How did India overlook Tablighi, world’s largest radical organization ?
In India, the academic and journalistic discourse on jihadi terrorism
mostly revolves around transnational and Pakistani terrorist
organizations. Meanwhile, non-violent and semi-violent Islamist groups
such as Jamaat-i-Islami, and its proxy charitable fronts in the US, UK,
and Canada, along with groups such as the Popular Front of India and the
Social Democratic Party of India have, so far, more or less, managed to
escape the attention of intelligence and security agencies.
However, after a number of critical investigations recently revealed the
role of elements in the Jamaat-i-Islami in radicalizing society and
aiding terrorist organizations in Kashmir, impelling the Home Ministry
to ban it, other legal Islamist groups, also claiming to be peaceful,
social organizations, are finally the subject of investigation by
India’s intelligence agencies. One noteworthy example is Tablighi Jamaat
(TJ), which has, impressively, operated across the length and breadth
of India for decades, openly recruiting millions, and yet somehow
avoiding the notice of the law enforcement agencies, despite laying a
fertile ground for the spread of radical ideology.
Ironically, in the West, TJ has been carefully watched by law
enforcement agencies, aware of its links to terror, for the last two
decades, despite TJ taking care to operate more carefully and in greater
secrecy. TJ is an offshoot of the fundamentalist and hardline Deobandi
sect of Islam. A global missionary movement, TJ operates the largest
Islamic network in the world, with perhaps as many as 70-80 million
members spread over 150 countries. Its ijtemas(religious gatherings) in
India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh attract the largest number of Muslim
devotees after the Haj.
TJ claims to be a quietist, apolitical organization. In the popular
perception, TJ is a guileless missionary organization simply preaching
Islam through door-to-door mobile bands. In reality, TJ preaches an
extreme religious outlook. It serves to radicalize existing Muslim
communities by encouraging Muslims to embrace a more ascetic, Deobandi
strain of Islam, in which every aspect of a Muslim’s life is dictated by
TJ rules.
The essence of TJ’s philosophy is the importance of protection from
the fitna [test] of the outside world, through intense piety and
adherence to TJ’s very particular strain of faith. Only once the ummah
has undergone the “purification of self”, TJ believes, can the spread of
Islam to non-Muslims take place. In essence, TJ’s work is predicated on
the idea of inevitable conflict with the non-Islamic world. French TJ
expert, Marc Gaborieau goes further, and has suggested that the supreme
goal of TJ is nothing less than a “planned conquest of the world”.
TJ’s influence is widely felt. In Bangladesh, TJ works to rid Muslim
communities of perceived Hindu heritage and influence, which, the Hudson
Institute claims, has exacerbated significantly the radicalisation of
Bangladeshi society. In North Kashmir, a senior police officer there
told us, the terror group Hizbul Mujahidin sends potential recruits on a
40-day TJ religious training program, after which they are permitted to
join the organization.TJ cadres visiting Kashmir from Northern and
Eastern India face no resistance or opposition from local groups such as
Jamaat-e-Islami and violent extremists, reportedly because elements
within the TJ have assisted them with the movement of money and messages
especially during Kashmir’s frequent internet shutdowns.
Reports claim TJ is also involved with the radicalization of youth in
Kashmir’s Deoband seminaries. In the past, several seminaries were
banned after they were found to be sending students for terrorist
training.
Marhama village, in the Anantnag district, where the Pulwama suicide
bombing conspiracy was hatched, has a powerful Deoband madrasa, whose
faculty includes TJ preachers. As Assad Bashir notes, the area is a
stronghold of Deobandi terrorist group Jaish-e-Mohammed (K-File, Assad
Bashir).
One prominent Barelvi Sunni Muslim leader from Uttar Pradesh, who has
studied the functioning of TJ on the ground for the last 25 years, told
us that TJ recruits, after taking part in the obligatory travelling
missionary work for set periods of time (a practice common to TJ members
all around the world), are often sent to join prominent organizations
such as the Popular Front of India, Social Democratic Party of India, as
well as the Jamaat-e-Islami.
Barelvis have good reason to be concerned about the missionary arm of
their Deobandi rivals. TJ cadres have long been significantly involved
in the occupation and takeover of Barelvi mosques in villages and cities
across India. Initially, TJ tries to infiltrate the local mosque
committee with its members. If successful, they re-register the mosque
as Deobandi, relying on the endorsement of Waqf boards, which are
largely controlled by Deobandis. Failing that, TJ establishes a rival,
anonymous mosque committee of their own, and attempts to supplant the
existing committee, once again relying on the Waqf boards’ approval.
