Sunday, January 18, 2009

Saudis call to curb 'extremist' fatwas

Saudi Arabia is calling for tougher guidelines on issuing fatwas, or Muslim religious edicts, in order to combat the spreading of what Riyadh calls "ill-considered" fatwas issued by unqualified scholars.
Ruler of Saudi Arabia, King...

Ruler of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud.
Photo: AP [file]
Slideshow: Pictures of the week

The call is part of Saudi Arabia's efforts to stem religious extremism.

Saudi Arabia has been fighting a homegrown terrorist threat since 2003.

Groups belonging to, or inspired by international Al-Qa'ida, are trying to undermine the monarchy in Saudi Arabia, which has faced criticism because of its alliance with the West, and especially with the United States.
RELATED

* The Media Line

The country has arrested and tried thousands of terror suspects and is trying to weed out extremist elements planning terror attacks, recruiting operatives or spreading extremist ideology through the Internet.

More than 170 Muslims scholars from around the world are currently gathered in Mecca for a five-day conference organized by the Mecca-based Muslim World League's Fiqh (Islamic Jurisprudence) Academy.

The Muslim world is being plagued by a tendency to deliver fatwas by unqualified people, Saudi King Abdullah Bin Abd Al-Aziz said in a statement read out at the conference.

This is especially prevalent on satellite channels, the Internet and other forms of communication, he said.

Some of these edicts were being issued without any criterion by biased, ignorant, careless or extremist individuals posing as religious experts, the king added.

"They have been abusing Islam and distorting its noble values," which could contaminate the minds, faith and conduct of Muslims youth, he said, according to ArabNews.

Westerners associate the word "fatwa" with edicts on warfare and death sentences, such as the fatwa seeking the death of author Salman Rushdie after the Iranians found his writing offensive to Islam.

However, fatwas are in fact very diverse in content and are a guideline for endless mundane matters, such as whether a Muslim can consume caffeine, play football, and many other matters.

A fatwa can be issued by anyone with the appropriate training and qualification for the task, usually a Muslim with high standing in his community.

But some Muslims scholars complain that extremist scholars create a warped portrayal of Islam by taking Quranic verses and other Muslim scriptures out of context.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1232275663025&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

In US, Lashkar-e-Toiba chief's kin raised funds for jihad

In US, LeT chief's kin raised funds for jihad
12 Jan 2009, 0123 hrs IST, Indrani Bagchi, TNN
Print Email Discuss Share Save Comment Text:
NEW DELHI: For all the protestations that the Jamaat-ud-Dawa is a charitable organisation and Hafiz Mohammed Saeed is an injured innocent, it's
clear that the organisation and Saeed's family, in particular, have been in the crosshairs of US government for several years and a couple of Saeed's family members are already in US custody.

As the Lashkar-e-Taiba grew in stature, profile and links to violent terrorism in Pakistan, curiously, its amir Saeed's family kept making tracks to the US to live and work there over the past decade.

Over the years, LeT aka Jamaat-ud-Dawa has morphed from an ISI-sponsored terror outfit against India to become a global jihadist organisation with increasing ties to Al Qaeda.

The US has been on its trail for some time now, but could not do much because the JuD had sprouted roots in almost all areas of Pakistani life. The Mumbai attacks resurrected US security agencies' interest in this outfit.

And the reason for that, sources said, was that Saeed's family had been making determined tracks to the US -- to live there as imams and preach and raise funds for jihad.

The evidence for that came in bits and pieces. The first to land in the US was Muhammad Masood, Saeed's brother, who arrived in 1987 on a J-1 exchange visitor visa. He lived in the Boston area, working odd jobs until he started teaching at the Islamic Academy of New England at the Islamic Center of New England in Sharon, Massachusetts. Masood was arrested in November 2006 and charged with visa fraud and other unnamed crimes.

The second family member to arrive was Abdul Hannan, Saeed's brother-in-law (married to Masood's sister). Hannan arrived in the late-1990s, coming to the US through another member of their organisation, Muhammad Khalil, who is serving time currently in a US jail. By 1998, Hannan himself was in jail, also in Massachusetts.

He was out by 2002, and for the next couple of years floated around another US state, Rhode Island, also as an imam, before returning, as imam to Massachusetts. Hannan was again arrested in November 2006 with his brother-in-law Masood. So far, there were two members of Saeed's family in US jails.

The third member, another brother of Saeed named Hamid arrived in the US in 2001 for a programme at Harvard University. He returned to the US later in the year and became an imam at the Islamic Society of Greater Worcester. In October 2007, Hamid was deported to Pakistan, on visa irregularities. But one of the reasons, said sources, was that the US discovered that he used to run a safe house for LeT terrorists in Moon Chowk, Lahore, and that his imam activities in the US were all about teaching jihad to youngsters there.

