THE
WAHHABI INVASION: HOW SAUDI USES ITS FINANCIAL SOURCE IN ORDER TO RADICALIZE
KASHMIR
Via India Today
The famed Sufi tradition and spirit
of KASHMIRIYAT in the Valley, already ravaged by decades of insurgency, faces a
new challenge. Wahhabism, an austere, puritanical interpretation of Islam
promoted by SAUDI ARABIA, is making deep inroads into KASHMIR due to the
efforts of the Jamiat Ahl-e-Hadith, which calls itself a religious and welfare
organisation.
Background Information:
NEW MOVEMENT
Swelling congregations flock to
about 700 mosques that the organisation, which registered itself way back in
1958, has built across the Valley. Practically every village along the
picturesque, poplar-lined, 60-km stretch northwest of Srinagar towards Gulmarg
has one or more Ahl-e-Hadith-funded mosques. The new mosques and their
attendant madrassas make for a contrasting picture with the hundreds of
dilapidated mosques built over centuries in the age-old Sufi tradition. Unlike
worshippers at the older Sufi shrines, Ahl-e-Hadith mosques are overtly more
conservative: women wear burqas or at least a headscarf, while the men sport
beards and don skull caps; their traditional salwars end just above the ankle
in accordance with Wahhabi tenets.
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“Young Kashmiris are restive and
disillusioned. To them, Ahl-e-Hadith is a new, more committed and determined
option.”
Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami, CPI(M) legislator |
SAUDI ARABIA PLANS TO EXPAND MOSQUES AND MADRASSAS
CONSTRUCTIONS IN SOUTH EAST ASIA
Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) Police
and Central intelligence officers say Ahl-e-Hadith’s funding comes primarily
from SAUDI ARABIA. Based on US intelligence, they believe that the House of SAUD,
rulers of SAUDI ARABIA, had in 2005 approved a $35-billion (Rs 1,75,000 crore)
plan to build mosques and madrassas in SOUTH ASIA. “Wahhabi groups across Jammu
and Kashmir were beneficiaries of this largesse,” says a senior police officer.
SAUDI
CHARITY NGOS FUND WAHHABISM
Intelligence sources say SAUDI charities
and private donors route zakat (charity) money to J&K through illegal
hawala channels. It increases during the Eid season. Whenever mosque
managements are questioned about it, their explanation is that it is donation
or goat-skin money. All organisations registered under the Foreign
Contributions Regulation Act (FCRA), 1976, have to submit their annual balance
sheets to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). “Not one organisation registered
under the FCRA in J&K accounted for money coming in from SAUDI ARABIA,”
says a senior MHA official. However, there is no way to keep track of
funds received by organisations that are not registered with MHA. Most of the
organisations, which have contributed to the growth of Wahhabi and Ahl-e-Hadith
movements in KASHMIR, are not registered.
Background
Information:
See: WAHHABISM AT THE DOORSTEPS OF EUROPE
Sources in the Intelligence Bureau
admit that they are aware of the large-scale illegal funding, but add that they
cannot do much due to the sensitive internal situation. “We have taken up the
issue several times with the state police but nobody wants to get into it. It
suits them to ignore it,” claim sources.
Paramedics at a diagnostic centre
run by the Jamiatahl-e-Hadith in Barbarshah, Srinagar.
WORLDWIDE
SAUDI WAHHABI TACTICS - FROM BOSNIA TO ASIA: FUNDAMENTALIST INDOCTRINATION BY
WAHHABI IN MADRASSAS, SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES
Admitting massive cash inflows to
the Valley, a senior state police officer says that the bulk of the illegal
funds meant for Wahhabi groups and other hardline factions are physically
transferred across the Line of Control and at the trading station in Uri in the
form of hard currency-both real and fake INDIAN currency notes-taking advantage
of the barter trade being permitted between J&K and PAKISTAN-Occupied
Kashmir. “Checks by customs officers are at best cursory. There are no X-ray
machines and other standard international border control equipment. The army
merely observes the goings-on,” he says. The officer adds that it is impossible
to quantify the smuggled funds and that no agency-Central or state-has made any
effort to do so.
What concerns police and
intelligence officials more is the possibility of Lashkar-e-Toiba and
Tehreek-ul-Mujahideen militants relying on Ahl-e-Hadith members to provide them
hideouts. “Indoctrinated Wahhabis are the least likely to turn in Islamist
militants to the police,” says a senior intelligence official.
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“A knee-jerk response could be
dangerous. The organisation is doing a lot of good work and has a
considerable following.”
Mehbooba Mufti, People’s Democratic Party chief |
Scarcely visible a decade and a half
ago, Ahl-e-Hadith now claims over 15 lakh members, over 16 per cent of Jammu
and KASHMIR’S Muslims. Besides the 700 mosques and madrassas it built,
Ahl-e-Hadith is believed to have funded 150 schools, several colleges,
orphanages, clinics and medical diagnostic centres. It has also proposed an Rs
200-crore Islamic university, Transworld Muslim University (TWMU), in
Hyderpora, Srinagar, affiliated to leading SAUDI institutions. The proposal was
referred to a select committee after state Congress chief Saifuddin Soz opposed
it in the Legislative Council on October 9, 2010.
