The SIMI story
BY YOGINDER SIKAND
The identity of those behind the bomb blasts that shook
Mumbai [in 2006] remains unclear. Some claim Hindutva terrorists were
responsible while others suspect the Pakistan-based terrorist outfit,
Lashkar-i Tayyeba, or the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI)
or a combination of both. In the meanwhile, scores of suspected SIMI
activists have been detained by the police.
Whether or not the SIMI was behind the blasts will be
known only after a fair and impartial investigation. Yet the fact remains
that groups like the SIMI, although representing a tiny fringe of the
varied landscape of Islam in India, do pose a grave threat not only to the
country as a whole but, equally, to Indian Muslims as well. In a sense a
response to growing Hindu fascism and deadly anti-Muslim pogroms,
SIMI-style radical Islamism helps feed Hindutva forces, leading to further
communal polarisation, with all the consequences that this has for the
country’s welfare and that of the Muslims themselves, already a
beleaguered and marginalised minority. In the wake of the Mumbai blasts
and the allegations of SIMI involvement, many Indian Muslims are now
wakening to the need to denounce not just Hindutva chauvinism but similar
Muslim groups, such as the SIMI, as well that speak the language of
conflict, hatred, violence and revenge.
Established in 1977 and banned by the Government of India
in 2001, the SIMI’s vision of Islam derives from the voluminous writings
of the Islamist ideologue, Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, founder of the
Jamaat-e-Islami. For Maududi, as for the SIMI, the mission of the Prophet
Muhammad is seen principally as having been the struggle to establish true
monotheism or tawhid. This is taken to mean not just the worship of
the one god but also, and equally importantly, the rule of the one god.
Political power, in other words, is seen as central to the
Islamic mission. All man-made systems of law are condemned as ‘false’,
even Satanic, and Muslims are reminded that unless they actively struggle
to be ruled in accordance with the Shariah their commitment to and faith
in Islam is not complete and remains suspect. Struggling to establish the
Islamic state, the caliphate or khilafah, is seen as a duty binding
on all Muslims and one that the Muslims of India, despite being in a
minority, must abide by. Muslims who are ‘comfortable living under an
un-Islamic order’ are warned that they shall be consigned, rather
uncharitably, to hell.
In the absence of the khilafah, the SIMI believes
that Muslims cannot lead their lives fully in accordance with Islam. The
khilafah is seen as a divinely ordained order and also as the only
solution to the many problems of not just the Muslims alone but of all
humankind. It is envisaged as a pan-Islamic polity, for all Muslims are
said to belong to the same nation (qaum, millat). Islam, in
the SIMI’s interpretation, does not recognise any national differences and
all Muslims are brothers to each other. Hence they must be ruled by a
single khalifa. Nationalism is seen as a false ‘idol’ and one devised by
the non-Muslim ‘enemies of the faith’ to divide the Muslims and thereby
weaken them. National as well as racial, regional, linguistic and
sectarian identities are seen as a sign of ‘ignorance’ (jahiliya),
which is vehemently opposed to Islam, and represent major hurdles in the
path of establishing the rule of a single khalifa over all Muslims.
In line with the general Islamist understanding, the SIMI
sees Islam as a ‘complete programme’, providing detailed instructions on
all matters from the most intimately personal to collective affairs such
as the state and international relations. Thus secularism, even in the
form of state neutrality vis-à-vis religion or the separation of religion
and state, is seen as inherently anti-Islamic, for to choose not to be
ruled by god’s laws is a sign of rebelliousness against him. Likewise,
democracy is also condemned, for to be ruled by man-made laws instead of
the Shariah is tantamount to the unforgivable sin of shirk or
associating partners with god.
All ideologies and religions other than Islam are
condemned as false and sinful (taghuti) and their adherents as
‘rebels against god’. All non-Muslims are branded together as kafirs and
no distinction is made among them. Muslims are exhorted to give up the
ways of the ‘unbelievers’ and to inculcate an unrelenting hostility to
‘un-Islamic’ culture and to fully abide by the path of the prophet.
Because the ‘enemies of god’ are expected to show stiff resistance to
Islam, violent jihad is to be waged, if need be, against those who put
hurdles in the path of the struggle for establishing the khilafah.
Islam thus comes to be seen as a militaristic political programme.
This understanding of Islam and the SIMI’s methods of
realising its vision of the Islamic polity make no room for the particular
context in which the SIMI operates, where Muslims are a relatively small
and insecure minority. It is as if to contextualise the faith and that
demands that it makes upon the faithful would be tantamount to cowardice,
hypocrisy or deviation from Islam or even amount to apostasy. The fact
that to actively and openly struggle for the establishment of an Islamic
polity in the Indian context would certainly invite stiff opposition from
other communities is recognised but the trials and tribulations that this
would mean for Muslims are, it is insisted, to be welcomed as a true test
of their faith and commitment and to have always been the lot of the true
believers, from the prophet’s time onwards.