By 2003, LeT offices were visible in California and Virginia. After the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan, international organisations also discovered that the LeT had become an outsourcing centre, their terror training camps were also used to train other terrorists from other groups.

Basically, they became more anti-US, anti-west along with their anti-India fundamentals than ever before. The culmination of that was shown in the Mumbai attacks on November 26.

Bruce Riedel, a close foreign policy aide to US president-elect Barack Obama and author of the book `The Search for Al Qaeda', told TOI, "Mumbai demonstrated that Al Qaeda's ideology of global jihad has been adopted by LeT. The targets were Qaeda's targets: Israel America and India. I suspect that Qaeda may have had a hand in the planning given the longstanding and close ties between the two."

Gradually, the hunt for Al Qaeda and the hunt for terrorist groups targeting India are becoming the same. Which explains the intense interest of the international intelligence community in the investigations into the Mumbai attacks.

Daniel Markey, currently with the Council for Foreign Relations and earlier with the US State Department, told US media last year that US' greater concerns was that the LeT was becoming too allied to global jihad and not just an anti-India group.

Hussain Haqqani, currently, Pakistan ambassador in the US, wrote in his book `Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military', "They have managed to fly under the radar of the global network of law enforcement and still maintain their global links. But they have a grandiose ideological agenda and the capacity to wage violence, which makes them very dangerous."
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/In_US_LeT_chiefs_kin_raised_funds_for_jihad/articleshow/3964960.cms

Pak Jihadi groups recruiting young children for Jihad, suicide attacks: MQM

Pak Jihadi groups recruiting young children for Jihad, suicide attacks: MQM
January 17th, 2009 - 5:51 pm ICT by ANI -
x
Send to a Friend:
Your name:
Your email:
Friend name:
Friend email:
Send to a friend:

Karachi, Jan.17 (ANI): The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) Party has claimed that banned religious organizations in Pakistan were busy recruiting minors for Jihad (holy war) and using them as suicide attackers.
According to a press release by the London based secretariat of the movements investigation committee (IC), various banned organizations are involved in persuading minors and youngsters for Jihad and after keeping them at various offices, they are sent to Waziristan for training.
Young boys are being trained for bombings, suicide attacks and in the use of modern weaponry in training institutions located in the tribal areas, The Daily Times quoted the press release, as stating.
The report claimed that the banned organizations are increasing their dominance in newer areas, which earlier used to be centered in and around Pakhtoon.
It also said that most of these young Jihadis are taken to training camps without their parentsconsent. (ANI)

http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/south-asia/pak-jihadi-groups-recruiting-young-children-for-jihad-suicide-attacks-mqm_100143629.html

Now, ISI training muslim women for jihad in J&K

Now, ISI training women for jihad in J&K
18 Jan 2009, 0127 hrs IST, M Saleem Pandit, TNN
Print Email Discuss Share Save Comment Text:
JAMMU: At the time when militancy in Jammu & Kashmir has fallen to its lowest levels in two decades, desperation across the border is evident
with Pakistan's ISI preparing women terrorists squads to fuel violence in the state.

The revelation of a Pakistani woman, Asiya Bibi (23), who is in J&K police's custody, that ISI is training about 100 women for terror assignments in the state has sent the security establishment into a tizzy. Asiya, arrested from Rajouri along the LoC in November last year, told her interrogators that the women fidayeen were undergoing arms training in various terror camps at Bimbar, Kotli and Sena in PoK. "In Bimbar, dozens of women are receiving arms training along with men,'' an interrogator quoted Asiya as saying. "Pakistan army soldiers are training women in Sensa and Kotli while ISI men are incharge at Bimbar.''

Asiya, wife of a Pakistani soldier Mohammed Sajjad, confessed that ISI had deputed her for spying along the LoC. "She was on mission to take photographs of the fencing and collect information on the deployment along the LoC,'' a source said. She also told her interrogators that ISI was initially planning to push 17 girls into India to mix with the local population. "As per the plan, they were to marry locals and finally act as spies,'' the source said.

But an intelligence source refused to accept Asiya's confession and said she could be exaggerating. "Asiya had a quarrel with her husband and crossed over to this side in a fit of rage,'' he said.

Jammu SSP Manohar Singh said women have been involved in terrorism in the past too. "Dozens of women may be directly involved in militancy but most of them are driven by money and not conviction,'' Singh said. He said last year in March, police identified six such women. "We arrested three of them and kept the rest under surveillance,'' he said.

