Radicalism and the Rehabilitation experiment

Treat the cause, not the symptoms

This is one of the most powerful experiments that the media has failed to highlight; we have worked this successfully when Pastor Roberts called Quraan an evil book written by a false prophet. We held the Quraan conference run by ten non-Muslim clergy to go through the verses claimed to be evil resulting in surprises. Details are at www.QuraanConference.com

Mike Ghouse

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/mar/02/worlddispatch.yemen

A Yemeni judge is pioneering a religious re-education programme for Islamic militant prisoners and claims a 90% success rate, writes Brian Whitaker

• Brian Whitaker
• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 2 March 2004 10.43 GMT
• Article history

An icy wind was blowing in the streets of Westminster and there were flakes of snow in the air, but the hotel was warm inside. With its wood panelling and comfy armchairs, the lobby resembled something between a gentleman's club and a country mansion: the essence of Englishness.

Enter the incongruous figure of Judge Hamoud Abdulhamid al-Hitar, dressed in a long black robe, a ceremonial dagger at his waist and a copy of the Guardian under his arm.
A judge in the high court of Yemen, he had been invited to London by the British government because the Foreign Office, the attorney general and the Metropolitan police, not to mention several Muslim organisations, all wanted to know about his unusual method of fighting terrorism - by theological dialogue.
In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, the Yemeni authorities, under considerable pressure from the United States, rounded up several hundred suspected troublemakers and kept them in jail without trial. Many, the authorities readily admit, had not committed any crime but were known as sympathisers - if not active supporters - of Osama bin Laden.
The approach pioneered by Judge Hitar, who is also chairman of the Yemeni Human Rights Organisation, is to "re-educate" and release them, subject to guarantees of good behaviour. The success rate in re-education is about 90%, according to Judge Hitar, and more than 100 have been freed so far.
The basic idea is very simple: that Islamic militants are not fundamentally bad people but have mistaken views of Islam that can be corrected through religious argument based on the Koran and the teachings of the prophet (the Sunna). If they can be genuinely convinced of their error, they will not commit criminal acts and - perhaps more importantly - will not encourage others to do so either.
"It's similar to the work of a doctor," Judge Hitar said. "We diagnose and we treat it."
The theological dialogue committee, which Judge Hitar chairs, was set up in September 2002 to hold discussions with returnees from Afghanistan and "youths holding extreme theological ideologies contradictory to the unanimity of Islamic scholars". (Since the Yemeni justice system is based on Islamic law, judges are well qualified to deal with the religious issues.)
"We chose a group of these young people, and picked the most extreme and the best educated," Judge Hitar said. "They asked why we had come. We said it was to carry out a dialogue and our number one point of reference would be the Koran and the Sunna. "We told them: 'If YOU are right we will follow you, but if WE are right you should follow us'.
"We set out an agenda by finding out what problems they suffered from and what [religious] authorities they depended on." Two particular attitudes among the militants soon came to the fore: a belief that they could kill non-Muslims in the name of jihad, and a belief that Yemen's political system was contrary to Islam.
"They considered Yemen as a non-Islamic state," he said. "They said the government is not governing according to God's book and is pro-western. Some of them were not aware of the treaties and agreements between Yemen and other countries. Some thought it was acceptable to shed the blood of non-Muslims anywhere on earth."
The secret of the dialogue's apparent success is that it confronts such views in Islamic terms, citing the Koran and other authorities that the militants respect. It makes use, for example of the constitution of Madina, established in the prophet's time, which protected the rights of Jews and other non-Muslims.
Yemen's international relations, Judge Hitar explained, are based on agreements and governed by the United Nations - arrangements which are fully compatible with the Koran and the Sunna.
"UN signatories are in a state of peace with one another, and it is not permissible to attack citizens from other UN members. [Non-Muslim] people visiting Yemen have a visa, so it is not permissible to attack them or force them to convert to Islam."
Those who accept the re-education are asked to sign a statement condemning violence, committing themselves to obey the law and dissociating themselves from al-Qaida or any armed group. They must also agree to respect the rights of non-Muslims and promise not to attack the interests of friendly states.
But are these changes of heart genuine, or are the militants simply grabbing a "get-out-of-jail-free" card? That is a question Judge Hitar is often asked.
"These young people are not going to be convinced easily," he answered. "They don't agree just to get out of jail. One of them said 'I am prepared to stay for 20 years in jail to prove that I have changed.'"
Those released are kept under surveillance, and Judge Hitar emphasises that suspects who have been charged with actual crimes have to be brought before the courts.
"Dialogue is for everyone but release is for the innocent," he said. The principle of dialogue, he believes, is one that can be used to deal with Islamic militancy far beyond Yemen, even in Britain which he describes as "the capital of religious tolerance".
"With total confidence I think this method can be applied in the UK," he said. "There are British Muslims who have the ability [to conduct dialogues] and we are prepared to train them further. We are ready to co-operate with them and train them in Yemen or in Britain."
It was time for Judge Hitar to leave. The BBC's Arabic Service were eager to interview him, and later he would be meeting Muslims in Birmingham. Preparing to step out, once again, into the British winter, he held up a ballpoint pen and waved goodbye with it.
"The pen is stronger than the stick," he said.

