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#1 [Permalink] Posted on 16th June 2015 08:55
Preamble


Muslims constitute a global community by Godly injunction in the Noble Qur'an - an Ummah.
It is our right to share the joys of any flourishing section of this Ummah and it is the duty of every member of this Ummah to give consolation to those members of the Ummah who are suffering.

Kashmir has been in news for last few decades for wrong reasons.
As an Indian Muslim it is strange that I as well as most of us in India know very little about the ground situation there except for what has been dished out by the official media.

May be the reason behind the apathy of Indian Muslims towards Kashmir is obvious.
Muslims in India do get some sort of consolation because of Kashmiri Muslims for that increases our numbers in India. Kashmiris on the other hand are not inclined towards India.

Of course Muslims at global level will have a different perspective.

This sinner has just returned from a Kashmir holiday.
Obviously Kashmir issue was never far away from my mind.
I would like to share my mental turmoil with brothers and sisters here before time factor clouds my raw obsevations.
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#2 [Permalink] Posted on 16th June 2015 09:17
Driver Muhammed Naseer


Driver Muhammed naseer, not his real name, apologised very profusely to the policeman when he backed off from a huge traffic jam ahead. The apology was pathetic. If you take a U-turn from a traffic jam then it is a perfectly legal action. Naseer is an expert driver and he put his experience to good use to save us many precious hours. Why should he be apologetic about it? But apologetic he was. The strange thing is that even the policeman was a Kashmiri. Unlike the policemen elsewhere the policemen in Kashmir are at their nerves end. Perhaps they are more pathetic than my hapless driver. When I reminded the driver about the news reports that used to come out of Kashmir abour police brutalities he said, "Who has not committed atrocities on Kashmiris?" This driver was no politucal activist. He simply stated the ground reality. There are not many places where a common man is in utmost terror of the local policeman. In Kashmir he is.
The Policeman

What is the mental state of a Kashmiri policeman? I do not know. The question did not come to my mind there. Even if it had come I doubt my courage to probe the matters. Militancy in Kashmir is at present at its lowest ebb but the nerves remain both raw as well as frayed. But Kashmiri policeman is a Kashmiri policeman. A policeman is a policeman and so is the Kashmiri one. Then he is Kashmiri too. For example where else do you see so many policemen in beard? I have no gulf experience to report but Kashmiri police force might be the most bearded one in the world. And this was only one of the so many indications that I was present in a Muslim society. Is that also an Islamic society? This is a good question about which it would not be prudent to offer my assessment. But I shall venture towards a positive evaluation of Kashmiris rather than negative one in this regard.
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#3 [Permalink] Posted on 20th June 2015 08:53
On My Kashmiri Students


Like the Darul Uloom, Deoband Kashmiris consider AMU as their institution. Hence many students come to Aligarh for their studies. To dissipate the Kashmir militancy in 90s of last century the central government in India adopted various measures. One of them was to send the Kashmiri youth out of Kashmir for higher studies. Aligarh to took a huge intake of Kashmiri students. For example the year I joined teaching our masters class was three times larger than its usual size and this was due to Kashmiri students. As a result by now I have many students in Kashmir. Some of them are in universities assistant and associate professors. As such Aligarh students are well connected with each others but as it happened I share some mutual liking with some of my Kashmiri students. One of them has been insisting for nearly a decade that I visit Kashmir. Who can resist the beauty of the place called heaven on earth by Jahangir?

Gar firdos bar roo e zameen ast
Hamin ast o hamin ast o hamin ast.

