A willful misinterpretation of history sees attacks during Ramzan

Thirteen jawans were injured when terrorists carried out a series of attacks on security forces in Jammu and Kashmir in a span of four hours on June 13. The six attacks came in a span of four hours on Tuesday. DGP SP Vaid told PTI that there was intelligence input about terror attacks on the 17th day of Ramzan and all necessary precautions were taken.

On the 17th day of Ramzan (March 13, 624 CE), an Islamic battle of a defensive nature known as Ghazwa-tul-Badr (or Jang-e-Badr) was fought by Prophet Mohammad (pbuh) against the Meccan oppressive pagans who wronged and harshly tortured him along with his followers, denying them the basic tenets of freedom of religion and inflicted great injuries upon all those who stood by them.

The significance of the 17th day of Ramzan was not commonly known to Indian Muslims. It is only after the wave of Islamic messages spread across social media that they began to talk about the victory that Muslims achieved in the battle of Badr. But deplorably for Muslims, the warmongers in Kashmir have chosen to celebrate this occasion by peddling terror.

Shakeel Shamsi, a veteran journalist and editor of noted Urdu newspaper, Roznama Inquilab had the temerity to point it out in his article “Ghazwa-e-Badr aur dahshat gard,” “Regrettably, the terrorists actively engaged in south Kashmir have celebrated the anniversary of Ghazwa-e-Badr with the ghastly terror attacks in six different places”.

While Shamsi has lamented this sorry state of affairs in Kashmir in his June 15 editorial, the theological justifications for striking terror on the ‘anniversary’ of Ghazwa-e-Badr are strongly worded in many Pakistani Urdu dailies such as Nawa-e-Waqt of Lahaur and websites like Daily Urdu Point and the official website of Hizb-ut-Tahrir.

Regrettably, even some gullible editors of Delhi’s Urdu dailies like Roznama Sahafat published sycophantic articles on Ghazwa-e-Badr. Apparently, overlooked the extremist rhetoric that the jihadists made out of this first Islamic battle.

In fact, this peculiar form of jihadist atrocity is not an isolated phenomenon in Kashmir’s history. Previously, Kashmir in the 90s as well as in the early 2000s witnessed far more brutal attacks around Ramzan as compared to the recent massacres in South Kashmir. Former BBC correspondent, Yusuf Jameel, who covered Kashmir’s armed militancy in the nineties, recounted how they stood out as the “bloodiest” in terms of the militant attacks in Kashmir. “The scale of attacks back in the ’90s was much greater. There were a number of incidents during the nineties on a given day. The scale was much larger than this”, he said.

Another senior journalist who has covered the armed uprising and unrest in Kashmir through the 90s and into the 2000s, was also of the same view. He opined that the attacks carried out in different parts of South Kashmir on June 13 were not haphazard or coincidental. “I think the attacks were meticulously planned on this day to remind the people of the armed struggle of the nineties…Every year in the early nineties, the day 17 Ramzan was chosen for widespread attacks on government forces… “Called ‘action’ in those days, the militants would make it a point to strike on this day, their way of commemorating the battle of Badr”, he told Kashmir Reader.

Now it should not be difficult to fathom as to why the jihadists in Kashmir chose to wreak havoc particularly on June 13—the 17th Ramzan, the eve of Ghazwa-tul-Badr. They launched a nefarious series of six multiple attacks on the same day in different parts of south Kashmir. Apart from the innocent people suffering the torment of these terror attacks, many government troops were shot dead and many of them were critically injured in this wave of six terror attacks launched by the jihadists in different parts of south Kashmir. This is how they have marked the anniversary of Ghazwa-tul-Badr with their obnoxious actions and extremist designs.

In fact, the event of Ghazwa-e-Badr, popularly known in Kashmir as Youm-e-Badr (the day of Badr) was very specifically celebrated by the ISIS and its ilk on every 17th day of Ramzan in Raqqa and Mosul. According to Kurdish news source Rudaw, while ISIS terrorists celebrated the 17th Ramzan, they frowned upon every other Islamic festival like Eid-ul-Fitr and Eid-ul-Adha. They warned the residents of their occupied lands to shun the celebration of Eid. ISIS scholars’ opinion is that such a practice never existed during the time of the prophet Mohammed (pbuh) and that it was later coined by ‘misguided’ Muslims.

