Author: Rajeev Deshpande
Publication: The Times of India
Date: September 22, 2008
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 PoK, and which suited the terror mission devised by the SIMI. 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 Delhibased 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 regarded as a "reformer" or "hardliner".
This apparent contradiction stems from his bid to rid Islam of "impurities".
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.
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. 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. It is this theological
"inheritance" that led the IM-SIMI to believe its "war"
against India and "non-believers" is just and fair.
