are “nationalist and multicultural, with a long history of peaceful
cohabitation with democracy - principles that are incompatible with ISIS
worldview”.
The authors
quote Mustafa Tanveer, an Indian Salafist thinker, as saying that “rejecting
democracy is both anti-national and anti-Islamic, given India's
constitutionally guaranteed freedom of religion”. They go on to explain that
Salafism like this, along with a cosmopolitan, multilingual subcontinental
culture, has “insulated large sections of the Indian Muslim community from the
lure of transnational Jihadi groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda.”
The authors
hold that “majoritarian violence against Indian Muslims is not only a form of
ideological extremist violence in itself, but also alienates a community from
the rest of the population and has the potential to radicalize youth toward
terrorism or extremism, thereby exacerbating the threat of Jihadi violence
in the country.” Terrorist organizations utilize such acts of violence as a potent
motivator and weapon to recruit new members and gain support for their cause.
As a result, “even realistic security calculations must now advocate for the
state to urgently address such violence within India” in order to decrease the
risks of radicalization, according to the authors.
Following a
careful analysis of the author’s report, it is worth noting that the authors have
presented their findings with great sincerity and a deep sense of patriotism.
Now, I believe it is vital to call on both Muslim and Hindu religious leaders
to play a greater role in resolving the escalating Muslim-Hindu conflict in
India. We should never allow anything possible to create tensions between the
two communities. I strongly urge Muslim scholars to provide the accurate interpretations of
war-related Quranic verses and hadiths that terror groups like ISIS regularly employ,
as well as to inform the common masses through their sermons that the context
of these verses and Ahadith is different and thus can’t be applied in the
present era.
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A
regular Columnist with NewAgeIslam.com, Ghulam Ghaus Siddiqi Dehlvi is an Alim
and Fazil (Classical Islamic scholar) with a Sufi background and
English-Arabic-Urdu Translator.
New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic
Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism