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Yoginder Sikand, The Jingoism of Competitive Jihadism
Reproduced with kind permission of, and thanks to, Qalandar and Yoginder Sikand. In the summer of 2000 a series of bombs went off at churches, a temple and a mosque in different parts of south India. Shortly after, Indian intelligence agencies claimed to have discovered the hidden hand of a hitherto little-known Muslim group, the Deendar Anjuman (‘The Religious Association’), behind the attacks. A few weeks later the government of India declared the Anjuman to be a banned organization, accusing it of seeking to create communal disturbances in the country. Leaders of the Anjuman, based at their headquarters in Hyderabad, vehemently protested the ban, arguing that they were simply a harmless missionary group, firmly committed to peaceful preaching and promoting friendly relations between Hindus and Muslims. They claimed that their success in winning a number of converts to their fold had angered the government, which had led it to wrongly implicate it in the bomb blasts. A year before the blasts occurred I had visited the Anjuman’s headquarters, located in the Asif Nagar colony in Hyderabad, where I spent a day meeting Anjuman activists. I was curious to learn more about this maverick group, shunned by other Muslims as heterodox because of their peculiar beliefs. The founder of the Anjuman, Siddiq Hussain, claimed to be the incarnation of a Hindu-Lingayat saint called Chanabasaveswara, who, or so he argued, had prophesied that all of India would one day turn Muslim. Talking to the activists of the Anjuman and, later, going through the literature that they gave me, I delved further into the story of this intriguing man. Siddiq Hussain was born in 1886 at Balampet in the Gurmatkal taluqa of the Gulbarga district, then part of the Nizam’s Dominions and now in Karnataka. His family traced their descent to the Prophet Muhammad, and was known for having produced numerous leading Sufis belonging to the Qadri order. Siddiq Hussain received his primary education first at Gulbarga and then at Hyderabad. Later, he enrolled at the Muhammadan Arts College, Madras, and from there he went on to the Bursen College, Lahore, for his higher education. In the course of his studies he is said to have mastered eleven languages and developed an expertise in medicine and the martial arts. As a young man, the hagiographic accounts tell us, Siddiq Hussain developed a great interest in various religions, and came into contact with several noted Sufis and Islamic scholars of his time. In 1914, he joined the Qadiani branch of the heterodox Ahmadiyya community, considered outside the pale of Islam for its belief that its founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, was a prophet sent by God, and, in doing so, denying the Islamic belief in the finality of the prophethood of Muhammad. He took the oath of allegiance at the hands of the then head of the Qadiani jama‘at, Bashiruddin Mahmud Ahmad, son of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, but fourteen days later he renounced his membership, accusing the Qadianis of being kafirs for considering the Mirza as a prophet. It is likely that at this time he moved closer to the rival Lahori branch of the Ahmadis, which split off from the main Ahmadi jama‘at in 1914 on the question of the status of the Mirza. Unlike the Qadianis, the Lahoris, led by the well-known Islamic scholar Maulana Muhammad ‘Ali, insisted that the Mirza was not a prophet but simply a mujaddid (‘renewer of the faith’). It seems that Siddiq Hussain formally joined the Lahori jama‘at, for in his tract A‘ada-i Islam (‘Enemies of Islam’), dating to the mid-1920s, he wrote that he and members of his Anjuman believed that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad had been sent by God as the mujaddid of the fourteenth Islamic century, indicating that he continued to hold the Mirza in great esteem despite having parted ways with the Qadianis. In Siddiq Hussain’s eventual parting of ways with the Lahoris, his own personal claims to a special relationship with God, which were at odds with Lahori doctrines, seem to have played a central role, for he is said to have claimed to be the ‘promised awaited one’ (muntazar maw’ud) foretold by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad through whom the Holy Spirit (ruh-i haq) would speak to the world. In the early hagiographic accounts of Siddiq Hussain we hear little of his activities till 1924, when he publicly declared what he claimed was his divine mission and established the Deendar Anjuman. The 1920s were a crucial period for Hindu-Muslim relations in India, witnessing a marked rise of Hindu-Muslim conflict after a brief spell of inter-communal harmony in the course of the short-lived Khilafat and Non-Cooperation movements. In early 1923, the Arya Samaj launched a massive drive to bring into the Hindu fold hundreds of thousands of Rajput Muslims in the north-western districts of the United Provinces. Soon, the campaign