How Jamaat-e-Islami Keeps Rebranding Itself in Kashmir
I. Ahmed Wani
The history of modern Kashmir cannot be fully understood without examining the contradictory journey of Jamaat-e-Islami Jammu & Kashmir (JeI-J&K). For three and a half decades, the organisation has functioned as both a religious-educational movement and the ideological mother of Hizbul Mujahideen, Kashmir’s largest home-grown militant group. It has preached patience and revolution in the same breath, condemned democracy as unbelief while demanding democratic rights, and built a parallel moral order in villages even as it cried victim when the state pushed back.
They have four pillars that have allowed JeI to survive every political earthquake in Kashmir: doctrinal flexibility, institutional penetration, controlled violence, and the politics of selective silence. Let us analyse them.
1. Doctrinal Flexibility: From Maududi to Opportunism
Abul Ala Maududi, the founder of Jamaat-e-Islami, opposed the creation of Pakistan and described nationalism as shirk (polytheism). Yet within Kashmir, JeI cadres first opposed the armed uprising in 1989–90, citing minority status and the need for long-term tarbiyat (training). When the armed movement became popular, the same leadership quietly birthed Hizbul Mujahideen in September 1989. South Asia Terrorism Portal records confirm that JeI provided the first commanders and the entire ideological justification for “jihad within Islamic limits” against the “secular Indian state”. When the tide turned after 2008 and armed jihad lost public support, JeI again pivoted—this time to “peaceful, democratic, constitutional” struggle. The core doctrine never changed (secular democracy remains kufr in its literature), but its public application bends with extraordinary elasticity.
2. Institutional Penetration: The Long Game
The late-1980s absorption of thousands of JeI sympathisers as government school teachers (the controversial Fahli-e-Aam Teacher scheme) was not an accident of governance; it was a strategic capture of the most powerful institution in rural Kashmir—the school. A generation of children grew up learning that loyalty to Islam meant distrust of India, that elections were haram, and that one day an Islamic state would replace the present order. Many of those teachers later became the recruitment officers, financiers, and safe-house providers for Hizbul Mujahideen. Even after the scheme was officially stopped, most retained their jobs. Intelligence estimates (2020–25) still list hundreds of serving and retired teachers as Over Ground Workers. This is not conspiracy theory; it is documented institutional continuity.
3. Controlled Violence and Moral Policing
In the 1990s, large parts of Anantnag, Kulgam, Pulwama and Shopian lived under Hizbul’s parallel administration. Cinema halls were shut, beauty parlours attacked, and “immoral” individuals punished—sometimes with death. The 1992–93 killing of three youths in Thajiwara for objecting to a commander’s misconduct is only one recorded case among dozens. Such violence was never random; it was ideological enforcement dressed as moral cleansing. When counter-insurgency forces and surrendered militants (Ikhwan) rose in the late 1990s, JeI quietly distanced itself from the gun, claiming Hizbul had “gone out of control”. The organisation kept its hands clean while the idea it planted continued to kill.
4. The Politics of Selective Silence
JeI’s loudest protests today are reserved for raids, arrests, and property attachments. Yet it has never once acknowledged—let alone apologised for—the civilian deaths, forced marriages, extortion, and disappearances carried out in its name during the 1990s. This selective memory is strategic. Acknowledgement would force accountability; silence allows the victim narrative to flourish unchallenged. When the Government of India banned JeI in 2019 and again in 2024, the organisation discovered constitutional fundamental rights it had spent decades condemning. The pattern is global: from 1971 Bangladesh to Zia-era Pakistan, Jamaat organisations have repeatedly used liberal institutions as shields after employing violence as swords.
The Numbers Tell the Same Story
Between 1988 and November 2025, terrorism in Jammu & Kashmir has claimed over 25,000 lives (SATP data). Hizbul Mujahideen, born directly out of JeI, was the dominant group through the bloodiest decade. Even in its decline—only one local recruit in 2024 against 160 in 2020—the support ecosystem nurtured by JeI schools, mosques, and teacher networks remains intact. The gun may be weaker, but the idea is not dead.
The Latest Avatar
The recent formation of the Justice and Development Front (JDF) and similar platforms is merely the newest mask in this long drama. It is designed to fill the “democratic vacuum” in rural panchayats and municipal bodies while carefully distancing itself from the Hizbul Mujahideen label. Old-school JeI leaders publicly criticise the Front as a “mistake”, playing a familiar hide-and-seek game with security agencies—denouncing the new outfit in press statements while quietly guiding it from the shadows. During the 2024 Assembly elections in Kulgam and other south Kashmir segments, candidates widely believed to be JeI-backed received generous injections from the traditional Bait-ul-Maal (the organisation’s collective fund meant for religious and welfare work). Money collected in the name of mosques and charity was diverted into election campaigns, revealing the same old machinery beneath a fresh coat of paint.
Jamaat-e-Islami in Kashmir does not need to win elections or control the legislature outright. Its genius has always been to create front after front, deny ownership when convenient, and retain real influence on the ground. Until Kashmir’s political class and civil society treat JeI not as an electoral reality to be managed but as an ideology to be openly debated and defeated, the organisation will keep producing new avatars. The elastic ideology has not broken after thirty-five turbulent years. It has only learned to stretch further—and to rebrand itself whenever the old name becomes too heavy to carry.
