A crucial part of gunman Mohammad Ajmal Kasab's confession at the Mumbai attack trial has been censored by the judge on the grounds that it could inflame religious tensions between Hindus and Muslims in India. After stunning the court on Monday by admitting guilt in the the three-day rampage that killed 166 people, Kasab gave further testimony on Tuesday that included details about his training by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a Pakistan-based militant group on U.S. and Indian terrorist lists.

The front-page report in today's The Hindu, which noted the judge's gag order in its sub-header, put it this way:

Ajmal made some crucial statements on Tuesday as part of his confession. They pertained to the purpose of the attack as indicated by the perpetrators and masterminds and the message they wanted to send to the government of India. Ajmal also wanted to convey a message to his handlers. However, this part of his confession faces a court ban on publication.

In view of the communally sensitive nature of Ajmal’s statements, judge M.L. Tahaliyani passed an order banning the publication and broadcast of Ajmal’s statement recorded on Tuesday by any media or person, except the part which pertains to the CST. Mr. Tahaliyani remarked that the trial was at “a delicate stage.”

Given the complex mix of religion and politics in India, it's not unusual to see the media playing down the communal aspect of tension and violence. In the recent general election, the party that usually plays up these differences, the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), hardly used the "religion card" in its losing campaign. But that doesn't mean things are getting better. According to the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism in Mumbai, the "unfortunate year of 2008 ... proved to be worse than 2007." See their two-part report on 2008 here and here.

But Kasab's testimony could shed important light on what role religion plays in Islamist militancy. How could a young man who wanted to become a dacoit (bandit) be convinced by Islamist militants to try to become a shahid (martyr) instead? Was he actually convinced, or did he do it for other reasons?

(Photo: Taj Mahal hotel burns, 27 Nov 2008/Punit Paranjpe)

Kasab told the court on Monday that he originally approached the militants to get weapons and training and won (surprisingly easy) admission to their office by saying he wanted to wage jihad. He was taken in and given extensive training in preparation for the Mumbai attack last November. All of this is detailed in published accounts of his statement in court on Monday. In earlier statements, police say, he showed little understanding of Islam or jihad, saying the latter was "about killing and getting killed and becoming famous."

What role did Islamist ideology play in this, and what part the confused ambitions of a poor and impressionable young man? In a publication entitled Why Are We Waging Jihad?, Lashkar-e-Taiba listed its goals as:

1) to eliminate evil and facilitate conversion to and practice of Islam;

2) to ensure the ascendancy of Islam;

3) to force non-Muslims to pay jizya (poll tax, paid by non-Muslims for protection from a Muslim ruler);

4) to assist the weak and powerless;

5) to avenge the blood of Muslims killed by unbelievers;

6) to punish enemies for breaking promises and treaties;

7) to defend a Muslim state; and

8 ) to liberate Muslim territories under non-Muslim occupation.

Did his handlers stress all this to Kasab? Did he want to do any of the above? What did his Islamist handlers say about Hindus? If they fed him a diet of anti-Hindu hatred, might it be better to publicise the details so they can be debated and discredited? Some of the most interesting contributions to such a debate could come from Indian Muslims, who live in the kind of secular democracy the LeT rejects.

(Photo: Kasab in detention, 3 Feb 2009/video grab from CNN IBN)

I'd be especially interested to hear the reaction from the famous Darul Uloom Deoband seminary, which is a traditionalist Sunni school but has urged Muslims to reject terrorism and vote in elections against extremists.

Right now may not be the best time to publish Kasab's censored confession. But revealing it at a later date, for example after the verdict, might do more good than the harm Judge Tahaliyani fears. What do you think?

Pakistan is dealing with multiple challenges all at once - its sovereignty and its very idea of itself as an independent nation state are tested in the northwest by both the Islamist militants and U.S. forces hunting them. To its east, the old hostility with India is back in full force following the Mumbai attacks. Then above all, some think the economic meltdown is a more serious risk to Pakistan’s survival than the threat of a conflict with India.

Where does a proud nation turn to for deliverance, faced with almost daily prognosis of its imminent demise?

To religion, going by the rise and rise of the mullah in Pakistani society according to a couple of articles in Pakistan’s Newsline magazine. Time was when the village mosque imam was one  of the most powerless men in the community whose social functions were limited to being present at  births, deaths and weddings, recalls author Mohammed Hanif .

The imam also led the prayers, but it was a different time then. There would be people loitering around the  mosque but it never occurred to him to ask them to join the prayers; nor were those hanging outside  the mosque embarrassed about sitting them out.

What was there to discuss? Faith was your personal  business, between you and your god. So a tiny majority went to the mosque regularly and another  opened “a bottle of something” in the evening, and they all lived on the same street.