spread to other areas of India, and Arya leaders began issuing calls for converting all the Indian Muslims. Muslim leaders responded with alarm, launching efforts at countering the Aryas through various Islamic missionary (tabligh) groups. Siddiq Hussain is said to have actively worked with one of the leading Tablighi activists of this time, the Amritsar-based lawyer, Ghulam Bhik Nairang, in attempting to prevent the Aryas from making further inroads among the Muslims. After spending some time in the north, Siddiq Hussain returned to Hyderabad, where he set about launching an ambitious campaign to spread Islam among the local Hindus. Siddiq Hussain’s missionary approach seems to have been deeply moulded by his close association with the heterodox Ahmadis. Like them, he sought to present Islam, not as a radical alternative to, but, rather, as the fulfillment of, Hinduism. His strategy consisted of focusing on the similarities that he perceived between his understanding of Islam and various strands in Hinduism, arguing that various Hindu religious figures had predicted the arrival of Muhammad as God’s last messenger and that, therefore, the Hindus should convert to Islam in order to be saved in accordance with the alleged millennial expectations of the Hindu traditions themselves. This also involved making a case for his own personal claims of being in a special relationship with God and Muhammad. Predictably, Siddiq Hussain’s missionary project and his own eccentric interpretation of Islam roused the wrath of the Hindus and Muslims of Hyderabad. Numerous Sunni scholars came out with fatwas declaring him to be an apostate and an infidel. Faced with fierce opposition to his efforts, in 1932 he fled to Yaghestan in the North-West Frontier Province, where he is said to have stirred up a sizeable number of Pathans to launch an armed jihad. On 11 July, 1934, he announced in front of a large gathering of his followers that he had received a divine revelation (ilham) that all of India would shortly convert to Islam. ‘Rejoice! Oh Musalmans!’, he declared, to the obvious delight of his followers, ‘ The whole of India will soon turn Muslim’. However, before he could lead his Pathan army to the Indian plains, the British got wind of his plans and had him arrested. They arranged for him to be deported back to Hyderabad, where the Nizam had him locked up in solitary confinement in the Thugee Jail. He was released in 1938 but forbidden to leave the confines of the Nizam’s Dominions. Following his release from jail, Siddiq continued to maintain contacts with his followers in Yaghestan. In 1939, he set up a military training centre at Hyderabad, which he christened the Tahrik Jami‘at-i Hizbullah (‘The Movement of the Party of God’), where his followers were trained in the use of arms. At this time he also penned two tracts, titled The Practical Science of War and The Principal Armies of Asia and Europe for the benefit of his disciples, which, however, were soon banned by the Government of India. Alongside these preparations for armed jihad, the Anjuman kept up its missionary work. Following Indian independence in August 1947, almost all the Indian native states were incorporated into the Indian Dominion. The Nizam of Hyderabad, however, refused, hoping to stay independent or else to join Pakistan. In late 1948, India reacted by ordering what has come to be known as the ‘Police Action’, in which Indian troops over-ran Hyderabad in a short, swift move. The Nizam’s forces put up a weak defence, but were soon overpowered by the Indian soldiers. According to Anjuman sources, Siddiq Hussain and his followers fought the Indian forces on 27 different fronts, but were soon captured at their headquarters at Asif Nagar. When the Anjuman’s headquarters fell into the hands of the Indian troops, Siddiq Hussain ordered all his male followers aged between eight and eighty to accompany him to prison. A special tribunal was instituted to try a case against him, in front of which he unhesitatingly declared, so Anjuman sources claim, that he had indeed fought the Indian Army, ‘in accordance with the practice of the Prophet Muhammad’. The tribunal, it is said, was later declared illegal on technical grounds, and, consequently, Siddiq Hussain was absolved of all charges and released, in early 1952, along with his followers. On his release, he is said to have addressed a large gathering at a mosque where he declared, ‘No government can arrest me. I shall uproot infidelity and disbelief. Now the only way for India’s salvation is to turn Muslim. The day is not far off when the whole of India shall accept Islam’. Siddiq Hussain died in April 1952, and was survived by four wives, five sons and three daughters. Siddiq Hussain was succeeded by his chief khalifa, Sayyed ‘Amir Hussain, as the head of the Indian branch of the Anjuman. Under Sayyed ‘Amir, the Anjuman continued the missionary activities begun of its founder, but rather than adopting the aggressive mode of preaching that characterized much of Siddiq Hussain’s life, the Anjuman now