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‘Will tie explosives to our kids’ — Al Qaeda warns India of suicide attacks over Prophet remarks

Jihadist group warns of 'retaliatory attacks' in Delhi, Mumbai, UP & Gujarat. Statement comes on the back of West Asian nations condemning remarks by BJP members.

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New Delhi: Al Qaeda has issued a statement warning that it will carry out suicide attacks against India in retaliation to purportedly blasphemous remarks made by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokespersons about Prophet Muhammad. 

The statement, released by the jihadist group late Tuesday on online forums serving its supporters, comes on the back of diplomatic denunciations of India by various Middle Eastern countries — several of them targets of past Al Qaeda operations.

“We shall kill those who affront our Prophet…and we shall bind explosives with our bodies and the bodies of our children to blow away the ranks of those who dare to dishonour our Prophet,” the statement read.

After the international backlash, the ruling BJP had suspended national spokesperson Nupur Sharma and expelled Delhi BJP media in-charge Naveen Kumar Jindal over their controversial statements on the Prophet. 

“The saffron terrorists should now await their end in Delhi and Bombay and in UP and Gujarat. They shall find refuge neither in their homes nor in their fortified army cantonments. May our mothers be bereaved of us, if we do not avenge our beloved Prophet,” the Al Qaeda statement said.

It also referred to the Ghazwa-e-Hind, a theologically contentious but popular prophecy referring to an apocalyptic war on India that will precede the Yawm al-Qiyamah, or God’s final day of judgment.

“We bring tidings of death and destruction to the rulers of India, of executions and hangings, of imprisonment and being bound with chains,” the statement further said.

A senior intelligence official told ThePrint on condition of anonymity, “The Al Qaeda is the most disciplined of the many transnational jihadist groups in our region, and has excellent connections within organisations like the Lashkar-e-Taiba.” 

The official said threats from Al Qaeda “should be taken extremely seriously”, adding: “Although India was significant to various local and Pakistani jihadist groups, it never really attracted the attention of the transnational groups like al-Qaeda or the Islamic State. The danger is that events in India are drawing a great amount of unwelcome attention from the jihadist community.”

The statement is the second one issued by the terror outfit in the last two months, focussed on ongoing religious conflicts in India. 

In April, ThePrint had broken the news about a videotaped speech of Al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri, focussing on the hijab controversy in Karnataka.


Also Read: Al-Qaeda still present in Afghanistan, Indians among its recruits, says UNSC report


Earlier statements by Al Qaeda on India

Al-Zawahiri’s speech had made no threats of terrorist attacks, instead blaming the governments of other South Asian, Muslim-majority nations for failing to defend the religious community.

“Governments imposed on us, specifically in Pakistan and Bangladesh, do not defend us, rather they defend the very enemies they have empowered to fight against us,” he had said in the clip.

The Al Qaeda’s last speech on India before this was made in 2014, to announce the formation of a separate wing of the organisation called al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS). 

The Al Qaeda’s south Asia chief was Sana-ul-Haq, a one-time resident of Uttar Pradesh’s Sambhal district. He migrated to Pakistan in 1998, and then studied at the pro-jihadist Jamia Ulum-e-Islamia seminary in Karachi.

Educated at the Hindi Inter College in Sambhal, Sana-ul-Haq was the youngest of five siblings. He dropped out of school in the eighth grade, and was sent to the Dar-ul-Ulum seminary in Deoband. The violence of 1992-1993 appears to have led him towards jihadism.

Following his studies in Pakistan, Sana-ul-Haq is believed to have joined the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, serving as a religious studies teacher at its training camps for Kashmir jihadists.

Earlier this year, the Assam police had arrested five alleged members of the Ansarullah Bangla Team, an affiliate of Al Qaeda in the Indian subcontinent. Eleven members of a similar cell, who were alleged to have been plotting bombings in West Bengal, Kerala and Delhi, were arrested in 2020.

(Edited by Gitanjali Das)


Also Read: Al Qaeda chief’s support ‘unwelcome, wrong, bid to create rift’, says Karnataka girl Muskan’s dad


 

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