If we see the terror landscape across the world, alarming signs are surfacing. While it is quite evident in disturbed countries, like Nigeria and Somalia, its outreach to big and stable Islamic countries is a new and disturbing phenomenon seen in the last decade.
Terror follows the path of radicalisation but the threat of mass radicalisation is limited when a terror outfit follows the path of direct war, carrying out assault operations on the state. The effect is mostly localised and fails to grab the masses largely to follow the path of radicalisation because those terrorists are not someone living in the house next door who can come and radicalise his or her neighbours. They lack social contact. They are not like some regular preachers from mosques or similar religious institutions who can indoctrinate masses in the name of religion.
That is what social jihad does.
The Britannica Encyclopedia defines jihad as a meritorious struggle. It “primarily refers to the human struggle to promote what is right and to prevent what is wrong”. Merriam-Webster defines jihad as a holy war waged on behalf of Islam as a religious duty. Mary Habeck, Associate Professor of Strategic Studies, Johns Hopkins University, calls it a just war that is both an individual and communal duty.
But the history of jihad always saw distortions, the Britannica Encyclopedia says, giving it a military sense, with every war against non-Muslims called jihad to expand the Islamic rule. Jihad was to protect your home turf but was ultimately used as a tool of aggression. The jihadists saw and made their followers believe Islam was under attack. They wanted to spread the territory of Islam to every corner of the earth. They, in fact, wanted to convert the whole world into an Islamic regime. For them, jihad, a meritorious struggle, was converted into “militant jihad”, a concept co-opted by the terror organisations of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Now, clerics or preachers, the most important part of Muslim society, are taking that militant jihad to the next level. We can term it “social jihad”. Its fundamentals are simple but deeply penetrating. Social jihadists are not going to challenge the ruling governments directly by carrying out large-scale bomb attacks or mass shootings or truck rampages or plane attacks.
Instead, they are now challenging the masses on their faith and, in turn, radicalising them. They are creating tools that will be their weapons to directly challenge the governments to force them down, something that is not possible for a big terror group like al-Qaeda or Islamic State.
They are mass radicalising people to become their weapons, with youngsters being their primary recruits. Two big Muslim countries are good examples – Pakistan and Bangladesh.
PAKISTAN
The rise of the radical form of the Barelvi sect of Sunni Islam has put Pakistan, the second largest Muslim country, on a dangerous path. The country that used pushing terror in its neighbouring countries like India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan as its unstated state policy, is now among the most terror-affected countries because of that policy adopted since the 1980s when it used to train Mujahideens to fight against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. It chose to radicalise a section of its population, to create and nurture Mujahideens, who became the future terrorists once the Soviet Afghan invasion was over.
DEOBANDI V/S BARELVI
The fight for influence between Deobandi and Barelvi Islam had mostly gone in favour of the former, a more aggressive and radicalised version of Islam followed by many terror groups like the Taliban, JeM, and TTP. Pakistan, which made jihad its state policy by supporting Mujahideens in Afghanistan against the Russian invasion, became close to Deobandi militant groups to further its geopolitical interests. The Deobandis with a hard-liner interpretation of religion and open to being Mujahideen to defend “pure Islam” gelled well with the requirement of the ruling establishment of Pakistan and its army.
Barelvis, always seen as moderate Muslims, did not fit into what Pakistan needed. They, an important part of Pakistan’s society and politics since 1947, in fact, had become a marginalised Sunni Muslim group for Pakistan’s rulers after the 1980s. For them, Barelvis, with their approach to a softer version of Islam, were no match for aggressive and extremist Deobandis.
Deobandis, now one of the core elements of Pakistan’s state policy, took to cornering the Barelvis even more. Militant groups following Deobandi Islam, in fact, targeted the Barelvis, Shiites, and Ahmadis alike, calling them non-Muslims. They blamed the Barelvis for blasphemy, for following polytheism, for their devotion to Sufi saints, which they considered a crime in Islam. Sufi shrines were targeted with bomb attacks.
