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[ by Charles Cameron — Hindutva vs Ghazwa-e-Hind, India vs Pakistan, battle of the girl orators, flags flying in the other guy’s capital, Zaid Hamid, erased from the map, what have I missed? ]
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For starters, when I saw the blurry headlines under 13-year-old Sadhwi Balika Saraswati‘s speech to a Vishwa Hindu Parishad gathering, I wasn’t sure whether to pair her speech with Zaid Hamid‘s image of the Pakistani flag flying over Delhi’s Red Fort:

or with the Ayatollah Khamenei‘s recent statement about the “fake” Zionist regime disappearing from the “landscape of geography”:

I mean, there are parallels there, and differences, in each case.

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And then, when I did a little more digging, all hell broke metaphorically loose, and I couldn’t get enough tabs on my browser to hold all the videos I seemed to want to check out.

I’ve combed through my history and sorted things out now, so I can point you, for starters, to:

13 yr old Hindu girl speaks out against Anti-India forces at a VHP rally — a Youtube video of the relevant part of her speech with English subtitles. You can read a transcript of the speech — missing all the excitement — here. And to give you an idea of its (relative) popularity, one YouTube version of this speech without subtitles, has had 410,535 views, with 1,503 likes and 1,589 dislikes, while another has had 200,964 views, with 801 likes and 491 dislikes… Bear in mind, though, that the Indian population exceeds one billion.

A Pakistani girl replies to 13 yr old Hindu girl who spoke against pakistan — sadly, no subtitles here, but at least it’s a response from someone of roughly equivalent age..

Reply to bajrangdal’s girl by Zaid Hamid which is also interesting, as he’s the spokes-guy for the Ghazwa-e-Hind idea…

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Which in turn brought me back to thinking once again about the Ghazwa, and:

Ghazwa-e-Hind is our destiny — Zaid Hamid himself addressing the topic (posted this month) — “and we invite the Muslims from Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey and the rest of the Muslim world to come and join us in the fulfilment of this most fascinating destiny which awaits us now: recapturing of India.”

Ghazwa-e-Hind Hadith Explaination — the picture is very blurry , is that our old friend Sheikh Imran Hosein, perhaps? — and

Ghazwa-e-Hind By Dr Israr Ahmed

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I’m afraid Zaid Hamid wouldn’t be satisfied with India alone, though:

That’s him, top left, overseeing everything.

Oh, and for good measure, here’s a humorous response to Hamid, zaid hamid latest about india — featuring a barking dog.

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Look, I don’t think Pakistan is about to capture India, or vice versa, any time soon.

If the two countries feel the need to face off, I hope they will limit themselves to a little ritual drama and some fierce stares, and they do every day in the border ceremonial at Wagah:

Beyond that, I’m an advocate for conflict-resolution and peace-making.

What I do think is that undercurrents of the kind found in the incendiary rhetoric of both sides are worth the attention of analysts.

[ by Charles Cameron – Ghazwah-e-Hind, the other prong of Khorasan jihad, YouTube propaganda, Zaid Hamid, his warnings to the West (leave well alone!) and to the Hindus (convert!) ]

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1.

The Hadith:

The major sweep of the victorious army with black banners will be from Khorasan to Jerusalem, as described in various earlier posts here — but  there are ahadith that deal with the conquest of India (and China, but that’s another story, see David Cook, Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic, pp 170 ff) that are currently enjoying a vogue in Pakistan…

Here is one version of the hadith, as quoted  by the Shaikh of the Naqshbandi Owaisiah Sufis, Muhammad Akram Awan, to whom I shall return in a future post, in a speech he gave in Pakistan in November 2008:

From Abu Hurairah (rau), he said: (saws)

The Messenger (saws) of Allah promised us Ghazwah-tal Hind. Now, if I encounter it, I shall invest my wealth and life in it. Then, if I am killed I will be among the most chosen Shuhada (martyrs) and if I live, I would be Abu Hurairah ‘the freed’ (from Hell Fire).

2.

The plan:

So how does that translate into contemporary geopolitics?

