New Delhi: Al-Qaeda will demolish the Ram temple being constructed in Ayodhya and replace it with a mosque, the international jihadist group has vowed in the latest issue of its magazine Ghazwa-e-Hind.
Released online this week by jihadist feeds, the magazine also referred to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Uttar Pradesh Chief minister Yogi Adityanath — warning them not to dismiss its exhortations as “propaganda of the Pakistani establishment” — and called on Indian Muslims to support jihad (holy war).
“Just as the Ram temple is being built on the ruins of the Babri Masjid, it will be demolished, and the Babri Masjid will be rebuilt over the place of the idols in the name of Allah,” said the editorial in the 110-page magazine. “All this demands sacrifice,” it added.
The magazine’s content, one senior intelligence officer told ThePrint, appeared to have been authored by an individual familiar with the Indian milieu.
Addressing Indian Muslims, it said they should “not fear material losses in this cause”, as they have already suffered the destruction of life and property for decades. “If this life and property had been used for jihad, then there would not have been so much loss”.
It went on to call secularism “a hell” for Indian Muslims, and asserted that slogans of Hindu-Muslim brotherhood are “a hoax”.
“All this is not just talk,” it said. “The Babri Masjid was demolished 30 years ago, pregnant women were burnt after their stomachs were cut 20 years ago, their children were burnt along with them in Ahmedabad (Gujarat), and today there are bulldozers everywhere,” the article said.
“Hindus are sharpening knives, spears and swords for everyone from Jamia Millia (Islamia) and Aligarh, to Jamia Osmania (Hyderabad suburb) and Deoband (town),” it added.
“All Hindus are being taught to use sticks. Talk of chopping off the faces and heads of Muslims with vegetable-cutting knives is being heard from the mouths of Hindu women.”
It further said that al-Qaeda intends to fight a jihad so that the “entire Indian subcontinent will become part of the world of Islam, and stop idol worship”.
“From Jamia Masjid in Srinagar to the Babri Masjid, jihad is the solution”.
Focus on India
Founded by Osama bin Laden in 1988, al-Qaeda’s focus on India was initiated by Ayman al-Zawahari, who became the terror outfit’s chief after bin Laden’s death in 2011.
In September 2014, al-Zawahiri announced the establishment of the group’s new branch in the Indian subcontinent in a video posted online.
The founding chief of al-Qaeda’s South Asian wing, Sana-ul-Haq, also known as Asim Umar, was killed in 2019 in the Musa Qala district of Afghanistan in an air strike by the US. He came from Sambhal district in Uttar Pradesh.
Al-Zawahiri himself — who had supported pro-hijab protests in Karnataka in a video released in April — was slain on 31 July this year, in a US drone strike at his residence in Kabul.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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