Using Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Other Internet Tools, Pakistani Terrorist Group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi Incites Violence against Shi’ite Muslims and Engenders Antisemitism

Introduction

This paper examines the role of Pakistani terrorist group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) – the military arm of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) – and how the LeJ/SSP duo is using U.S.-based social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other Internet tools, along with its own dedicated websites and print magazines, to incite violence against Shi’ite Muslims, and also how it is engendering Antisemitism in order to promote its ideological agenda.

The LeJ has figured in several recent attacks in Pakistan. On February 28, 2012, Islamic militants dressed in Pakistani military fatigues stopped a bus in Pakistan’s northern district of Kohistan, forced all the passengers off, and examined their Pakistani government-issued Computerized National Identity Cards (CNICs) to verify their faith by their surnames. Passengers whose names indicated that they were Sunni Muslims were let off, while 19 Shi’ite Muslims headed for their homes in Gilgit Baltistan and were shot dead by the militants.[1]

The Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), a terrorist group feared for its long-standing campaign of violence against Shi’ite Muslims, was blamed for the attack. Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik ordered a probe, stating that the LeJ and Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) have been “involved in similar crimes [against Shi’ite Muslims] in the past.”[2] Responsibility for the attack was claimed by a militant who identified himself as a spokesman of Jundallah, a Sunni militant group which is indistinguishable from Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, both in terms of its ideological orientation against Shi’ite Muslims and in terms of the two groups’ cross-pollination.[3] ………………………………

The LeJ/SSP’s attacks are not limited to Shi’ite Muslims. They also target Ahmadi Muslims. Its print publications include Mahnama Ablaghe Haq, an Urdu monthly magazine which has an Internet presence on ablaghehaq.co.cc and on ablaghehaq.com. One of the special issues of the magazine in September-October 2011 carried an exclusive article against Ahmadi Muslims, with the cover page (see image above) accusing India, Israel, Britain and the U.S. of propping up Qadianis, the pejorative term for Ahmadi Muslims, while a sword is being used, presumably by the LeJ/SSP, to cut off the hand behind Ahmadis Muslims. The sword carries the Urdu text: “Second Constitutional Amendment 1974” – a law enacted by the secular Pakistani Prime Minister Z. A. Bhutto that dubbed Ahmadis non-Muslims and barred them from being called Muslims. Read more