If there is heaven on earth then
It is here, it is hear, only here

I did enjoy the mesmerizing beauty but there were two additional things that I got in the deal.
One was the near total Muslim nature of the Kashmiri society and the second was a closer look at the society that has seen the actual physical, in action, presence of Mujahideen. The last aspect has left their society very bruised but that is a technical aspect.
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#4 [Permalink] Posted on 20th June 2015 09:14
On Kashmiri Beauty


Kashmir is beautiful.
Very beautiful.
I shall not compare it with Switzerland for I have not seen much of it. Moreover comparing everything good with Europe is simply not healthy. Kashmir is a valley in Himalayan hills and every part of it can be reached by less than hundred kilometers of journey from Srinagar, the capital.
Srinagar is beautiful in spite of lack of basic infrastructure development.
Militancy has exacted its own price on the city.
It does not have high rise buildings and that is just as well.
Houses are of european architecture.
Jhelum river, together with its many tributories, cuts across the city.
The city is is a metropolis, it is huge and has its significant traffic jams.
The famous Dal lake is saddled between the city and the nearby hills.
In between the lake and the hills are the famed Mughal gardens.
Maple tree is very common in and around Srinagar.
Right in front of the university guest house in which I stayed there was this whole well laid group of at least five hundred full grown maple trees.
The well known Hazrat Bal mosque is not far from the university of Kashmir Campus.
On Friday I saw people directly making Wuzu in Dal lake in front of this mosque.

Then there are the numerous hill stations of Kashmir. All of them having either glaciers or rivers or both and beautiful valleys.
Gulmarg, Yousmarg and Sonamarg were the ones that I managed to cover including the various extensions like Aru valley, Betab valley, Chandanwadi, Chara-e-Sharif, Doodh Ganga, Manasbal lake and the like.

Greenry, rice fields, water streams, hills with huge covers of pine, devdar and teak trees or simply white snow caps are abound. For people of north India like me the Kashmir temperatures are heavenly. And it rains that brings the temperature to December-January levels of Aligarh or Delhi.
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#5 [Permalink] Posted on 20th June 2015 09:25
Kashmir : A Muslim Society


It was December 6, 1992 that made it painfully clear to the Muslims of India, at least to this sinner, that to have a Muslim identity in India was by that time a mortal sin. Some of my friends from the majority community might try to disagree but the ground reality that a Muslim sees in India is not available to them. In view of that I made a decision that might be lacking in courage but certainly does good to mental peace. I withdrew to Aligarh from India in general. In spite of about only thirty percent Muslim population Aligarh carries the tag of being a Muslim town.

But the feeling of the familiarity and cozy nature of a Muslim society was completely different in Kashmir. While travelling from the airport to the university at every corner i felt that it is my mother's sister who has stepped out into the street just a few feet ahead of us. Even in my first visit I was feeling completely at home. Mosques are as abundant as in Aligarh. not only the locales but even the people are very beautiful. Girls mostly have head covered. This does not come out so in the photographs published in the national newspapers where the journalists would be looking only for not covered Kashmiri girls to photograph. Even the most distant parts of the valley or the hill stations did have mosques.

And all thanks are due to Lord Most High for that.
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#6 [Permalink] Posted on 20th June 2015 09:57
On Kashmir Militancy


Let alone the policy makers in New Delhi the militancy in Kashmir, that has ebbed at the moment, even all parties combinely can not fathom the issue of militancy in Kashmir.

But let me try to enumerate the parties that are either interested or should be interested in this issue.

(1) Indian government.
(2) Kashmiris.

Kashmiris by and large are aligned against staying in India.
India, on the other hand, avers that Kashmir is an integral part of India.
India calls the part of Kashmir under Pakistani control as POK - Pakistan Occupied Kashmir.
The same entity is called the Azad Kashmir in Pakistan.

(3) Indian Muslims have by and large not shown suffiecient interest in Kashmir issue. This is mostly because of their own precarious situation in India ever since independence. My personal view is that they should show due interest in this issue.

(4) The World at large. Kashmir issue ended in the UN and hence it became an international issue. very soon India realized that this was a folly and then there were hasty retreats and by now India insists that it is a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan.

(5) Muslim Ummah. In all platforms of Muslims where international issues are considered Kashmir is second to Palastine issue in importance.

At the moment militancy in Kashmir is at its nadir.
Militancy in Punjab was quashed by India using two policemen - J.F. Reberio and K.P.S. Gill.

