NEW DELHI: Eight weeks after the detention of Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the group's parent political organisation has resumed issuing public threats of terrorist operations directed against India.

Last month's issue of the Jamaat-ul-Dawa's house journal Majallat al-Dawa has proclaimed that its fidayeen commandos would soon "butcher every Hindu and Kashmir will be freed." The magazine flatly noted that "our fidayeen love to slit the throats of Hindu dogs," adding the "Hindus understand the language of knives and guns only."

Majallat al-Dawa's express linkage of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa with terrorism flies in the face of official Pakistani protestations that the organisation has no links with the internationally proscribed terror group. In a recent interview to The Hindu , Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri argued that the Jamaat-ud-Dawa "is doing charitable work." He said no proof had emerged that its members were engaged in acts of terrorism.

Dr. Saeed himself has been issuing threats of violence from his home-turned-prison. "I will not sit in comfort," he told the Nawa-i-Waqt in a September 9 interview, "unless I emancipate the Muslims from the atrocities of India, Israel, the U.S. and Britain. Jihad will not stop in Kashmir, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine with my arrest. I am an ordinary person. There will be thousands of Hafiz Saeed who will take birth from this soil."

Hardline polemic has often preceded waves of Lashkar violence against India. Speaking at the Takmeel-e-Pakistan Conference in Lahore on August 14, 2003, Dr. Saeed argued that the "Muslims of Aligarh, Calcutta, and Bombay are being killed because they were involved in the crime of creating Pakistan. Today, the voice of jihad has reached the Muslims of Ahmedabad and Gujarat."

India is not the only subject of recent Lashkar invective — a fact of no small significance given that Dr. Saeed was detained after allegations emerged that the terror group had trained members of terror cells which targeted the U.S. and the United Kingdom.

Speaking at the al-Qudsia mosque in Lahore on September 27, Jamaat-ud-Dawa second-in-command Abdul Rehman Makki described Jews as "the worst and eternal enemies of Prophet Muhammad and Islam." "The Jews," he continued, "are the worst nation. They are the most sinful people. They do all the forbidden things."

Mr. Makki proceeded to demand that Pakistan's "foreign policy should be the Koran. Koran gives the Muslims the courage to stand up. A foreign policy that hinges on the U.S. policy can never be strong and stable." He ended his talk with a taunt evidently directed at Pakistan's Foreign Office spokesperson Tasnim Aslam: "Such countries which follow the U.S. policies appoint female spokesmen."

Other prominent Islamists have thrown down similar challenges to the regime of President Pervez Musharraf. On August 4, the Daily Ummat quoted Pakistan's former army chief General Mirza Aslam Beg as arguing that "Iran should attack Israel and Pakistan should attack India. This is the only way to bring a change in the world. Otherwise, humiliation will be the future of the Muslims."

Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal leader Hafiz Husain Ahmad asserted last month that the "concept of Islamic jihad cannot be left to a formal army or the state" — again a frontal challenge to General Musharraf. "In fact," he argued, "in Islam there is no concept of state or the formal army." Mr. Ahmad ended by demanding that ``every person above the age of 18 and under 60 should be provided jihad training.''

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