While Hamas leaders shared the dais with Kashmiri jihadists in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir on February 5, 2025, so-called Kashmir Solidarity Day, New Delhi continues to avoid designating Hamas as a terrorist group. This year, the star attractions of the Kashmir Solidarity Day celebrations in the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir town of Rawlakot were Hamas spokesmen Khalid Qaddoumi and Naji Zaheer, as well as Hamas leaders Mufti Azam and Bilal Alsallat. Joining the procession less than two miles from the Line of Control were global jihadist leaders like Jaish-e-Mohammed commanders Masood Ilyas and Asghar Khan Kashmiri and several top Lashkar-e-Taiba commanders. The United States designates both Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba as terrorist groups. Such demonstrations belie the notion that nationalist discourse constrains the vision of either Hamas or Kashmiri groups.
Linkages between the Kashmir-centric jihadist groups, their proxies, Palestinian Islamist networks, and global Islamist fronts are profound.
The overt association of Hamas leaders with Kashmir-focused jihadi groups should not have shocked India’s strategic community. Hamas and even the Palestine Liberation Organization have previously embraced ties. In 2017, Walid Abu Ali, the Palestinian envoy to Pakistan, shared the dais with Hafiz Saeed, the mastermind of the November 26, 2008, Mumbai terror attacks. Less than three weeks after the October 7, 2023, massacre in Israel, Khaled Mashal, a top Hamas leader, addressed a pro-Palestinian rally in Malappuram, an Islamist hotbed in Kerala. He addressed similarities and the ties between Zionism and Hindutva, the ideology tying Hindu identity with Indian nationalism.
Linkages between the Kashmir-centric jihadist groups, their proxies, Palestinian Islamist networks, and global Islamist fronts are profound, existing at an institutional level, particularly in the West. The Islamic Circle of North America, an umbrella organization of U.S.-based Islamist charity and advocacy groups, often acts as a Jamaat-e-Islami proxy, even as it denies direct links. Based in Pakistan, Jamaat-e-Islami propagates Maulana Maududi’s vision of political Islam, suggesting strict observance of Islamic law in personal, social, and state-related matters. Jamaat-e-Islami plays a crucial role in terror financing, radicalization, and recruitment to wage violent jihad in Kashmir. Reportedly, not a single killing or episode of civil unrest takes place in Jammu and Kashmir without Jamaat-e-Islami’s green light.
The Islamic Circle of North America organizes annual conferences in Washington, D.C., with the Muslim American Society, a group with long ties to Muslim Brotherhood. Among participants and speakers at these conferences is Ghulam Nabi Fai, whom the U.S. government charged with colluding with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency. Fai reportedly had worked with Jamaat-e-Islami for more than 50 years.
Nor is Fai the only linkage between Kashmiri militancy and Islamists operating in the West. Islamic Circle of North America’s charity Helping Hands for Relief and Development partners with Al Khidmat Foundation, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jamaat-e-Islami’s charity wing in Pakistan. Al Khidmat Foundation donated $100,000 to Hamas in 2006.
India’s refusal to see the connections between the Kashmiri jihadist groups and Palestinian terror outfits represents a major security and strategic blind spot.
Within Kashmir, sympathy and support for Palestinian terrorist groups like Hamas runs high. Among the Sunni population, the Palestinian issue is a key rallying point. A Lashkar-e-Taiba I interviewed reported that the group considers Israel, the United States, and India as its prime adversaries. Former Central Intelligence Agency tracker Sarah Adams’ recent findings suggesting that Hamas trained in Afghanistan before the October 2023 attacks affirm the Lashkar-e-Taiba claims about the linkages between South and West Asian terror and militant groups.
India’s refusal to see the connections between the Kashmiri jihadist groups and Palestinian terror outfits represents a major security and strategic blind spot. While India and Israel ties strengthened under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist government, anti-Israel bias still runs deep in Indian society, an artifact from earlier decades when India saw itself as a leader of the Global South. After the October 7, 2023, attack, Modi expressed sympathy with Israel, but India has yet to officially designate Hamas a terrorist group.
That contradiction must end. New Delhi must realize how different today’s geopolitical realities are from the Cold War days. Transnational jihadi terrorism constitutes one of the most critical threats to global security, and India has been one of its most prominent victims. India might continue its efforts to balance ties between Iran and Israel; after all, the United Arab Emirates maintains such balance. Preserving ties with Tehran should not, however, stop designation of Hamas. Failure to do so undercuts the credibility of India’s voice on terror.
