A few days ago I noted that a little-known Indian jihadist group had sent an email claiming responsibility for last week’s bombings in Jaipur, in which over 50 people were killed.
But the email was more than just a claim of responsibility. In “Not just a claim, a manifesto for jihad” in The Hindu, May 17 (thanks to all who sent this in), Praveen Swami explains why:
Ever since newspaper and television stations received an e-mail from the terrorists who carried out the Jaipur serial bombings, commentators have busied themselves searching for messages hidden amidst its text.
In fact, the e-mail couldn’t be more transparent: as its authors assert at its outset, the document mailed to the media quite simply is the “Indian Mujahideen’s Declaration of Open War Against India.”
Given the stark fact that the bicycles shown in the video attached to the Indian Mujahideen e-mail were those used to execute the Jaipur serial bombings, there can be little doubt the message is credible.
It would be misleading, though, to understand the e-mail only as a claim of responsibility. Like a similar document issued by the Indian Mujahideen after the bombings of three trial-court buildings in Uttar Pradesh last year, the e-mail is “” despite its crude style and poor spelling “” a political manifesto.
According to the authors of the e-mail, the bombings were carried out to meet two purposes: first, to “blow part your tourism structure” and, second, to “demolish your faith in the dirty mud, in the name of Hanuman, Sita [and] Ram“.
At its outset, the e-mail links the attacks in Jaipur to the broader global jihad, warning the “USA and [Great] Britain in particular that [that] we Muslims are one across the globe.” Although there is no reference to the Islamist campaigns in Afghanistan or Iraq, the e-mail threatens that western visitors to India “will be welcomed by our suicide attackers.”
But the e-mail is, for the most part, concerned with explaining just why the Indian Mujahideen are conducting terrorist attacks. Violence, the e-mail states, is a means to “to clearly give our message to Kuffar-e-Hind [the infidels of India] that if Islam and Muslims in this country are not safe then the light of your safety will also go off very soon”.[…]
Some of the sharpest invective in the document, interestingly, is reserved for the clerics who issued an unequivocal condemnation of terrorism in February. After two days of discussions held at the historic Dar-ul-Uloom seminary in Deoband, Uttar Pradesh, the clerics had said terrorism was “un-Islamic,” and called on Indian Muslims to “continue their loyalty towards their motherland.”
It wasn’t at all an “unequivocal” condemnation of terrorism, as explained here. Still, the fact that it upset these jihadists makes it look better.
Describing the clerics as “dogs,” a “bunch of cowards”, “puppets of Hinduism” and “ullema-e-Kuffar”, or the disbeliever’s clergy, the e-mail interrogates “what terrorism is all about and who is a terrorist”. Who, it asks, are the terrorists: the “Hindus who killed the Muslims in Gujarat [and] Maharashtra or us who took revenge [qisas] through serial blast in Mumbai local trains?”
Citing from the Koran and the Hadith, or traditions of the Prophet, the Indian Mujahideen argues its actions have theological legitimacy. Scriptural calls for forgiveness relied on by the Deoband clerics, it says, are only relevant after a decisive military victory. Dialogue, it continues, is futile: “there is no existence of compromise between a believer and a non-believer.”
Islamic law, the e-mail asserts, allows the use of collective retaliation against civilians if they are infidels. Given that “a single [Muslim] home is attacked by thousands of [Hindu] terrorists, [a] single woman is raped by hundreds of men,” it becomes legitimate for “the mujahideen to go to any extent or use anything to crush the dignity and power of the enemy.”
According to the e-mail, all Indians are legitimate targets because “they have willingly elected their leaders and representatives in Parliament who draw up the policies which murder our children, dishonour our women, occupy our houses and plunder our wealth.” Moreover, Hindus “fund the terrorist organisations like Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Shiv Sena.”
In its hostility to the Deoband clerics” declaration, the e-mail is one with most south Asian jihadists. Soon after the declaration was issued, the Jamait ul-Mujahideen rejected it as “poison for all Islamic movements in the world.” For its part, the United Jihad Council said the declaration was “one-sided,” and promised to continue the jihad “until the Day of Doom.”…