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| 2004-05-30 |
| A backgrounder from the Friday Times published in 2000.. In January this year the Binori Town mosque in Karachi made national and international headlines when Maulana Masud Azhar made his appearance there before the media and declared war on both India and the United States. Azhar was one of the three prisoners the hijackers of an Indian Airlines plane got released as quid pro quo for releasing the hostages. In the past few years, Binori mosque, which also houses the second biggest seminary in Pakistan, has emerged as one of the most respected seminaries in the Islamic world. But its fame, or as some would call notoriety, is not owed merely to the Islamic syllabi taught here. The madrassah also teaches "jihad" to its students and its seminarians regularly go to Afghanistan to train in the art of warfare. A large percentage of the Taliban’s upper-crust leadership has been students of Binori mosque. Azhar, who appeared before the media after his release, is also one of the students of Binori mosque and like thousands of other students was taught jihad here. His teacher is Maulana Shamzai, who is titled Muftiuzzaman and is also accepted as the spiritual leader and mentor by Mullah Omar of the Taliban, the Amirul Momineen of the movement. The Binori mosque was surrounded by young men bristling with automatic weapons during Azhar’s stay there. Azhar, whose rhetoric has now finally been put down by the government after the US State Department took note of his threats, left the mosque after a few days and now heads an organisation called Jaish e Muhammad. The Jaish has the blessings of Shamzai. Who was also a signatory of the so-called Supreme Council of Global Jihad. Binori mosque, which provided the leadership to the Taliban was founded by Allama Yusuf Binori and Maulana Mufti Mahmood. The latter was the head of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI), one of whose factions is now headed by Maulana Fazlur Rehman. Today, the sprawling marble mosque is run by a trust established by Allama Binori, though a major source of income is through domestic and foreign funding. The seminary has many foreign students and has a strength of about 8,000 students. Teachers at the mosque told TFT the seminary has been spreading Deobandi-Sunni ideology from its inception. A student from Sudan says while the mosque was initially small, in the last three decades it has turned into the most important Deobandi-Sunni seminary. Today, the mosque attracts students and funds from over 50 countries, including the Philippines, the United States, and Britain. Most of the funds come from individuals and various businesses. "Rich and poor both give us money out of their love from Islam," says Mufti Shamzai. Binori’s colour completely changed since the rise of the Taliban militia. Officials confirm the mosque has often been used by sectarian outfits as a "safe haven". TFT has learnt the administration has always avoided entering the mosque premises. The administrators deny any linkage with the sectarian outfits but concede that it is possible that some people might have hid there without their knowledge. "However, it is not our policy to give shelter to such people or promote disunity among Muslims," says one of the mosque officials. Which is nonsense, of course. Given the nature of the attack, it is probably the Shia’s that wacked Shamzai. Although in 2001, one of the other leaders of Binori were assasinated by followers of a different Sunni sect, so they are not short of enemies. Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai was the brain behind the Taliban movement and is still the most respected figure. While the Binori mosque administrators deny they indulge in Pakistan’s politics, they do concede that they provide the young cadre for the JUI. "We only teach religious subjects. We do not impart military training. But once they go for jihad to Afghanistan they are given such training by the jihadi forces," says Shamzai. The importance of Binori mosque can be judged from the fact that any scholar from the mosque visiting Afghanistan is treated as a "state guest". When in November 1997 two scholars of the mosque were assassinated in Karachi, Mullah Omar personally expressed his grief over their deaths. Leaders from Afghanistan’s Taliban militia frequently visit the mosque and its madrassah. Interestingly, official sources say hundreds of foreign jihadis took shelter in the mosque when Ms Benazir Bhutto’s government launched the drive to expel them from Pakistan. Most of these people have refused to return to their native countries after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. The government was under pressure from countries like Egypt, Syria and Jordan to send these people back since most of them belong to Islamist organisations that have been banned in these countries on the charge of indulging in "terrorist activities." If Karachi is the center of global terrorism, Binori serves as ground zero, churning out thousands of high quality Mujahideen, who go on to take leadership positions in Jihadi groups. It’s graduates have included the leaders of the Taliban, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Sipah-e-Sahaba and Harkat ul Jihad Islami. It’s biggest competetion probably comes from the Lashkar, which is a seperate problem, consisting of Wahabis rather than Deobandis. Mufti Shamazi is not worried about the government’s recent move to crack down on the seminaries across the country. "We don’t keep arms; we only teach jihad and no one can stop us from religious teaching," he says. But intelligence sources confirm that thousands of mujahideen who fought in Afghanistan have now become a part of the Islamist network and use Afghanistan as a base. Some of them have been involved in sectarian strife while others call themselves "jihadi". Many of them are former students of Binori Town mosque, who are the Taliban of Pakistan. Their leader, Mufti Shamzai is the Mullah Omar of Pakistan. Shamzai foresees an uprising of the forces of jihad throughout the world against repression. "I am proud that people are participating in the jihad against the enemies of Islam. They come from different countries but all of them have the same goal - and they are all students of this great institution," Shamzai told TFT. Incidently, Shamzai was part of the team of Scholars who accompanied the leader of the ISI in a trip to Afghanistan to convince Mullah Omar to hand over Osama Bin Ladin, of course they did the opposite, telling Omar to fight on. He is one of the most important players in the Military-Mullah axis, since he recruits the cannon fodder that the Generals have thrown at Afghanistan and Kashmir. If you really want to find some high value terrorists, Binori might be a better target than Waziristan. |
| Posted by:Paul Moloney |
| #3 If Iran considered the Binori Town Mosque a serious threat, it would have been gone a long time ago, sitting as it does in the middle of the Shia portion of Karachi. Anyone arguing for complicity between Shia terrorists and Sunni terrorists can't point to a better example, the fact that the Shia haven't flattened the place yet. The enemy of my enemy... |
| Posted by: longtime lurker 2004-05-30 9:25:15 AM |
| #2 If Musharraf is killed, he will just be replaced by some other mustachioed, 'moderate' General with a firm grasp of English and an overinflated sense of what Pakistan's role on the region should be. And if that General is assasinated, he will be succeded by another, and so on. One thing that Pakistan has a lot of is Generals. Even the so-called Islamist Generals (who were the ones that brought Musharraf to power in the first place) are far too concerned with maintaining their feudal lord lifestyles to bother with any nuclear holocaust, as Qazi said the other day, it's all just talk. Trouble will come only when the number of Generals in Pakistan exceeds the amount of land that can be appropriated for them when they retire, and the number of industries that will be given to them to run. Then there will be some serious unpleasantness, with the Islamists likely playing some sort of role. |
| Posted by: Paul Moloney 2004-05-30 5:10:27 AM |
| #1 Isn't it about time for some disgruntled "splinter group" to park a truck bomb outside the Binori mosque and gave it a taste of "Oklahoma City" style hospitality? These sick f&%ks will continue to churn out death brigades until Perv gets capped and then we'll face the possibility a nuclear armed Islamic state. If Perv lacks the nerve to shut down these murder machines, then it's time for covert operations. These morons have essentially declared war upon America, shouldn't we give them their wish? I'm hoping that America still has contingency plans in place for appropriating Pakistan's nuclear weapons in the event of Perv's overthrow. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2004-05-30 4:48:42 AM |