Tablighi Jamaat? Harkat-ul-Mujahideen? Jamaat-ul-Fuqra?
Check this out. Can't vouch for the reliability of the source. Obviously, the author has some axes to grind.
Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
According to The New York Times, Mohammed left the US Army in 1989 after three years of service. During his military service, he earned a Parachute Badge and an M-16 Expert Badge, teaching soldiers in the Special Forces about Muslim culture. He also admitted he had helped secretly move Osama from Pakistan to Sudan in the early 1990s and trained members of his terrorist organisation, al Qaeda. Osama shifted from the Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996. In his plea, Mohammed described Osama as central in a massive conspiracy by members of an Islamic holy war (jehad) movement to target US military installations and embassies worldwide. "The objective of all of this was to attack any Western target in West Asia," Mohammed said. Mohammed's plea of guilt focusses attention on the efforts of Pakistan and Afghanistan-based jehadi extremists to recruit members from the Muslim communities in North America and the Caribbean to use them initially for operations against American interests in West Asia and then to promote jehad in the US territory itself. While the role of Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, of Pakistani origin, and other US-based Muslim mercenaries of Osama in setting off the blast at the New York World Trade Centre in February 1993, is well known and well-documented, adequate attention has not been paid to the activities of certain Pakistan-based organisations. The earliest of such organisations was the highly secretive Jamaat-ul-Fuqra, which started its clandestine activities in the Muslim communities of North America and the Caribbean in the 1980s. Founded in Pakistan during the US' proxy war against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan by Sheikh Mubarik Ali Gilani, it not only organised religious teachings for the members of the Muslim communities of these countries, but also converted a large number of Afro-Americans to Islam and brought some of them to Pakistan for training in the use of firearms and explosives. It was strongly against the US, Israel and India and its members in the US and Canada were suspected in a number of instances of arson attacks on property owned by the Jewish people and the Hindus. In a report carried by the News (February 13, 1995) of Pakistan, Mr Kamran Khan, the well-known investigative journalist, brought to light the nexus between the Tablighi Jamaat (TJ) of Pakistan, headed by Lt Gen (retd) Javed Nasir, former Director-General of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), declared by the US as an international terrorist organisation in October 1997, and their role in supporting Islamic extremist movements in different countries, and among the Muslim community in the US. Till 1997, HUM was known as the Harkat-ul-Ansar (HUA). Mr Kamran Khan quoted unidentified office-bearers of the HUM as claiming that among foreign volunteers trained by them in their camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan were 16 African- American Muslims from various cities of the US. The February 1998 issue of Newsline, a Pakistani monthly, quoted workers of the TJ as saying that the TJ had many offices in the US, Russia, the Central Asian Republics, South Africa, Australia and France. |
Dr Jassim Taqui, an Islamic scholar, wrote in the Frontier Post of Peshawar of January 15, 1999, that the TJ claimed to have frustrated the efforts of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to penetrate it and succeeded in converting some CIA agents to Islam. Amongst the organisations in the US with which the TJ is believed to be closely associated, are the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Muslim Youth of North America (MYNA). The ISNA president used to be one Sheikh Abdullah Idris Ali, an American immigrant of Sudanese origin, who was also the Pesh Imam and Khatib of a mosque in New York. Among the alleged members of the TJ in the Muslim community in the US is Mr Louis Fara Khan, the Afro-American Muslim leader. The TJ operates in the US and the Caribbean directly through its own preachers deputed from Pakistan and also recruited from the Pakistani immigrant community in the US as well as through front organisations such as the Jamaat-ul- Fuqra. In its preachings to the Pakistani immigrants in the US, the TJ has been stressing the importance of cultivating the Afro-American Muslims in order to counter the lobbying power of the Hindus and the Jewish people. The HUM, which works in tandem with the TJ, has been training Afro-American Muslims from the US in its training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Writing in the Dawn of January 12, 1996, Mr Ghani Eirabie said: "The Ummah must remember that winning over the black Muslims is not only a religious obligation, but also a selfish necessity. The votes of the black Muslims can give the immigrant Muslims the political clout they need at every stage to protect their vital interests. Likewise, outside Muslim states such as Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and Pakistan, need to mobilise their effort, money and missionary skills to expand and consolidate the black Muslim community in the US, not only for religious reasons, but also as a far-sighted investment in the black Muslims' immense potential as a credible lobby for Muslim causes, such as Palestine, Bosnia or Kashmir - offsetting, at least partially, the venal influence of the powerful India-Israel lobby." In July-August this year, Mr Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the Amir of Pakistan's Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI), had toured the US and appealed to the members of the Pakistani community and Afro-Asian Muslims to mobilise the Muslim voters in support of Mr George Bush Jr in the US Presidential elections and to ensure the defeat of Mr Al Gore. He described the Clinton Administration anti-Pakistan and criticised it for allegedly deviating from the traditional US policy of supporting Pakistan on the Kashmir issue. In recent weeks, there have been reports that many organisations in the US of Pakistani origin have been canvassing support for Mr Bush Jr from amongst the Muslim voters. They have been pointing out the US's close relations with Pakistan during the Reagan and the Bush Administrations from 1981 to 1993. They also claim that though Mr Bush invoked the Pressler Amendment against Pakistan in October 1990, and acted energetically against the Chinese supply of missiles to Pakistan, he refrained from acting on a report from the Counter-Terrorism Division in 1992, recommending that Pakistan be declared a state-sponsor of international terrorism. Politically active members of the Pakistani community in the US describe the so-called pro-India tilt of the Clinton Administration as a temporary aberration brought about by some officials in the State Department such as Mr Strobe Talbot, Mr Thomas Pickering and Mr Karl Inderfurth, and claim that senior officers of the Pentagon and the US armed forces have been unhappy over this tilt. They also claim that there are many supporters of Pakistan in the Republican Party such as Mr Dick Cheney, Mr Bush Jr's Vice-Presidential running mate, who was the Defence Secretary in the Bush Administration, Gen (retd) Colin Powell and Mr Robert McFarlane, who was the National Security Adviser of Mr Ronald Reagan in 1983-85 and express their confidence that if Mr Bush Jr is elected, he would, on the advice of such elements, restore what they describe as the traditional Republican policy of friendship towards Pakistan. They project Mr Al Gore as pro- India and pro-Israel and, in this connection, refer to his selection of a Jewish leader as his running mate. As part of their efforts to mobilise Muslim support for Mr Bush Jr, they have been disseminating copies of an article written by Mr McFarlane in the Washington Post of September 18, after a meeting with Pakistan's self-styled Chief Executive, Gen Pervez Musharraf, in New York. In the article, Mr McFarlane strongly criticised the attempts of some analysts to demonise "a long-time friend and ally" of the US and to blame Pakistan for the turmoil in that region and to call for its designation as a 'terrorist state'. He described such attempts as perverse and unjustified under any rational analysis of the facts and called for a resolution of the Kashmir dispute in accordance with the UN resolutions. He added: "To ask Kashmiris to accept the Indian constitution is to preempt the purpose of talks: To achieve a solution that meets the aspirations of the Kashmiri people in accordance with the UN resolution." (The author is former Additional Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India.) - B. Raman |