Forty years later, the imam has metamorphosed into a television evangelist who preaches 24/7 on his own satellite channel, or goes around the nation building madrasas while some others are engaged in jihad. But each is flaunting an influence that they never had, according to Hanif, author of the book  “The Exploding Mangoes”.

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In the aftermath of the Mumbai massacre, a lot of attention has been focused on the militant Islamist group Lashkar-e-Taiba that has been blamed for the bloodbath. Simon Cameron-Moore, our bureau chief in Islambad, has written an interesting piece on what they've done in recent years. As a religion editor watching this story unfold, I was also curious to know how they think. What kind of religious views do they have? My Google search has turned up an interesting answer.

An article entitled "The Ideologies of South Asian Jihadi Groups" gives a very concise and complete run-down of Lashkar-e-Taiba's thinking (hat tip:Times of India). In today's context, the article's author is just as interesting as its content. An academic at the time he wrote the article in 2005, Husain Haqqani is now Pakistan's ambassador in Washington. He's been in the media quite often arguing that Islamabad did not support Lashkar-e-Taiba even if it was operating in Pakistan. Indian media arent't buying it.

Sorting that out is not my job. I just wanted to note a list of the goals Lashkar-e-Taiba has set for itself. In a publication entitled Why Are We Waging Jihad? that Haqqani cites, the goals are listed as:

1) to eliminate evil and facilitate conversion to and practice of Islam;

2) to ensure the ascendancy of Islam;

3) to force non-Muslims to pay jizya (poll tax, paid by non-Muslims for protection from a Muslim ruler);

4) to assist the weak and powerless;

5) to avenge the blood of Muslims killed by unbelievers;

6) to punish enemies for breaking promises and treaties;

7) to defend a Muslim state; and

8 ) to liberate Muslim territories under non-Muslim occupation

Can we call these Lashkar-e-Taiba's "religious goals?" It's hard to draw a dividing line, but these cover both religion and politics. In South Asia, where they have first-hand experience of this kind of thinking, they would describe these as "politico-religious" goals. That clumsy term is more precise, but could it catch on elsewhere?

Time was when every time militants set off a bomb in Pakistan, India’s strategic establishment would turn around and say “we told you so”. This is what happens when you play with fire … jihad is a double-edged sword, they would say, pointing to Pakistan’s support for militants operating in Kashmir and elsewhere.

Not any more. When India’s opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party – which has consistently advocated a tougher policy toward Pakistan – tells the government to be watchful of the fallout of the security and economic situation in Pakistan, then you know the ground is starting to shift.    

“Pakistan is on the verge of an economic and political collapse,” party leader and former foreign minister Jaswant Singh said in remarks that  seem to have escaped much public attention. “It is time we understood the influence and be prepared to face it.”

Former Indian High Commissioner to Britain Kuldip Nayar, who is from the opposite end of the political spectrum, made a similar point shortly after the bombing of Islamabad’s Marriott hotel. 

“If ever Pakistan goes under, India’s first line of defence would collapse. The Taliban would have secured the launching pad to attack India’s values of democracy and liberalism which do not fit into their scheme of things,” he wrote in the Gulf News. 

“Terrorism is the means, Talibalistan is the end. New Delhi and Islamabad should jointly fight against the menace,” Nayar, who has long campaigned for peace with Pakistan, said.

On Thursday, a suicide attacker struck again in a high-security part of Islamabad, this time on the police headquarters itself, underscoring the militants’ ability to strike at will anywhere across the nation.

“The grim truth is that Pakistan is becoming something alarmingly close to a failed state,” wrote Sumit Ganguly, director of research at  the Center on American and Global Security at Indiana University, in a piece for the Washington Post.  Pakistan, he said, faces an “existential crisis on its streets and in its courts, barracks and parliament”.

The world, led by the United States, must work to put the country back together again, he said. “If not, we will face a terrifying prospect: Pakistan’s collapse (slow or otherwise) into a full-blown failed state, armed with nuclear weapons, riven by ethnic tensions, infused with resentment and zealotry, with roving bands of Taliban sympathizers and bin Ladenists in its midst. ”

So is New Delhi ready to play ball? Given that India looms large over the Pakistani mind and its security/foreign policy has been predicated to meet the threat from its larger neighbour, one obvious way for Pakistan to be more at ease with itself would be to reduce tensions with New Delhi.  

 The Pakistan Policy Group, comprising independent, bipartisan American experts on U.S.-Pakistan relations, said in a report that while America couldn’t really impose normalcy between India and Pakistan,  “it can continually point out  both countries’ interests would be served - now more than ever - by building better relations because both face existential terrorist threats.”

This weekend Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh launches a rail link in Kashmir, which fueled much of the hostility between the two nations all these years and remains the main stumbling block to better ties.

Is this an opportunity for Singh to announce concessions? Pakistan’s Dawn, citing unspecified news reports, said that Singh was expected to announce important peace measures with Pakistan during the trip to Kashmir.