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| The Great Banuri Town Seminary |
| 2004-02-23 |
| A look at the center of radical Deobandi Islam. It is said that Allama Yusuf Banuri set up the Banuri madrassa in Karachi just after 1947 after coming down from the NWFP. Another account says that the large Banuri Town complex of seminaries was established by him much later. The headquarters of what is certainly the largest Deobandi madrassa in the country is in Site Area spread over more than six acres. Jamia Banuria can accommodate 2,000 pupils, while all its 12 branches in the city accommodate 3,000 pupils. The amount spent on its upkeep comes to Rs 3.7 crore annually. The seminary has secular subjects in addition to religious courses, but its graduates have figured prominently in jihad. Its most well known pupil was Maulana Masood Azhar who also taught here before becoming a jihadi hero and leader of the banned Jaish-e-Muhammad. Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai: The most well known living head of the Banuri complex is Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai who was counted as the most powerful man in Pakistan during the rule of Mullah Umar in Afghanistan. An American author has written that Mullah Umar and Osama bin Laden met for the first time in Banuri mosque under the tutelage of Shamzai. Among his 2,000 fatwas the most well known is the one he gave against America in October 2001 declaring jihad after the Americans decided to attack Afghanistan. He had earlier in 1999 already deemed it within the rights of the Muslims to kill Americans on sight. (The fatwa was later modified in explanation.) He was the patron of the foremost Deobandi jihadi outfit Harkatul Mujahideen and was seen as an elder by the two leaders of Harkat: Fazlur Rehman Khalil and Masood Azhar. In 1999, after his release from an Indian jail, Masood Azhar quarrelled with Khalil and formed his own Jaish-e-Muhammad. Shamzai was clearly inclined to favour Masood Azhar and became a member of the Jaish shura (governing council). He was already a member of the shura of Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) of Maulana Fazlur Rehman. "The spilling of American blood is permissible" is how his ’99 Fatwa went. Shamzai is one of a group of highly respected Deobandi scholars in Pakistan who give religous legitimacy to the Jihadi outfits. The Shuras of these different groups have an overlapping membership, which ensures that they remain under the control of the radical, but pro-Army, Mullahs. The Rise of Maulana Masood Azhar: The most famous alumnus of the Banuria seminary was Maulana Masood Azhar, leader of the banned Jaish-e-Muhammad. He is the son of Allah Baksh Shabbir, a teacher of Islam, of Bahawalpur. He has five brothers and six sisters. Masood was born in 1968 and completed his religious training at Banuri Mosque of Karachi and then taught there for two years till 1989. He was inspired to do jihad while at Banuri Mosque. Masood is the author of 29 jihadi tracts and was the organisational genius behind Harkatul Mujahideen, for which he toured abroad and collected funds. He was caught carrying fake dollars at Jedda airport during one of these trips. He was instrumental in getting Harkatul Mujahideen and Harkat al-Jihad al-Islami to merge for some time and was also the man behind creating a collective organisation named Harkatul Ansar. He was in Somalia in 1993 while Osama bin Laden was based in Sudan. Masood was caught in Anantnag in Held Kashmir in 1994 while trying to coordinate Harkatul Ansar. Masood is said to have met Osama bin Laden in Medina in 1994 when both were disguised. Masood’s mission was to bring his jihadi organisation under the aegis of Al Qaeda. Masood Azhar was devoted to Maulana Haq Nawaz Jhangvi, the fanatically anti-Shia and anti-Iran founder of Sipah e-Sahaba who was murdered in 1990, which in turn led to the murder of an Iranian diplomat in Lahore, thus starting the great sectarian war of the decade of the 1990s, attracting Arab funds to Deobandi warriors. It is said that his separation from Harkatul Mujahideen forced his co-leader Fazlur Rehman Khalil to move close to Osama bin Laden, but the truth is that Masood Azhar’s trail in Somalia in 1993 links him with the adventure the Harkat recruits participated in from Sudan which resulted in 24 Pakistani troops (as part of a UN peace force) killed in ambush by warlord Aidid that Osama bin Laden was supporting. Later in 1999, the kidnapper of Daniel Pearl in Karachi, Umar Sheikh, joined him and confirmed the strong bond between Al Qaeda and Jamia Banuria. Binori has also served as one of the headquaters of the global jihad movement. While Afghanistan was the training area, this and some other madrassas provided the religous indoctrination for the future leaders of jihadi movements. Qari Saifullah Akhtar: The next renowned graduate of Banuri Mosque is Qari Saifullah Akhtar, born in 1958 in South Waziristan. The leader of Harkat al-Jahad al-Islami, Qari Saifullah Akhtar first came to public view when he was caught in the 1995 unsuccessful army coup by major-general Zaheerul Islam Abbasi, but saved his skin by turning state witness. (Some say he was defiant but was still let off.) After that he surfaced in Kandahar and from 1996 was an adviser to Mullah Umar in the Taliban government. His fighters were called ‘Punjabi’ Taliban and were offered employment, something that other outfits could not get out of Mullah Umar. The outfit had membership among the Taliban too. Three Taliban ministers and 22 judges belonged to the Harkat. In difficult times, the Harkat fighters stood together with Mullah Umar. Approximately 300 of them were killed fighting the Northern Alliance, after which Mullah Umar was pleased to give Harkat the permission to build six more training camps in Kandahar, Kabul and Khost, where the Taliban army and police also received military training. From its base in Afghanistan, Harkat launched its campaigns inside Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Chechnya. Because of their common origin in the Banuri seminary, Harkat al-Jihad al-Islami and Harkatul Mujahideen were merged in 1993 for better performance in Kashmir. The new outfit was called Harkatul Ansar, the first to be declared terrorist by the United States after one of its commanders, Sikandar, formed an ancillary organisation Al Faran and kidnapped Western tourists from Kashmir in 1995. Qari Saifullah Akhtar fled from Kandahar after the fall of the Taliban and hid in South Waziristan for some time before being reportedly whisked away to some safe place in the Gulf by one of his Arab friends. |
| Posted by:Paul Moloney |
| #3 Sounds like three excellent reasons to bomb the joint into gravel to me... |
| Posted by: mojo 2004-2-23 11:58:45 AM |
| #2 I quit giving when it occurred to me that I'd helped fund eleven libraries at CMU... |
| Posted by: Fred 2004-2-23 11:52:57 AM |
| #1 I wonder if they get those pain in the ass alumni letters from Banuri hitting them up for money? I also wonder if they give them the "I gave at the office" excuse. I also wonder why they aren't fuckin' dead yet. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2004-2-23 11:30:36 AM |