In Kashmir it took many measures that constitute a very complex web of things.
I have mentioned the mass relocation of Kashmir youth to outside Kashmir in India.
Then there was this pressure on Pakistan via US.
That was very effective because of the international situation.
The events of 9/11 left Pakistan exposed to raw internal, US combined with NATO, power and hence Pakistani support to militancy dwindled.
India created successfully a division amongst the ranks of the militants by bribing the criminal class amongst them and forming the so called Ikhwan-ul-Muslimeen, not to be confused with the similarly named party in Egypt. The Ikhwan massacred the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen en masse for earlier both of them had worked together and hence the Ikhwan knew all the weaknesses of the Hizb.
This is the doctrine behind latest assertions from central government in India that terrorists will be killed by terrorists.
Of course India has about seven lakhs of army and paramilitary forces stationed in Kashmir.

All of this is public information yet it was peculiar experience to see army and paramilitary barracks at locations too numerous to count.
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#7 [Permalink] Posted on 22nd June 2015 19:01
1) Taliban posied at the Gates of Kabul
2) Pakistan and China coming together
3) Russia and its military decisively tilting towards Pakistan

1,2
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#8 [Permalink] Posted on 22nd June 2015 19:02
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#9 [Permalink] Posted on 22nd June 2015 23:18
Muadh_Khan wrote:
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I think the & symbol causing cutting of when posting from android app. InshaAllah I will be sorting this soon
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#10 [Permalink] Posted on 30th April 2017 09:50
Vinod Sharma on Kashmir


Following is based on a Facebook status by veteran Indian journalist Vinod Sharma.

Vinod Sharma : God forbid, if India loses out in Kashmir, the onus partly will be on certain TV anchors and retired generals who spew venom to show themselves as great patriots.They actually are on a self-promotion mission unmindful of its consequences for our great country.
The 9-11 pm prime time TV slot on some channels is when Pakistan gains and India loses space in the minds of Kashmiri Muslims in the Valley.

Avinash Tuli : You are a veteran journalist, Mr Sharma. You know it well enough that both economically and militarily India is far stronger than the near-bankrupt Pakistan. That Pakistan can ever wrest Kashmir from India is something that only exists in the surreal dreams of some people. This fear has no foundation in reality.

Vinod Sharma : You must not discount internal strife that's growing each minute. My worst nightmare is: what if school kids including girls now leading protests lose lives at the hands of our forces on a big scale. Such tragedies can happen unintended and the fallout from them will be incontrollable. In fact, I learn that militants are waiting for it....

Derrick D'Costa : Wish people heard your words of wisdom more. There are good reasons and wise reasons why the early leaders who had so many staunch Hindus among their number accomodated all. The decision was prudent no nation can be built on the foundation of internal...l strife. Even Mountbatten could see that things would get worse as weaponry improved. It is scary how easily humans turn on each other but our people seem intent on aggressively fanning the flames. From Freedom at midnight "Could things have turned out better if England had delayed its leave-taking? Maybe. But it is just as likely that things would have been worse, not better. The reports were coming in from all over that British authorities were at their last gasp. They had given their very last ounce of strength in riots in March 1947. They couldn’t quell it any more. The riots near New Delhi – over 50 villages destroyed. And how much force could Britain send? All it had: 365 soldiers. And next time – they knew there’d be a next time – it would be more serious.
What they’d seen, and what Mountbatten had seen, was a change. Till early 1947, when Sikh and Moslem and Hindu went on killing sprees, they stuck to good old clubs and swords ... the old-fashioned way. Now they were using guns. India was in the middle of an arms race... and it wasn’t arming to kill British officials.
It was to kill each other.
Every day that India stayed under British rule, the arms race would build further, faster – the guns would stockpile higher.
What’s worse, the killings weren’t confined to the towns any more. There, at least, authorities could blow whistles, call out cops. Now the butchery was in the wide open countryside, where England hadn’t the troops – Never had the troops – to quell it. India was like a ship, full of ammunition, its decks on fire, in the middle of the ocean. Would things have worked out better, if England had stayed longer? Say, till June 1948, as originally planned? That depends: did England have anything to put the fire out with?"
Avinash Tuli : Our army men are in a strange situation. Between the devil and the deep sea - that would be an apt description of their plight in Kashmir. While they are facing the murderous terrorists infiltrating into India from Pakistan, the paid-to-work hooligans ...of Syed Shah Gilani keep pelting them with stones.from behind. If the army men take a firm line with these hooligans, a section of our media goes to town condemning the government for perpetrating atrocities on the people of Kashmir. What alternative is then left with the government? Should the government tell the army men that their duty is to kill the terrorists and get themselves killed by the stone pelters?