sought to project itself as a peaceful group, committed to communal harmony, universal brotherhood and reconciliation. This shift must, of course, be seen as a pragmatic response to the vastly changed political context, with the Muslims having been displaced from political power in Hyderabad, the rapid depletion of the ranks of the traditional Muslim elites, many of them migrating to Pakistan, the general insecurity of the Muslim community in India as a whole and the alarming rise of Hindu chauvinism. Thus, contrary to what Anjuman sources insisted in the wake of the ban, the Anjuman’s own history has been characterized by a strong strain of militant activism. Its inter-faith dialogue work, which Anjuman leaders hold as evidence of its commitment to communal harmony, is in fact geared to stressing the ultimate truth of its own version of Islam over other faiths. As the Anjuman literature clearly indicates, all other religions are seen as representing limited, often distorted, versions of the truth. They are also said to predict the arrival of Muhammad as God’s last messenger. Hence, the Anjuman believes, people of other faiths can be saved only if they accept Muhammad and follow his teachings, or else they would perish in hell. Some months ago, I received a cryptic email message from an activist of the Anjuman based in Karachi. He had read an article that I had written on the Anjuman which I had posted on a website, and wanted to know more about me. We exchanged several emails thereafter, and I even got to speak to him over the telephone. I asked him about allegations of the involvement of the Anjuman in the bomb blasts. He vehemently denied these charges, but, in the same breath, argued that because the government of India had banned the Anjuman the time had come for Muslims to declare armed jihad against India. Did this mean, I asked him, that his call for jihad had little to do with the continuing oppression of Muslims in India, and was simply a response to the government’s banning of his organization? He evaded my query, and, instead, advised me to have a look at the Anjuman’s website for an answer. I then turned to the intriguing question of the Anjuman’s alleged links with the Ahmadis, which many Muslims have themselves pointed out in order to stress that the Anjuman was not Muslim at all. He insisted that those who believed that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was a prophet were firmly outside the pale of Islam. ‘They shall rot in hell’, he thundered. But what, I asked him, about Siddiq Hussain himself, who apparently believed that the Mirza, while not a prophet, was actually a divinely-appointed mujaddid, or renewer of the faith. ‘Oh, so you know about that’, he answered hesitatingly, and he kept silent for a while. ‘To be honest with you’, he revealed, ‘we do believe that Mirza sahib was a mujaddid’. But why, I egged him on, did the Anjuman, in its literature and on its website, repeatedly insist that it had nothing to do with the Ahmadis? Was it not thereby deliberately misleading people about its own beliefs? ‘We say we have nothing to do with the Ahmadis, but this is only in the sense that we do not accept the Mirza as a prophet as the Ahmadis do’, he answered. ‘But we do believe that he was a mujaddid’, he added. He agreed with me when I said that the Anjuman chose to keep its belief in the Mirza as a mujaddid carefully concealed for fear of retaliation by Muslims. The Pakistani government had declared the Qadiani and Lahori Ahmadis as non-Muslim, and there was every possibility that the Anjuman might meet the same fate if its association with and faith in the Mirza, even as simply a mujaddid, were finally discovered. After all, I suggested, the Lahoris, too, believed, like the Anjuman, that the Mirza was not a prophet but just a mujaddid. If the Lahoris could be branded as non-Muslim for this belief, there was no reason why the Anjuman could not, too, if the Pakistani government or public got wind of that. He declined to reply to my argument, and turned the conversation to another subject. I have not heard from this person after we had this conversation, and my emails to him now go unanswered. But I have found answers to many of the questions that I wanted to put to him on the official website of the Pakistani branch of the Anjuman http://www.deendar.org that functions from Karachi. The website clearly indicates that the Anjuman, like many other Pakistan-based Islamist groups, sees itself as a major player in what could be called a game of ‘competitive jihadism’. The oppression of the Indian Muslims at the hands of Hindu fascists comes as a blessing in disguise for these groups, for it provides them the ammunition they need to rouse passions and mobilize support and resources. Various Islamist groups compete for the allegiance of the same potential supporters, and hence each seeks to outdo the other in militant rhetoric in order to lay claim to being the most committed to the cause of Islam against what are described as the ‘enemies of the faith’. Portraying