Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Banned terrorist organisation Jaish-e-Mohammed has started its fund raising campaign in Punjab as the harvest season for major Rabi crops sets in.

In the latest issue of JeM’s weekly online magazine (accessed on April 25), its charity wing al-Rehmat Trust invited Ushr contributions for supporting the “families of martyrs, detainees of Islam and ghazis” along with the “seminaries, religious centres and the needy”.

Ushr is an agricultural equivalent of Zakat, where a portion of agricultural produce is given away as charity. The first Muslim ruler to levy it as a tax was Caliph Umar Ibn al-Khattab (RA) whereby Ushr was collected by the state as a 10% tax on the harvests from irrigated land and 20% tax on harvests from rain-watered land. In Pakistan, it is instituted by Article 31 (C) of the Constitution 1973, which provides for the state to secure the proper organisation of Zakat and Ushr. In pursuance of this provision, Zakat and Ushr Ordinance 1980 was promulgated, after which Zakat and Ushr Department was constituted in 1980. The department remained on the concurrent list until 2010 when it was devolved under the 18th Constitutional Amendment. Zakat and Ushr is now a provincial subject.

The Provincial Assembly of the Punjab passed Zakat and Ushr Act, 2012, in March that year, whereby the Punjab Revenue Department would collect the Ushr from every landowner, grantee, allottee, lessee or landholder on a compulsory basis. According to the law, the Punjab government notified the Provincial Zakat and Ushr Council, the district and local Zakat & Ushr committees in order to manage disbursement of the Zakat and Ushr funds to the needy.

In May 2012, Punjab landlords refused to pay Ushr for it being considered a direct additional tax on farmers after the imposition of agricultural income tax. According to revenue officials, the government has not been able to collect Ushr for the last 20 years. In the year 1991-92, the Ushr collection receipts amounted to Rs 39.46 million against the assessed amount of Rs 122.70 million that year.

Talking to Daily Times, an official of al-Rehmat Trust confirmed that his organisation was collecting Ushr for charity purposes. However, he refused to share any further details about the amount collected and the number of people who responded to their request. The work is, he said, in progress as we speak.

Al-Rehmat Trust (ART) is registered as a charity organisation and is reported to have links with the banned JeM. The advertisements by ART regularly appear in the JeM weekly magazine, to which the officials of ART also regularly contribute with their writings on different issues like jihad activities in Kashmir and Afghanistan, as well as with the preaching material on Islamic injunctions.

In March this year, the Counter-Terrorism Department of Sindh uncovered a money trail from the banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi to ART and ultimately to the JeM.

On March 18, CTD SSP (Operations) Munir Ahmed Sheikh had informed the media about the arrest of members of anti-Shia militant outfit Abdul Hafeez Pandrani Brohi group and banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi from Kemari and Sohrab Goth areas of Karachi. He said that the accused were involved in the massacre at Sehwan Sharif in February.

As per the CTD, the main suspect of the Sehwan Sharif attack, Abdul Aziz Sheikh, was a key member of the LeJ who had close ties with Abdul Hafeez Pandrani and banned Jaish-e-Mohammed. As an emir of LeJ in Shikarpur, he had funded JeM through al-Rehmat Trust, the SSP had said.

JeM was banned in 2002 by the government of Gen (r) Pervez Musharraf when he faced US pressure to curb terrorist groups operating from Pakistan. Alongside JeM, its offshoot Khuddam-ul-Islam was also banned at that time but surprisingly, ART still remains out of the proscribed list of both the Interior Ministry (62 organisations) as well as the Foreign Ministry (171 organisations). Although, after the adoption of the National Action Plan in 2014, the government launched a crackdown on terror financing instruments and imposed strict bans on funds collection, especially on religious occasions (fitrana on Eidul Fitr and hides of sacrificial animals on Eidul Azha). It is, however, noteworthy that JeM workers were caught on several videos while openly asking charity contributions in Karachi last year for jihad in Kashmir and Afghanistan.

JeM head Masood Azhar remains at large after he was released weeks after being taken in ‘protective custody’ by an intelligence agency of Pakistan in early 2016. Sartaj Aziz, adviser to the PM on foreign affairs, had told the media in 2016 that phone calls were traced to JeM centre in Punjab, which were made by terrorists who executed the Pathankot attack. Sharad Kumar, the DG of National Intelligence Agency of India, had categorically said in June 2016 that there was no evidence of Pakistani government’s involvement in the Pathankot attack.