Pakistan’s Jamaat-ud-Dawa Steps Up Campaign of Anti-American Rhetoric
Despite the Pakistan government’s proscription, the Islamic charity Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) has stepped up its overt anti-Indian and anti-Western rhetoric, holding mass protest rallies across Pakistan as its leaders continue to give provocative speeches in various public forums to fuel Jihadi sentiments and threaten Indian and Western interests in the region. The JuD is believed to act as a front organization for the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist group, responsible for the 2008 assault on Mumbai.
Following the death of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, hundreds of JuD activists descended into the streets of Pakistan’s main cities, including Karachi and Lahore, to offer special “funerary prayers in absentia” (ghaibana namaz-e-janaza) in early May and to pronounce Bin Laden a martyr (The News (Islamabad) May 4). Days later, scores of JuD activists joined members of other Islamic radical groups to organize a rally in Karachi of the Tahaffuz-e-Harmain Sharfain (“Defense of the Two Noble Sanctuaries,” i.e. Mecca and Madinah), a movement in defense of holy mosques in Saudi Arabia led by a group of radical Pakistani clerics. The rally was intended to support the government of Saudi Arabia against “conspiracies” hatched against the Kingdom by the United States and its allies (Daily Times [Lahore], May 7).
On June 20, JuD organized a similar campaign under the auspices of a radical pressure group known as the Dafaye Pakistan Forum (Defense of Pakistan Forum), bringing out a ten-point declaration at an event held in the Jamia al-Dirasat Islamia seminary in Karachi. The declaration described the United States as an enemy of Pakistan and warned India against any military adventures that would threaten Pakistan. During this event, JuD leaders Amir Hamza and Abdul Rhaman Makki joined leaders of Ahle Sunnat wa’l-Jamaat and Jamaat-e-Islami in calling for the imposition of an “Islamic system” in Pakistan. The JuD leaders also asked India to hand over Hindu radicals suspected in the 2007 India–Pakistan Samjhauta Express train bombing, in which nearly 70 people (mostly of Pakistan origin) were killed (Express Tribune [Karachi], June 22).
The JuD (formerly known as Markaz Dawa wa’l-Irshad) was founded in Lahore, Pakistan in the mid-1980s with an Ahle Hadith (Wahhabi) orientation. JuD has long been known to be a front for the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the perpetrator of numerous attacks against India, including the November 2008 Mumbai episode. The Islamabad government launched a brief military operation against JuD/LeT hideouts and training camps in the early weeks of December 2008 under pressure from the United States and India, arresting many top operatives, including Hafiz Saeed and Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, the masterminds of the November 2008 Mumbai attacks (for more on Saeed see Militant Leadership Monitor, June 2010). Hafiz Saeed was later released from detention for lack of evidence and continues to make incendiary high-profile speeches with apparent impunity.