Srinagar, India-administered Kashmir – On a sunlit June Friday in Srinagar’s Outdated Metropolis, the Jamia Masjid stands because it at all times has, ornate and imposing. Its 14th-century picket pillars have been witnesses to centuries of sermons and battle.
Inside, about 4,000 worshippers sit in silence.
When Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, the non secular chief of Kashmir’s Muslims, rises to talk, he does so with grace however warning. Draped in his customary golden-bordered white thobe and topped with a brown Karakuli hat, he delivers a sermon laced with quiet prayers.
“As we enter the brand new Islamic 12 months,” he stated, “I lengthen greetings to the complete Muslim Ummah. Might Allah grant us peace, unity and power, shield the oppressed, and information our leaders with knowledge and righteousness in these testing instances.”
His tone is unrecognisable from just some years in the past, when the now 52-year-old mirwaiz – as Kashmir’s chief Muslim chief is thought – was a fiery orator, thundering with conviction, his speeches a strong cocktail of non secular messaging and politics.
For nearly three a long time, Kashmir’s supreme Muslim chief was additionally one of many area’s most influential voices arguing for its independence from India by means of peaceable dialogue, at a time when the valley was a cauldron of violence. An armed secessionist battle that kicked off within the Nineteen Eighties led to an enormous Indian safety presence in Kashmir, and since then, greater than 40,000 folks have been killed in response to Indian authorities estimates.
Farooq’s speeches would usually invoke Kashmir’s proper to independence. Seven years in the past, on June 2, 2018, as an example, the mosque brimmed with greater than 30,000 worshippers. Farooq, visibly impassioned, ascended the pulpit.
“This pulpit won’t ever fall silent,” he proclaimed. “The Jamia mimbar will proceed to talk fact and be on the facet of justice … Kashmir is our nation, solely we’ll determine its destiny.”
The group erupted. Chants of “Azaadi [freedom]!” thundered inside the mosque.
However Kashmir has since changed: In 2019, the federal government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi unilaterally revoked Kashmir’s semi-autonomous standing, assured on the time underneath the Indian Structure, which was adopted by a safety clampdown and administrative restrictions. 1000’s have been arrested, together with Farooq, who was positioned underneath home arrest. It will be 4 years earlier than he was launched in 2023.
On this Friday, it looks as if Farooq has modified, too. Gone is the defiant rhetoric that when outlined him. There aren’t any overt political cues in his sermon, solely verses from scripture, requires endurance, and appeals for neighborhood calm.
The group listens. Respectful, however not like in earlier years, unmoved.
Exterior, throughout Kashmir, a query is starting to take maintain. Few say it out aloud, however the conversations are actual: Is the head-priest adapting to outlive in a modified Kashmir, or is he fading into irrelevance?
Who’s the mirwaiz?
In Kashmir’s advanced political and non secular panorama, few figures embody each reverence and endurance fairly like Mirwaiz Umar Farooq. Thrust into public life on the age of 17 after the assassination of his father – the earlier mirwaiz – in 1990, allegedly by rebels from a Pakistan-backed armed group, Farooq inherited not simply the pulpit, however a legacy.
Because the mirwaiz of Kashmir, his official position was rooted in spiritual scholarship. However in Kashmir, the mimbar is never simply theological.
Farooq rapidly emerged as a particular voice – soft-spoken, scholarly and deliberate. In contrast to many contemporaries who have been drawn in the direction of the rising armed rebellion of the Nineteen Nineties, Farooq selected the trail of nonviolence and negotiation. Because the valley slipped deeper into militarised battle, he turned a number one determine within the All Events Hurriyat Convention (APHC), a coalition advocating for a peaceable, negotiated decision to the Kashmir dispute.
Kashmir is claimed in full by India and Pakistan, although each management components of it. In Indian-administered Kashmir, in the meantime, pro-independence sentiments have simmered since 1947, when the area acceded to India on the time of partition.
Farooq positioned himself as a average, strolling the tightrope between road sentiment and diplomatic chance. “Mirwaiz Umar has at all times positioned himself as a average politician, a believer within the establishment of dialogue and somebody who has been versatile in his political stance,” stated Gowhar Geelani, author-journalist and political analyst. “The top priest has proven willingness to speak with all stakeholders, together with the nation states of Pakistan and India, and totally different civil society coalitions inside and out of doors Kashmir.”
At a time when most separatist leaders rejected talks with the Indian state as betrayal, Farooq broke ranks. In 2004, he led a Hurriyat delegation to fulfill Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in Delhi, calling it “a step ahead that might open doorways to understanding.” He later held a number of rounds of talks with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Vajpayee’s successor, elevating points like troop withdrawal, demilitarisation of civilian zones and Kashmir’s autonomy.
“We’re not in opposition to India,” he stated after one such assembly. “We’re for Kashmiris. Dialogue is the one method out of this decades-long tragedy.”
Geelani defined that this strategy, whereas distinctive, got here with its personal political dangers: Completely different sections of the ideological spectrum in Kashmir seen Farooq with “admiration, warning and suspicion”, he stated.