In November 2005, a Jaish-e-Mohammed suicide bomber Yasmeena (22) had blown herself up at Awantipora in south Kashmir's Pulwama district. In 2006, police arrested an LeT terrorist Khalida Akhter, who had undergone arms training in PoK in 2002. "She was sent back with a mission to befriend security forces and kill them,'' a police officer said. Khalida was provided a safe house in Srinagar from where she coordinated terrorist activities along with two of her associates.
In March 2008, police arrested two women Rafiqa Begum and Rubeena Begum after intercepting an ammunition-laden vehicle on its way from Doda to Qazigund in the Valley. "The two told their interrogators that they were assisting the terrorists for money. They also confessed to having delivered Rs 2 lakh hawala money to LeT commanders Abu Yasir and Mohammed Iqbal in Doda,'' SSP Manohar Singh said.


http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Now_ISI_training_women_for_jihad_in_JK_/articleshow/3994900.cms

The Changing Patterns of Terrorism in India": a Study by Orkash

The Changing Patterns of Terrorism in India": a Study by Orkash PDF Print E-mail
“In the wake of the Mumbai terror siege, the challenge today for India's security machinery is not only tackling terror attacks but also providing a tactical response to the changing operational and ideological undercurrents that terrorism in the country is presently going through.” - Ashish Sonal, CEO, Orkash Services Pvt. Limited.

Terrorism is not new to India – but what is unique now is the evolved characteristics and the enhanced operational capabilities of the terrorist outfits and their operatives. Surprisingly, India is ranked second, right behind Iraq in the number of terrorist activities (excluding Jammu and Kashmir) despite the fact it is not a country in conflict. In the study titled “The changing patterns of terrorism in India”, Orkash has identified the bellwether currents that define the new breed of terrorism which is sending 'wake up' waves across the security machinery of the country. About 2-3 years ago – more precisely before the 'defining' year of 2008 – terror attacks mostly included only sporadic blasts in the target cities. The frequency of major terror attacks was also comparatively moderate – 4 terror attacks in 2007, 3 in 2006, and 1 attack in 2005. But 2008 was different – there were at least 12 highly synchronized large terror attacks since the beginning of the year.

The 'new breed' of terrorism in India is confident, bold in actions and increasingly sophisticated. In the study leveraging upon the expert domain knowledge and proprietary research work, Orkash identified the prominent undercurrents of the changing patterns of terrorism in India:

a) For the first time ever, the (Islamic) terrorism has a pan-India network of operatives and logistics support. Our calculations designed to quantify the size and scale of organizational resources needed to carry out terror attacks that happened in Indian cities between May and November 2008 indicate the requirement for at least 80 to 120 well trained terrorist operatives not including sleeper cells and those involved in logistic support. This is a very large number.

b) The trend towards larger and sophisticated attacks - i.e. terrorists are exploiting the increasingly abundant communication infrastructure and information flow for their collaboration, creation of covert support networks, financing, intelligence gathering, logistics and operational execution. The high degree of planning and existence of large all-India terror network is exuded by the fact that the terror outfits did not feel the need to even give a day's break between the serial blasts in two Indian cities (Bangalore and Ahmedabad).

c) The ideological underpinning of the movement is undergoing a change, as reflected by the operatives increasingly having a local urban face, contrary to what used to happen a few years back. Increasingly, indigenous organizations such as SIMI have been created on the lines of the Deobandi ideology of extreme fundamentalism. Another Domino effect is the surfacing of Indian-origin tech savvy terrorists working in prominent IT companies (indicative of the diluting definition of 'infiltrators').

d) There has been a major shift in the targeting patterns of the terror outfits as is evident in the recent attacks wherein posh business and commercial institutions have been attacked. Terrorists are increasingly likely to target westerners and businesses, and employ new tactics such as hostage-taking and random shootings at peak hours in crowded places. The excessive nature of the terror attacks is in itself a big concern. This can further trigger a wave of copycat terror incidents with a change in the tactics and targets of terrorists. The terror groups have realized that large-scale attacks in critical business hubs of India helps them realize their objectives much faster than sustaining insurgency in the border states of the country.

In its study, Orkash recommends that as an immediate priority, terrorism in India needs to be handled more as a matter of internal security and not be dominated by its trans-national context alone, particularly given the existing geo-political scenario in south Asia. The need of the hour is the development and implementation of an evolved incident response, clear definition of responsibilities of the numerous security forces/agencies, easy mobilization of emergency security teams, better investigative capabilities and coordinated and expedited response to intelligence inputs. Although, India's security infrastructure is suitably large to support the emerging demands, the shortcomings has been primarily due to the uncoordinated tactical response and the absence of the necessary skills to undertake an effective operational management.

http://pr-usa.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=160264&Itemid=95