Both India and Mumbai have been the target of terrorist attacks in the recent past by groups identifying themselves as Indian Mujahedin or the Students' Islamic Movement of India. E-mails sent to various media outlets and captured gunmen have claimed that the attackers seek release from prison of Indian Muslims and an end to what they claim is persecution of Indian Muslims.
Claims such as these are in fact only incidental to the central reason for these horrific attacks. Most of the Indian sub-continent — that now includes the predominantly Hindu state of India and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan as well as the People's Republic of Bangladesh — once belonged to the Islamic umma under the Mughal emperors. The division of British India into today's multiple nation states split Muslims from Muslims, some of whom seek to regain lost territory for Islam.
India, as an increasingly prosperous free market democracy, whose nuclear arsenal faces off against Pakistan's turbulent and equally nuclear-armed society, is an obligatory target for jihadist groups. As long as India remains democratic, free and Hindu, jihad to compel its return to Islam is mandatory, according to Islamic doctrine.
Strategically, the Mumbai attacks inevitably will precipitate a new crisis in Indian-Pakistani relations. The two had been on a tentative path to some measure of rapprochement meant to step down tensions from a series of earlier jihadist attacks including the 2006 Mumbai commuter train bombings and the assassination of Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto almost one year ago.
Now, with Pakistan already facing increasing pressure from NATO coalition forces along its northern border with Afghanistan as well attacks from its own internal extremist elements, the certain accusations from India could well tip these two historical adversaries over the edge into a renewed and dangerous confrontation.
Focus against Taliban and al-Qaida fighters in its Northwest Frontier Provinces and Federally Administered Tribal Areas will shift back to the tense border with India, including the perpetually conflicted Kashmir valley. Calculated instigation of renewed confrontation between India and Pakistan could well take attention away from the hunt for high-value targets, which has been notching up an impressive record of success in recent weeks.
The international community must not allow these jihadist tactics to work. The killers' deliberate focus on singling out for attack some of Mumbai's best-known tourist treasures, such as the Taj Mahal Hotel, the Oberoi Tower, and its magnificent train station, in addition to the Jewish cultural center at Chabad House and American and British citizens, leaves no doubt about the real target of this military-style assault: it is Dar al-Harb which Islamist jihadis are determined to bring into the Dar al-Islam.
All who are thankful for the freedoms of liberal tolerant society under rule of man-made law must understand that just as Mumbai was the target this time, and Bali, Glasgow, Jerusalem, London, Madrid, New York, and Washington, D.C. have been targets before, in the eyes of these jihadis, we are all harbis (enemies).
We are all the targets of those who would impose the harsh strictures of Sharia on the entire world. Whether by military assault with bombs and gunfire, or through the soft jihad of dawa and infiltration, jihad is aimed at conquest. That we still have the ability to recognize that objective and oppose it with every means at the disposal of a free society is reason for all of us to be thankful.
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Clare M. Lopez is the vice president of the Intelligence Summit (www.intelligencesummit.org) and a professor at the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies (www.cicentre.com).
1 comment:
Valuable resource of Mumbai news summaries: http://www.ng2000.com/blog/2008/11/29/mumbai/
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