Vinod Sharma: Syed Ali Shah Geelani is almost a nobody in this dangerous phase of new militancy. Pl reflect deeper ....

Vinod Prabhu : Mr tuli agreed to your views. History of india is a witness to the fact that it has been let down by the internal enemy. One day this would be a make or break for the dispensation. A simple thing needs to be told by the highest court which the kashmiri...fail to apprehend. Certainly the lives of our armymen aren't cheap. They only respond n do not initiate a riot. It's no secret that the separatists are the people behind riots. It's not rocket science.

Avinash Tuli : Does it mean that the Kashmir imbroglio is past any resolution? No responsible government can ever allow itself to be blackmailed into doing things that a handful of agitating people in Kashmir demand. The people who keep crying, "Azaadi, azaadi, azaad...i..." are not the true voice of 65 lakh Kashmiri Muslims living the Valley. By and large, they are peace loving and want to be with stable India instead of with disintegrating Pakistan.


Vinod Sharma : Can say more. But won't. Thank you Mr Tuli. Things aren't that simple.

Vinod Prabhu : Sir I fear the worst is yet to come because this issue has been utilised by a few politicians to their own upliftment and the same are now crying hoarse.

Satish Kumar Chadha : Yeh Jo Public Hai, Yes Sab Jaanti Hai and Kashmir citizenry is part of it ...... :D

Avinash Tuli : Like you, Sharma sir, I also feel for those school boys and girls. I would hate to see anyone of them being hurt or killed if the army resorts to firing. But I am also concerned about our soldiers who too were once kids and who are still kids for their loving parents. What if anyone of them gets badly hurt or even killed by a stone pelted by these Kashmiri kids?

Vinod Sharma : I've deep concern for my country losing out the proxy war...because politicians are watching while soldiers find themselves pitted against fellow Indians.
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#11 [Permalink] Posted on 30th April 2017 10:12
What degree of awareness is their in India especially amongst Indian Muslims concerning the barbarity inflicted upon the Kashmir people?

Kashmir is one of those place where rape has been used as a systematic, tool of war in order to humiliate the local population.

I remember reading over two decades that upwards of 30,000 had been raped by the 850,000 occupation force.... I also read horrific
accounts of first person testimonies as recorded by Human rights watch and physicians for human rights...and an American Christian
preacher wrote an entire book called Kashmir the valley of death.

Women being rounded up in entire villages raped...young children being raped even a case of elderly man being raped whilst his children and grand children were forced to watch.

May ALLAH destroy the Mushrikeen and all those complicit in the oppression ameen.
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#12 [Permalink] Posted on 30th April 2017 11:01
Abdur Rahman ibn Awf wrote:
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Very good question ya akhi.
Indian Muslims are aware of the situation in Kashmir but I must admit that this awareness is not complete.
Unfortunately the gap between the level of awareness and the actual situation is really huge.
Till I visted Kashmir two years ago even my level of awareness was lacking so much that I really feel ashamed.

And I have to feel more ashamed because once you are aware you can not remain detached.
Neither as a human being nor as a Muslim.

I, therefore, apologize to my Kashmiri brothers and sisters that I am guilty of maintaining a both guilty and criminal silence on this isssue.

It will be an act of shamelessness to put forward any excuses for my conduct, as well as the conduct of the rest of the Indian Muslims, but still I got to do that.

We Muslims from the mainland India ourselves have been very timid and coward in reacting, protesting, registering the wrongs that we have been facing. Even in case of the grossest crimes against us these have been non-Muslims who have been asserting on our behalf and raising their voices for our protection.

Late Mukul Sinha was one such person. Teesta Seetalwad is another one.

