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Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

Pakistan: Muslim seminarians plot to launch jihad attacks

Apr 11, 2014 10:06 am By Robert Spencer

Muslim studentsWe are constantly told in the West that Islam rightly understood teaches peace and tolerance, and that jihad terrorists are not Muslims, but criminals, who are twisting and hijacking their religion’s true, peaceful teachings. If that were true, however, then the last people whom one would expect to get involved in jihad terror plots would be Muslim seminarians, who spend all their days studying the Qur’an and learning how to understand it properly. So how is it that these seminarians were involved in jihad plotting? The fact that they were explodes the entire mainstream narrative that prevails in the West. Not that anyone will notice.

“Pakistani Taliban plot with seminaries to assault capital – police,” by Mehreen Zahra-Malik for Reuters, April 11 (thanks to Lookmann):

(Reuters) – The Pakistani Taliban will coordinate with Islamist activists at major seminaries in or near the capital, Islamabad, to launch attacks if peace talks with the government fail, police said in a report obtained by Reuters.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif took power last year promising to end Pakistan’s insurgency through negotiations. Talks got going in February but have achieved little.

The Pakistani Taliban, allied with but separate from the Afghan Taliban, are fighting to overthrow the government and impose a strict version of Islam on the nuclear-armed nation of 180 million people.

They called a ceasefire beginning on March 1 to facilitate the talks but it officially ended on Thursday. It is unclear if the ceasefire will be extended.

Police said in the report that two well-known seminaries would support attacks in the capital and its twin city of Rawalpindi if the talks break down and the military moves against Taliban bases in areas bordering Afghanistan.

“If talks between the government and the Taliban fail … like-minded religious seminaries and mosques have been given the target of fully contributing in carrying out attacks,” police said in the report, which was prepared last month.

Police identified two well-known seminaries, or madrasas, on the outskirts of Islamabad. They said the two had already helped launch several attacks, including a 2009 assault on the army’s headquarters in Rawalpindi.

One is led by a cleric called Azizur Rehman Hazarvi. It provides “brain washing courses and lessons on sacrificing oneself for jihad”, police said in the report.

The other is run by Fazlur Rehman Khalil, who is on a U.S. terror watch-list and signed a 1996 fatwa or decree from Osama bin Laden in which he declared war on the United States.

At Khalil’s seminary, commanders provide “jihadi weapons training classes” to students from the ethnic Pashtun tribal areas which have long been militant recruiting grounds, police said.

The two seminaries also host fighters who come to carry out attacks and help with “all last minute preparations”, they said.

Militant fighters have set themselves up with activists at hardline mosques in Islamabad before.

In 2007, more than 100 people were killed when security forces assaulted the Red Mosque in the heart of the capital after well-armed fighters from the tribal areas and followers of the mosque’s radical clerics running a Taliban-style movement refused to surrender.

Police and government spokesmen declined to comment on the report but security officials who requested not to be identified said the information was correct. One police officer said 20 seminaries in Rawalpindi were being investigated for similar Taliban links.

“KILL THEM IN THE CITIES”

Khalil denied any connection with the Taliban and said his seminary was being threatened by insurgents for being pro-government.

“We openly believe that any attacks against Pakistan are wrong and against Islam,” Khalil told Reuters. “Ask the police to show me one arrested person who is linked to my seminary.”

The other cleric identified in the report, Hazarvi, was not available for comment.

The Pakistani Taliban spokesman was also not available to comment but a member of the Taliban leadership council said fighters were present in all major cities and would be “unstoppable” if the talks with the government broke down.

“If the government attacks us in the tribal areas, we will kill them in the cities,” he said. “By the grace of god, the Taliban today are more united and present everywhere.”

A bomb in a market on the outskirts of Islamabad on Wednesday killed 24 people. The Taliban denied responsibility.

Despite Khalil’s denial of militant links, police say he runs a faction called Ansarul Ummah, which draws support from several groups linked to al Qaeda. Investigators say Ansar is a front for the banned Harkat-ul-Mujahideen that Khalil founded in 1985.

Harkat was one of several militant groups patronised by Pakistan’s intelligence agencies, who have long considered such groups useful assets in case of war with arch enemy India and in promoting Pakistani interests in neighbouring Afghanistan.

A cleric knowledgeable about hardline seminaries said he believed that Khalil had links with the Taliban and described him as a middleman for Taliban and government negotiators. Khalil’s role in trying to get talks going has been reported in the media.

Muneebur Rehman, chairman of an alliance of seminaries, dismissed the findings of the police report and asked, if it were true, why authorities had not done anything.

Maybe because they’re sympathetic and/or compromised?

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Filed Under: "Tiny Minority of Extremists", Pakistan Tagged With: featured


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Comments

  1. Ayatrollah says

    Apr 11, 2014 at 10:29 am

    All praise to Allah.

    Pakistan has proven again and again they are the land of the true believers. May Allah continue to guild them.

  2. mortimer says

    Apr 11, 2014 at 6:23 pm

    Allah hates Pakistan because it isn’t Islamic enough. He will have to destroy it now from the inside.

    • bill says

      Apr 12, 2014 at 10:06 am

      Allah is the god of love, how can he hate anything? It must be wrong. Oh, but he is always getting angry and destroying people when they do not come up to his ‘high’ standards. Very much like Islamists in fact!

  3. Walter Sieruk says

    Apr 12, 2014 at 12:58 pm

    The murderous violence of the militant jihadism of Islam, Sura 9:11,112. 47:4. with all the violent scheming and deadly actions does bring to mind the wisdom of Thomas Paine form his book THE AGE OF REASON. For it reads “Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system.”

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