Kashmir’s Rage Boy is not all that angry

Focus | Yusuf Jameel

Srinagar: It is a story of a "larger-than-life" character. The fuming face of Muslim anger over the real and perceived tirade against Islam and the believers, the man who has been nicknamed "Rage Boy" and is a blog favourite in the West and beyond, is actually a mundane man among Kashmir's belligerent youth.

But encouraged by the kind of hype the media and "Islamphobia" campaigners have given to him over the past many months - his irate face appears on clocks, beer mugs, thongs, T-shirts - a 29-year-old Srinagar youth is now thinking global. He with likeminded activists is preparing to launch a new political party to "defend Muslims,'" interests across the globe. Reacting to his being America's most hated poster-boy of alleged Islamic radicalism, Shakeel Ahmed Butt said, "I know they hate me but I'm not bothered at all. The invective, though tenuous and part of anti-Muslim bias, has rather encouraged me to do more for my brethren."

Mr Shakeel, a failed militant whose "biggest achievement" is carrying out an unsuccessful sneak rifle-fire attack on the cavalcade of senior Congress leader and then junior minister at the Centre Mr Rajesh Pilot, along the Boulevard here during the heyday of insurgency feels elevated enough to say, "I'll soon decide on my political future. I would dedicate rest of my life for the cause of Islam and the Muslims." His reverie is; "All the 56 Muslim countries must join hands and fight back the enemies of Islam. They must severe ties with the governments and the nations that affront Islam, the Qur'an or the holy Prophet." He also wants Saudi Arabia and other wealthy Islamic nations to "withdraw their money from the American banks in order to bring it to its knees."

The so-called "Rage Boy" who turns up at almost every major or small demonstration to express anger about any move or incident that is seen as anti-Islam or anti-Muslim, be it Danish cartoons, the Pope's swing at Islam, knighthood to Salman Rushdie, Israeli's military actions against the Palestinians and Lebanon, the American invasion on Iraq and strikes in Afghanistan or the Srinagar sexploitation scandal, said that he does not believe in any ideology but Islam. "I don't subscribe to socialism, secularism or Gandhi-ism but Islam and Islam alone and would reconcile to nothing except liberty for the sake of Islam," Mr. Shakeel told this newspaper at a classic Kashmiri urban house built of exposed brick and timber with windows made of delicate wooden fretwork in the city's Malik Angan neighbourhood where he lives with his mother and her five other sons and their families.

As our photographer Habibullah Naqash and I walked into the patio of the house to meet the 'Rage Boy' at a mutually decided time, a man in his early forties rushed out to inquire about us and the purpose of our visit. On being told who we are, he said, "No, he is not here." But he had asked us to come to (his) house for the meeting, the man who turned to be Mr Shakeel's elder brother was informed. "Ok, ok, let me find out," he said and after steering us to a small room on the first floor of their house, went away. A few minutes later, Mr. Shakeel came in and after the customary exchange of pleasantries suggested that we should shift to a more "luminous" room on the third floor. We agreed. There, he, for about one hour, spoke about his family and his own life and future plans.

Born in 1978 to a Kashmiri artisan family which has now spread its handicrafts business beyond the Valley, Mr Shakeel was not a gifted child to his parents. He gave up his studies when he was still in Class 12 at a government-run school in Srinagar's Bana Mohalla locality. His father Ghulam Qadir Butt was cherished by his neighbours and friends as being a devout Muslim. Though not associated with any political party of his time, he was known to have a propensity towards the thought of Kashmir joining Pakistan, which did not happen and the events unfolding in post-1947 Jammu and Kashmir left him disillusioned. "But he never took part in active politics and instead dedicated his time and energy towards the upbringing of his children - six sons and two daughters," Mr Shakeel said. But a bloody incident that occurred way back in 1986 changed the family profile. As the Muslim United Front alliance was pitted against the National Conference-Congress combine in the state Assembly elections, the police raided the cluster of houses in their locality in search of the ruling alliance's opponents. The policemen on barging into Butts' house allegedly threw Mr Shakeel's 18-year-old sister Ms Shareefa out of an upstairs door. She broke her spine and died from her injuries six years later. While she was still fighting for her life, Mr Shakeel decided to "stand up and fight for a bigger cause." As the insurgency was reaching its peak, he joined Al-Umar Mujahideen which was emerging as one of the most feared militant outfits, particularly in Srinagar. On Februaty 5, 1991, he with the outfit's deputy chief Naeem al-Haq crossed the Line of Control using the Lolab valley track and returned home after two-and-a-half months as a trained militant who knew how to use a Kalashinkov and explode a grenade.

But without making a mark as a "mujahid," he was seized by the BSF during a cordon-and-search operation in a Srinagar neighbourhood on September 24, 1994. "Prior to my release on February 2, 1997, I was kept at different detention centres and torture chambers run by the Army, the BSF, the STF (local police's counterinsurgency Special Task Force) and was tortured even by the Ikhwanis (the renegades working for the security forces)," he charged. Days after his release, another tragedy struck the family. The STF men raided their house to look for Mr Shakeel but he was not there. They, he alleged, beat his 75-year-old father instead, leaving him with a broken leg. The senior Butt spent the rest of his life bedridden.
Since his release in a larger group of 135 militants and other separatists, Mr Shakeel claims he has been briefly detained by the police about 300 times, mainly during street protests. He feels proud that he has been lodged in all the police stations in Srinagar and the main ones in the towns of Baramulla, Sopore, Kupwara, Pulwama and Anantnag. It was during his stay at Srinagar's Kralkhud police station last month when two senior police officers had visited him to offer they would find him a suitable girl to marry. He added, "They were ready also to do all that would be required to rehabilitate me and said that they would drop all the cases against me if I quit going to demonstrations."

But Mr Shakeel wants to marry a girl of his choice - a non-Muslim from any part of the world whom he would only convert to Islam. He vividly remembers his father often taking him to mosques and edifying him about two important principles of life: do not be greedy and help Islam to spread its teachings the way our Sufis and seers did. He also recalls how he as a child would love to wear a blue services' cap and then stand up in front of his father to yell "Aadhi rooti khanyan ge, par sar nahi jukayen ge."

He pledges to continue to do what he has been doing for the past few years - ranting in demonstrations against "injustice" wherever it takes place. Asked if he also felt for the non-Muslims if wronged, Mr Shakeel retorted, "Yes, of course. I do feel equally for them. I was injured when the police came in the way of the procession taken out against the massacre of 35 innocent Sikhs at Chattisinghpora. They broke my head with a lathi."

He said that he has turned down an offer made to him by a group of Kashmiri attorneys that they would on his behalf file a case against those who project him as a bad boy of Islam.

"I told you I'm not bothered. Why should I? It gives me some relief that I've been able to, at least, startle the enemies of Islam." He also said that a Western journalist had recently asked him if he knew where Osama bin Laden was. "I told him that he lives in the heart of every Muslim." What Mr Shakeel also knows is; "an infidel feels terrified of a true Muslim.

"That is why they are exaggerating what I've been doing. This they do only to tarnish the image of Islam." But the so-called "Rage Boy" insists that he should not be blamed for that.