As Shahid Badr Falahi, president of the SIMI, once put it,
"The Koran itself says that the kafirs will naturally oppose the Muslims.
If through any of our actions the kafirs are agitated, this itself is
proof that what we are doing is right [.] We have deliberately adopted the
policy of the prophet in this regard. If this drives the enemies of Islam
to anger, we cannot help it." An unflagging commitment to a combative and
extreme understanding of the faith is thus seen as a sign of faithfulness
to the prophet and for activists of the SIMI this is indeed a major source
of the movement’s appeal, faced as they are with a sense of being
completely besieged.
The SIMI was floated by the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind in the
late 1970s. Although it was intended to work among Muslim students to
create among them what it saw as ‘Islamic consciousness’ and to engage in
peaceful missionary work among non-Muslim students, a succession of events
occurred immediately after the founding of the organisation that forced it
to take an increasingly hard line position. The young SIMI activists seem
to have relished controversy and sensationalism, seeing it as an
opportunity to present their vision of Islam as the ideal ‘solution’.
Being free of the control of the more moderate and experienced older
leaders of the Jamaat, whom they saw as effete and too moderate, the young
leaders of the SIMI drifted in the direction of a growing radicalism.
In 1979, less than two years after the SIMI was
established, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, Ayatollah Khomeini
toppled the shah of Iran and in Pakistan, the military dictator, Zia
ul-Haq, set about imposing Islamic criminal laws by force. The SIMI voiced
its opposition to the Soviet invasion, welcomed the Iranian revolution,
seeing it as the first step in the eventual global revival of Islam, and
wholeheartedly supported Zia’s ‘Islamisation’ policy. Gradually, as a
result of events abroad and the consciousness of Muslims being an
increasingly threatened community in India, the SIMI’s rhetoric grew
combative and vitriolic, insisting that Islam alone was the ‘solution’ to
the problems of not just the Muslims of India but of all Indians as such
and indeed of the whole world.
This growing radicalisation of the SIMI was not looked
upon favourably by top leaders of the Jamaat, who had been working to
present a moderate image of their organisation, seeking to dialogue with
people of other faiths and to promote democracy and secularism in the face
of the rapid growth of militantly anti-Muslim Hindu organisations. Jamaat
leaders demanded that the SIMI work under the Jamaat’s overall command but
the SIMI refused. Accordingly, in 1982 the SIMI separated from the Jamaat
which then revived its own students’ wing, the Students Islamic
Organisation. Yet both the Jamaat as well as the SIMI continued to share a
commitment to a common vision, as developed by Maududi, differing only on
the question of the precise tactics and strategy needed in the Indian
context to bring Maududi’s vision to fruition.
Following its separation from the Jamaat, the SIMI
expanded considerably, setting up branches in various parts of India. It
published several periodicals in different languages and formed its own
publishing company to propagate its message of ‘Islamic Revolution’. By
2000 the SIMI had some 400 full-time workers or ansars and 20,000
sympathisers or ikhwans in addition to a cell for young children
aged between seven and 11, called the Shahin Force. It also established a
special wing to work among madrassa students and ulema, the Tahrik
Tulaba-i Arabia. Most of its activists and members belonged to lower
middle and middle-class families living in towns and cities. It appealed
to a class of Muslim students that saw themselves as, in some sense,
deprived, for whom its message of the ‘superiority’ of Islam over the
‘decadent’ and ‘immoral’ West and ‘polytheist’ Hindus struck a welcome
chord.
The SIMI’s evolution from the 1980s onwards was dictated
almost entirely by events taking place in India and in the wider world,
these being interpreted as attacks directed against Islam and Muslims by
the ‘enemies’ of the faith. Inevitably, then, the SIMI was driven to an
increasing radicalism that won it support among a small number of Muslims
in India who saw themselves as increasingly beleaguered, victims of both
Hindu chauvinism and the Indian state that was seen as representing
essentially ‘upper’ caste Hindu interests.
The SIMI organised protest demonstrations against attacks
on Muslims, both in India and elsewhere, which provided it publicity as
well as possibilities for new recruits. It sought to intervene in and
generate public support for its stand on other issues of major concern to
the Indian Muslims, such as efforts to do away with the separate Muslim
personal law, moves to dilute the Muslim character of the Aligarh Muslim
University and the Hinduisation of textbooks in government-run schools.
Its activists were also involved in relief work among Muslims affected by
anti-Muslim violence, which helped bolster the image of the organisation
as being seriously committed to the rights of the Muslims. It also
provided other services such as libraries and free coaching classes for
Muslim students from poor families.