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Muslims welcome hearings by Congressman Peter R. King

http://worldmuslimcongress.blogspot.com/2011/03/muslims-welcome-hearings-by-congressman.html

Mike Ghouse, president of the World Muslim Congress welcomes the initiative by Congressman Peter King, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security to hold the hearings on Islamic radicalism.

It is our duty to keep law and order and faithfully guard the safety of every citizen. Hate is one of the many sources of disrupting the peace in a society and it is our responsibility to seek the source of such hate and work to mitigate it.

Indeed, the last few attempts to mess with our nation’s security has come from men flaunting the Muslim label, and as Muslim Americans, it becomes our individual and collective responsibility to participate in ensuring the safety of every American, and we welcome the hearings. We hope it will lead us to find the sources and causes of such erratic behavior, and perhaps point out areas of concerns to be addressed and find lasting solutions.

We have to identify the criminals who are individually accountable for their actions, and need to punish them expediently according to the law.  As a civil society, we must also resist the temptation to blame their family, nation and religion, and not fall for and legitimize their attempts to hide under a religious label for their evil acts. The use of phrases such as Islamic Radicalism is oxymoronic and must be avoided to uphold our civility.

As Americans together and Muslims together, we are planning to organize conferences and workshops on terrorism, anti-Semitism, Sharia, Quran, GLBT, racial profiling, Islamophobia and other issues which pit one American against another. We hope to separate realities from myths to help find solutions.

Mike Ghouse is the founder of America Together foundation, committed to building cohesive societies offering pluralistic solution on the issues of the day.  His work is indexed in 4 websites and 21 Blogs at http://www.mikeghouse.net/

Book smashes India's "Islamic terrorism" myth

Book smashes India's "Islamic terrorism" myth
A former IG of Maharashtra police lays bare a massive plot to destabilise India

By M Zeyaul Haque

New Delhi, October 22 (The Milli Gazette): A new book curiously titled Who Killed Karkare? says a nationwide network of Hindutva terror that has its tentacles spread up to Nepal and Israel is out to destroy the India most Indians have known for ages and to remould it into some kind of Afghanistan under the Taliban.

The writer, a former IG Police of Maharashtra, SM Mushrif, has reconstructed a fearsome picture out of former Maharashtra ATS chief Hemant Karkare’s chargesheet against alleged Hindutva terrorists like Lt. Col. Purohit, Sadhvi Pragyasingh Thakur and others.

The chargesheet pointed towards a mind-boggling nationwide conspiracy with international support to destabilise the constitutional order and the secular democratic Indian state that upholds it, to be replaced by a Hindutva state run according to a new Constitution. For that the conspirators were prepared for a massive bloodbath, using bomb attacks on religious places to trigger that anti-Muslim holocaust.

Mushrif, who has over three decades of diligent policing behind him and whose feats include exposing the Telgi scam, has made an elaborate case out of nearly a dozen blasts over a large area of the country conducted by Hindutva terror groups of different stripes. His case: a section of India’s intelligence services, a miniscule group in the armed forces and a section of different state police forces have been compromised and infiltrated by these elements, a development that bodes ill for the future of the country.

In Hemant Karkare’s net (of investigations, of course) many big and small fishes of VHP, RSS, Bajrang Dal and Sanatan Sanstha (which has been found to be involved in Diwali-eve blasts in Goa last week) had been trapped. Serving and retired army officers, academics, serving and retired officials of India’s premier intelligence service were ensnared in Karkare’s fishing net. The menacing power of the latter groups, inspired by sustained anti-Muslim hate campaigns of the last six decades, gave the plot a sinister and highly destructive character.