Syed Saleem Shahzad (Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban: Beyond Bin Laden and 9/11, pp 206-215) offers a brief overview of the Indian Jihad / Ghazwa-e-Hind in its current incarnation, with the involvement of the Pakistani ISI and AQ’s (presumed late) Ilyas Kashmiri, bringing us fast forward to the present day:

This was the ISI plan drawn up 30 years ago with Harkat-ul-Jihad-iIslami, Jamaat-e-Islami, Muslim Brotherhood connections, Islamic seminaries, and Sufi networks of constructing a theater of war from Central Asia to Bangladesh to defeat the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and simultaneously to acquire the right of self-determination for Kashmiris in India. Thirty years later, Al-Qaeda simply refurbished the plan after sketching out its ideological boundaries, to prepare the greater theaters of war of Khurasan and Ghazwa-e-Hind for victory, before its armies, holding the black flag aloft, entered in the Middle East for the final battle against the Western world.

From my POV, the ghazwa is one of the topics Stephen Tankel might profitably have addressed as theological matter relevant to the LeT and the Mumbai attack…

Here’s the close of Shahzad’s book, to make the apocalyptic thrust in all this quite clear:

However, the saga of Al-Qaeda’s One Thousand and One Nights tales continues with new strategies and new characters. For Al-Qaeda these are just measures to keep the West running from pillar to post until it exhausts itself and Al-Qaeda can announce victory in Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda next aims to occupy the promised land of ancient Khurasan, with its boundaries stretching all the way from Central Asia to Khyber Paktoonwa through Afghanistan, and then expand the theater of war to India.

The promised messiah, the Mahdi, will then rise in the Middle East and Al-Qaeda will mobilize its forces from Ancient Khurasan for the liberation of Palestine, where a final victory will guarantee the revival of a Global Muslim Caliphate.

3.

The video: 

With that as background, I’d like to illustrate the emotional drive of the ghazwa idea, with screen shots from a video posted to YouTube in February of this year, titled Ghazwa-e-Hind (Prophecy) – Fall of India – Promised Victory. This section will take up quite a bit of screen space, but you can pretty much scroll on down and get the general idea, pausing where something seems a tad different or more interesting:

The video features stirring music throughout, presumably taken from Molossus (From “Batman Begins”) [2005] by Hans Zimmer & James Newton Howard — which we are invited to purchase on iTunes or AmazonMP3…

It opens with a rally, at which an Indian speaker is castigating Pakistan —

next up: two frames that give a textual expression of the hope involved —

then, what we might call a “starting” map —

various evidences of military might —

another couple of text frames —

 

some arguably more intense weaponry —

and no less intense special forces —

then the hoped-for “close of play” map, book-ending the “opening” map above —

the ultimate threat —

and the flag of Pakistan flying over the Red Fort in Delhi —

4.

The warning: 

I have one final screen shot in the series, and it features Syed Zaid Hamid —

the man who has been most actively stirring up public sentiment in Pakistan for the Ghazwa-e-Hind.

I will close with two of Hamid’s speeches, posted on YouTube, each of them containing a warning.  The first is in English, geopolitical in tone, and contains a warning to the US, Israel and India, that they should not attack Pakistan.

The second is addressed to the Hindus:

Such an invitation to convert is mandatory “when you meet your enemies’ before waging jihad, as stated in the hadith in Sahih Muslim, Book 19, 4294:

Invite them to (accept) Islam; if they respond to you, accept it from them and desist from fighting against them.

— and parallels bin Laden‘s Letter to America, in which UBL wrote:

The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam.

(a) The religion of the Unification of God; of freedom from associating partners with Him, and rejection of this; of complete love of Him, the Exalted; of complete submission to His Laws; and of the discarding of all the opinions, orders, theories and religions which contradict with the religion He sent down to His Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Islam is the religion of all the prophets, and makes no distinction between them – peace be upon them all.

5.

The outline:

That’s the basic outline.

I hope to dig in deeper and provide more subtlety in future posts, but this topic is still pretty new to me — I first ran across it, somewhat tangentially, in the United States of Islam video which I began to discuss in October 2010, and which I may return to shortly.

I also wish to invite comment from others who have been looking into the Ghazwa for longer than I have.