The overtures to the Indian authorities – daring on the time – price Farooq help amongst hardliner separatists but in addition positioned him as a uncommon determine prepared to barter with out abandoning the demand for self-determination. His political gamble was seen by many as an try to humanise Kashmir’s battle and push for a peaceable decision, whereas retaining the ethical authority of the pulpit.
On the coronary heart of the mirwaiz’s capacity to play that position was his affect – a stature of a sort that no different pro-independence leaders in Kashmir might boast of. And that affect was centred at Srinagar’s Jamia Masjid.
Earlier than 2019, when Kashmir nonetheless held its particular standing, Fridays on the mosque have been charged occasions. Farooq’s sermons, laced with Islamic perception and political longing, moved overflowing congregations.
After August 2019, when India revoked Kashmir’s particular standing and the mirwaiz was arrested alongside hundreds of others, the 600-year-old mosque too has often been closed underneath safety orders. Sermons have been changed by silence.
The return in 2023
On a gray September morning in Srinagar in 2023, the air hung heavy with a mixture of apprehension and subdued hope at Jamia Masjid, as Mirwaiz Umar Farooq returned to the pulpit – gentler now. His shoulders, as soon as agency with certainty, appeared barely stooped. His gaze, previously sharp and looking out, now lingered, softer, extra introspective. The hearth was gone.
Tight safety manned each alley; worshippers queued in lengthy traces, many weeping silently as they glimpsed the mirwaiz step ahead.
“That is the time for endurance,” he stated, pausing usually, his tone deliberate. Gone have been the requires a plebiscite for Kashmiris to determine on their future, for resistance to what he as soon as known as “Indian occupation”.
As a substitute, there was a softened plea – for dialogue, not between nations, however with Kashmiris.
As soon as, he thundered, “No one can silence us.” That day on his return to the mosque in September 2023, he stated: “Maybe nobody is able to hearken to us.”
Quick ahead two years, and final month, as tensions peaked between India and Pakistan following India’s retaliation over the Pahalgam assault, he spoke to mourn the struggle’s youngest victims, Zain and Urwa. The dual youngsters had been killed in Pakistani shelling. The mirwaiz stated that their “smiling picture will hang-out us”.
“Kashmir is a bleeding wound,” he stated. “A flashpoint that may explode anytime.” His viewers, which might as soon as erupt into chants, listened silently.
In January, Farooq travelled to New Delhi to attend a gathering of a parliamentary panel on amendments to a legislation that governs Muslim endowments – referred to as waqf – throughout India and Indian-administered Kashmir. It was his first formal engagement with the Indian state since 2019, prompting hypothesis about – as but unconfirmed – renewed communication between the mirwaiz and Delhi.
A separate assembly with a member of parliament from the Nationwide Convention, a mainstream Kashmiri occasion that swears by the Indian Structure and gained final 12 months’s state legislature election, additional fuelled chatter that the mirwaiz may be exploring a political compromise with New Delhi.
Al Jazeera reached out to the mirwaiz for an interview, however has not acquired any response.
Analysts recommend that Farooq’s current public engagements – together with appearances at interfaith and nationwide occasions in Delhi – replicate a cautious recalibration fairly than a transparent ideological shift. The mirwaiz now seems to be navigating a drastically altered political terrain, the place symbolism and strategic networking – notably with Indian Muslims dealing with their very own constraints underneath the rule of Modi’s Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Celebration – often is the solely types of relevance nonetheless out there.
“This isn’t a lot a shift in ideology as it’s a response to shrinking house,” stated Anuradha Bhasin, senior journalist and political analyst. “He has at all times been a symbolic determine, straddling the spiritual and the political. On this charged political local weather, not simply separatists however even mainstream political actors have been left with little or no room for articulation.
“What we’re seeing now’s survival inside that slim house. He has been principally underneath home arrest for the final six years, and the Hurriyat has fully disappeared – so he’s remoted.”
Nonetheless, questions in regards to the mirwaiz and his cautious sermons are dividing younger Kashmiris.
Silence or technique?
Conversations with younger Kashmiris, from faculty campuses to downtown Srinagar cafes, reveal a quiet disillusionment with the mirwaiz amongst some. “He’s extra a preacher now than a frontrunner,” stated Aqib Nazir, a journalism pupil, a couple of man as soon as seen as amongst Kashmir’s most outstanding political voices.
His moderation, as soon as seen as a power, is more and more interpreted as powerlessness by this set of Kashmiris – as quiet capitulation.
However for others, the Mirwaiz nonetheless holds symbolic significance. They interpret his extra restrained sermons as an indication of maturity and pragmatism – a aware effort to guard the mosque’s position as a significant house for non secular continuity and communal gathering.
In a context the place public life is intently monitored and expressions of dissent are sometimes scrutinised, some imagine this strategy helps keep an area for spiritual life with out drawing undue consideration or risking additional restrictions.
“He’s the final ethical voice we’ve received,” stated Asif, a Srinagar resident who’s listened to the Mirwaiz for greater than 10 years.
“His restraint isn’t weak spot – it’s survival.”
