Dr. Afia Siddiqui, dubbed Lady Al Qaeda or the Al Qaeda Mata Hari, is back in the news again with Senator Mushtaq of Jamaat-e-Islami and Clive Stafford Smith, supposed a civil rights lawyer and an anti-death penalty lawyer and activist, having joined forces to try and have her returned to Pakistan. One need not wonder what Senator Mushtaq has to say about Smith’s advocacy for the abolition of death penalty world, or what Smith might make of Senator Mushtaq’s horrendous and vituperative attacks on Pakistan’s LGBTQ community. Both of them, nonetheless, have come together to champion the cause of Dr Afia Siddiqui. Strange bedfellows indeed.
There is not much mystery, however, about how Dr Afia Siddiqui got to where she did. Born into a religious Deobandi family in Karachi, her mother was an ally of Pakistan’s brutal Islamist dictator General Zia-ul-Haq, who appointed her to the Zakat Council in the country, after she supported him on Hudood Ordinance and Islamisation of Pakistan. Afia Siddiqui went to the University of Houston in 1990 transferring to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology later. Here she became part of the Muslim Students Association or the MSA. MSAs exist on most major US campuses where ultra conservative Islamist doctrine is preached by neo-traditionalist religious scholars like Imam Hamza Yusuf Hanson etc. It is like the conference circuit for Islamic fundamentalist scholars, who go from campus to campus giving talks on how young Muslim undergraduates can resist the “evils” of the godless western civilization. That alone would not have radicalized her though. Her conversion to the terror cause came sometime during her time at Brandeis where she got her doctorate in neuroscience. It was during this time that she got married (it was an arranged marriage) and her husband moved from Karachi to Boston to work as a doctor. It is unclear if Dr Afia Siddiqui was a US citizen by then though many news outlets describe her as one. Her legal team staunchly denies this. How then were she and her family able to maintain a US residency is something that is a bit of a mystery.
During her sojourn in Boston, she became even more radicalized, now taking to preaching Jihad openly. She wanted her husband to join the Taliban in Afghanistan but he refused. Her husband later told the FBI that he had procured $10,000 worth of military manuals and bomb making literature to please her. Afia and her family returned to Pakistan in 2002 and her marriage fell apart, with her husband divorcing her for being allegedly involved in extremist activities. In 2003, she married Osama bin Laden’s courier, Ammar Al Baluchi – a fact confirmed by Pakistani intelligence. Al Baluchi ultimately divorced her because he found her too liberal. Subsequently, she went into hiding for a period of five years till her eventual arrest in Ghazni Afghanistan by the Afghan National Police, something that she confirmed herself in court. It was here that she allegedly shot an M4 rifle and attempted to murder US operatives. This was what she was eventually charged with.
The truth is that Afia Siddiqui is a victim but she is not the victim of “evil Americans”. She is a victim of the Islamic fundamentalist preachers masquerading as Islamic scholars, including those who travel from campus to campus in the US.
In court, she admitted to the possibility of having written documents about mass bomb attacks but she denied ever having fired the M4. Regardless, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York on September 23, 2010, convicted her after a jury trial of one count of attempted murder of United States nationals in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2332(b)(1); one count of attempted murder of United States officers and employees in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1114(3); one count of armed assault of United States officers and employees in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 111(a)(1) and (b); one count of using a firearm during a crime of violence in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c); and three counts of assault of United States officers and employees in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 111(a)(1). The district court sentenced her principally to 86 years’ imprisonment.
US Court of Appeals the Second Circuit held in December 2012:
“We also find that the district court did not clearly err in determining that Siddiqui’s offense was calculated to retaliate against the United States. While in Afghan custody prior to the shooting incident, Siddiqui referred to the United States as invaders, and when queried about the bomb-making documents found in her possession, Siddiqui indicated that the target of those bombs were “the foreigners.”
What’s more, shortly after firing on the American interview team, Siddiqui stated: “I am going to kill all you Americans. You are going to die by my blood”; “death to America”; and “I will kill all you motherfuckers.” Taken as a whole, this evidence provides a sufficient factual basis for the district court’s conclusion that Siddiqui’s offense was calculated to retaliate against the United States.”
The case turned on the testimony of US operatives admittedly. Are there good reasons to question their testimony and imagine that there is a grand American conspiracy against this innocent Pakistani neuroscientist? The main question remains. Why did the Americans feel compelled to frame Dr Siddiqui? What did they have against her that they went through such lengths to concoct stories about her? No one from the Afia Siddiqui camp has been able to answer this question convincingly.
The truth is that Afia Siddiqui is a victim but she is not the victim of “evil Americans”, who tried and convicted her fairly as per law. She is a victim of the Islamic fundamentalist preachers masquerading as Islamic scholars, including those who travel from campus to campus in the US preaching their gospel of hate. Pakistani international students in the US can be easy prey to these so-called scholars. It is not surprising that young freshmen and sophomores from Pakistan and indeed the rest of the Muslim world, begin idolizing religious conservatives and neo-traditionalists like Imam Hamza Yusuf Hanson, Zaid Shakir and Yasir Qadhi, because they perceived the liberal atmosphere of their college campuses as a direct affront to their religious beliefs and identity. There is a dotted line from there to extremism and even terrorism. At the end of the day it is an internal Muslim battle between two different visions of Islam. There is the modernist vision that – while self consciously Muslim – nevertheless is not based on denial of modernity. On the other hand you have a reactionary and fundamentalist mindset which rejects everything it deems anti-Islamic. Dr Afia Siddiqui, a talented scientist by all accounts, was seduced by the latter. Joining Al Qaeda was the logical next step, if not an inevitable one.
The writer is an advocate of the high courts of Pakistan and author of ‘Jinnah: A Life.’
