Amidst the continuous conflict between Israel and Palestine, Hamas, the terrorist group based in Palestine, stated in a statement on 31st July that its political leader Ismail Haniyeh and one of his bodyguards had been killed in Tehran. The dreaded terrorist organisation was formed in late 1987 at the beginning of the first Palestinian intifada (uprising) and has roots in the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Notably, the group behind the horrific attack on Israel on 7th October is not only responsible for terrorism in the Jewish country or the Middle East, but also has penetrated its venomous claws in India as well.
The Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) which had close ties with Pakistan-based terror outfits and Indian Mujahideen (IM) was banned by the government of India on 27th September 2001, shortly after the 9/11 attacks. The group faced serious charges including sedition, creating hatred and engineering communal violence, among others. SIMI was reportedly established in 1977 as the student branch of the Jamat-e-Islami-Hind (JIH), the Indian equivalent of the JeI (Jamat-e-Islami), which was established in the 1940s by Maulana Mawdudi. Its objective was to revitalize its senior student organization, the Students Islamic Organization (SIO).
SIMI was founded in Aligarh, with Professor Muhammad Ahmadullah serving as its first president. SIMI’s cordial relationship with the JIH could only last till 1981. Along with a host of other ideological disputes, the SIMI and JIH symbolically split up in 1981 over disagreements over Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s visit to India. Others also assert that JIH dissociated itself from the SIMI. According to JIH, Arafat’s visit was a positive step forward and he was viewed as a supporter of Islamic ideals. On the other side, SIMI activists in New Delhi welcomed Arafat with black flags, fiercely denounced him and dubbed him a puppet in the hands of the West.
The 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution was seen to have been another element that caused friction between SIMI and JIH. JIH was worried that SIMI’s extreme behaviour would damage its reputation, so the group detached itself from the latter and tried to concentrate and rely on its senior students’ front, SIO.
Coincidently or not, Arafat and the Hamas leadership have a very strained relationship as well which resulted in hundreds of fatalities and injuries. His political party “Fatah” which is currently ruling over the State of Palestine under Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas has been in a relentless and violent power struggle with Hamas but the two sides have repeatedly failed to reach an agreement.
Hamas and SIMI’s shared goal of an Islamic state in India
The ideas of secularism, democracy, and nationalism, according to SIMI, are anti-Islamic and it frequently emphasises the need for an armed struggle to establish Islam’s supremacy, the restoration of the Khalifat (the Islamic state or caliphate), and ummah (Muslim brotherhood). SIMI places particular emphasis on the creation of the Khalifat in the context of India. The organization holds that, despite being a minority in the country, Muslims should work hard to ensure that Shari’ah is implemented, as failure to do so will result in their demise in Hell. Hence, the creation of an Islamic polity in the state of India is considered to be the primary goal of Indian Muslims, per SIMI.
The goals of SIMI, which frighteningly resemble what Hamas seeks to do to Jews in Israel, underscore yet another commonality between the two groups. Their profound relationship is further demonstrated by the “Ikhwan Conference” hosted by SIMI in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, on 29th and 30th October 1999 which was attended by over 20,000 people and featured speeches by Sheikh Yaseen, the founder of Hamas, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the leader of Jammat-e-Islami-Pakistan, and the Imam of Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa mosque via telephone. It declared, “Islam ka ghazi, butshikan/Mera sher, Osama bin Laden (The warrior of Islam, the destroyer of idols/ My lion, Osama bin Laden).”
SIMI which had a pan-India presence with bases in states including Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West Bengal, Gujarat, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir not only had close links with JeI, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and Pakistan-based jihadi groups such as Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) but even Hamas as proved by Sheikh Yaseen’s telephonic address during the Ikhwan conference. The connections were found to be even deeper when Salim Sajid, an ex-financial secretary of SIMI who was later imprisoned unveiled that one of the organization’s main funding sources was Hamas.
He also informed that SIMI received financial support from and had connections to both Bangladesh’s Islami Chhatra Shibir (ICS) a student wing of JeIBangladesh and Saudi Arabia’s Jamayyatul Ansar (JA) which is mainly made up of Indian Muslims who work in the country and believed to be transferring money to SIMI. The Consultative Committee of Indian Muslims in the United States, the International Islamic Federation of Students Organizations headquartered in Kuwait, and the World Assembly of Muslim Youth in Riyadh were identified as other sources of finance.
The immutable umbilical cord of Jihad and Mulsim Ummah extends across boundaries as evidenced by security agency inquiry reports which pointed out that SIMI had ties to multiple extremist organisations, including Hamas in Palestine, Saudi Arabia’s Jamayyatul Ansar, and Bangladesh’s ICS.
SIMI transformed into PFI
Similar to a chameleon, SIMI members tried to alter its appearance after the ban on the outfit and started to take part in other organisations, however, they joined groups such as the Popular Front of India (PFI), much like a leopard that cannot change its spots. Multiple SIMI members became part of the PFI, according to reports from the Andhra Pradesh (AP) state intelligence agency which also pointed out PFI’s activities in the Kurnool district of Andhra Pradesh and its involvement in the 2011 communal violence in Adoni.
Reports on SIMI’s reorganization in several regions of the nation had surfaced. Based on an intelligence assessment indicating that SIMI cadres are attempting to reorganize, the Ministry of Home Affairs sent out alerts to Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra after which a nationwide hunt for at least 80 SIMI members who belonged to various Uttar Pradesh (UP) districts as the intelligence report also warned that these cadres were absent from their home territories since the SIMI ban went into effect.
PFI was formed in 2006 with the merger of the Karnataka Forum for Dignity (KFD) and the National Development Front (NDF). On 28th September 2022, the Government of India declared PFI as an “unlawful association” and temporarily outlawed the organisation for five years under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention (UAPA) Act. The government reasoned that the organisation was “prejudicial to the integrity, sovereignty and security of the country” and cited PFI’s connection with terror organisations like Students Islamic Movement of India, Jamat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh and Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
The intelligence report was supplemented by a broadcast that aired on a television network on 2nd November 2010 which reported to have been informed by the Intelligence Bureau (IB) that the PFI is attempting to establish connections with the SIMI. According to a similar allegation published in The Hindu on 22nd January 2008, SIMI was suspected to be operating in Kerala under the umbrella of at least 12 groups. The investigation pointed out that to evade police monitoring, the organizers of SIMI would occasionally rebrand their front groups. According to the report, which cited intelligence sources, SIMI activists were working under the guise of organizations for enhancing personal efficiency, rural development and research centres as well as religious study centres.
SIMI reportedly divided into two factions. The Safdar Nagori group of SIMI, which adheres to “armed jihad,” split apart from the organization after the ban in 2001. The other faction has been contesting the ban in court and has not been active since it went into force.
The Indian government’s repeated extensions of the ban on SIMI are proof that the organization continues to pose a threat to the country. Simultaneously, as previously stated, a segment of SIMI has been litigating in a court against the prohibition. On the other hand, intelligence reports and publicly accessible sources indicate that Islamist groups such as the PFI have been used by former SIMI members. It is suspected that these radical groups are radicalizing young people by utilizing SIMI’s extensive network and resources. Additionally, reports indicate that a large number of these groups might be rebranding themselves regularly to dodge surveillance by law enforcement agencies.
PFI cadres joined SDPI after the ban
Taking a cue from SIMI, PFI’s members began joining the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), the political arm of the radical Islamist group that the central government had not outlawed last year. Consequently, the Popular Front of India (PFI) created the SDPI in the backyard of its former cadres to continue operations in Karnataka. “Some of the PFI members are in the SDPI and some of the SDPI members are in the PFI. Everyone isn’t here (in the PFI) because it’s a Muslim-only organisation whereas the SDPI also has Hindus and Dalits,” Chand Pasha who served as the PFI’s district president for Chikkamagaluru for three years before the ban was captured admitting on camera, last year in April.
“Let me tell you off the record that the PFI cadre is now the SDPI cadre. They work in the background. Arrests can’t happen. They don’t have evidence. If, for instance, I belong to the PFI, there isn’t any document to establish it. There was no such system for issuing IDs in the PFI,” Asif, the SDPI in charge of the Moodbidri Assembly constituency in the coastal area of Dakshina Kannada revealed the deception with which the entire scheme is executed. “We get the maximum support from the Gulf. They (our financiers) would tell us to collect their remittances from the homes (of their contacts) here,” he added.
Muneeb Bengre, an SDPI corporator in the Mangaluru City Corporation, likewise mentioned, “They have come in. It’s no longer the PFI after the ban. They have come to the SDPI. They are our supporters, our members. They are all working. That cadre is not working with PFI identity, but it’s working for our SDPI.” Nazir, another SDPI office bearer stated, “It’s not shaken. Cadres aren’t something that will go away. Young men who don’t have training shake. But we are fully trained from the beginning. I don’t know if they (the PFI cadre) are attacking leaders (of other right-wing groups), but there’s always a fear, the PFI is highly feared,” he boasted about the violent image of PFI.
Conclusion
Extremist and terror groups frequently establish front organisations to hide their identities, and members of these groups often join groups that share similar beliefs, be it LeT which tries to masquerade as a “charity outfit” named Jama’at-ud-Da’wah or Jaish-e-Mohammed which is hiding behind People’s Anti-Fascist Front to carry out its violent operations in Jammu and Kashmir. More importantly, the relationship between Hamas and SIMI, or any other terror group, may seem odd to some because of multiple differences including linguistic, geographic or even political but the important thing to remember is that these groups are all motivated by the same ideology which is hatred of Kufar or Kafir (infidels) and the establishment of an Islamic state. What others consider to be significant distinctions disappear before their unwavering will to impose Sharia law and govern the entire world under the banner of Islam, which is their ultimate goal.