Either way, Barelvi imams and management are ejected, leading frequently
to violent clashes between the two groups.
In the National Capital Region, TJ cadres have ensured the Deobandi
takeover of 150-200 Barelvi mosques. In Gujarat, the TJ and Deobandis
have taken over 80% of the mosques. In one such incident in Jaipur,
where TJ cadres violently captured the Karbala mosque, criminal
investigations were initiated. However, law enforcement agencies failed
to follow through, apparently only because of the technical point that
TJ is not a formally registered organization. Deobandis teach and
practise a fundamentalist, exclusivist form of Islam, which blends
easily with extremism and terror. As TJ’s seizures of mosques continues,
so does the threat of Deobandi influence. And that is just not an
Indian issue; TJ and hardline Deobandis are a global problem.TJ IN THE WEST
TJ has operated in Europe since 1945, when the first TJ missionaries
were sent out from the British Raj to England. Working in non-Muslim
environments, TJ’s work has been quieter and more careful than its
activities in South Asia, with many Western Muslim communities, for
decades, not even aware of its existence. But Western Muslim communities
were a particularly important target for TJ. The ostensible sins of the
secular world—especially in the 1960s and 1970s—were all too apparent
for religious conservatives horrified by moderate Muslim communities
that enjoyed music, dance and mixed-gender events. It was felt that TJ’s
work to Islamize Muslim communities was particularly vital here.
Journalist Innes Bowen, writing about TJ activity in Britain, cites one
early missionary who wrote: “The bazaar of immorality thrives and Satan
has set here a wide and tough snare.” Much later, in the 1990s, another
British TJ official declared: “A major aim of Tablighi is to rescue the
ummah [Muslim nation] from the culture and civilization of the Jews,
Christians and (other) enemies of Islam to create such hatred for their
ways as human beings have for urine…and excreta…”
As in India and the rest of South Asia, TJ sought to operate in Europe
primarily through Deobandi networks. In fact, as the academic Philip
Lewis notes, the most important Deobandi institution in Europe, Darul
Uloom Bury, was established on the orders of Indian TJ leader Muhammad
Zakariya, who penned the essential TJ text, Faizail-e-Amaal.
A second Darul Uloom, in the Northern English town of Dewsbury, was
established in the late 1970s, becoming one of TJ’s chief institutions
outside of India and Pakistan—it is often referred to, in fact, as TJ’s
headquarters in Europe.
Using Dewsbury as a base, TJ missionaries travelled to Europe and the
rest of the world, recruiting followers and Islamizing Muslim
communities. Upon arriving in a new city, these missionaries would “soon
spread out into mosques throughout the city, state and country, usually
sleeping in bedrolls on the floor of host Islamic centers.” A common
tactic in the West, report some studies, is for TJ missionaries to
“suddenly show up in small groups at the homes of Muslim individuals who
have not been seen at a mosque lately”.
In some cases, TJ missionaries served as a vanguard for Deobandi
expansion into South Asian communities in Europe. This was a clever
investment. TJ’s assistance in the expansion of the Deobandi presence
produced an extensive network of Deobandi mosques, many willing, decades
later, to serve as key outposts for TJ missionary work. It is unclear
whether TJ have helped Deobandis seize mosques in the West, as they have
done in India. But, in Britain, it is worth noting that Deobandis
constitute a mere estimated 20% of Britain’s 3 million Muslims, and yet
control over 40% of the mosques.
In France, where TJ could not rely on as large a South Asian population,
it has recruited an enormous number of Muslims from North African
backgrounds.
Along with the establishment of several TJ mosques, the movement is now,
one academic writes, “part of the daily fabric of Muslim life in
France”.
TJ gatherings in Europe can attract thousands, although they are
arranged, as Innes Bowen notes, without websites, press releases, or
other advertising materials. TJ remains largely a secretive force, that
only comes to the public’s attention when its influence is sporadically
uncovered.
In the United States, the TJ approach has been a little different. First
arriving in the 1950s, TJ found that a relatively small Deobandi
presence required them to find new Muslim community partners and
establish mosques of their own, often targeting black Americans who had
recently left the Nation of Islam in large numbers (a quasi-Islamic
black nationalist movement) and who were looking for a new ideological
home.
Today, in fact, TJ mosques in America cater to a diverse array of Muslim
converts and immigrants from all corners of the globe. It is estimated
there are 15,000 TJ members active in the United States, of which,
reportedly, only 60% are South Asian.
