Jaish’s digital front and Pakistan’s anti-terrorism duplicity

This online course comes months after Jaish had announced donations through digital wallets like Easypaisa and Sadapay to facilitate ‘digital hawala’ and raise funds to finance its activities, soon after Op Sindoor destroyed the hideouts of the terrorist group. JeM operates over 2,000 active digital wallet accounts, generating an estimated $2.8-3.2 million in revenue annually. A significant portion of these funds are reportedly used for arms purchases and financing terror operations, with some estimates suggesting up to 50% goes directly to arms purchases. GeM may escape the scrutiny of the Financial Action Task Force (FAFT).

The online course is intended to serve as an ideological training platform and a tool to raise funds for Jaish-e-Mohammed’s operations. Female relatives of senior Jaish commanders are leading the online module, including Masood Azhar’s sisters Sadiya Azhar, Sameera Azhar and Sia Azhar as well as Afara Farooq, wife of one of the Pahalgam terror attackers, Omar Farooq. The curriculum has already been publicized through Jaish-e-Mohammed’s internal Telegram and WhatsApp networks as well as through closed online religious forums.

Yet beneath this cloak of piety lies a deliberate strategy that weaponises faith, technology and gender to expand Jaish-e-Mohammed’s ideological footprint, while Islamabad turns a blind eye even as it receives international counter-terrorism funding.

This is symbolic of how Pakistan’s enabling environment and misuse of international counter-terrorism funds continues to perpetuate extremist ideology under the guise of religious education. Jaish-e-Mohammed’s online curriculum reflects the digitalization of modern jihadi movements and Islamabad’s continued failure, if not deliberate evasion, to implement counter-terrorism commitments.

The growth of jihadist movements in South Asia follows a clear trajectory – from madrassa-based education and terrorist training in the 1990s to digital radicalization and online propaganda in the 2020s. JeM, founded by Masood Azhar in 2000, was an early organization to adopt information technology as a tool of mobilization. From its weekly publications such as Al Qalam Like for its online magazines Zarb-e-MominThe organization has continuously created an ecosystem of cyber extremism.

A good start Tuhfat-ul-Muminaat Symbolizes an important change; It specifically targets women as ideological participants rather than passive supporters. The course represents the convergence of jihadist ideology and digital communications, a hybrid model where platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook, YouTube and Telegram serve as virtual seminars. The course material shared through private online groups reportedly used selectively interpreted Quranic verses to justify militancy, martyrdom and anti-India sentiment.

Unlike earlier propaganda that glorified frontline heroism, this digital jihad is intellectual and domestic, encouraging women to “support jihad from home”, manage social media propaganda, and raise “spiritually prepared sons.” It is a modern version of the same ideological rigidity that once pushed thousands of Pakistani youth into Kashmir and Afghanistan.

Jaish-e-Mohammed’s approach reflects a broader trend of gender jihadism. While global attention has often focused on the recruitment of women by the Islamic State, Pakistan’s Deobandi terrorist groups have quietly nurtured a parallel ecosystem. Women’s wing of Jaish, Khatoon-e-IslamIt has long organized informal study circles, publications and religious lectures to develop ideological allegiance. Online courses are merely an institutionalization of that effort.

Women are increasingly seen not as peripheral actors but as power enhancers. They act as disseminators of extremist narratives within family networks and local communities, where their influence can be profound and often go unnoticed. Jaish’s story deliberately conflates domesticity with piety: portraying a woman’s obedience to jihad as a form of faith and motherhood as a battlefield of ideas. This ideological framework not only normalizes extremism but also ensures inter-generational continuity of jihadist values.

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated this digital migration. Religious scholars started preaching on YouTube and giving fatwas on Zoom. JeM’s online courses are a natural evolution of that environment, blending old theoretical content with new digital delivery. Jaish’s new campaign shows how terrorist organizations have completely adopted the architecture of the modern Internet. This new course integrates several online platforms:

• YouTube and Facebook For promotional clips featuring religious sermons and motivational lectures.
• telegram For encrypted group discussion and delivery of course materials.
• WhatsApp For registration, assignments and peer-group interactions.
• closed learning portal Where women can access recorded lectures and live sessions.

Such sophisticated use of social media mirrors the methods of Islamic State Al-Khansa BrigadeWhich organized women for online and logistics jihad. However, JeM’s approach is tailored to the South Asian context, based on the emotional appeal of Kashmir, anti-India sentiment and the protection of Islamic identity.

The inclusion of multimedia content and emotional storytelling reflects Jaish’s understanding of digital attention economies. Its propaganda is not limited to violence, but extends to psychological manipulation, in which radical participation is described as a moral obligation.

