Home to the world’s second-largest Muslim population, India has long been relatively immune to Islamic radicalism—as evidenced by the fact that only 75 Indians have joined Islamic State (compared to over 600 from Belgium, which has an exponentially smaller Muslim population). Yet in recent years, thanks in part to Saudi-funded proselytization, Wahhabi Islam has increasingly displaced the more moderate local traditions, as Abhinav Pandya explains. (Free registration may be required.)

[O]ver the last decade and a half, Saudi Arabia has become increasingly uncomfortable with the rising Shiite influence in India and with Tehran’s overtures. They therefore decided to provide a religious and cultural [counterweight by] pumping in money to promote Wahhabism in India. During a single two-year period (2011-2013), according to an Indian Intelligence Bureau report, 25,000 [Saudi] Wahhabis visited India for missionary work; over that period they brought, in installments, $250 million to propagate Wahhabism, $460 million to set up madrasas, and $300 million for miscellaneous costs, including alleged bribes to mosque authorities. . . .

It’s already noticeable in visiting the [southern Indian state of] Kerala that a process of Arabization among the Muslim population is already underway, as reflected in language, eating habits, belief systems, and dress code; more women are wearing the hijab or even the niqab. It may come as a surprise, but Salafist and Wahhabi ideologies in India appear to have won more appeal among the educated classes. [These denominations’] austerity acts as a way for [the educated] to differentiate themselves from rural Muslims with their “ignorant” and “superstitious” beliefs. . . .

[B]ecause of Muslim radicalization’s politically sensitive nature, and the lack of any national-level strategy and program to address it, most of the time it is left to the state police to deal with such matters. . . . But it’s clear that state police do not have the requisite skills and infrastructure to detect such trends and take effective action against them.

A properly thought-out counter-radicalization program for India also faces another obstacle: the prevailing sentiment in India’s mainstream academia and media that domestic Muslim radicalization has increased in reaction to the Narendra Modi government’s embrace of Hindu nationalism. However, it’s not clear that such a connection can be made. There have been no major inter-communal riots, busting of terror sleeper cells, or terrorist attacks within India since 2014, the year of Modi’s election.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.