themselves as firmly committed to the cause of the Indian Muslims and to the extirpation of ‘idolatrous’ Hinduism is a convenient means for such groups to press their own claims as the sole representatives of Islam and as courageous mujahids following in the path of the Prophet and the early Muslims. In the Anjuman’s case anti-Indian jihadism also appears to serve the additional purpose of deflecting attention from its association with the Mirza, and in establishing its own claims of representing ‘authentic’ Islam. The Anjuman’s website provides a clear illustration of how this process of ‘competitive jihadism’ is sought to be played out. Its militant rhetoric clearly proves that the Anjuman’s own claims of being a harmless religious group firmly committed to inter-faith harmony are completely misleading. The main page of the site depicts a map of South Asia with a sword dangling above, adjacent to which is a flag embossed with the Islamic creed of confession, ‘There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah’. In order to stress the Anjuman’s own claims above those of other competing Islamic groups it repeatedly asserts the organisation’s commitment to armed jihad and to its stated project of converting India to (its own brand of) Islam. It insists that the Anjuman is the ‘ultimate choice’ for the Muslims, and that the Anjuman alone can ‘save them from the forthcoming disaster’. This is because, so it argues, Siddiq Hussain was appointed by God Himself for this task, and so the Anjuman has God on its side. The Anjuman ‘is not the creation of a man’s mind’, the website says, but, rather, was founded under the ‘authority of God’. ‘Allah has chosen us to spread his message […] all over the world’, it announces. The message is thus clear: To oppose the Anjuman is to oppose God Himself. In order to reinforce its own claims to being the ultimate representative of Islam, the Anjuman’s website is filled with statements and announcements about the organisation’s commitment to jihad against India and to the conversion of all of India to Islam. This is, of course, a means to stress its own claims to Islamicity over other Islamic groups, an essential component of the phenomenon of what ‘competing jihadism’. Thus, the website claims that Siddiq Hussain received a divine revelation (ilham) from Allah Himself to the effect that, ‘All India will become Muslim’. For his part, Siddiq Hussain is depicted as having spent his entire life struggling to realize that dream. The sole aim of the Anjuman is presented as winning India (and the rest of the non-Muslim world) for Islam. ‘India will become Muslim is our target’, its website clumsily puts it, for which purpose the members of the Anjuman are said to have ‘sold […] their souls to Allah’. Elaborating on its missionary-cum-jihadist programme, the website discusses the strategy devised by Siddiq Hussain to prove the ultimate truth of Islam through the scriptures of other faiths, particularly Hinduism. The ‘main purpose’ of this, it says, ‘is to show the non-Muslims mention of the world teacher Muhammad in their books’. This is depicted as essentially a peaceful method of missionary work, but in the same breath the website insists that the members of the Anjuman ‘preach and strongly believe in jihad’. Jihad, the website argues, is an essential tool to ‘provide a powerful platform to the Muslim world against non-Muslims’. ‘Armed struggle (jihad) is the main pillar of Islam that is [sic.] to save Islam. We have to prepare all Muslims for a great jihad in accordance of [sic.] Quranic teachings’, the website insists. It announces that while its major focus in India is to preach Islam through the Hindu scriptures and to ‘protect’ Muslims against the ‘mischief of Hindus’, its essential task in Pakistan is ‘to inspire the spirit of jihad among the Muslims’. It makes clear that by this it means armed jihad against the Indian state, but it also cautions that this can be resorted to only if insurmountable barriers are deliberately put in the path of peaceful missionary work. However, it predicts that the project of the conversion of all of India to Islam would not be entirely smooth. Temples and idols shall be destroyed, ‘the ling of Kashi will be broken into pieces’, ‘the temple of Sri [?] shall be struck down’ and ‘Brahmins shall be fed with beef’, it warns in an article revealingly titled ‘The Whole of India Is To Become Muslim’. Apparently, with the banning of the Anjuman by the government of India in 2000, the Anjuman authorities in Pakistan now believe (despite what their Indian counterparts might claim to the contrary) that conditions warrant the immediate declaration of armed jihad against India. The website carries a message titled ‘Ban on the Preaching Activities of Deendar Anjuman in India’ that makes a declaration to that effect. Issued in May 2001 by the central joint secretary of the Pakistani wing of the Anjuman, Habib Bin Waheed, the message argues that in the wake of the banning of the organization and in the face of the continued oppression of Muslims