White-Collar Terror

DOCTORS ARE SUPPOSED to be the heralds of life. But a handful of Indian Muslim doctors secretly traded their stethoscopes to become the portents of an apocalypse.

One, who goes by the name Dr Umar Mohammad, detonated his sedan with sociopathic sanguinity at rush hour as crowds milled about in Delhi’s Chandni Chowk. It turns out that Dr Mohammad was from Pulwama in Jammu & Kashmir, which is widely known as the “hotbed of terror”.

Luckily, the module Mohammad was part of was found out just in time, before it could commit an even greater act of terror. For this, investigative agencies deserve much credit. Thanks to a string of arrests of the “Al-Falah module” and the “Ricin module”.

One set of arrests, which took place in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, and Jammu & Kashmir, was accompanied by the seizure of over 2,500kg of bomb-making material, rifles, pistols, and other suspicious items. The “Al-Falah” cell, comprising three doctors, was exposed when one of their accomplices got careless while pasting posters of the Pakistan-based banned terrorist organisation, Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), in an area tracked by CCTV cameras in Srinagar.

The other set of arrests, made in Gujarat, led to the recovery of poison-formulating material and pistols hoarded by another accomplished doctor. Had this doctor succeeded, he would have unleashed a bio-chemical weapon laced with Ricin, an odourless and colourless highly toxic gas.

Both sets of arrests took place within a day of each other, though authorities have not said whether they are linked so far.

Investigations revealed that these radicalised doctors were in contact with foreign handlers operating from Pakistan and other countries, as well as banned outfits like ISIS, JeM, and Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind (AGUH).

Taken together, they expose a growing “white-collar terror” ecosystem operating from within professional circles. And this discovery ought to finally lead to a rethink in policymaking circles and, of course, in civil society.

Thus far, guided by political correctness more than national interest, the response to radicalisation has been framed in a socio-economic perspective.

We are told Muslim youth in Kashmir and Kerala are picking up the gun because they have no prospects. If that were truly the case, then these highly educated doctors would have had no cause to pick up the gun or design deadly biochemical weapons.

Per capita income in Kashmir, for instance, has grown 148 per cent between 2015 and 2025 and stands at around `1.5 lakh per year. This income level is more than double that of Bihar. Yet, Kashmiri youth are recruited by terror organisations in percentage numbers, hundreds of times higher than Bihari youth. And if prosperity and opportunity were truly an antidote to jihad, no one from the wealthy Gulf states like Qatar (GDP per capita $1,22,000) or Saudi Arabia ($74,000) would join Islamist terror groups. Forget West Asia, even Belgium, with its generous welfare state, has been a fertile recruiting ground for ISIS. In fact, Belgium has seen the largest inflow of citizens from Western Europe into the ranks of jihadi organisations.

The time has come to identify the elephant in the room: religious ideology. Pan-national jihad, while not the only, but certainly the most essential ingredient, is fuelled by a political vision that sees the world in a binary: Dar al-Harb and Dar al-Islam.

Dar al-Islam refers to lands where Islamic law prevails, while Dar al-Harb refers to lands not governed by Islamic law, lands considered potential adversaries.

This worldview lies at the core of Islamist radicalism. India, a nation sworn to secularism and tolerance, is a red rag to the raging Islamist supremacist bull. So is the West. But unfortunately, the dominance of wokeism and its pronounced idealism has meant that anyone daring to advance the “clash of civilisations” thesis is dismissed as an ignorant “skinhead” on the fringes of society.

Indian policymakers must learn from the mistakes the West has made. The NDA’s managers must avoid woke virtue signalling when framing a response to jihad. The war on terror cannot afford to take even ideological prisoners.