SIMI and Islamist Threat Within: A Can of Jehadi Worm Got Exposed !

By Animesh Roul

During the last fortnight, the 'Student Islamic Movement of India' (SIMI), the radical outlawed Muslim student outfit, has received many setbacks when Madhya Pradesh State police have rounded up over 30 active cadres including its chief Safdar Nagori and Shibly Peedical Abdul from Rajgarh, Ujjain, Indore and Bhopal. Nagori was reportedly planning a series of major terror strikes across India. The interrogations revealed two vital developments: SIMI has plans to indoctrinate and train school-going children as future jihadis and for that purpose (perhaps) they have already established a women's combat and preaching wing known as 'Shaheen Force.' The outfit provided jihadi and explosives training to its cadres at camps in Choral and in other places where Islamist recruits from neighbouring states like Jharkhand, Kerala and Karnataka participated.

SIMI is widely known for its covert involvement in all major terrorist attacks in India, outside restive Jammu and Kashmir. SIMI provides logistics and foot soldiers to Pakistan-based jihadi groups, primarily to Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e- Muhammad. Many cadres also joined terror outfits for providing logistical support in setting up sleeper cells across the country. SIMI’s cadres used to fan Muslim ghettos in many Indian cities for new recruits and base as these places are always prone for becoming a safe hideout for any terrorist or their sympathizers.

Emergence:
SIMI was founded on April 25 1977 in the University of Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh as a radical student outfit and the inter-linked triad of Islamic concepts—Ummah, Khilafat and Jehad —determined SIMI’s postures and activities in the country thereafter. It started as united platform for Muslim students and youth in the country, with the objective to restore the Caliphate for the unity of Ummah (Muslim community) by rejecting the concept of nationalism, secularism and democracy. Its aim was to establish Dar-ul-Islam (land of Islam), by using violent path, if necessary, to convert non Muslims. The ideological inspirations were derived from Muslim thinkers who had launched Islamic movements in the subcontinent in the past, e.g. Shah Walliullah, Sayyid Ahmad and Haji Shariat Allah and Maulana Maududi, the founder of the Jama’at-i Islami (JEI). SIMI was deeply inspired by the Maududi’s goal to make Islam the supreme organizing principle for the social and political life of the Muslim community. as a whole within ‘iqamat-i-deen’ and ‘hukumat-i ilahiya’ concept. In its annual report, SIMI reiterated these tenets urging Muslim youths to struggle for the revival of Islam in the light of Quran and Sunnah.

In its nearly three decades of existence and seven years of proscription, the outfit has been relentlessly trying to revive Islam in India in a covert but coordinated manner with an overall objective to Islamize the whole country spreading ‘communal poison’ among Muslim youths.’ Tagged as the ‘fifth column’ of Pakistan’s intelligence agency due to its anti-India activities, the outfit has been active and operational in many parts of India since its inception in 1977. Being a conglomerate of a number of students and youth Islamic bodies like Muslim Students Association, Students Islamic Union, Students Islamic Organization, Muslim Youth Association, SIMI became a platform for fanatical Muslim students, who were opposed to the concept of nationalism, secularism and democracy. Its pro-Taliban stance in the wake of the September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, anti-US demonstrations in Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Rajasthan and lionization of Osama bin Laden as the ‘ultimate Jehadi’ drew worldwide attention and prompted Indian government to impose a ban. Indian government announced a ban on SIMI on 27 September 2001, under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, for its anti-national and destabilising activities in India, for its controversial remarks questioning India’s sovereignty and integrity and for its links with other Islamic militant outfits operating in the country and in Pakistan. Later it was proscribed under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA), 2002. Since the ban, SIMI has been operating under different names and one of them is Tahreek Ihya-e-Ummat (or Movement for the Revival of the Ummah).

Leadership:
The last known leaders of the outfit were Shahid Badar Falah and Safdar Nagori as the national president and secretary-general respectively. While the president was arrested and charged with sedition and for communal tension in north India in September 2001, its general secretary Nagori was arrested on March 27, 2008 from Indore, Madhya Pradesh. Nagori has been trying to revive SIMI and already established links with the operatives of Pakistan intelligence agency, Hamas and other like minded leaders across India’s national border. The ideological links with Hamas was revealed by SIMI’s financial secretary Salim Sajid following his arrest in June 2002. According to him, Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmad Yaseen had endorsed the ‘freedom struggle’ in India’s Jammu and Kashmir state and reconstruction of demolished Babri Masjid in UP. His interrogation also brought SIMI’s covert connections with Saudi Arabia’s Jamayyatul Ansar (JA) and Bangladesh’s Islamic Chhatra Shivir, student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh. JA comprised of SIMI activists primarily expatriate Indian Muslims operates in Saudi Arabia. Besides ideological support, financial aids were pouring from these sources. The outfit has always kept ties floating with the Jamaat-e-Islam (JeI) units in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. Among other sources of funding, the role of World Assembly of Muslim Youth in Riyadh and the International Islamic Federation of Students' Organizations based in Kuwait are well established. Even the US based Consultative Committee of Indian Muslims is also reported to have supported SIMI.

Tentacles:
Intelligence sources have stated that after the proscription, large numbers of SIMI cadres have fled to northeastern part of India and neighboring Bangladesh for subversive training across the border and also for forging ties with other Islamic groups in the region. Much before that SIMI had formed local branches in West Bengal, especially in the border districts of Malda, Murshidabad and North and South Dinajpur and even reached Kolkata. They organized regional meetings in West Bengal and in Chittagong of Bangladesh under different banner in 2003 where they had reportedly stressed on a plan to infiltrate Islamic education centers, libraries, and other cultural bodies for covert mobilization of Islamic forces. Widely dispersed tentacles of SIMI were not restricted to Indian subcontinent only. In 2003, as many as 350 Indian Muslims working in Jordan, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and other Middle-Eastern states were recruited by SIMI to fight US forces in Iraq at the behest of International Islamic Front.

Cadres of the outfit were being trained clandestinely by the ISI operatives with the aim of launching subversive strikes in the country and to balkanize India by carrying out large scale terrorist strikes. Many have confessed during their interrogations in the past. One arrested Sikh militant revealed in 1993 that many SIMI cadres, along with Kashmiri and Sikh militants had been brought together by the ISI through the Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan to carry out training and subversive activities in Indian mainland. Although SIMI has denied the charge time and again evidences suggested that it has been in league with the ISI. Reports in the media indicated that ISI has been using various fraternal bodies associated with SIMI as conduits for sending funds, advice and instruction. It has also used Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries maintaining contacts with SIMI activists during their regular visits either for collection of funds or for Haj. In early 2003, senior police official in Lucknow who investigated SIMI case in the state, warned about later’s revival plan with the help of ISI. His reaction was based on the confessions made by the arrested SIMI operatives, Obaid Ullah and Mohammed Arif. Presently it is suspected that cadres of SIMI must have infiltrated other likeminded outfits at the behest of ISI.

Recent arrests show that there has been mushrooming growth of ‘mini Talibans’ all over central India and certainly SIMI was on a revival path.

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