Among the plans unearthed by Karkare was a blueprint for the assassination of 70 prominent Indians who could by a hindrance to the project of Hindutva. Interestingly, most of the persons marked for elimination would, naturally, be Hindus because it is they who primarily run the dispensation. The conspirators were also unhappy with organisations whose Hindutva they suspected to be less virulent than desired.

Mushrif, who very well knows the power of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) to make or mar lives and careers, says he is prepared to face the consequences of hostility of this power hub. He musters “evidence” to show that the IB has regularly been interfering with regular police investigations to let Hindutva terrorists slip out of the net and replace them with random Muslim youth. To fudge the issues further obliging police officers in the states would not mind exterminating a few Muslim youth to be branded posthumously as “terrorists”.

There are quite a few number of such cases where such extra-judicial killing of Muslim youth has turned out to be false police encounters. All this is done to cover tracks of Hindutva terror. Mushrif says a “Brahminist” network that has its origins in Maharashtra, and is closely knit across political parties, government services, including IB, and other vital sectors of life is behind the terror that seeks to destroy the secular, democratic state. He hastens to clarify that very few Brahminists are Brahmins. Many are from other high Hindu castes, some from middle and lower castes.

Most Brahmins are fair-minded and would not like to associate themselves with hate ideologies. Hemant Karkare, too, was a Brahmin, Mushrif says. So is Mushrif’s son-in-law.

It is pertinent to note that “Brahminism” and “Brahminical order” first appeared in Dalit protest vocabulary in the Dalit uprising movement in Maharashtra towards the turn of the 20th century. Mushrif, who appropriates part of this vocabulary for the present discourse, says that Maharashtra still remains the centre of this ideology that, among other things, has the dubious distinction of killing the Father of the Nation.

The power establishment that really runs the affairs of this country (Mushrif says it is not Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh or Rahul Gandhi) does not want to expose the Hindutva terrorists. One example is the blasts in Samjhauta Express, which the IB said was carried out by Pakistan’s ISI. Mushrif quotes a report in The Times of India that said, “the Centre had blamed the ISI on the basis of the IB’s findings.” However, during a narco-analysis test under Karkare, Lt. Col. Purohit had admitted having supplied the RDX used in the blast. The IB, which draws its power from its proximity to the Prime Minister (its director briefs the PM every morning for half an hour), did not want Karkare’s investigation that blew the cover off the IB’s shenanigans, to continue.

Once Karkare was removed from the scene, the IB moved in to fill his position with KP Raghuvanshi, a pliant police officer with extremely low credibility among Muslims for his record of letting off known Hindutva terrorirsts and implicating innocent Muslim youth even in bomb attack cases on mosques.

There are quite a few interesting vignettes here, like Raghuvanshi and Col. Purohit’s association with Abhinav Bharat in Maharashtra, whose hand was evident in a series of blasts across the country. It has old connections with men like Veer Damodar Savarkar (whose relative Himani Savarkar leads the Abhinav Bharat movement), Dr Munje, who led the Hindu Mahasabha, and other Hindutva luminaries. It is at the Bhonsala Military Academy run by these groups that Purohit trained police officers, including Raghuvanshi. Mushrif asks a pertinent question: Will Raghuvanshi pursue the investigation against Purohit, his guru? A plausible answer is, perhaps no. Already charges have been dropped by a special court under MCOCA against 11 accused, including Purohit, on the grounds of insufficient evidence produced in the court by the prosecution.

This was just the beginning of the undoing of Karkare’s painstaking investigation. Mushrif says slowly the system is working to undo all of Karkare’s work and let off the terrorists who over the years destroyed scores of lives and wreaked irreparable economic damage. The ATS team under Karkare had pointed out VHP leader Praveen Togadia’s role in the blasts. The ATS under Raghuvanshi dropped the investigation against him saying (please hold your laughter) they do not know who Togadia is!

A number of investigations have been thus sabotaged by the powers that be and the tracks of the Hinduta terrorists duly covered. The 319-page book is crammed with such information.

But what about who killed Karkare? Mushrif says two teams were at work on 26/11 ­– one which did the maximum damage, and was from outside. The smaller team took advantage of the confusion of the moment and acted only on the relatively small CST-CAMA-Rangbhavan stretch that killed Karkare. It was a desi unit that wanted Karkare and his men out of the way.

Book: Who Killed Karkare? The Real Face of Terrorism in India
Author: SM Mushrif
Price: Rs 300
Pages: 319
Publisher: Pharos Media (www.pharosmedia.com), New Delhi
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