Bhatkal, with a population of 100,000 - 70% of that Muslim thrives on religion; this also happens to be the birthplace of Yasin Bhatkal, a Navayath who has been convicted in several bomb blast cases.
Karnataka Assembly Elections 2018 » When Mankal Vaidya, the sitting Congress member of legislative Assembly (MLA) from Honnavar-Bhatkal in Uttara Kanara on the Karnataka coast, was re-named the party candidate for the constituency, the first thing he did was writing to the local socio-political body Majlis-e-Islah-o-Tanzeem for support. Vaidya told local reporters: “I have already written to the body seeking its support in the upcoming election, and I am waiting for their response.”
The support of Majlis-e-Islah-o-Tanzeem plays an important role in the Bhatkal-Honnavar constituency, where Muslim bodies come together under the umbrella organisation and vote according to its instructions.
Also approaching Majlis-e-Islah-o-Tanzeem is Inayathullah Shabandri, who got the body’s support in the previous election and is now contesting on a JD(S) ticket. Bhatkal has a population of only about 100,000, but 70 per cent of the population is Muslim. They belong to the Navayath sect of Sunnis but belonging to the Shafi school of thought (unlike other Sunnis in India who belong to Hanafi school). Navayath is translated as “newcomer” from the original Arabic, so they probably settled on the Karnataka coast, having migrated from Iran and the Arabian coast. Majlis-e-Islah-o-Tanzeem, the official organ of the Navayaths, is regarded as the most powerful Muslim organisation in the entire Uttara Kannada district.
Bhatkal thrives on religion. You could say it is notorious for it. This is the birthplace of Yasin Bhatkal, a Navayath who has been convicted in several bomb blast cases across the country, his friends, two brothers Iqbal and Riyaz Bhatkal, and Abdul Kadir Sultan Armar, a former member of the banned Student's Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) who left home 10 years ago with his younger brother Saif.
Like Indian Mujahideen founder Yasin Bhatkal before him, Armar, an Islamic State (IS) volunteer, had also been recruiting jihadists both online and through one-on-one meetings. It was after the arrest of Bhatkal (also known as Mohammed Ahmed Siddibappa) that intelligence agencies discovered that Armar was engaged in acts of violence overseas. He was part of the Ansar-ut-Tauhid, an outfit that had claimed responsibility for the 2008 murder of US envoy John Granville in Khartoum, Sudan. His mission was to die fighting in Iraq and Syria, and so he headed for the IS and was killed recently in Kobane in northeast Syria along the Turkish border.
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