Syed Suroor Hameem
Teacher
It quite baffles a rational mind in Kashmir that a banned fascist organisation like Jamat-e-Islami (JeI) still has significant social acceptability. And there are talks in a few circles that they should be allowed to carry on political activities and contest elections. This is happening even after JeI’s reactionary, regressive, feudal, and radically violent beliefs and practices for a long time have brought doom, death, and destruction to Kashmiri society. Jamat-e-Islami’s sole purpose is to grab power as it believes in supremacist ideals.
Jamat-e-Islami may have destroyed Kashmiri children belonging to unprivileged or lower socio-economic classes or sections of society by turning them into Jihadis, but it has very cunningly been able to preserve its relatively privileged status in society. While the poor children continue to die for some illusory “Islamic and Heavenly Glory,” children of Jamatis continue to enjoy privileged jobs, businesses, and positions. However, it really cannot go on like this forever; JeI cannot be allowed to carry on what it has done in the past. Today’s Kashmiri youth need to be made aware of the criminally sordid history of JeI so that they are not tricked in by the deceptive rhetoric and propaganda of JeI. We need to expose this pernicious cabal of fascist and theocratic gangsters who have destroyed our society from within.
Kashmiri youth need to realize that JeI is a criminally fascist organisation that has committed gruesome crimes against Kashmiri people at the behest of the Pakistani deep state. In any case, the record of JeI in Bangladesh and Pakistan is also one of extreme criminality, but that is not the topic of discussion here.
The JeI also operates through its various front organizations, allowing it to penetrate all domains of Kashmiri social and political life. It uses religion to influence everything. The fires of the current radicalization/militancy swaying young lives were gradually lit up in Kashmir by the JeI ideology and its preachers, and other affiliated organisations like Dukhtaran-i-Millat (women’s wing of JeI), Jamiat Tulaba (student/youth wing of JeI), and Tehreek-i-Hurriyat. All this was done systematically. In the early 1990s, JeI, through different militant organisations—especially its armed wing Hizbul Mujahideen—unleashed terror and mayhem in Kashmir, killing hundreds and thousands of secular Kashmiris. It also indulged in massive land grabs during those days of lawlessness. Quite akin to the Taliban, JeI in those days established a parallel system of theocratic governance in the Kashmiri hinterland, establishing the Sharia Adaalats (Sharia Courts) while penetrating and hijacking important social institutions like the education system, mosques, Awqaafs, and even charity organisations.
Despite an official ban on JeI instituted by the GOI in 2019, the control of mosques in most areas is still with JeI/Tehreek-i-Hurriyat; their radical preachers still influence the youth. The poisonous and hate-driven radical literature written by fanatic 20th-century Islamist ideologues like Maududi, Syed Qutb, and Hassan al-Banna, and other such figures, continues to be distributed among youth. JeI still collects large sums of charity money, albeit now clandestinely. Despite the official ban, JeI continues to orient young impressionable children towards radicalization and a Jihadist mindset.
In Kashmir, of late, the Islamist camp is also witnessing competitive extremism between JeI, Deobandis, and Salafis. All of these are in a race to attain the “puritanical” brand of Islam. Mohalla Madrasahs, locally called evening Quran Darasgahs run by Salafis, Jamatis, and Deobandis in both towns and villages, continue to indoctrinate children as young as 8 to 10 years old using the most radical and distorted interpretations of Islamic theology. JeI continues to target women and young girls also. Quite regularly, JeI, through the hardcore Islamist women’s organization Dukhtaran-i-Millat, organizes preaching programmes for women in their Darasgahs and mosques where they are oriented towards violent extremism. Post-2019, all this is being done under a low profile and using non-eminent members. But the fact is they are carrying on with what they had been doing earlier.
It is true that JeI grew in the 1950s as a reactionary feudal movement to counter the progressive politics of Sheikh Abdullah and his Naya Kashmir manifesto. Much of the initial founders of JeI in Kashmir were from traditional upper-caste feudal families who hated Sheikh for the “Land Reforms.” Naturally, any feudal, regressive movement wears the cloak of religion for “authenticity,” more so in our cultures which are steeped in the public denominator of religion. In its extreme grudge and hatred towards National Conference, JeI in the 1970s even entered into electoral alliances with rightwing Hindu political formations like Janata Party, the precursor of BJP, all while feeding on the rhetoric of Islam and Muslims.
The Jamat-e-Islami’s fascist rhetoric and supremacist Islamist ideology has been analysed and explored by many scholars, both Muslims and non-Muslims. These include reputed Islamic scholars of the subcontinent like Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, Ameen Islahi, and Javed Ghamidi. These scholars were once influenced by Maududi only to renounce him later on the aforementioned issues.
Jamat-e-Islami’s genocidal culpability in Bangladesh is well known, where it unleashed mass murder and rape of humongous proportions on dissident Bengalis through its armed wing Al-Badr as it sought to “purify” Bengali Muslims of their cultural identity. In Pakistan, it has always sucked up to the military establishment in its project of nourishing terrorism and terror groups. It is also notorious for stoking anti-Ahmadi hatred and violence in that country. During Zia’s regime, it penetrated the state institutions of that country.
Like its counterparts in Bangladesh and Pakistan, Jamat-e-Islami (JeI) in Kashmir shares all the tenets and characteristics of a fascist organization. It believes in grabbing state power and establishing a supremacist Islamic state where minorities would be treated as second-class citizens. Maududi and Egyptian Brotherhood ideologues like Hassan al-Banna and Syed Qutb are blunt in justifying violence and terror to achieve these ends. They even advocate global Islamic imperialism in which non-Muslim countries should come under the Islamic fold. It is because of their inherent ideological/theological belief in “the Entire Earth as Allah’s Mosque,” where Islam alone must prevail. They have a genocidal, dystopian theological vision of the world in which ultimately Islam and Muslims will reign over everything and non-Muslims will disappear as they would accept Islamic supremacy.
They describe Islam and Muslims as a “Glorious and the ONLY True Faith” and all other religions as “false.” This presumption of Islamic superiority is used to normalize the Jihad and terrorism which they unleash not only against “infidels,” but also against fellow Muslims who disagree with JeI ideology or believe in pluralism and democracy. Ironically, JeI rhetoric also presents Muslims as victims of “Kaafirs” (infidels) in order to justify Jihad. JeI uses selective propositions, myths, and symbols from Islamic theology and history to rationalize their fascist and totalitarian version of Islamic history. JeI also wants Muslims to give up their ethnic, linguistic, and cultural identities for attaining a supra-identity of Muslim/Momin.
It is also worth mentioning that Jamat-e-Islami is a terribly patriarchal organisation which believes in male chauvinism and excludes women from public spheres. Its leadership has always been exclusively male. Jamat-e-Islami believes in oppressing Muslim women on the lines of the Taliban in Afghanistan. It played a notorious role in enacting the Hudood Ordinance during Zia’s regime in Pakistan, which snatched basic rights and dignity from women.
It is up to the conscious people of Kashmir, especially the youth, to call the bluff on this terrible organisation and its vicious ideology by consigning it to the dustbin of history. At the moment, JeI seems the greatest existential threat that Kashmiri society and civilisation faces.
