The Hindu : National : Lashkar-linked magazine calls for attacks

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Dec 30, 2005

National

National

Lashkar-linked magazine calls for attacks

Praveen Swami

Demands `retaliation and requital' for fall of Dacca

NEW DELHI : The December issue of the Voice of Islam, a Pakistan-based journal closely affiliated to the Lashkar-e-Taiba, has called for "retaliation and requital" of the fall of Dacca to Indian forces on December 16, 1971.

Released in print and on the Internet earlier this month, the aggressive anti-India polemic in the Voice of Islam has fuelled speculation that its call for retaliatory attacks may have been connected to the timing of yesterday's tragic terrorist attack on the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.

Arguing that the injunctions of Islam forbid "military surrender and even running away from a battle," the current issue of the Voice of Islam demands that retaliation against India be made a part of "the expression of our national aims and military doctrine." December 16, it insists, needs to be remembered "not just with grief and frustration," but as a day "for retaliation and requital."

Authored the retired Pakistani naval commodore Tariq Majeed, the article on Pakistan's defeat in the war of 1971 claims the debacle was the consequence of "the subversion and sabotage that their Hindu population was committing." Majeed writes that the citizens of Bangladesh have now come to realise "the serious threat of subversion at home and turned to combat it."

In Majeed's vision, a renewed war against India would be made legitimate by what he describes as "the savage cruelties being committed by India on the Muslims in Occupied Kashmir." "However unpopular or unpalatable it may be," Majeed argues, "there is no better word than retaliation to give firm and clear expression to the desire for vindication of a wrong done, particularly when the matter is that of honour.

Voice of Islam's December issue also carries a long editorial opposing the ongoing India-Pakistan détente process, saying moves towards peace are part of a "conspiracy against Islam and Pakistan." Instead, it advocates that Pakistan support a war that is "making India bleed militarily and financially." Jihadist activities, the Voice of Islam editorial argues, have been represented as terrorist by those committed to a "vile and unholy Zionist Agenda."

According to the Voice of Islam, Pakistan's rulers ought instead to "understand that jihad is the mainstay of politics in Islam" since its success "paves the way for the establishment of a caliphate." Towards this end, it recommends that Pakistan's military "abandon everything like back-channel diplomacy to ensure that the sacrifices made by Kashmiris don't go [to] waste."

While the Voice of Islam's publishers, the ultra-right wing Jamaat-ud-Dawa, denies it has any connection with the Lashkar, this claim has been challenged in both media and scholarly work. Founded to aid the Islamist jihad against the Soviet Union's forces in Afghanistan, the Lashkar was a branch of the Markaz Dawat wal'Irshad [Centre for Prosletysation and Preaching], headed Hafiz Mohammad Saeed.

After Pakistan proscribed the Lashkar-e-Taiba under international pressure in 2002, Saeed renamed the Markaz the Jamaat-ud-Dawa [Organisation for Prosletysation], and announced it had severed its links with the Lashkar. However, Pakistani media accounts and academic work makes clear both groups still share offices as well as a common pool of cadre and leaders.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

National