The SIMI sought to propagate its message through mass
contact programmes, lectures, seminars and rallies as well as through its
abundant literature, mainly the writings of Maududi himself. A regular
feature was its special week-long campaigns aimed at creating an awareness
of the Islamic ‘solution’, in which, inevitably, the intention was to
‘prove’ that Islam alone had the solution to all problems afflicting
humankind. Thus, for instance, in 1982 the SIMI organised an
‘Anti-Immorality’ week in the course of which ‘social evils and general
immorality’ were condemned and ‘immoral’ literature was publicly burnt. In
1983 the Kerala unit of the organisation held a special ‘Anti-Capitalism’
week in which it was sought to be stressed that the ‘Islamic economic
system’ alone could provide genuine social justice. In an effort to win
the support of ‘low’ caste Dalits in its attacks on Hinduism, in 1994 the
SIMI organised the ‘Anti-Varna Vyavastha’ week all over India, in the
course of which, through public lectures and the distribution of leaflets
and posters, it was stressed that the salvation of the Dalits lay in
conversion to Islam, demanding, rather simplistically, an ‘immediate end
to the caste system’.
Although a forceful champion of what it called ‘Islamic
Revolution’ ever since its inception, the SIMI witnessed a further
radicalisation of its rhetoric from the 1990s until, by 2000, the
organisation was proclaiming the need for Muslims to engage in armed jihad
in India. The radicalisation of the SIMI since the 1990s must be seen in
the context of, and as a response to, the growth of Hindu militancy,
particularly in the North Indian states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh where
the SIMI also had a noticeable presence.
The destruction of the Babri mosque in 1992 and the
subsequent massacres of Muslims in various parts of India proved to be a
major watershed in the history of Hindu-Muslim relations in India. While
some Muslims now insisted that the only way forward for the Muslims was to
work together with Hindus to isolate both Hindu as well as Muslim militant
groups, some fringe others, such as the SIMI, stressed that the time had
now come for Muslims to wage jihad against the Indian state or the Hindus,
as, it argued, their lives and their faith were now under grave threat. As
Shahid Badr Falahi, the president of the SIMI, asserted, the Muslims and
Islam were now being targeted by Hindu militants in league with agencies
of the state. Hence, he declared, "It is high time that Muslims organise
themselves and stand up to defend the community."
By early 1991 the SIMI had begun mobilising Muslims to
struggle against Hindu militants, censuring Muslim leaders who advised
restraint or dialogue. In February 1991 the SIMI organised the ‘Babri
Masjid’ day all over India, holding demonstrations against the efforts of
Hindu militants to destroy the disputed mosque in Ayodhya. SIMI leaders
issued appeals to the Muslims to ‘stop thinking in defensive terms’ on the
question of the mosque and the growing wave of attacks on Muslims. Its
rhetorical opposition to the campaign led by Hindu groups to destroy the
mosque made for an increasing popularity of the SIMI and indeed it was
only after the SIMI took up the issue of the mosque, organising meetings
in various parts of the country to oppose the Hindu militants’ campaign,
that it really emerged as a significant force to be reckoned with, albeit
in small pockets, having hitherto been restricted largely to a few towns
of Uttar Pradesh.
Carrying on with its campaign to generate mass support for
its position on the mosque, in September 2001 it organised a large
conference at Mumbai, attended by some 25,000 students from various parts
of India. At the conference it was stressed that the time had now come for
Muslims to ‘turn to Allah’, to engage in ‘missionary work’ (dawat)
and to launch jihad.
Following the destruction of the Babri mosque and the
subsequent massacre of Muslims in large parts of India, the SIMI concluded
that there was no hope for Muslims in seeking to dialogue with Hindus or
the government because, in its view, both had turned irrevocably hostile
to them. In a letter sent to various Muslim leaders and ulema, a top SIMI
leader, Abdul Aziz Salafi, insisted that the Muslims should make it clear
to the Government of India as well as to Hindu militants that the Muslims
‘would now refuse to sit low’. He insisted that Muslims could no longer
trust various ‘secular’ parties to guarantee their rights and that they
should now ‘establish their own political identity’.
Four years later the SIMI spelt out precisely what it had
in mind. In a statement issued in 1996 it declared that since democracy
and secularism had failed to protect the rights of the Muslims there was
no alternative left for the Muslims but to struggle for the establishment
of the khilafah. It appealed to non-Muslims to recognise that
nationalism and westernisation were not the solution to the manifold
problems facing the country, the only answer to which, it argued, was what
it called the Islamic political order. It insisted that with the
establishment of the khilafah all racial, linguistic, caste and
communal antagonisms would automatically be resolved and true equality and
justice established. The break from the Jamaat’s policy of gradualism was
thus made irrevocable and complete.
