The generic statement “Education is the antidote to extremism,” is often heard in the liberal ecosystem regarding the grievous problem of Islamic Jihad and terrorism. However, this notion has been proved wrong time and again as many Muslim individuals with distinguished scholastic backgrounds have been discovered to be highly radicalized and actively involved in multiple terror plots. The most recent example of the same is an educated Kashmiri couple with connections to the Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISKP), a front group of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), despite holding prominent degrees such as BTech and MBA.
Jahanzaib Sami Wani and his wife Hina Bashir Beigh moved to Delhi in 2019 from Jammu and Kashmir during the winter season. The pair got married on 6th October when Srinagar was still under lockdown after Article 370 was repealed by the Modi government on 5th August of the same year. Jahanzaib was employed at an United Kingdom based company and held an MBA and BTech degree, while his spouse pursued a bachelor’s degree in computer applications before completing an MBA. She served at some banks before taking a break for her wedding that year.
The couple, who were both in their mid-30s, rented an apartment in Jamia Nagar’s C Block. At first, they would go to the Okhla Bird Sanctuary or see movies on the weekends. However, that was short-lived. The pair generally stayed indoors when anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act demonstrations erupted. The two continued to spend most of their time indoors browsing the internet due to Covid in the next year. However, investigators from Delhi Police’s anti-terror squad knocked on their home early on 8th March 2020. The couple was taken into custody and charged under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
The pair appeared to possess two separate personas online, according to the police. Jahanzaib masqueraded as Xaib, Abu Abdullah and Abu Muhammad-al-Hind and Hina was Hannabee as well as Katijah al Kashmiri. The police asserted that they were followers of ISIS and that handlers with bases in Syria and Afghanistan were in charge of them. The matter was sent to the National Investigation Agency (NIA) ten days later amid the commotion. The duo was placed in jail under judicial custody following a period spent on remand. They were found guilty four years and one month later by a special court in Delhi.
The sentence was delivered on 6th May on the charges of trying to create a caliphate and planning to carry out 100 bombings in a single day in the city. Jahanzaib received jail terms, from 3 to 20 years including a fine while Hina was handed down two jail terms of seven years each, ending their legal process. They had been under surveillance for several months before their detention, per the investigation, which the court upheld.
How the couple was caught
In the summer of 2019, intelligence sleuths became curious after intercepting certain chats made by an account bearing the name Hannabee over an encrypted chat platform. As they probed further, they discovered two dubious entities communicating with some ISIS entities. The terror group, operating under the name Wilayah-al-Hind, had just begun its operations specifically targeting India at this time.
Additionally, Sawt-al-Hind, or Voice of India, a digital journal had appeared on the internet and in applications like Telegram. According to the police, the two groups were also found inciting and radicalising some young people to incite violence during the anti-CAA/NRC (National Register of Citizens) marches. The pair prepared the magazine and communicated with Abu Usman al Kashmiri of ISKP based on the NIA chargesheet.
One of their first articles in the journal extolled the dead terrorist, Huzaifa al Bakistai, the ISKP commander who was killed in a drone strike in the Nangarhar area of Afghanistan in 2019. The couple were profoundly influenced by him. Finding “Xaib and Hannabee” was a difficult chore, despite the fact that the police were on to them. The tech-savvy pair accomplished an effective task of covering their tracks, but finally, the authorities managed to get access to their network. “The communications revealed that they were actively radicalising people across India. Hina, who had pursued her studies in Pune, and her husband were also in touch with a Pune-based couple. The man was a gym trainer and the woman, Sadia, were already on the radar of agencies for IS leanings. Hina had managed to convince Sadia to wear a suicide belt in an upcoming mission,” unveiled an investigator.
NIA special court convicts five individuals
Abdullah Basith, Sadiya Anwar Shaikh and Nabeel Siddick Khatri have also been convicted along with the Kashmiri pair by the NIA court. According to the NIA investigation, Abdullah Basith was a self-professed member of ISIS who helped Jahanzaib Sami produce the ISIS magazine “Voice of Hind.” He had been found guilty and given the same term, he had already served. Moreover, Sadiya Anwar Shaikh also admitted to belonging to the terrorist group. She spearheaded a bid to bring all terrorist groups together under the ISIS banner. She received a prison sentence of seven years for each of these offences. Furthermore, she attempted to obtain a suicide jacket through Jahanzaib.
Nabeel Siddick Khatri provided funds to Jahanzaib to purchase weapons. He executed preemptive bombings to further ISIS doctrine along with the latter. He earned 15, 8 and 8 years in prison. He will be sentenced to an extra two years in prison or a sum equivalent to Rs. 2.5 lakh if he does not pay the penalty that has been imposed against him.
Meanwhile, a Bengaluru-based MBBS student Abdur Rahman, alias as Dr Brave, is on trial. He was arrested in August 2020. He was radicalized by the other accused persons and travelled to Syria in December 2013. He had been involved in several ISIS terrorist operations in Syria, where he had learned how to develop software for ISIS to steer its laser-guided anti-tank missiles and a medical application to cure the terrorists.
