India in the face of global jihad

[OhioChick]

The involvement of the two Indian Muslims in the terrorist attacks in the UK has raised the question whether it is time to re-evaluate the trend of Muslim radicalism in India.

By Sujoyini Mandal for RSIS (13/08/07)


Is India now on the map of global jihad? The arrests of two Indian Muslims, Sabeel Ahmed and Kafeel Ahmed, from the UK in connection with the failed London and Glasgow bombings on 29-30 June, seem to suggest this. Both Indians are young, well educated established professionals, who represent India's Muslim middle class. Significantly they belong to the state of Karnataka, where literacy among Muslims is higher than other parts of the country, and particularly from Bangalore, the cosmopolitan Information Technology (IT) hub of India. Kafeel Ahmed keenly followed events in Afghanistan and Palestine. Evidence gathered from his house includes speeches delivered by Osama Bin Laden, graphic videos of tortured Chechen terrorists and online manuals on how to prepare bombs.

This is the first time that Indian professionals working abroad are being directly linked to a terrorist attack overseas. The implications of this development are two-fold. On the one hand, it portrays the increasing identification of Indian Muslims with the cause of global jihad. On the other hand, the involvement of educated professionals in terrorism could be detrimental to India's economic and business interests.

The shift
From 1989, with the rise of insurgency in Kashmir, Indian Muslims, albeit a minority, have sympathized with the cause of terrorist groups whose focus was primarily the liberation of Kashmir. However, today what is being seen is a shift in mindset. The emerging pattern now points to indigenous Islamist radicals, many of them educated, middle-class professionals, who are identifying themselves more and more with the movement for global jihad, being spearheaded by groups like al-Qaida and its allies.

This trend was first noticed in the profiles of some of the perpetrators arrested in connection with the attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001 and the Mumbai bombing in 2003 and 2006. For the 2003 blasts in Mumbai, of the 23 arrested, there were five engineers, three physicians, a business-school graduate, two college graduates and a doctoral student. These people apparently kept keen interest on the 9/11 attacks. Muzammil Sheikh and Tanvir Ansari, two of the suspects implicated in the 2006 train bombings in India, are a computer professional and an Indian traditional doctor respectively. Additionally, examples of Mohammed Abdul Mateen and Jalees Ansari, both doctors by profession are manifestations of a rising radical consciousness among the Muslim middle class in India. Interestingly, Muslim radicals with Western educational backgrounds tend often to be educated in the sciences and engineering. This phenomenon reflects the tendency of such radicals to have been transformed by an increasing consciousness of religion while in university. They tend to read religious texts literally, just like their engineering or mathematics texts, unlike social science students who adopt a more critical approach to their academic texts.

http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?ID=17975