As Hindu militancy increased in stridency, taking an ever
increasing toll of Muslim lives, the SIMI adopted an even more hard line
position, calling for Muslims to avenge the death of their co-religionists
by following in the footsteps of the 11th century Mahmud Ghaznavi who led
several attacks into India and is said to have destroyed many Hindu
temples. SIMI activists put up posters in several towns, appealing to god
to send down another Mahmud to take revenge for attacks on Muslims and
their places of worship.
In 1993 the arrest of a Sikh militant is said, at least so
Indian sources claimed, to have revealed a ‘Pakistani conspiracy’ to unite
Sikh and Kashmiri Muslim activists along with SIMI members to allegedly
‘create disorder in India’. By this time the SIMI was alleged to have
developed links with Islamist militants in Kashmir. It is said to have
distributed posters and audio cassettes extolling the militants and
exhorting the Indian Muslims to follow in their path. In 2000 the arrest
of a Chinese Muslim from Xinjiang and his SIMI accomplice at the border
between West Bengal and Bangladesh is said to have provided the Indian
police vital information on the SIMI’s contacts with Islamist groups in
western China struggling for independence. Indian authorities also alleged
that the SIMI had established links with Osama bin Laden. In the wake of
the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York in September 2001, SIMI
activists organised demonstrations at several places in India, castigating
America as an ‘enemy of Islam’ and ‘an agent of Satan’ and lionising Osama
as a ‘true mujahid’ and a ‘hero fighting the non-believers’. Posters
hailing Osama and supporting the Taliban, including extolling the
Taliban’s destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, were put up in several towns
and Muslims were exhorted to ‘trample over infidels’.
Shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Centre, and
emboldened by the western concern about Islamist militancy, on September
27, 2001 the Government of India declared the SIMI a banned organisation
under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967. In the wake of the
ban, the government arrested most of the top leaders of the SIMI along
with scores of its activists, closed all its offices, froze its bank
accounts and seized all its assets. The two-year ban was notified by the
union home ministry after the governments of the states of Uttar Pradesh,
Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh pushed for its proscription in the wake of
allegations of the organisation’s involvement in incidents of
intercommunal strife. The ban was sought to be justified on four counts.
Firstly, the SIMI’s alleged links with militant Islamist
groups in Jammu and Kashmir and the Pakistani secret services agency,
Inter-Services Intelligence. Secondly, its alleged links with pan-Islamist
militant organisations and its agenda of working for the establishment of
a ‘global Islamic order’. Thirdly, its role in promoting intercommunal
rivalry, hurting the religious sentiments of people of other faiths and
allegations of its involvement in violent incidents. Lastly, its
involvement in allegedly working to destabilise the country, promoting
secessionism and denying the basis of the Indian Constitution through its
virulent opposition to nationalism, democracy and secularism.
SIMI leaders rebutted all these charges, insisting that
they had always abided by peaceful and democratic methods and that their
work had all along been limited only to ‘character building’. Its
president, Shahid Badr Falahi, insisted that the SIMI was totally opposed
to ‘any violent or terrorist activities’. Muslim and even some secular and
leftist organisations were quick to protest the government’s decision,
branding it as partisan and blatantly anti-Muslim. It was pointed out that
the government had no firm evidence of the SIMI’s involvement in violent
incidents.
The ban was said to be yet further confirmation of the
government’s anti-Muslim policy and it was argued that if the government
were really serious about tackling terrorism it should have also banned
Hindu terrorist groups which have a long history of involvement in
anti-Muslim and anti-Christian violence. It was alleged that the
government’s move was motivated by political compulsions in order to
present itself as defender of the Hindus. That the government chose to
ignore these criticisms was a clear indication that in the war against
terrorism a consistent policy of double standards would be adopted. The
message that was conveyed was that the government had different yardsticks
to deal with Hindu and Muslim militants, the former treated as
nationalists and ardent patriots and the latter as enemies of the nation.
For Muslim organisations this came as little surprise and
although feeble protests were made it was realised as never before that
the aggressive confrontationist stance of groups like the SIMI could
hardly serve the community. Rather, it had only made their situation as a
beleaguered minority even more precarious. As to whether or not the SIMI
was actually behind the Mumbai blasts it is too early to say. In the
absence of clear evidence it would be unwise to rush to any conclusion.
Yet what is obvious is that the radicalism of Islamist groups like the
SIMI on the one hand and Hindu fascist groups on the other feed on each
other, both speaking the language of hatred. A consistent mass struggle
against both forms of terrorism, Muslim and Hindu, and insisting that the
state take vigorous action against both, is the only way to ensure that
the events in Mumbai are not repeated.
(Yoginder Sikand is an author of several books on Islam
and allied issues who has worked on issues related to Muslims and
intercommunity relations in contemporary India. This article was posted on
the countercurrents.org website on July 15, 2006.)
Courtesy: www.countercurrents.org