TWMU is planned as a
multi-disciplinary institution with a stated mission to “facilitate a new
generation of leaders in medicine, science, technology and religion based on
the Shariahâ”. Ahl-e-Hadith is already engaged in setting up key faculties
within its existing institutions across Srinagar. Accepting responsibility for
halting the proposal, Soz was reticent about his reasons for refusing
permission, since the proposal was cleared in February 2008 by then Congress Chief
Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad. Official sources claimed it was blocked, following
intervention by J&K Governor N.N. Vohra on the advice of security agencies.
Both the ruling National Conference and the Opposition People’s Democratic
Party (PDP) had supported the bill. PDP head Mehbooba Mufti cautions that
any decision to scuttle the university must be preceded by a thorough
investigation into Ahl-e-Hadith’s sources of finance. “A knee-jerk response
could be dangerous. After all, the organisation is doing a lot of good work and
has a considerable following,” she says.
LIKE IN BOSNIA, WAHHBISM IS EXPERIENCING INCREASING
POPULARITY AMONG YOUTH
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PURISTS ON THE PROWLWahhabi codes
run counter to the age-old Sufi tradition.
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The organisation’s rapid proliferation and increasing popularity among youth is making KASHMIR’S predominantly Sufi-Hanafi community anxious. “Opportunities for better education and secure future draw young KASHMIRIS for whom Ahl-e-Hadith represents a new, untested alternative,” says CPI(M) legislator Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami. The conservative Jamaat-e-Islami, too, is nervous at the prospect of ceding political ground. Ahl-e-Hadith’s feisty General Secretary Abdul Rehman Bhat, 65, insists, “Delhi is unwittingly playing into the hands of separatists like Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who are opposed to our university.” Hurriyat leaders Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq belatedly voiced support for the university in a joint statement in November. Non-committal on the Wahhabi proliferation, Geelani says the greatest threat to KASHMIRIYAT is from “the occupation forces deployed by INDIA”. But Tarigami says Ahl-e-Hadith is contrary to the Jamaat’s ideological framework: “The Jamaat- e-Islami leadership perceives a dilution in their own brand value.”
AHL-E-HADITH-RUN ENGLISH COACHING INSTITUTE
The Jammu and KASHMIR Peace
Foundation (JKPF), a Hanafi organisation devoted to reviving historic Sufi
shrines, believes that a sinister process of “fundamentalist indoctrination” is
under way in Wahhabi madrassas and schools. Based on a district-wise count,
JKPF’s Chairman Fayaz Ahmad Bhatt, 40, says nearly 7,000 mosques, including 911
in Srinagar, preach the orthodox Wahhabi brand of Islam. KASHMIR’S non-Muslim
minority, too, views the Wahhabi ingress as a “conspiracy to Talibanise KASHMIR”.
“The Taliban had also sprung from PAKISTANI madrassas funded by the Wahhabis,”
says former Kashmir University professor Kashi Nath Pandita.
Ahl-e-Hadith leaders vigorously deny
all links to Islamist extremist groups. “We are more liberal than those that
criticise us,” says Bhat. He points out that former Ahl-e-Hadith president
Maulana Showkat Ahmad Shah was assassinated by Tehreek-ul-Mujahideen militants
outside a mosque in Srinagar’s Maisuma locality on April 8 because he opposed
extremism.
Bhat talks about the
Ahl-e-Hadith-run English coaching institute for adolescent girls just above his
Barbarshah, Srinagar, office and the diagnostic facility and pharmacy on the
floor below that offers services at concessional rates. “No one is turned away,
not even CRPF (Central Reserve Police Force) jawans,: he says. He also
points to the Salafia Muslim Institute, the co-educational school with 800
children on Srinagar’s airport road in Parraypora. “We get strict about scarves
for girls only after Class VI,” says Principal Mufti Altaf. Students are
segregated by gender after Class II.
Ahl-e-Hadith has two registered
charities that are eligible to receive foreign funding under FCRA. But the
organisation denies receiving any SAUDI money after 1996. Bhat, however, admits
there are grants and scholarships for
students to go for studies in Jeddah. He claims that the money spent on
building new mosques and schools is raised via zakat. The total annual
collection from all 700 mosques Ahl-e-Hadith claims to run across the state is
around Rs 2.5. Even if one were to accept Bhat’s claim that it costs them only
Rs 10 lakh to build a new mosque, the organisation would have ended up spending
much more in building the 350 new mosques it has since 2004 than what it
gathered through zakat.
Mehbooba is not overly worried about
the Wahhabis because she believes KASHMIRIS would never surrender their
inherent freedom so easily. “Sufism is not merely a religious belief but a way
of life. Women here did not take to the burqa even when militancy was at its
peak,” she says. Her confidence is cold comfort, given the rapid growth of the
Ahl-e-Hadith’s influence.
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