The Barelvis simply lost the power corridors in Pakistan. Politically they had become insignificant.
TEHREEK-E-LABBAIK PAKISTAN (TLP)
The clerics of the Barelvi sect probably saw just one way out of this crisis they felt they were in – to become more radical than the followers of Deobandi Islam – and chose blasphemy and protection of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, criticised the world over for punishing people with a death sentence, as the core strategy.
But to follow their core agenda, unlike the Deobandi terror groups, they needed people’s support. They needed to make their voices heard and accepted by the ruling establishments. They chose social jihad to push their cause.
And here the TLP comes into the picture. 2011 was the year of its genesis. The current run of mass radicalisation began at the same time. Salman Taseer, governor of the Punjab province of Pakistan, spoke against the country’s blasphemy laws. He met Asia Bibi in jail, a Pakistani Christian woman sentenced to death in a blasphemy case in November 2010. He tried to defend her.
Radical clerics organised large protests with thousands of people criticising Taseer’s views. One such protest raised the slogan “Gustakh-e-Rasool ki ek hi saza, sar tan se juda, sar tan se juda (beheading is the only punishment for speaking against the Prophet)”.
The result– Taseer was shot dead by his own bodyguard. The cleric who raised the slogan, Khadim Hussain Rizvi, justified the murder, hailing the guard as a hero. He established Tehreek-E-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) as a movement in 2015 to release Taseer’s killer, got wide support from society, and converted his campaign into a political party after the execution of the bodyguard in 2016. TLP held protests across the country before and after the execution that were attended by tens of thousands. It called Taseer’s guard a martyr and converted his burial ground in Islamabad into a shrine that now witnesses big gatherings regularly.
THE THREAT OF TLP
TLP, within six years of its establishment, has become the largest religious political party in Pakistan. Just a year after its establishment, it got 8% votes in a by-election to the seat vacated by ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in Lahore. It got 2.19 million votes in the 2018 Pakistan general election and was the 5th largest political party in terms of the vote share. The party fielded 178 candidates for Pakistan’s National Assembly, its top parliamentary body, and in total 566 candidates. It won two seats in the Sindh assembly.
A FORMIDABLE FORCE
TLP has become the single-point source of mob violence in the country – something that Deobandi terror groups lack. Its members are violent but also political. They are like street hooligans but they carry the weight of their numbers.
They force the Pakistani establishment to surrender before their demands and protests. In 2017, the Shahid Khaqan Abbasi government removed economist Atif Mian, an Ahmadi, from its advisory council after the TLP held protests against his appointment.
In April 2021, TLP cadres organised a violent protest across Pakistan. They were angry with France for honouring a teacher murdered for showing the Prophet’s cartoon in a classroom. Their demand was the expulsion of the French ambassador and closure of the French embassy. The ensuing clashes saw the group banned for a brief period, its leader arrested, and 10 police officials and 11 civilians killed. But, under intense public pressure, the Pakistani government was forced to remove the ban and free the leader.
Clearly, Pakistan is in a grave danger that it doesn’t realise. A large part of its society is being transformed into having a radical mindset with tools of social jihad. Pakistan, in fact, can be the next Afghanistan from socio-religious and political perspectives. The Barelvi sect of Islam, emerging as a major force, will push the country into a civil war-like situation with many warring groups such as the Barelvis, Deobandis, and the ruling establishment with its army fighting for space.
BANGLADESH
Politically, Bangladesh, the fourth largest Muslim country, is different from Pakistan. A distant cousin and part of Pakistan till 1971, it won itself freedom with India’s help to emerge as an independent nation and chose to follow the path of a parliamentary republic keeping religion constitutionally separate from politics.
Bangladesh was deeply in the grip of radical clerics and preachers/orators during the 1971 war and though they are now paying for the atrocities they committed on the Bangladesh citizens in collusion with the Pakistan army, the world also cannot forget the fact that it took Bangladesh almost four decades to start the process to crack down on these perpetrators. Why so? Because they were from religious outfits and enjoyed support from a large section of the population.
