Re: Karachi Blast (merged)
Had it been India instead of Pakistan they would have immediately pointed towards ISI and the "Designs" of Pakistan without any hesitation. Since their police is so lazy, they rather like to point finger towards ISI so that they dont have to nab anyone.
Re: Karachi Blast (merged)
yeah i agree with you mulz.
DECAPITATION ATTACK ON ANTI-SALAFI GROUP IN KARACHI
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR: PAPER NO. 44
by B. Raman
In an article on Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) written on August 1, 2001, which is available at http://www.saag.org/papers3/paper287.html, I had written as follows: “As a result of the policy of divide and rule followed in Sindh by the ISI under Musharraf, one is seeing in Pakistan for the first time sectarian violence inside the Sunni community between the Sunnis of the Deobandi faith belonging to the Sipah Sahaba and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and the Sunnis of the more tolerant Barelvi faith belonging to the Sunni Tehrik formed in the early 1990s to counter the growing Wahabi influence on Islam in Pakistan and the Almi Tanzeem Ahle Sunnat formed in 1998 by Pir Afzal Qadri of Mararian Sharif in Gujrat, Punjab, to counter the activities of the Deobandi Army of Islam headed by Lt. Gen. Mohammed Aziz, Corps Commander, Lahore. The Tanzeem has been criticising not only the Army of Islam for injecting what it considers the Wahabi poison into the Pakistan society, but also the army of the State headed by Musharraf for misleading the Sunni youth into joining the jehad against the Indian army in J & K and getting killed there in order to avoid the Pakistani army officers getting killed in the jehad for achieving its strategic objective. The ISI, which is afraid of a direct confrontation with the Barelvi organisations, has been inciting the Sipah Sahaba and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi to counter their activities. This has led to frequent armed clashes between rival Sunni groups in Sindh, the most sensational of the incidents being the gunning down of Maulana Salim Qadri of the Sunni Tehrik and five of his followers in Karachi on May, 18, 2001, by the Sipah Sahaba, which led to a major break-down of law and order in certain areas of Karachi for some days. Musharraf, the commando, believes in achieving his objective by hook or by crook without worrying about the means used. In his anxiety to bring Sindh under control and to weaken the PPP (Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party), the MQM and the Sindhi nationalists, he has, through the ISI, created new Frankensteins which might one day lead to the Talibanisation of Sindh, a province always known for its sufi traditions of religious tolerance and for its empathy with India.”
A decapitation explosion at a religious congregation in Karachi on April 11, 2006, killed the entire senior leadership of the Sunni Tehrik, an anti-Deobandi, anti-Wahabi and anti-Salafi Sunni organisation of Pakistan, which has maintained its distance from Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda and International Islamic Front (IIF). The religious congregation was organised by the Jamaat-e-Ahle Sunnat (JAS) to mark the Holy Prophet’s birthday. Fifty other innocent civilians, many of them lower-level leaders of the Tehrik, were killed in the explosion.
The Pakistani authorities have blamed two suicide bombers for the devastating explosion, which killed Abbas Qadri, the Amir of the Sunni Tehrik, and four other senior leaders. No organisation has so far claimed responsibility for the explosion.
In the past, this organisation had been projected by the Deobandis, the Wahabis and the Salafis of Pakistan as a Sunni surrogate of the Iranian intelligence to counter the growing influence of the Wahabi-Salafi ideology among the Sunnis of Pakistan.
The Sunni Tehrik draws its following mainly from the Barelvis, a Sunni school of thought, which is generally perceived as more tolerant than the Deobandis. In fact, the Barelvis, many, if not most, of whom are descendents of converts from Hinduism, are in a numerical majority in Pakistan and in a preponderant majority in the Sindh province. The Deobandis, most of whose following is restricted to the Pakistani Punjab, the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), are descendents of Muslims, who came into the sub-continent from Central Asia, Afghanistan and West Asia. They look upon the Barelvis as inferior to them and as soft due to the distorting influence of Hinduism on their thinking and behaviour.
While the Deobandi extremists have been backing—openly or covertly— Al Qaeda and its ideology, the Barelvis have been uncomfortable over it. Many of them have been critical of the use of the Pakistani territory by Al Qaeda and the IIF for their terrorist operations in other countries. They have also been worried over the implications of the message disseminated by bin Laden in January, 2006, in which he claimed that plans for another terrorist strike in the US homeland were already underway. Their worry is that just as the use of the Afghan territory by bin Laden for his 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US brought about the US-led military action in Afghanistan, the use of the Pakistani territory by Al Qaeda for a terrorist strike in the US could bring about a US military strike against Pakistan.
There are two main group of Sunni sectarian organisations in Pakistan—the Sipah-e-Sahaba and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, both strongly Deobandi-Wahabi-Salafi and both members of the IIF, and the Sunni Tehrik, strongly Barelvi and anti-Deobandi-Wahabi-Salafi. Since many years, the Sipah-e-Sahaba and the LEJ have embarked on a campaign for the Arabisation and Wahabisation of the Barelvi Muslims and for removing the distorting influence of Hinduism. The Sunni Tehrik has been resisting the onslaught of the Deobandis, Wahabis and Salafis.
For the last fifteen years, there has been a conflict between the Deobandis and the Barelvis for the control of the mosques and their funds not only in Pakistan, but also in the UK. Previously, the Barelvis used to control the mosques in the UK frequented by immigrants from the sub-continent, but they have since been driven out by the Deobandis and Wahabis. This was the starting point for the radicalisation of the Pakistani-origin Muslims in the UK and in the other countries of West Europe. The ISI has been supporting the Sipah-e-Sahaba and the LEJ in Pakistan as well as in West Europe.
Since its formation, the Sunni Tehrik has been involved in a sub-sectarian conflict with the Sipah-e-Sahaba and the LEJ and in a political conflict with the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) of Altaf Hussain. While the Sunni Tehrik and the MQM have been countering the activities of the Deobandis, Wahabis and Salafis and their attempts to Arabise and Wahabise the Indian Muslim migrants (Mohajirs) to Pakistan, they have at the same time been quarelling with each other over the collection of funds from the Mohajirs for their respective political activities.
Politically, while the Urdu-speaking Indian Muslim migrants to Pakistan from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh support the MQM, the Gujarati speaking migrants (Bohras and Memons) support the Sunni Tehrik with funds. The migrants from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh came from a poor or middle class background—landless labourers, petty traders, money-lenders, bureaucrats— but the migrants from Gujarat came from a rich background (businessmen). It is said that Karachi’s economy is largely controlled by the Memons and other Gujarati-speaking Muslims. They give more funds to the Sunni Tehrik than to the MQM.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-Mail: [email protected])
http://www.saag.org/\papers18\paper1767.html
This Indian analyst who has held senior posts in the Indian establishment has no idea about the Islamic sects.He in this article has wrote that " Gujarati speaking migrants (Bohras and Memons) support the Sunni Tehrik with funds"
bohris are not sunnis in the first place and they are somewhat similar to shias one of the main difference between shias and bohris is that shias have 12 imans and the imamate stopped at 12 with Imam mehdi who will return before qayamat whereas bohris still have their imams and syedna burhanuddin is their present imam.
why would bohris support sunni tehrik???
Re: Karachi Blast (merged)
Who made this person an analyst?
Ever heard Farooq Sattar is a memon but a key person in MQM? Inciting hatred is the motto of many indian 'analysts'.