What began as an organisation to educate people about the true spirit of Islam is now busy developing itself into a high-class “brand” in the world of Islamic terror. This is not what SIMI’s founder-president wanted it to be.

When “students” start wearing masks, it is time for the nation to be worried. Of late, members of the banned Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) have been operating wearing the “mask of terror”.

Over the years, SIMI has been developing itself into “a fist of fury” with the aim of creating Islamic terror. Fears exist in government circles that the SIMI has been penetrated by Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaida through Taliban-trained cadres.

A little-known outfit, the “Indian Mujahideen” took the responsibility for the recent serial bomb blasts in Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Jaipur. But the intelligence agencies always suspected that it could be the SIMI-Taliban’s face hiding behind the mask of “Indian Mujahidden”.

Their suspicions were confirmed last weekend with the arrest of 10 members of a pan-India SIMI network, including mastermind Mufti Abu Bashir by the Gujarat Police. A madrasa cleric from Azamgarh, Bashir was picked up from Lucknow by the Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat police for the July 26 blasts in Ahmedabad and earlier in other cities.

SIMI members are suspected to be facilitators for Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the Taliban and Pakistani and Kashmiri terrorist organisations.

Bombs, pistols, cartridges, RDX, mobile phones, fake Indian currency, and provocative books printed in Pakistan and maps are generally seized from anti-national organisations. But, when one comes across items like masks, pairs of surgical gloves and surgical instruments in SIMI’s jungle training camps in various states, it is time to worry as they indicate only one thing: The “users” are in the business of killings.

SIMI has a lot in common with Afghanistan’s fundamentalist Islamic movement, the Taliban. Both are “students of Islam” and follow the extreme form of the Deobandi ideology. Banned three times, it is known to be operating underground under various names.

What began as an organisation to educate people about the true spirit of Islam is now busy developing itself into a high-class “brand” in the world of Islamic terror. This is not what SIMI’s founder-president wanted it to be.

SIMI was founded in Aligarh Muslim University by a physics student, Mohammad Ahmadullah Siddiqui, in April 1977 with a mission to “liberate India from western cultural influence and spread Islam”. SIMI originally emerged as a student wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami. But the alliance was short-lived as the Jamaat disapproved of SIMI’s extreme line. Siddiqui felt that there was a bias against the Muslim community in Indian media. So, he looked for opportunities to train himself in journalism.

Currently, Siddiqui is a professor of mass communication at Western Illinois University, US, but he maintains that “I now have nothing to do with SIMI”. He went to the US in 1980 for a Masters in mass communication from the University of Illinois in Chicago, followed by a PhD from the Temple University, Philadelphia.

In one of his rare interviews, Siddiqui recently said SIMI perhaps had been “hijacked” by misguided and radical elements. “What was started by me was purely a students’ body to present Islam through seminars. We had fixed 30 years as the upper age limit for membership so that it remains a students’ body”. But this seems to be true only on paper.

Siddiqui moved out of SIMI when he turned 30 in 1980. The next year, he moved to the US. He thought SIMI was doing “okay” till the late 1980s, when he received an invitation to attend its annual convention in Mumbai. The invitation card on SIMI’s letterhead carried an unusual sign - a fist.

Shocked, says Siddiqui, he told the organisers that “I do not think this is the correct representation of SIMI because Islam does not stand for showing fists to people.’’ The last time that Siddiqui met someone from SIMI was in 2001 at a Bangalore media workshop, where he told them that SIMI’s course was absolutely inappropriate and wrong, and “the greatest jihad is to learn Islam and to practise it and to present it to other people.”

It seems the SIMI cadre did not need its founder-president’s advice. It has now come too far on the road to terror. At every bomb blast site in the country, the police wonders whether it is the handiwork of SIMI. Highly motivated members are from IT, engineering, medicine, law, teaching, media, stocks, aviation, hospitality and courier sectors. In 2005, SIMI was split into hardliners and moderates.

SIMI was first banned on September 27, 2001, immediately after the bombing of twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001, and suspected involvement in communal riots in Uttar Pradesh. SIMI remained banned till September 27, 2003, during which period several prosecutions were launched against its members under the provisions of the Terrorist And Disruptive Activities Prevention Act (TADA), the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA), and Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967.

SIMI was banned the second time on September 27, 2003, and the ban ended on September 27, 2005. It was banned for the third time on February 8, 2006. On July 27, 2006, the government told the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Tribunal that “SIMI has stepped up its subversive activities and is involved in almost all major explosions, communal violence and circulation of inflammatory material across the country.”

When the needle of suspicion began turning once again towards SIMI following the recent serial bomb blasts in Bangalore and Gujarat cities, the investigating agencies were shocked when a Delhi High Court Tribunal on August 5 gave a “clean chit” to SIMI and lifted the ban on the ground that the government had failed to give enough evidence. The Centre moved fast and the next day obtained a stay from the Supreme Court on the Tribunal’s order.

It gained notoriety when 13 SIMI members were arrested for their role in the 7/11 train blasts in Mumbai in 2006, and for cycles bombs, which rocked the textile town of Malegaon (Maharashtra) later. The outfit is currently regarded as having a national presence, with major bases in central India. Its chief Safdar Nagori was recently arrested in Indore, making it SIMI’s nerve-centre.

SIMI has apparently been gaining strength from “clean certificates” being given to it by some top political guns like Mulayam Singh Yadav, former defence minister and president of the Samajwadi Party, Lalu Prasad Yadav, railways minister, and the Left leaders, who have claimed: “SIMI is not a terrorist organisation.” Not worried about the security agencies’ fears, they seem to be more concerned with ballots than bullets.

To be concluded