TJ’s American headquarters is considered by some to be the Alfalah
mosque in New York City, which, unusually, openly acknowledges its TJ
identity on its own website. Contrast this with Darul Uloom Dewsbury in
the UK, which admits no public link to TJ at all, despite being its most
important TJ center outside South Asia. Other prominent TJ centers in
America include Chicago, San Diego and Los Angeles.
In the 1980s and 1990s, TJ operated more overtly in North America, in a
manner similar to its operations in India today. It openly held
conferences in Chicago and Toronto, which many thousands attended. After
9/11, however, TJ activity has been more careful, and much less
visible. Some analysts have concluded that TJ’s relatively inconspicuous
existence today suggests it has lost influence and members; although it
is difficult to square that claim with the fact that TJ missionaries
continue to be found at mosques across the US, and that so many recent
jihadists have passed through TJ programs.
Indeed, that many Western jihadists have some involvement with TJ at
some point in their radicalization is indisputable. Somewhat in contrast
to Indian intelligence services, Western officials have been aware of
TJ’s dangerous influence for decades.
US officials stated in 2003: “We have a significant presence of Tablighi
Jamaat in the United States and we have found that Al-Qaeda used them
for recruiting now and in the past.” In the early 2000s, a Pakistani
intelligence source claimed that 400 American terrorist recruits in
Pakistan or Afghanistan had emerged by the American TJ network. French
intelligence, meanwhile, has claimed that 80% of its own Islamist
extremists may have once been part of TJ, referring to it as an
“antechamber of fundamentalists”.
TJ-tied (in reports of) Western terrorists have included Richard Reid,
the transatlantic “shoe bomber”, and Mohammed Siddique Khan, mastermind
of the 7/7 terror attacks in London. Even Abu Qatada, a leading
Jordanian jihadist preacher and Al Qaeda contact, was reportedly
involved in TJ circles. Although TJ operates a little more cautiously in
the West, its ideological adherence to TJ branches in South Asia is
clear. In fact, even the split between TJ’s branches in India and
Pakistan was reflected among Western TJ networks. In 2017, supporters of
the two TJ camps came to blows outside a London TJ institution. In the
US, TJ members who subscribed to the “wrong” TJ faction were apparently
expelled from TJ mosques.
It is unsurprising that not all Western TJ members were willing to
support the Indian faction of TJ; Pakistani TJ institutions have long
attracted the loyalty of TJ members around the world.TJ AND PAKISTANI WAHHABISM
In Pakistan, the regime of General Zia-ul-Haq supported the work of
Deobandi and Tablighi extremists. Since then, Tablighi cadres have
continued to play influential roles in Pakistan, including, positions as
powerful as the Director-General of ISI, Pakistan’s notorious
terror-tied spy agency. Multiple reports claim that TJ cadres of
Pakistan meet with their Indian counterparts in Bangladesh, where they
work in close coordination with Jamaat-i-Islami, which colluded with the
Pakistani army in the genocide of civilians during Bangladesh’s 1971
Liberation War. Today. Reportedly, TJ’s Pakistani cadres enter India
through Bangladesh, where some believe they may serve ISI’s interests.
It is also important to note that in Pakistan, TJ has further
demonstrable connections with terror groups. Top-level recruiters from
terror groups have visited TJ cadres in Raiwind and encouraged
individual Tablighis to join terror groups. Reportedly, in 1995, TJ’s
military offshoot, Jihad-bi-Al Saif, was accused of plotting to kill
Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan’s former Prime Minister.
The dreaded terrorist group Harkat-ul-Mujahidin (HuM), founded in 1980,
drew all of its original members from Tablighi Jamaat. HuM was
responsible for hijacking Indian Airlines flight IC 814 in 1998 and
brutally murdering French engineers in Karachi in 2002. Later, 6,000
Tablighis were trained in HuM camps, many of whom fought in Afghanistan
and joined Al Qaeda after the defeat of the Soviets. Another violent
offshoot of TJ, Harkat-ul-Jihad al Islami (HuJI), is active in Kashmir
and Gujarat. HuJI was responsible for the attack on an American cultural
center in 2002, as well as the 2004 assassination attempt on Sheikh
Hasina Wajed, then the leader of moderate Awami League and now the
current Prime Minister of Bangladesh.
