The Mothers Of The Lashkar - C M Naim

The book is titled Ham Ma’en Lashkar-e-Taiba Ki (‘We, the Mothers of Lashkar-e-Taiba’); its compiler styles herself Umm-e-Hammad; and it is published by Dar-al-Andulus, Lahore. Its three volumes have the same garish cover, showing a large pink rose, blood dripping from it, superimposed on a landscape of mountains and pine trees The first volume, running to 381 pages, originally came out in November 1998, and was reprinted in April 2001. The second and third volumes, with 377 and 262 pages, respectively, came out in October 2003. Each printing consisted of 1100 copies. Portions of the book—perhaps much of it—also appeared in the Lashkar’s journal, Mujalla Al-Da’wa.

It is obviously a book of propaganda, and as such presents a closed world. It deliberately excludes from its readers’ sight huge areas of the experienced lives of the Pakistani people and the belief fields of millions of Muslims in South Asia, not to mention around the world. It is intensely focused. Its goal is to establish that jihad is the paramount purpose of Islam on earth, and in particular for the Muslims of Pakistan. The pages of this book do not contain any reference to the ills that plague all Pakistanis in such sites of public life as work places, schools, hospitals, and urban neighbourhoods. It is not concerned with Pakistan except as the territory from where the Lashkar must obtain its recruits.Similar is its concern with Kashmir—to be exact, the Valley of Kashmir. The book shows no awareness of the Kashmiri people as impoverished and besieged human beings in two nation states. When it refers to the Kashmiris it is only to allege and denounce that Kashmiri mothers and girls were being raped by Hindu soldiers occupying the valley. What other injuries and pains the Kashmiris might be suffering is a subject totally excluded here, for doing otherwise would involve bringing into purview the Pakistani Kashmir, too. That is where the Lashkar has its camps, and where it unquestioningly collaborates with the authorities of the state. There is no indication in the book that the Lashkar supports an independent Kashmir in any manner.

Not to deny the alleged or reported cases of rape and other forms of violence against women in Indian Kashmir, but I must note that the jihadi concern with sexual exploitation of Muslim women by non-Muslims happens to have a history too. It is the obligatory motif in their literature in South Asia, invoked with reference to both Muhammad bin Qasim’s attack on Sindh (8th century) and the jihad of Syed Ahmad of Rae Bareli (19th century) against the Sikhs conducted on the border with Afghanistan. While it may be said that the movement led by Syed Ahmad also did something for the benefit of Muslim women who were not under Sikh domination—it urged widow remarriage, a major step against the practiced orthodoxy of the time—the Lashkar cannot make a similar claim. It encourages widow remarriage, but within the confines of the dead man’s immediately family or the ranks of the Lashkar. The widows of the ‘martyrs’ are in no way encouraged to build a life of their own. In fact, several ‘martyrs’ expressly ask their parents to forego educating the girls in the family to any high level, and instead have them married quickly into good ‘jihadi’ families. Needless to say, neither the Lashkar nor any other Islamic extremist group has expressed any concern over the rampant violence against Muslim women in Pakistan in the form of honour killings, incidents of acid throwing, karo-kari (handing over a woman to be killed as a ‘ransom’ for a man), not to mention something as mundane as domestic violence. [thanks BS]