in India by Hindu fascists, the time has come for India to be declared as dar ul-harb or ‘abode of war’ by Muslim clerics all over the world. Bin Waheed argues that the Anjuman is best suited for the onerous task of jihad against India. Seeking to press the Anjuman’s own claims to represent Islam over other competing Islamic groups, he makes so bold as to claim that the Anjuman is ‘the only Muslim organization to safeguard the interests of Indian Muslims’. He goes so far as to declare, ‘We are [the] only single [sic.] representative body of the Muslims of the subcontinent’. That this claim is completely laughable, for the Anjuman remains virtually unknown, among both Indian and Pakistani Muslims, does not, of course, strike Bin Waheed at all. In another message, titled ‘Islam is the Only Religion’, Bin Waheed elaborates on the Anjuman’s declaration of armed jihad against India. The intention of the Anjuman, he says, is to turn India into a ‘Muslim state’. This, he says, the Anjuman had been trying to do through peaceful preaching for many years, but now that the government of India has banned the organization armed jihad is warranted. The Anjuman refuses to be cowed down by the Indian government’s move, he asserts, for, he declares, it has God on its side. Hence, God’s supposed ‘promise’ of all of India turning Muslim through the efforts of the Anjuman shall come true, he prophesies. He cites a series of natural calamities in India in recent years that are said to indicate God’s wrath against the government of India for putting up barriers in the path of the Anjuman’s missionaries. Despite these divine warnings, the Indian government does not seem to have relented in its hostility towards the Anjuman. Hence, Waheed suggests: [T]he Indian government does not seem to have learned the [sic.] lesson. Perhaps it needs harsher punishments. Jihad is to remove barriers to the preaching efforts. Preaching is the aim. Jihad is the tool to achieve the aim. Jihadi movements should also open the gates of preaching to win the hearts of the Hindu masses. If they don’t embrace Islam their morale would at least go down to the lowest ebb. This is the key to success. Although the Pakistani wing of the Anjuman has thus declared armed jihad against India there is no evidence of the Anjuman being involved in any violent incidents in the country after the imposing of the ban. This indicates that its jihadist rhetoric is primarily meant for domestic Pakistani consumption, in order to present itself as an authentic Islamic sect and thereby to deflect attention from its links with Mirza Ghulam Ahmad and his teachings. Yet, the Anjuman’s aggressive missionary agenda is still alive, and at least in Pakistan its missionaries are said to remain fairly active, although increasingly faced with opposition by other Muslim groups who accuse it of being a hidden front of the Ahmadis. Its website speaks of a missionary missive recently sent by the Pakistani branch of the organization to the Indian Prime Minister and Home Minister asking them to convert to Islam. In the letter the Anjuman announces that, in accordance with the alleged predictions of a number of Hindu pundits, God would dispatch an army of Muslim Pathans to invade India to rescue it from Hindu extremists, to ‘replace Brahminism with Islam’ and to convert India into a ‘Muslim state’. This shall be accompanied with much bloodshed and destruction, and the letter advises Vajpayee and Advani that if they want to ‘avert the coming disaster’ they must realize that ‘the only way out is the acceptance of Islam’. The cantankerous rhetoric of the Anjuman has, mercifully, few takers among Muslims, both in India and in Pakistan, where it remains a virtually unknown fringe group despite its claims of being the sole representative of the Muslims of the region. In fact, following allegations of the Anjuman being involved in the bomb blasts in 2000 several Indian Sunni maulvis issued fatwas of infidelity against the Anjuman, clearly announcing that the members of the group were well outside the fold of Islam. Yet, the Anjuman’s jihadist shadow-boxing seems to show no signs of abating. In this, I have argued, it is impelled, its claims notwithstanding, less by any real concern for the spread of Islam or for the very obvious sufferings of the Indian Muslims, than by what appears to be an irrepressible urge to appear as passionately committed to the cause of the faith in a very perverse way. The more aggressively anti-Indian or anti-Hindu its posture, it seems to believe, the brighter its chances of being accepted as the representative of the Muslims, as it describes itself. But in this the Anjuman is hardly unique, for ‘competitive jihadism’ is a widely shared phenomenon, and common to most other radical Islamist groups. In turn, this logic of competing militancy appears as a more general phenomenon, shared by militant outfits in all other religious traditions as well. Top | Back to Articles main | Yoginder Sikand Articles List |
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