Jamaat denies connections with MB, Russel Tribunal on Kashmir; facts disagree [details]

Former president of the banned Jamaat-e-Islami J&K has released a statement after the shocking revelations made by DisInfo Lab, which had pointed out that the Jamaat has now paved way for the Muslim Brotherhood in South Asia and India on Kashmir conflict. Dr Abdul Hameed Fayaz, former president of Jamaat, said the allegations levelled against the banned organisation and its associate members that they were involved in any conference in Bosnia were "baseless".

The organisation is using its ban status to evade the allegations.

"Any organization or individual claiming to be an associate organization or representative of the Jamaat is quite against the facts and is hereby challenged. The Jamaat was restricted to the territory of Jammu and Kashmir only and its activities too were restricted thereto, and after it was banned in February 2019, it stopped all its activities and functions. Some names shown in the report have attended in the conference have no nexus or association with the Jamaat," Dr Fayaz said.

He further claimed that neither the Jamaat nor its members were involved in the conduct or promotion of the Bosnia conference.

"It is also hereby made amply clear that any member migrating to any place outside the territorial jurisdiction of Jammu and Kashmir ceases to be a member of the Jamaat as per the party constitution. So any person residing permanently outside Jammu and Kashmir cannot claim to be a member of the Jamaat and the organization cannot be held responsible for any activities done by such persons as any person settled abroad cannot have the membership of the Jamaat," Dr Fayaz said, adding that "Nobody has taken any verbal or written consent from, any erstwhile leader or functionary of the Jamaat to speak in any conference and at present due to the ban, it is quite out of question to get such consent."

MB-Jamaat nexus

The Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaat had been coordinating their activities in the US and Europe for a while, but so far the South Asian theatre was left for Jamaat to handle. The first public entry of Muslim brotherhood in South Asia and India was seen last year with the seeding of the Boycott movement, DisinfoLab said in a report.

MB had been nurturing some of the political/ civil groups in India for a while, it has been keeping a low profile, that is until now. Something, however, has changed in the recent past. The report had earlier documented an expose of the Jamaat-led business enterprise which is run in the name of Kashmir but benefits only a handful of individuals and their families -- all settled in the US and Europe.

However, after the expose, these individuals and organisations got discredited and are no longer capable of running the Kashmir conflict industry. And hence, it seems that the baton of the Kashmir conflict industry was needed to be handed over to MB, a veteran of the conflict industry in Palestine, DisinfoLab said. The deep-rooted links between MB and Jamaat are evident and the statement issued by the latter appears to be solely on paper.