Further, when TJ’s Indian cadres travel to Pakistan for ijtemas and
preaching work, they are reportedly sought to be lured by terror groups
like Al Qaeda, Lashkar, and Harkat-ul-Mujahidin.RECOGNISING THE THREAT
Of course, TJ’s more overt links to extremism are not limited to the
countries we have already mentioned. Alex Alexiev has written that the
Government of Philippines has accused TJ (which has at least 11,000
members in their country) of acting as a conduit for Saudi money to
terrorists in its south and as a cover for the Pakistani jihadist
volunteers. In Tunisia, Rachid Al Ghannouchi, co-founder of Tunisia’s
Ennahda Party and one of the most prominent Islamist ideologues in the
world, is a graduate of TJ, having joined the movement in Paris in his
youth. Terrorists from Algeria’s Armed Islamic Group (GIA), meanwhile,
were closely involved with TJ. The list of examples goes on.
TJ is a pestiferous force. And, given the evidence, who could seriously
still consider it a quietist movement? Certainly, terrorist groups in
Kashmir, Pakistan and Afghanistan, along with jihadist preachers and
recruiters in the West and elsewhere, have long sought to use it to
their advantage, with no apparent effort by TJ to refuse them.
Omar Nasiri, a spy who infiltrated Al Qaeda in the 1990s, reveals that
Al Qaeda encouraged potential recruits to first join TJ, partly because
TJ’s missionary work offered important cover for travelling jihadists.
Indeed, Zeeshan Siddiqui, a British jihadist tied to Al Qaeda, flew to
Pakistan, allegedly to meet Al Qaeda contacts, while claiming to be
attending a TJ conference.
Despite these facts, it is pertinent to mention that unlike the US, TJ’s
alleged links with terror groups, radicalization, and other illicit
activities have neither received much attention from India’s
intelligence and counter-terrorism agencies, nor from journalists and
Indian scholars of terrorism studies. TJ’s unofficial, unincorporated
status, its vague recruitment processes and secret and dubious financial
practices make it particularly challenging for law enforcement agencies
and financial watchdogs to track its activities.
But there is also no doubt that, even without the direct terror links,
TJ has radicalized entire communities across the globe. Once moderate
communities are regularly targeted by TJ for re-education. As Yoginder
Sikand noted in his 1998 study of TJ in Britain, the movement works to
“promote a sense of paranoia and even disgust of non-Muslim society”.
Nor is TJ ultimately limited to just Deobandi Islam, even within South
Asian communities. The BBC has noted that, despite many Muslims
belonging to the somewhat moderate Barelvi movement, they were still
being drawn into TJ circles. TJ’s reputation for pure piety among the
world’s Muslims has seemingly often afforded them the permission to
cross sectarian lines, while still using Deobandi mosques all around the
world as bases.
One former TJ member told the BBC: “I saw teenage boys, go to the
mosque, go home, preach to their families. Six months later, all the
women in the family would be wearing the niqab—you wouldn’t see their
faces again. I saw entire families change through Talibghi Jamaat.”
But even if one were to discount the evidence in South Asia tying TJ to
jihadists and extremist groups, as well as ignore the well-documented
facts that too many Western jihadists have passed through TJ ranks and
that too many TJ members embrace violent thought, one crucial point
remains.
If TJ’s claim to eschew all political discussion is genuine, by refusing
to discuss certain political issues, TJ isn’t guaranteeing that
extremism cannot be taught; it is guaranteeing that TJ will avoid doing
anything to discourage the violence that is the obvious corollary of the
dogma TJ preaches and enforces.
Radicalism is not just about violence; it is fundamentally about the
embrace, and imposition, of absolutist theology. TJ, perhaps more
extensively than any other radical sect in the world, preaches and
insists on that absolutism.
The Indian public have been made aware of what happens when these
extremists operate with impunity, even if Indian intelligence services
have been slow to catch on. Western intelligence services, meanwhile,
knew of dangers of TJ and yet failed to counteract their influence,
despite Western Muslims using TJ to travel in significant numbers to
South Asia to join terrorist organizations.
The threat of hardline Deobandis and their missionary arm, TJ, is global
and obvious; it requires cooperation between India and the West to
produce a global and tough response, starting with international
investigations into TJ’s financing, its links with Pakistani and its
proxy Kashmiri terror organizations, and its role as an incubator for
jihadist radicalization.Abhinav Pandya is a counterterrorism expert
and author of Radicalization in India: An Exploration (Pentagon Press,
2019); Sam Westrop is director of Islamist Watch, a project of the
Middle East Forum.
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