But at the same time, the inspiration to mark the 17th day of Ramzan with mindless atrocities also emanates from the ISIS ideology. According to the radical Islamist ideologue, Abu Mus’ab Zarqawi, the military expeditions of the Islamist fighters on the day of Ghazwa-tul-Badr or 17th Ramzan is attributed with divine intervention. Going by Islam’s historical accounts like Sirah Ibn Hisaham, the first military expedition in Islam was the Ghazwa-tul-Badr which took place on the 17th Ramzan in 624. After eight years, Muslims achieved the victory in Mecca during Ramzan. Therefore, not only the 17th Ramzan, rather the entire holy month which marks Muslims’ quest for complete peace and tranquillity along with cultural festivity, is taught as ‘time for terror and calamity’ in the ISIS theology. Much against the spiritual sanctity attached to this holy Islamic occasion, to an utter horror, jihadist goons including in Kashmir have turned Ramzan into a month of horror and calamity.

More to the point, last year, the global jihadists chose this auspicious month to further their nefarious designs in Orlando (Florida), Istanbul (Turkey) and Dhaka (Bangladesh). Similarly, they have again terrorised the innocent people in the ongoing month of Ramzan. From Florida, Istanbul, Dhaka, London, Baghdad, Java, Indonesia, to now Manchester and Tehran, they have all been subject to ghastly ISIS terror attacks, very particularly in days of Ramzan. These massacres, apart from claiming hundreds of innocent lives, have created panic in the minds of millions of people. Thus, these attacks were self-evident results of the clarion call of the Islamic State to its adherents: ‘make Ramzan a month of mayhem’. One of the ISIS spokesmen, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani urged his worldwide cult to systematically launch attacks during the holy month of Ramzan. He is reported to have said: “Ramzan, the month of conquest and jihad. Get prepared, be ready … to make it a month of calamity everywhere for the non-believers … especially for the fighters and supporters of the caliphate in Europe and America”.

Of late, ISIS has called for more terror attacks during the upcoming days towards the end of the month of Ramzan. Using the messaging application Telegram, the official spokesman of ISIS, Abi al-Hassan al-Muhajer has disseminated an audio message extolling the recent suicide bombing targeting the parliament building and a mausoleum in Tehran. His message read: “O lions of Mosul, Raqqa, and Tal Afar, God bless those pure arms and bright faces, charge against the rejectionists and the apostates and fight them with the strength of one man,” as reported here.

If truth be told, the jihadists mark the month of Ramzan as ‘a month of calamity’, because this belief results from an extremist underpinning of Ghazwa-e-Badr which is antithetical to the actual reading of this historic event in Islam. After the Prophet (pbuh) and his companions achieved victory in their defensive battle against the oppressive forces in Mecca, he proclaimed general amnesty, without any revenge. Even when a few of his companions, overjoyed with conquest, shouted in Arabic: “Al-Yumu Yumul Malhama” (today is the day of retaliation), Prophet (pbuh) strongly rebutted it. He said: “La, Al-Yaumu Yaumul Marhama” (No, today is the day of mercy).

Thus, the 17th Ramzan event of Badr is actually misconstrued and twisted by the self-styled Islamic scholars and ideologues of the ISIS with an aim to provoke global Muslims to revenge on their supposed enemies. The mainstream Muslims particularly those in Jammu and Kashmir have to remind themselves of the Islamic ideal of Marhama (mercy) in place of Malhama (retaliation or war).

As we are winding down to the end of the sacred month of Ramzan, a note of caution is desperately required in the context of the Kashmir unrest. Just as there was a similar spike in violence during the month of Ramzan which heightened after Eid-ul-Fitr in the wake of Burhan Wani’s killing, regrettably, much bloodshed could be seen ahead.

The author can be contacted on Twitter @GRDehlvi.

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