MEMRI has reported that the leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan has blamed terrorism on “U.S. tyranny.” According to the MEMRI translation:
Syed Munawwar Hasan, the Emir of the pro-Taliban religious-political party Jamaat-e-Islami, has said that terrorism is the result of U.S. tyranny in the Pakistan-Afghanistan region, according to an Urdu-language daily. “As long as the U.S. stays in this region, terrorism will increase,” the Jamaat-e-Islami leader said, according to a report in the Urdu-language newspaper Roznama Islam. Syed Munawwar Hassan added that Pakistani rulers should realize that the U.S. has teamed up with India to destabilize Pakistan. The private U.S. security firm Blackwater, renamed XE, is conducting secret operations for the CIA in Pakistan, he said. The Jamaat-e-Islami leader also criticized President Asif Zardari for declaring Kashmiri fighters “terrorists,” saying: “Kashmiris are fighting Pakistan’s war and are protecting our backbone while President Asif Ali Zardari added salt to their wounds by declaring them to be terrorist.”
A previous post discussed earlier remarks by Mr. Hasan in which he accused the West of being the “real terrorists” and complained that Western societies will not allow Muslims to practice Islam in their daily lives, labeling practices such as jihad as terrorism.
The JEI was founded in 1941 and is Pakistan’s oldest religious party. The party had its origins in the thought of Maulana Sayyid Abul A’la Maududi (1903-79), the most important Islamist intellectual in the history of Southeast Asia. Maududi was also a major influence on the global Muslim Brotherhood with whom the JEI has long enjoyed close relations. In the United States, the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) is generally considered to represent the JEI. ICNA has a particularly close relationship with the Muslim American Society (MAS), a part of the U.S. Brotherhood, and the two organizations have been holding joint conferences in recent years. In addition, many past and present leaders of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), also part of the U.S. Brotherhood, have backgrounds that are strongly associated with JEI. One notable example is India-born Muzammil Siddiqi, a past ISNA president and leader of the Fiqh Council of North America. A previous post has discussed a recent speaking invitation by ISNA to another JEI leader.
Source: Roznama Islam, Pakistan, December 1, 2009