Author: Kanchan Gupta
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: July 16, 2006
The holy warriors who carried out the 7/11
bombings in Mumbai may be members of local sleeper cells of the LeT and SIMI
but the battle they are fighting is part of the global war being waged by
Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda. With Islamism finding an increasing number
of converts in India, Osama and his generals will now find it easier to deploy
foot soldiers in our country to push the frontiers of jihad, writes Kanchan
Gupta.
"I don't speak, of course, to the vultures
who seeing the September 11 images scornfully giggle 'Good. Americans-got-it-good'.
I speak to the people who, though neither stupid nor evil, delude themselves
in pietism or uncertainty or doubt. And to them I say: Wake up, folks, wake
up! As intimidated as you are by the fear of going against the stream... you
don't understand or don't want to understand that a Reverse Crusade is on
march. As blinded as you are by the myopia and the stupidity of the Politically
Correct, you don't realise, or don't want to realise, that a war of religion
is being carried out. A war they call Jihad..." Celebrated Italian journalist
Oriana Fallaci in The Rage and The Pride
There is a certain predictability to the manner
in which we in India respond to Islamist terrorism. The lib-left intelligentsia
unleashes a propaganda offensive with the aim of painting the criminals as
victims and placing the blame at someone else's door. Every time a bomb goes
off, leaving in its wake death and destruction, we get to hear the familiar
refrain: Babri demolition, Gujarat riots, poor Muslims. We also get to hear,
as we did during the hours following the Mumbai bombings, wide-eyed television
news anchors breathlessly asking all and sundry: "Do you think this was
a terrorist attack?" Perhaps the anchors hoped to hear someone say, "No
darling, it was fireworks to celebrate Italy's victory in the World Cup."
Within days of the jihadi attack on Sankat Mochan Mandir on the eve of Holi
in March this year, a Hindustani classical music concert was organised and
telecast live to show that the outpouring of rage across the country was quite
misplaced as the people of Varanasi were busy listening to Hori and Thumri.
Similarly, after the slaughter in Mumbai, the emphasis has been on how life
in that city has not been affected. Boys will be boys, why bother about a
bit of harmless mischief?
Meanwhile, the Government is busy doing what
this regime does best: Pretending hurt innocence and slyly pointing fingers
at "external forces", darkly hinting at Pakistan's role in the bombings
but fighting shy of lifting the veil and exposing Islamabad's nasty face.
Instead, colourful stories are being planted of how shadowy Pakistan-based
Lashkar-e-Tayyeba activists carried out the bombings with the help of the
banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and then "fled the country".
What is not being mentioned is that this Government had allowed the ban on
SIMI to lapse for six months, allowing the Islamist organisation to regroup
and rearm its cadre. And while the Government looks for convenient stories
to dilute anger over its abject failure, Union Human Resource Development
Minister Arjun Singh and Minority Affairs Minister AR Antulay wave away all
suggestions of the Mumbai bombings, and the bombings and attacks preceding
Terror Tuesday, as manifestations of jihad.
Notwithstanding the crafty propaganda of the
lib-left intelligentsia and the cunning disinformation campaign of the UPA
Government, the writing on the wall is clear: Global jihad has arrived in
India. We have the choice of either reading the message and acting accordingly,
or demolishing the wall and pretending that all is fine and such "minor
irritants" cannot be allowed to come in the way of the peace process
with Pakistan. The enormous human cost, it would seem, is a small price to
pay for those of us who, to quote Oriana Fallaci, "don't understand or
don't want to understand that a Reverse Crusade is on march", who are
"blinded... by the myopia and the stupidity of the Politically Correct,"
who "don't realise, or don't want to realise, that a war of religion
is being carried out. A war they call Jihad".
The holy warriors who carried out the 7/11
bombings in Mumbai, and before that in Delhi on the eve of Diwali last year
and in Varanasi on the eve of Holi this year, may be members of local sleeper
cells of Lashkar-e-Tayyeba and SIMI, but the battle they are fighting is part
of the global war being waged by Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda, at present
headquartered in Gen Pervez Musharraf's Pakistan, to establish the primacy
and dominance of Islam. With Islamism finding an increasing number of converts
in India, and pretended victimhood becoming a convenient cover to unleash
manufactured rage on issues ranging from President George Bush's visit to
the alleged lampooning of the Prophet by Jyllands-Posten, a Danish newspaper,
from India's vote against Iran in the IAEA's board of governors meeting to
Western aid agencies refusing to fund Hamas's terror campaign - issues that
fit into the larger matrix of pan-Islamism - Osama bin Laden and his generals
will now find it easier to deploy foot soldiers in our country to push the
frontiers of jihad and expand the theatre of this clash of civilisations.