These videos use sophisticated production techniques – soft background nasheeds, high-definition imagery of Kashmir, and emotionally charged narration – designed to evoke grievance and religious solidarity. They are often re-uploaded from multiple accounts to avoid content moderation.

Telegram channels associated with Jaish-e-Mohammed share course material in encrypted formats. Additionally, Twitter/X accounts promote them by using hashtags related to Muslim identity and women’s empowerment – ​​a deliberate subversion of progressive discourse to normalize extremism. This is the new frontier of influence operations: religious fundamentalism wrapped in the language of empowerment.

Tuhfat-ul-Muminaat The initiative thus represents not only an ideological project but also an information campaign – which seeks to blur the lines between faith and fanaticism, education and theory.

A good start Tuhfat-ul-MuminaatAn online jihad course for women by Jaish-e-Mohammed once again exposes the ongoing dishonesty in Pakistan’s counter-terrorism posture. Despite decades of international assistance to deradicalize and counter extremism, Islamabad continues to provide regulatory space and indirect financial support to banned organizations.

Pakistan’s commitments under the FATF framework and its removal from the gray list were projected as milestones in its purported reform path. However, under this façade, the state security establishment continues to tolerate and, in some cases, indirectly enable groups like JeM and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). Both organizations have long been sustained through a dense network of charity fronts and madrassa boards that operate under the guise of religious education and humanitarian relief. The most prominent among these is Al-Rahmat TrustThe charitable wing of Jaish-e-Mohammed, which continues to operate openly in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Despite being linked to a UN-designated terrorist group, the Trust benefits from indirect state support through tax exemptions, public donations and, in some cases, provincial grants for “religious welfare”.

Ironically, Pakistan continues to receive financial assistance from its allies and regional partners, which partly enables this dual-use system. Equally troubling is Islamabad’s selective enforcement of its cyber laws. Electronic Crimes Prevention Act (PECA)Designed to counter online extremism, it is often weaponized against journalists, human rights activists, and opposition figures. In contrast, online jihadist propaganda, recruitment pages and donation campaigns continue to flourish. Jaish-e-Mohammed’s digital ecosystem, including its virtual classrooms and encrypted communications platforms, operates with remarkable impunity.

Reports also indicate that many Jaish-e-Mohammed networks displaced during India’s Operation Sindoor have settled deep into Pakistan’s Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces. emergence of Tuhfat-ul-MuminaatTherefore, it reflects more than a tactical adaptation; This represents Pakistan’s enduring counter-terrorism paradox. While the state is publicly committed to dismantling extremist networks, its own administrative and financial structures continue to nurture them. This duplicity not only undermines the credibility of Pakistan’s reform narrative, but also undermines the broader international counter-terrorism order, which depends on Islamabad’s compliance. As the online mobilization of the women of Jaish-e-Mohammed shows, the global jihadist threat is evolving digitally – and Pakistan’s selective complicity risks turning its counterterrorism funding into an incubator for the very extremism it claims to fight.

The international community must see Tuhfat-ul-Muminaat This initiative has been seen not as an isolated incident but as a symptom of Pakistan’s structural failure and willful neglect in countering extremism. Western governments that continue to provide counterterrorism funding or defense assistance to Islamabad should demand transparency in the use of religious education initiatives and independent auditing.

Furthermore, digital forensic cooperation between India, EU and US can play a vital role in tracking Jaish’s online operations, identifying server origins and dismantling related social media groups. Multilateral mechanisms like the FATF should expand their focus from financial networks to digital propaganda economies, where extremist groups monetize online content, donations, and recruitment courses.

Equally important is the need for a regional digital counter-radicalism framework that addresses recruitment based on gender. Counter-narratives targeting women should highlight the exploitation and deception inherent in jihadist messages, using culturally resonant voices and community-based engagement rather than generic security rhetoric.

Jaish’s Tuhfat-ul-Muminaat is more than an online religious course; It is a timeless experiment in psychological and digital warfare. It highlights how extremist movements are adapting to the rhythms of a connected world, using the tools of modernity to take society back.

Unless international monitoring is tightened and Islamabad is held to account, the digital jihad factory will continue to flourish, producing not only terrorists but also ideologues. hijabAs social media becomes the new madrassa and hashtags replace sermons, the line between faith and fanaticism will blur further until the world recognizes that terrorism today is not fought with bombs alone, but with truth, transparency and digital vigilance,

This article is written by Soumya Awasthi, Fellow, Center for Security Strategy and Technology, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi.