If one is Indian, his Indian identity comes first, even the Taliban terrorists seem to believe in this fundamental thought. As reported by TFI, Indian photojournalist Danish Siddiqui was not only killed by Taliban terrorists, his body was also mutilated and disfigured by the terrorists who had verified his identity before they pursued him and executed him in cold blood.
With this level of brutality against an Indian Muslim, the Taliban has set out a loud and clear message to Indian Muslims and the radical Islamist factions of the community should receive it as soon as possible. The mutilation of Danish’s body on the grounds of nationality notwithstanding his religious identity, clearly indicates that there exists no global identity of Muslims which radical Muslims, as well as naive Muslims, assume the entire Muslim community to be part of.
Many fundamentalists are of the opinion that Islamic terrorists will not aim at Muslims belonging to any region. For the fact that the Taliban has contradicted the opinion, fundamentalists need to learn that Jihadi terrorists are the enemies of the nation as a whole and they do not consider a transnational brotherhood as a means to be kind to fellow Muslims. They use this transnational sentiment of unity only when their end goal is to achieve their sinister agenda and greater radicalisation.
As reported by TFI earlier, as soon as the news broke that Indian Photojournalist Danish Siddiqui has been killed after he was embedded with the Afghan special forces to cover the clash between forces and Taliban fighters, it shook the conscience of the nation. Soon after his death, the Taliban released a statement apologizing for the death of Siddiqui and said that it did not commit the murder. This was part of the Taliban’s greater deception which it has been playing for months now.
Few local Afghans then came out and told the media that Danish Siddiqui was not killed by the Taliban but his body was also mutilated and disfigured by terrorists after they came to know about his nationality.
According to a Washington Examiner report, the Taliban did not execute Siddiqui unknowingly. In fact, they had planned an entire operation to take the Indian Muslim journalist down for being an Indian. Siddiqui used to travel with an Afghan National Army team to the Spin Boldak region to cover the struggle between Afghan forces and the Taliban to acquire the lucrative border crossing with Pakistan. A Taliban attack had split the team and Siddiqui was left with three Afghan troops.
Danish Siddiqui had come into contact with shrapnel during the assault because of which he and his companions went to a local mosque to seek shelter from the blood-baying Taliban. As the Taliban terrorists came to know that a journalist was in the mosque, the terror organisation mounted an attack against the mosque itself so as to get to Siddiqui and execute him. His remains reveal that he was shot over 12 times and his head and chest were crushed by a vehicle that ran over his body.
This is an eye-opener, not just for Muslims but also for non-Muslims and the general liberal class which believes that the Taliban has evolved and grown a humane side since the last time it wreaked havoc in Afghanistan at this scale, which was during the period of 1996-2001.
Despite the terror activities of the Taliban, there exist Islamic fundamentalists and naive Muslims in India who are of the belief that the Taliban may be fighting and killing fellow Muslim Afghans, but it is not fighting a religious war against non-Muslims or non-Muslim nations, and that it would give a chance to a fellow transnational Muslim who comes from a non-Sharia liberal society. Danish’s killing shatters that myth in the most brutal way. Indian Muslims are on the radar of terrorists as much as the non-Muslims of India are.
A few years back, it was estimated by security agencies that some 100-120 individuals including men and women from Kerala either joined or tried to join, ISIS. Some of them moved to Syria or Afghanistan from the Middle East, where they were employed, reported The Indian Express. Many of them were killed over the years.
Moreover, security agencies had identified 17 Indians who were suspected to have joined ISIS back in 2014-2015. Three of them who belonged to Kerala, had moved to Syria in 2013-14, when they were employed in the Middle East. In May-June 2016, some two dozen people from Kerala, including women and children, left to join ISIS.
In addition to that, Of the 177 ISIS sympathizers arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) since 2014, Tamil Nadu, at 34, accounted for the largest number of those arrested, reports said.
Radicalization from Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Kashmir as well has been rapidly growing. “There is a very slow trickle of infiltrators into Kashmir. However, radicalization among locals has been growing rapidly because local OGWs are operating here. Radicalization drive primarily by the Jamaat-e-Islami has been responsible for the presence of at least 220 terrorists in Kashmir,” said a senior intelligence official.
But, after the brutality with Danish Siddiqui, it is a loud and clear message for many radical Indian Islamists that they are not included in the Muslim ‘fraternities’ be it in Saudi Arabia, the war-torn parts of West Asia, or Afghanistan, and will not be spared by the terrorists at any cost.