Moreover, as explained by terrorism expert
Alexis Debat in his analysis, Why Al Qaeda is at Home in Pakistan: Terror
Organisation Believed to be Drawing Less from Arabs, More from South Asia,
there has been a tactical shift in Al Qaeda's campaign. Rather than send in
"outsiders" to carry out spectacular attacks - as was done on 9/11
when Egyptian Mohammed Atta led a group of Saudis and other Arabs to implement
a plot hatched by, among others, Pakistani Khalid Shaikh Mohammed - it now
prefers to use local recruits to the cause of jihad. The message is external,
those who carry out the task are from within.
This point is underscored by a factor that
is common to the Madrid bombings of March 11, 2004, the London Underground
bombings of July 7, 2005, and the Mumbai bombings of July 11, 2006. In all
three instances, the attacks were planned and carried out by homegrown jihadis:
Moroccan immigrants in Spain, Pakistani immigrants in the UK, and, unless
proved otherwise, Indian Muslims in Mumbai. The bombers may have been motivated
by "local causes", but the larger cause is that of flying the flag
of global jihad. They have inflicted pain on their country to satiate the
dark desires of their ideological masters; they have made their country suffer
so that pan-Islamists can cheer.
If we are looking for the "external message"
that activated "internal" sleeper cells to go on the offensive in
Mumbai, we could perhaps find it in Osama bin Laden's April 23, 2006, message
broadcast by Al Jazeera in which he ranted against what he described as "a
Crusader-Zionist-Hindu war against the Muslims". Elaborating on this
point, he declared, "A UN resolution passed more than half-a-century
ago gave Muslim Kashmir the liberty of choosing independence from India. George
Bush, the leader of the Crusaders' campaign, announced a few days ago that
he will order his converted agent (Pakistan President Pervez) Musharraf to
shut down the Kashmir mujahidin camps, thus affirming that it is a Zionist-Hindu
war against Muslims... It is the duty of the umma with all its categories,
men, women and youth, to give away themselves, their money, experiences and
all types of material support, enough to establish jihad particularly in Iraq,
Palestine, Afghanistan, Sudan, Kashmir and Chechnya. Jihad today is an imperative
for every Muslim. The umma will commit a sin if it does not provide adequate
material support for jihad."
So, we have local issues blending into Osama's
global war against non-believers.
Seen against the backdrop of global jihad
and as part of the larger matrix of Reverse Crusade, the Mumbai bombings serve
Osama bin Laden's blood-soaked cause in more ways than one. Ever since the
Twin Tower bombings and the assault on the Pentagon, Al Qaeda has been plotting
spectacular attacks in a manner that keeps jihad on the front page, in prime
time news bulletins, and high on the collective consciousness of people across
the world. So we had the Bali bombings of October 12, 2002; the Madrid bombings
of March 11, 2004; the London bombings of July 7, 2005; and, now, the Mumbai
bombings of last Tuesday. The latest strike can also be seen as an attempt
to escalate Al Qaeda-inspired Islamist terror. We have Hamas and Hizbullah
courting retaliatory violence from Israel so that they can justify subsequent
acts of terror. In southern Afghanistan, Al Qaeda's new hero Dadullah, known
for blood-chilling cruelty that can put Atilla the Hun to shame, is leading
a renewed and vigorous Taliban offensive. In Iraq, Islamist "insurgency"
continues to overshadow political gains and consolidation of pro-democracy
forces. A third factor that needs to be built in to get the larger picture
is Al Qaeda's - more so Osama bin Laden's - expected effort to overcome the
deaths of two of its generals in recent days: Abu Musab Zarqawi, killed in
Iraq on June 8, and Shamil Basayev of Beslan fame, hunted down by Russian
troops in Chechnya on July 10. After the Mumbai bombings, Al Qaeda can tell
subscribers of Osama bin Laden's venomous ideology that a death here and a
killing there of its men mean nothing and cannot stall the onward march of
jihadis.
If there is any lesson to be learned from
the carnage in Mumbai, it is that we should not delude ourselves in "pietism
or uncertainty or doubt". Heed Oriana Fallaci's rage and, "Wake
up, folks, wake up!" This is jihad.