With the crackdown machinery starting its operation, the perpetrators, from religious parties led by Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami also started pushing a simultaneous measure, propagating more and more fundamentalism in society, as happened in Pakistan’s case with TLP, with religious indoctrination being the main tool to radicalise and attract the masses.
The push gave rise to a radicalised movement pulling youngsters like what Pakistan saw with TLP’s rise. Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), a movement started by a preacher, exploited this opportunity to emerge as a big menace. ABT, now known as Ansar al-Islam Bangladesh, became a big social threat and people-puller at the same time. Its ultra-radical, extremist views drew wealthy Muslims students into its fold in the name of blasphemy initially and soon it spread to the whole country with people from other walks of life also becoming its supporters. ABT, an AQIS front in Bangladesh, became so big that many analysts counted it among the largest militant groups in the country. It achieved a meteoric high in its social spread like TLP.
Much like TLP, blasphemy is the tool used by ABT militants to justify their actions and radicalise and win public support. Like TLP, blasphemy and religious indoctrination is the method ABT is using to achieve its social jihad in Bangladesh. But unlike TLP, it works in small teams across the country and routinely targets and publicly assassinates those it alleges were involved in blasphemous incidents, and its victims include minorities as well. Its brutality, represented publicly, is a message both to believers and non-believers to follow the line and represents the most radical form of terrorism, or Wahhabi extremism, followed by al-Qaeda.
BAN BUT NO BAN
ABT is the main terror group behind targeted public murders of many anti-Islamic bloggers, and secular, and liberal people in the country. The victims also include Bangladesh expats and the series of murders has invited much international condemnation. The outfit decided to lie low after big terror events like the Holey Artisan Bakery attack in Dhaka in July 2016 to dodge the security apparatus but its social jihad was always active, recruiting and radicalising people.
The extent of public support to the terror groups can be gauged by the fact that Bangladesh government was unable to provide security to the secular-liberal voices in the country and instead chose to silence them and their activism. Many publications closed their businesses and many chose to leave the country.
Though unlike TLP, ABT continues to remain a banned organisation in Bangladesh, its outreach and use of religious tools for social jihad are only increasing as can be seen by a spate of attacks on minorities, their properties, and their temples in the country. The last eight years, from 2013 to 2021, saw over 3,600 attacks on Hindus, says a not-for-profit report.
ONLINE EXTREMISM
ABT propagandists and senior members are adept in cyberspace. They use the virtual world for finding real enemies, propaganda, radicalisation, and recruitment. The outfit is targeting the Bangladesh hinterland to spread its wings further and is largely focusing on Rohingya camps and women, say Bangladesh intelligence reports.
Zobaida Siddiqua Nabila, a 19-year-old student, was the first-ever ABT female operative arrested in August 2021. Her significant cyber presence shows how deep the problem of online extremism is in Bangladesh and how it can be a big tool of social jihad. She was connected to the terror outfit through a Facebook page, and had 15 channels in her Telegram account with 25,000 followers to share extremist content. Her arrest was just the tip of the iceberg and the real number of ABT followers is expected to be much higher.
In March 2022, the country’s police arrested Amir Hamza, a radical and popular cleric on YouTube. Hamza is just in his 30s, got millions of views for his radical YouTube videos and his rallies were attended by tens of thousands of followers.
A TRANSNATIONAL WEAPON
Radicalise the young people and the rest will follow is the dictum that the preachers of outfits like TLP and ABT believe in. According to the Pakistan and Bangladesh police sources, most of the people involved in the blasphemy violence are youngsters. The share is as high as 90% for Pakistan.
They push to take Islam to every part of the world and it has seen simultaneous terror attacks in other parts of the world as well, not by hidden terrorists, but by the people living next door in society. After the controversial Prophet remark by a politician in India, a secular and vibrant democracy, many preachers here chose to repeat the slogan used in Pakistan…”Sar tan se juda”, demanding the beheading of the leader, and two Hindus, in fact, were killed for supporting the politician.
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