New Delhi: Terror outfit Islamic State has launched a new propaganda video that showed off a large group of Kalashnikov-wielding jihadists allegedly from India fighting against the Syrian forces.
The 22-minute Arabic-language video shows Thane engineering student Fahad Tanvir Sheikh, who travelled to Syria via Pakistan in 2014. It also features three other men from the city who escape to fight for ISIS.
In the video, Sheikh vowed to return to India but with a sword in hand, to avenge the Babri Masjid, killings of Muslims in Kashmir, Gujarat, and in Muzaffarnagar.
Sheikh is said to be the only individual conclusively identified in the video. He also paid homage to his friend from Thane, Shahim Tanki, one of the four young men from Kalyan suspected to have joined the ISIS. Tanki is said to have been killed in a bomb attack in Raqqa last year. The third member of the group, Areeb Majid, is now being prosecuted by the NIA.
The video also features several still-to-be-identified militants. An unidentified jihadi said: “To those in the Indian state who wish to understand our actions. I say you have only three options - accept Islam, pay jizya or get prepared to be slaughtered.”
“Hindus are striving to convert you Muslims to their faith, O’ sons of Bin Qasim is there any other humiliation that you still need to suffer before you will give up chanting that Islam is a religion of peace, and learn from the Prophet, who fought with the sword?” another unidentified militant said.
It is believed that the terror group’s video on Indian fighters aimed at recruiting jihadists from the country to fight against the government.
One of them claimed that he escaped the Batla House encounter, which took place in September 2008 against Indian Mujahideen (IM) terrorists holed up in Batla House locality in Jamia Nagar, Delhi.
The interviewed fighters also called on Indians to leave their country and join the 'jihad' in Syria against the 'kuffar' (infidels).
The video also shows militants joining hands and pledging 'jihad' against the Syrian forces.
“In India, we see that it is that it is the cow, the trees, the sun, the moon…that is worshipped. Instead of fighting these things, the Muslims of India trade and maintain social relations with these infidels. Have you forgotten the train bombings in Mumbai, or the bombings in Ahmedabad, and Surat, and Jaipur and Delhi,” the man who claimed that he fled Mumbai said.
The video features images of Muslim politicians like Assaduddin Owaisi, Badruddin Ajmal and clerics for compromising with a tyrannical system which is responsible for massacring Muslims. At one place, it shows image of Congress’s Mani Shankar Aiyer embracing a Hindu priest and Muslim cleric.
The video ends showing groups of militants on board small boats brandishing Kalashnikov with an ISIS black flag in the background. It shows bearded faces of most of the militants.
