Students Islamic Movement of India
This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content. |
Contents |
Guilty by Association?
How It Began?
Mohammad Ahmadullah Siddiqi, now a professor of mass communication at Western Illinois University in the US, founded the Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) at Aligarh in April 1977, with a mission to ‘liberate India’ from western cultural influence and convert it into an Islamic society
What is its ideology?
Influenced by the Deoband school of thought, SIMI aims to counter in India what it believes is the increasing moral degeneration, sexual anarchy and ‘insensitiveness’ as a result of following the ‘decadent’ west
How it became controversial?
SIMI originally emerged as a student wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami. But the alliance was shortlived as Jamat disapproved of SIMI’s extremist line.
SIMI was banned first on September 27, 2001, under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967. In July 2006, the Centre told the Unlawful Activities
(Prevention) Tribunal that contrary to notion that SIMI’s activities had declined following its ban, the organization had stepped up its subversive activities and was involved in almost all major explosions, communal violence and circulation of inflammatory material across the country
SIMI’s appeal
It’s radicalism that appeals to educated men
Mohammed Wajihuddin | TNN
FROM THE ARCHIVES OF ‘‘THE TIMES OF INDIA’’: 2008
Mumbai: It began as a front for Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), an organisation which has nursed a dream of seeing all Muslims live under an Islamic state. However, somewhere down the road, SIMI deviated from its parent body’s ideals and took to radicalising Muslim youth.
No Muslim leader today accepts that SIMI members are involved in terror attacks. But no one denies the fact that SIMI, in the name of avenging injustice to Muslim, real or imagined, managed to brainwash a section of the educated Muslim youth.
‘‘They would paste posters which had slogans like ‘Bhej illahi phir koi Salahuddin Ayubi (God, send again a Salahuddin Ayubi)’. Ayubi was a 12th century warrior who recaptured Jerusalem from the crusaders. It didn’t gel with the constitution of JI,’’ Aslam Ghazi, JI’s spokesperson in Maharashtra, recalled.
Formed in 1977, SIMI initially worked closely with the JI. But when the JI asked SIMI to work as its student wing, the group declined. ‘‘They
said they would morally support the Jamaat-e-Islami but would not work as its student wing,’’ Ghazi said.
Subsequently, the JI, then headed by Maulana Abu Lais, at its conference in 1982, formed the Students’ Islamic Organisation (SIO), its official student wing. Some of the 1980s events, like the Shah Bano case, the unlocking of the door of Babri Masjid which was followed by L K Advani’s rath yatra helped SIMI get its ground among a section of angry, educated Muslim youths. ‘‘We knew the boys had religious leanings but realised their extreme way of interpreting Islam only after the demolition of the Babri Masjid,’’ All-India Ulema Association president Maulana Athar Ali said.
After its demolition, posters with pictures of the mosque — its domes dripping blood — appeared in Muslim pockets. Some JI members tried to dissuade SIMI from radicalising Muslims youths but in vain. Finally, in the late 1990s, the JI, its members claimed, completely distanced itself from SIMI and its activities.
‘‘We never approved violence for redressal of our grievances. But then SIMI members were never our boys. Why would they listen to us?’’ Maulana Mustaqeem Azmi, a member of Jamiatul Ulema-e-Hind, an organisation of madrasa-educated maulvis which had opposed the Partition, said.