The fallacy that education can prevent extremism or terrorism
The false narrative advanced by the left and the Islamic community to conceal the true cause of terrorism and attribute it to poverty or illiteracy has been repeatedly debunked by, ironically, the same people they fiercely defend. Despite claims to the contrary, international terrorists such as Egyptian physician Ayman al-Zawahiri, who served as the second general emir of al-Qaeda from June 2011 until his death in July 2022, and the world’s most notorious civil engineer Osama bin Laden, who belonged to the wealthy bin Laden family in Saudi Arabia which is closely associated with the inner circles of the country’s royal family have demonstrated that no amount of wealth or education can eradicate the bug of jihad.
The educated Indian Muslims aren’t far behind either as illustrated by Sharjeel Imam, the mastermind of the Shaheen Bagh protest and many others like him. He completed his B.Tech. and M.Tech. from IIT-Bombay and was pursuing PhD from the institution. His years in one of India’s premier institutions only fueled his diabolical desire to balkanize India and “cut her chicken neck” (Siliguri Corridor) with the assistance of his community members only to force the government to scrap the CAA which provided a safe home to the persecuted minorities of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. He was arrested on 28th January 2020.
Umar Khalid, a former Democratic Students’ Union leader and research scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University, displayed his stellar academic qualifications by organizing and provoking anti-Hindu riots in Delhi and was apprehended on 14th September 2020. Notably, at least 53 people lost their lives and 700 were injured during the riots that spurred on the pretext of the Citizen Amendment Act 2019 and the National Register of Citizens. Interestingly, his father is Syed Qasim Rasool Ilyas, a former member of the Islamic terror outfit Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) which was banned by the Government of India in 2001 and is also a member of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB).
Another incredible example of the same pattern is Parveen Shaikh, the principal of the reputable private institution “The Somaiya School” situated in the Vidyaviyar neighbourhood of Mumbai. She has been expressing her radical views on social media, including her unwavering support for the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas and her frequent insults aimed at Prime Minister Narendra Modi. OpIndia raised the issue, which led to her termination, but, it didn’t change the reality that such a learned individual ended up becoming such a fanatic only because of ideology.
Riyaz Ahmad Naikoo, a top commander of Hizbul Mujahideen who was neutralised in 2020 in an encounter with the security forces in Kashmir was a teacher and carried a degree in mathematics, however, he chose to inflict jihad instead of making appropriate use of his education. He also had a reward of Rs 12 lakh on his head.
Likewise, the 4000-page chargesheet from the National Investigation Agency uncovered some startling information about the nabbed terrorists, Tabish Siddiqui, Zulfikar Ali Barodawala, Sharjeel Shaikh, Aakif Nachan, Zubair Shaikh and Dr Adnanali Sarkar belonging to Maharashtra ISIS module. Two of them worked for major companies in high-level positions. Zubair was a senior associate with a focus on technology and RPA (robotics process automation) at a tech business, whereas Zulfikar managed senior projects for a global firm, earning an annual salary of Rs 31 lakh. Sharjeel was employed by an IT company as a retainer.
The Hizb ut-Tahrir (HuT) network was demolished and 16 individuals were captured by the Madhya Pradesh Anti-terrorist Squad (ATS) last year in a coordinated operation with the Telangana Police and the Intelligence Bureau. Officers stated that the accused, who included a computer engineer from Bhopal and a professor from a college in Hyderabad, planned to incite terrorism and conduct war against the nation. The culprits, in a similar manner, worked as workers, teachers, fitness instructors, computer technicians, tailors, and drivers of vehicles. One of them was reportedly in charge of a coaching facility in Bhopal.
Uttar Pradesh Anti-Terrorism Squad on 11th November 2023 declared that they had captured four members Rakib Imam Ansari, Naved Ansari, Mohammad Noman and Mohammad Nazim of the ISIS jihadi terrorist group’s Aligarh module. Faizan Bakhtiar, an Aligarh Muslim University student detained by the ATS, revealed that the Aligarh module of ISIS was actively training attackers under the pretence of programs organised against Valentine’s Day. During such events, the students at one of the best institutions in India were radicalized and mobilized in preparation for possible lone-wolf strikes.
Members of the Pune ISIS group who were captured the previous year were skilled bomb makers and digitally savvy. Tabish Nasser Siddiqui, Sharjeel Shaikh, Zubair Noor Mohammed Shaikh, and Zulfikar Ali Barodawala were the names of the accused. NIA had announced a reward of Rs 3 lakh on Rizwan Abdul Haji Ali, a second-year Jamia Millia Islamia dropout. The culprits intended to follow the same course of action as the attackers on 26/11 when Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab and ten other Pakistani terrorists targeted different places in Mumbai.
Conclusion
The aforementioned cases are just a few of an extensive collection of instances when education has aided these individuals in advancing their agenda rather than leading them down a worthwhile and progressive route. They employ their expertise as a weapon to carry out their anti-Indian designs in an exceedingly calculated way. There is no level of education or financial success that can stop them from following the path of religious fanaticism. Though it could be a painful pill to swallow, it is the only truth. Therefore, the assertions that social justice or education would address the issue of terrorism or extremism are unfounded and are meant only to pacify and appease the credulous. We will continue to see more of these instances until the moment we are prepared to debate the true cause behind this problem rather than fabricate fictitious justifications in order to avoid speaking the reality.
