Jaish-e-Muhammad: Inside the Terrifying World of the Prophet's Army
By Abhinav Pandya
HarperCollins, 490 pages, Rs 499

Jaish-e-Muhammad, the Pakistan-supported South Asian terrorist group mainly active in India-Administered Kashmir, can be held single-handedly responsible for bringing the two nuclear-capable neighbours to the verge of a full-fledged war – twice: First, in 2001 when JeM attacked the Indian Parliament, and then in February 2019, after the Pulwama attack.

Dr Abhinav Pandya, a Cornell University graduate in public affairs, offers the first detailed and comprehensive study of JeM in this book. Here he examines JeM’s origins, ideology, organisational structure, financing, operational strategies and tactics, radicalisation methods, fidayeen attacks and intelligence networks.

JeM has pan-India ambitions and has strong ties with transnational terrorist groups such as the Al Qaeda, the IS-KP (Islamic State of Khorasan Province), the Taliban and the TTP (Tahreek-e-Taliban, Pakistan), which makes it a potential security threat for Western countries as well.

Dr Pandya’s rigorous field research for this book includes extensive interviews with veteran intelligence and security professionals who have dealt with JeM since its inception, including two former chiefs of R&AW who were closely involved in diffusing the IC-814 plane hijacking and hostage crisis, which led to the release of Masood Azhar, the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen terrorist, who founded JeM, allegedly with the help of Pakistan and Al Qaeda. It delves into intelligence dossiers, charge sheets of case, and confidential intelligence reports on JeM.

With the return of the Taliban to Afghanistan and JeM’s operational capabilities enhanced, this book is critical reading for a detailed understanding of the past, present and likely future of JeM.

Dr Pandya, a founder and CEO of Usanas Foundation – an India-based foreign policy and security think tank, is the author of ‘Radicalization in India: An Exploration’ (2019) and ‘Terror Financing in Kashmir’ (2023). He had previously advised the former governor of Jammu and Kashmir on security issues during the critical times when Kashmir’s special status, Article 370, was revoked.

Here is an excerpt from the book:

The Deobandi Movement:
The Fountainhead of Jihadism in South Asia

The decline of the Mughals and the onset of the British empire threatened the status of the Ulama—teachers and interpreters of religious laws and theologians—as state functionaries. As a result, their political and economic fortunes underwent a massive decline. The downfall of the Mughals also led to the rise of revivalist instincts among many Islamic clerics, who felt the corruption of puritanical Islamic practices due to intermingling with Hindus was the primary cause of the end of Muslim rule. Islamic scholar Shah waliullah Dehlawi (1703–62) was one of the most ardent voices of Islamic revivalism who inspired the Deoband movement.

Deoband is a revivalist movement within Sunni (primarily Hanafi) Islam. Centred in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, it has also spread to the United Kingdom, France and the US, and has a presence in South Africa as well. The movement was founded in 1867 in the wake of the failed uprising of 1857 in north India. A group of Indian Islamic scholars—comprising Rashid Ahmad Gangohi, Muhammad Yaqub Nanautai, Shah Rafi al-Din, Syed Muhammad Abid, Zulfiqar Ali, Fadhl al-Rahman Usmani and Muhammad Qasim Nanotwi—were the pioneers of the early Deoband movement. They developed it to counter the British rule as they perceived colonialism to be corrupting Islam. The group founded an Islamic seminary known as Darul Uloom Deoband (1867)—and the movement derives its name from the place where the school is located—where the Islamic revivalist and anti-imperialist ideology of the Deobandis began to develop. Over time, Darul Uloom Deoband became the second-most significant centre of Islamic teaching and research after Al Azhar University of Cairo. The Deoband ideology began to spread through organizations such as Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind and Tablighi Jamaat.

During India’s independence movement, the Deobandis advocated composite nationalism. In this, Hindus and Muslims were seen as one nation, and asked to be united in the struggle against the British. In 1919, a large group of Deobandi scholars formed their political party, Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind. Later, they opposed the Pakistan Movement. A minority group joined Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s Muslim League, starting the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam in 1945.

The Deobandi school of thought is generally regarded as a South Asian cousin of wahhabism. Like wahhabism, the Deobandi school of thought is also against the worship of shrines and tombs, and the celebration of the Prophet’s birthday. Their attitude towards Shias and infidels is closer to that of wahhabis. In social and religious domains, they are very conservative. Though they opposed the Partition of India, the reasons were not entirely secular. They believed that carving an already Muslim-dominant Pakistan out of India would strongly hinder the spread of Islam in the entire Indian Hindu hinterland. The Deobandi school, unlike the wahhabis, believes in taqleed (which means traditions and, in this context, interpretations of Islamic laws by the eminent Islamic scholars) and follows the Hanafi school of Islamic jurisprudence. The Taliban, SSP, LeJ and JeM subscribe to the Deobandi school of thought.

In India, the Deobandis have shunned jihadi violence and have issued strong fatwas against terrorism—but they continue to adhere to extremist and orthodox Islamic teachings. Hence, despite the outer trappings of nationalism, the security agencies remain sceptical of their ideology and long-term vision. They constitute 20 per cent of India’s Muslim population and are often at odds with the majority Barelwis’ school of thought. Furthermore, ideologically they (India’s Deobandis) also oppose wahhabis or Salafis, a relatively new entrant in India, though they are closer to Deobandis in beliefs than the Barelwis.

As mentioned above, Deobandis are present in South Africa and the western world too. Masood’s outreach to the Deobandi diaspora in the west and in Africa was critical in raising funds for HuM and JeM.

Tablighi Jamaat
Tablighi Jamaat (TJ), Deoband’s missionary offshoot, is the largest Islamic network, with around seventy to eighty million followers in 150 countries worldwide. Its members in Europe are estimated to be in the range of 1,50,000. TJ engages in religious proselytization. Its ijtemas (religious congregations) in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh attract the largest number of Muslims after the Haj. Though in popular perception it is an apolitical and religious organization, in many quarters, it is believed that TJ plays an indirect role in jihadi radicalization. Arguably, it preaches a conservative and fundamentalist Deobandi strain of Islam which prepares a fertile ground for jihadi radicalization. French TJ expert Mark Gaboriau has suggested that the organization’s aim is nothing short of a ‘planned conquest of the world’.

TJ has an extensive and robust network in the west, which has been operational since 1945. The group was guarded and careful about its activities and spread in the west, as a result of which it was not under the scrutiny of law enforcement and intelligence agencies for a very long time. In the west, TJ primarily operates through its strong Deobandi networks. Darul Uloom Bury, the most important Deobandi institution in Europe, was established under the guidance of Indian Deobandi leader Muhammad Zakariyya, who also wrote the famous Deobandi text Fazail-i-Amaal. In the 1970s, Darul Uloom Dewsbury, the second Deobandi institution, was established, which over time became the Deobandi headquarters in Europe. Interestingly, in the UK, Deobandis are 3 per cent of the total Muslim population; however, they control 40 per cent 77 of the mosques.

TJ/Deobandis have attracted thousands of Muslims from North African backgrounds in France. French intelligence claims that 80 per cent of its own jihadis once may have been members of TJ, referring to it as the ‘ante-chamber of fundamentalists.’ In the US, it is estimated there are 15,000 active TJ members, of which only 60 per cent are South Asian. In early 2000, Pakistan’s intelligence claimed that 400 American terrorist recruits in Pakistan and Afghanistan emerged from American TJ groups.

[The excerpt reproduced with permission of the publishers.]