Who is Mawlana Muthanna Hassan, AQIS Top Ideologue?

Among al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) ideologues, Muthanna Hassan is one of the most prolific writers, producing contents on a wide array of topics.

Mawlana Muhammad Muthanna Hassan is a leading ideologue of al-Qaida (AQ) in Pakistan and al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS). Muthanna Hassan is part of a small circle of preachers in the organization who have been spreading AQIS ideology in different formats – written, video and audio contents – for almost twenty years.

Along with Muthanna Hassan, this circle of preaching ideologues also includes Noman Hejazi, Moinuddin Shami, and Obaidurrehman al-Murabati. The names of these four exponents often appear in the publications of as-Sahab Media Subcontinent (the media mouthpiece of AQIS); in Nawa-e-Ghazwa-e-Hind (the bimonthly magazine of AQIS); and Hitteen (AQIS occasional, detailed magazine).

According to the biography of leading member of AQIS, Ustad Ahmad Farooq (killed in 2015 in Waziristan in an American drone attack) which has been written by the deputy amir of AQIS and Farooq's youth companion, Atif Yahya Ghouri, and published by as- Sahab Media Subcontinent in 2023, Muthanna Hassan was a student of Ahmad Farooq, who allegedly taught him media techniques and religious arguments around the ideology of AQ. Ahmad Farooq himself probably recruited Muthanna Hassan around 2009, when Farooq was placed in charge of AQ's media section in Pakistan, editing content in Urdu and English, at the suggestion of the deceased AQ leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

In fact, Muthanna Hassan's first writing appeared for the first time in 2009, published in the Urdu language magazine Hitteen, whose current editor is Mawlana Obaidurrehman al-Murabati, and which also includes Moinuddin Shami and Noman Hejazi. Moinuddin Shami himself was a student of Ahmad Farooq, according to Yahya Ghouri. Muthanna Hassan's first writing was published in Hitteen just when Farooq had been put in charge of the production of the same magazine.

Unlike Atif Yahya Ghouri and Ibrahim Ghouri – Farooq's youth companions who joined AQ in Pakistan at the same time as Ahmad Farooq – Muthanna Hassan and Moinuddin Shami are part of Ahmad Farooq's second circle of recruits, when the latter had already climbed to the top of the organization. Since Ahmad Farooq was born in 1981, if they had met during Ahmad Farooq's progressive transition to AQ, it is possible that Muthanna Hassan is between 40 and 45 years old. This also seems to be confirmed by the only image released by the organization from a 2019 video series, although Muthanna Hassan is in profile.

As regards the background, judging from the contents of the sermons and writings, Muthanna Hassan appears as a strictly religious-political preacher, and not a strategist or military commander. In particular, his speeches focus more on religious arguments typical of an individual who studied in a madrassa, rather than in a university like Ahmad Farooq. In fact, Muthanna Hassan's first writing, published in the fifth issue of Hitteen in 2009, deals with the "cultural invasion" of the West in the Islamic world and whether it is possible to oppose it without resorting to jihad. In the same issue, a second piece discusses how Muslims in Pakistan are not taking the initiative to carry out jihad in the country, with weapons or propaganda.

In 2009, Muthanna Hassan also published his first booklet, again with Hitteen, which discussed the correct way to conduct jihad in Pakistan. In particular, the book distinguished between "legal jihad" (the one carried out by AQ, the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban) and "illegal jihad", referring to some Kashmiri jihadist organizations historically aligned with Pakistani.

In 2010, Muthanna Hassan published a second booklet, again with Hitteen, which discussed the need to combat Western propaganda against Islam and AQ by waging an intellectual war. From 2010 onwards, Muthanna Hassan regularly writes for Hitteen and Nawa-e-Ghazwa-e-Hind. One of his most famous books is a short treatise on the role of the army in Pakistan, strongly criticizing the latter, accusing it of being the main obstacle to the creation of an Islamic state in Pakistan.

Muthanna Hassan has also been published frequently by as-Sahab Media Subcontinent, including a statement in which he called on Muslims in Afghanistan, India and Pakistan to unite to overthrow local governments.

The fact that today Muthanna Hassan holds a prestigious position as a religious-political ideologist of AQIS is demonstrated by the fact at the beginning of 2023, following a statement by the Grand Mufti of Pakistan, Mufti Taqi Usmani, who underlined that in Pakistan jihad was illegal, Muthanna Hassan published a detailed text in which he positioned himself on the same level as Taqi Usmani, cordially rejecting the latter's theses.

The last appearance of Mawlana Muthanna Hassan has been in an article focused on elections in Pakistan on February 8, 2024, written for Nawa-e-Ghazwa-e-Hind, where he criticizes Pakistan’s system of government and the democratic process.

In the recorded videos and audios, Muthanna Hassan speaks Urdu with a strong Punjabi accent. Although it is not possible to trace the geographical origin, it is worth noting that Ahmad Farooq lived in Rawalpindi, where he gathered several disciples who he then took with him to AQ. It is therefore probable that Muthanna Hassan is originally from Rawalpindi or comes from another area of Punjab (from the accent it would seem Central or South) but he lived in Rawalpindi, where he met Farooq.

Muthanna Hassan appeared in only one video series, which began in 2019, in which he and Usama Mahmood, current leader of AQIS, discussed the history of Pakistan and the current political system. However, the faces of both were covered for security reasons.

Furthermore, Muthanna Hassan's voice also appeared in an audio series in which he discussed the importance of uniting efforts for jihad.