The in-house Urdu magazine of the Pakistani extremist outfit Jaish-e-Mohammad, al-Qalam, has published an article calling South Asian Muslims for violent jihad in Myanmar in retaliation against the reported persecution of Rohingya Muslims in that country.

In its latest edition, the weekly magazine which claims to be the torch-bearer of Islamic journalism (Islami sahafat ka alambardar) carries an article penned by Jaish chief Maulana Masood Azhar.

At the very outset, Azhar threatens the “oppressive” Myanmar government to prepare for “the thudding sound of the footsteps of its conquerors”. He says “the country will be soon deprived of peace and tranquility”.

A cursory look at the key contents reveals the potential for radicalisation well-embedded in this virulent piece. It reads:  “The global Muslim community (ummah) is feeling the pain of the Muslim nation… It is because of the sacrifices of the Myanmar Muslims that the ummah is waking up and we are seeing this new awakening among the Muslims of the world… All of us must do whatever we can for the Myanmar Muslims. Just say your prayers, and get up to help them. You don’t need to show off what you are doing: just do it, and never stop.” The full Urdu article can be accessed here.

Thus, it is the first time that any extremist jihadist ideologue in South Asia has given a call for jihad in Myanmar. Significantly, this jihadist war-cry has come in a weekly column in al-Qalam regularly written by Maulana Masood Azhar under his pen-name ‘Sa’adi’. In this article titled in Urdu as “Betab Burma” (Distressed Burma), the group’s house magazine appeals to the common Muslims of the subcontinent “to do something, and do it urgently”.

The extremist jihadist magazine, which is published in Urdu both in print and online, is freely available to gullible young Muslims in the subcontinent. Jihadist literature like this has considerably helped in radicalising a sizeable number of naive readers particularly in Pakistan, Jammu and Kashmir and even some parts of the Urdu-speaking states in India.

It is not difficult to see why this “clarion call” for jihad has been given by one of the most notorious South Asian extremist groups when an increasing number of Muslims in India are joining the chorus of “Rise for Rohingyas”.

Given the growing anguish among Indian Muslims against the Myanmarese crackdown on the Rohingyas, the jihadist war-cry of Jaish-e-Mohammad and the ilk will fuel the flame of Islamist radicalisation in India.

With the first call for Jihad in Myanmar, the Jaish has sowed the seeds of this imminent religious strife. Several other extremist Islamist outfits in South Asia are rooting for the ‘Rohingya jihad’ in a bid to further their nefarious ends.

Now, similar calls for jihad are emerging from global jihadist outfits like Al Qaeda, which pose internal security threats to the region. According to the Pakistani newspaper’s report dated September 14, 2017, Al Qaeda militants have called for support for Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims, warning that Myanmar would face “punishment” for its “crimes”. The militant group behind September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States issued a statement urging Muslims around the world to support their fellow Muslims in Myanmar with aid, weapons and “military support”.

“The savage treatment meted out to our Muslim brothers … shall not pass without punishment,” Al Qaeda said in a statement, according to the SITE monitoring group. “The government of Myanmar shall be made to taste what our Muslim brothers have tasted.”

Whether some of the Rohingyas, if not the whole community, are linked to radical jihadist outfit Aqa Mul Mujahideen, and hence their illegal immigration in India poses security threats, is still being debated. But there has been no theological refutation, vociferously, of these jihadist underpinnings behind the Rohingya radicalisation.

Also, there is substantial evidence that the Rohingya-linked extremists are predominantly influenced by the puritanical thoughts of either the Pakistani Wahhabis or the India-based Tablighi Jama’at. Keeping this in view, mainstream Muslims in the subcontinent must rebut the radical rhetoric for the ‘Rohingya Jihad’ like in the al-Qalam’s article.  Indian Islamic leaders’ compassion and moral support for the Rohingya Muslims is not misplaced. But they should also feel impelled to distance the community from the monsters of radicalisation.

An ideological probe into the Rohingya crisis unravels that Rohingya Muslims’ plight is being used as a tool by extremist Islamist outfits now. They have begun to indoctrinate gullible Muslims into the narrative of victimhood. Indian officials have also found evidence that these groups have attracted a few Rohingyas by promising to help them carry out retribution against Myanmar, Bangladesh and India.

Scores of Islam-based social media groups are purportedly sharing pictures of persecution against the Rohingya Muslims and thus creating grievous fears among the common Indian Muslims against their own country. An outpouring of compassion for their co-religionists is natural and cannot be rejected outright. But this poses a grave internal security threat, given the similar display of sympathy and strongly-worded support and confrontational statements from the Pakistani jihadist outfits sparking regional fears.

Particularly in Kashmir, Hizbul Mujahideen has been fanning the flame of radicalism telling the provocative stories of Muslim victimhood in Myanmar. The extremist outfit’s sympathisers widely shared an Urdu poster on social media groups, on the occasion of the Eid-ul-Adha, urging Muslims of the Valley to donate skins of the slaughtered animals to the Hizbul Mujahideen,  which claimed to step up to rescue the Rohingya refugees.

The Hizbul Mujahideen’s poster reads in Urdu:

“Kashmir, Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq and now Burma. In fact, Muslims all across the world are getting mercilessly massacred and attaining martyrdom (shahadat), as evidenced in the given pictures. But the youths of Hizbul Mujahideen are well-prepared to tackle the onslaughts on Muslims everywhere. It’s your responsibility to make contributions in this cause. Hence, you must offer your Islamic donations and charity (Sadaqat and Khairat), particularly the sacrificed animal’s skins to the Hizbul Mujahideen, which resolves to rescue the distressed Muslims.”

This poster carries gruesome pictures showing Muslim children and women being ruthlessly killed in Burma, Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq. It has also provided the contact numbers of three responsible persons, as detailed in an article on a liberal and progressive Urdu website, Naya Zamana.