The Nuclear Jihad

The Kashmir Telegraph ^ | February 2004 | B. Raman

[quidnunc]

Pakistan is not the original birth place of the Islamic fundamentalist and jihadi organizations. Islamic fundamentalism and jihadi terrorism were born elsewhere in the Islamic Ummah and thereafter spread to Pakistan after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. 

But, Pakistan is the original birth place of the concept of the nuclear jihad, which highlighted the need for an Islamic atomic bomb and advocated the right and the religious obligation of the Muslims to acquire weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and use them, if necessary, to protect their religion. The jihadi terrorists and their ideologues in Pakistan perceived the nuclear weapon as the ultimate weapon of retribution against States which they viewed as enemies of Islam, particularly the USA and Israel. 

It was, in fact, the late Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto, a Western-influenced liberal and not a religious fundamentalist, who first projected Pakistan’s clandestine quest for an atomic bomb as the quest for an Islamic bomb to counter what he described as the Christian, Jewish and Hindu atomic bombs. He used this depiction in order to convince other Islamic States such as Libya, Saudi Arabia and Iran to fund Pakistan’s clandestine military nuclear programme. 

It was only subsequently that Pakistani jihadi organizations such as the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) and fundamentalist organizations such as the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI) and the Jamiat-ul-Ulema Islam (JUI) adopted Z.A.Bhutto’s depiction of the Islamic bomb and projected it as rightfully belonging to the Islamic Ummah as a whole. 

They described Pakistan’s nuclear and missile capability as held by it on trust on behalf of the Ummah. In 2000, when Abdul Sattar, Gen.Pervez Musharraf’s then Foreign Minister, advocated Pakistan’s signing of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), the Islamic fundamentalist and jihadi organizations started a public campaign against him and projected him as a traitor and as anti-Islam. Thereafter, he gave up his advocacy.  

After he shifted to Afghanistan from the Sudan in 1996, Osama bin Laden of Al Qaeda not only started speaking of the right and the religious obligation of the Muslims to acquire WMD and use them, if necessary, to protect Islam, but also initiated a project for the acquisition/ development of WMD under the leadership of Abu Khabab in his training complex in Afghanistan. 

-snip-

[thoughtomator]

One bomb is all they need to force the civilized world to wipe Islam from the face of the earth forever.

[Helms]

The Democrat Party is a danger to American and World Security.

Whats Up with those weird glasses and a comb over as if to say I am the only US Senator with a nose big and long enough to support them.

[swarthyguy]

BUMP>