- In October 2025, the news surfaced about the launch of a women-only online course by Pakistan’s anti-India jihadist outfit, Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM). Understandably, this news has sent shock waves across India.
The newly formed women’s wing, Jamaat-ul-Mominaat (Group of Female Believers), led by JeM leader Masood Azhar’s sisters, will administer this 15-day course, titled “Tuhfa-tul-Mominaat” (Gift for the Female Believers), from a madrasa within the group’s Bahawalpur headquarters. The course commenced November 8, 2025, via the Zoom app, with each daily class lasting 40 minutes—while WhatsApp is being used to provide lecture recordings.
The legitimate fear in India is that the female students radicalized through this initiative could become JeM suicide bombers, or logistical or propaganda operatives (besides the course being used to raise terrorist funding from students). For this reason, Indian media reports have widely labeled it an online “jihad course.”
Unpacking JeM’s Course Flyer
A closer look at the leaflet copied above, however, reflects that despite JeM being a hardcore militant outfit that believes in a privatized, violent notion of jihad, there is no mention of the word “jihad” in its promotional material. (Another women-only course whose news surfaced in November will, however, focus specifically on jihadism.)
Instead, to appeal to women, the flyer contains part of a Qura’nic verse on top enjoining the Prophet’s wives to pray, pay the poor due, and obey the Divine and Its Messenger—instructions which nevertheless hold good for ordinary Muslims. The course contents comprise Islamic guidance on ensuring ritual cleanliness, invoking God every day, solving life’s problems, treating diseases, and obtaining abundant provision.
Interestingly, one of the course contents focuses on the women-centric “Shari’ah commandment of purdah” (literally, “hijab” in Arabic) along with its “rationales.” Another topic explains the “positive effects of purdah on society.”
As an uncompromising feminist who remains deeply concerned about how Islam is understood, the launch of an online course with such contents draws this author’s attention to an issue of vital importance—one that is being missed everywhere amidst the tension surrounding this matter.
It is the mainstream unreformed Islamic theology, in which, contrary to a Qur’anic commandment, the truth has been mixed with falsehood since medieval times through verse decontextualization and fabricated traditions attributed to the Prophet. This theology, including the prevalent Shari’ah versions, combines innocuous Islamic tenets with the varying problematic articles, such as “purdah/hijab for women,” which, as per theologian Javed Ahmad Ghamidi, has been introduced by people other than the Prophet into the religion.
One such example is below where Masood Azhar himself conflates the mention of something as devotional as Makkah’s Holy Ka’abah with the corrupted, hate-filled understanding of jihad, while leveraging technology to disseminate his message. This text was shared by an instructor at Pakistan’s transnational Salafist women’s educational institution, al-Huda International:
In this excerpt from Azhar’s work, titled “The Blessings of the Islamic Creed: Madinah, Madinah,” he celebrates the growing number of pilgrims to the Ka’abah, on the one hand, and rejoices at his purported “rising trend toward jihadism” among Muslims, on the other. Similarly, he positively mentions an increasing number of Muslims memorizing the entire Qur’an, while at the same time portrays it as a “blessing” that his Jamaat-ul-Mominaat is organizing “thousands of Muslim girls and women,” thereby envisaging a bright future for Islamist terrorism.
Interestingly, JeM’s publishing agency, Maktaba-e-Hasan, follows the same approach as in publishing a book on the 99 names of God in Islam, while also producing several jihadist texts. It all precisely mirrors JeM juxtaposing daily Prophetic invocations with purdah in its Tuhfat-ul-Mominaat course, while flagrantly abusing Zoom and WhatsApp to radicalize the students.
Stay tuned for Part II of this three-part series next week.