At the moment I can not write anything more. May be later on.

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#13 [Permalink] Posted on 30th April 2017 11:07
Quote:
On Kashmir

I wrote a post based on veteran journalist Vinod Sharma's Facebook status on a Muslim forum. The subject matter was Kashmir. A brother asked me whether Indian Muslims are aware of the situation in Kashmir.

I said yes. But I also qualified my answer. Only after making that post I realized that the cautious silence that Indian Muslims have been maintaining on Kashmir will one day go against them.


I started writing above on facebook and than thought better of me.
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#14 [Permalink] Posted on 30th April 2017 15:15
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Bismillah.

Well Hazrat we are living in times of confusion sometimes its difficult to know whether our speech or actions may help or hinder a cause or perhaps make the situation worse....!

The following thread by Muadh Khan on Istikharah might be of help .... www.muftisays.com/forums/27-sharing-portal/9565-watering-...
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#15 [Permalink] Posted on 2nd May 2017 06:00
Is Kashmir slipping out of India's hands?
This is a question that has started apppearing in opinion columns from India.

When little girls pick up stones

Sadanand Menon
April 29, 2017 16:44 IST

An arresting photograph, earlier this week, on the front page of this newspaper, caught my attention. Some 30 young women, in college uniform, faces partly covered, are gathered beside standee panels that say ‘Jio Dhan Dhana Dhan’. At least 10 of the girls hurl stones—dhan dhana dhan—in the direction of photographer Nissar Ahmad where he is, most probably, standing alongside the J&K Police or the Indian paramilitary.

The photograph draws notice for several reasons. For one, it is perhaps the first time we are seeing an image of Kashmiri girls/ women pelting stones. We’ve more or less got used, over the past decade or so, to images of Kashmiri boys/ men throwing stones. We’ve even seen the local police and armed forces indulge in stone throwing.



It had, in fact, begun to seem like a periodic ritual necessitated by the political logjam that has reduced any solution to the Kashmir crisis to an exercise in futility. Every time the incidents recurred and the mandatory photographs returned to occupy prime space in mainstream media, we would hear wise columnists cluck their tongues and write sagely about the insane cycle of violence that led to a dead end.
Guns in the Valley

Of course, for all of them, it was the boys who were being irrationally violent. None of them thought it necessary to mention that the mere presence of 7,00,000 armed personnel in the Valley, the largest mobilisation at a single point anywhere in the world is, by itself, an act of brute violence. For them, it was merely an exercise in LoC management. None thought it necessary to ask why the guns were pointed internally. The late Prof. Dharampal, one of the intellectuals the Hindutva brigade loves to quote, has pointed out an interesting moment in Valmiki Ramayana when, for the first time, the otherwise subservient Sita questions Rama. It is just before they are to set out to the forest. Seeing that both Rama and Lakshmana, though dressed austerely enough for the forest, are nevertheless carrying their bows and arrows, a troubled Sita breaks her silence and asks, “Why do you carry arms into the forest? Just as taking a flame to a bunch of dried wood can cause a fire, so too carrying arms into the forest can cause violence and war.” The presence of the Indian armed forces in Kashmir has similar consequences. Governance or resolution has been substituted by military occupation leading, inevitably, to endless attrition.


Anyway, I’m on another point. The photograph of the stone-pelting girls is a sign. It is a sign that India has lost the plot in Kashmir. Just as the sight of the brutal police attack on over 1,000 satyagrahis showing passive resistance during the march on Dharasana Salt Works in 1930 provoked Webb Miller, the American reporter for United Press, to file his copy saying, ‘Today the British Empire lost India’, we too can say that Kashmir seems to have slipped away. The body language of the girls shows it. There is none of the (much ridiculed in sexist comments) effeminacy here. The six girls, right in front, chucking the stuff could have done any cricket or throwball team proud. There is nothing tentative here. It is fearless and determined. It signals a rejection of the Indian empire. That we had to wait till we saw such defiance from a bunch of girls is a shame. Of course, the much-touted spin will be trotted out—that these are misguided youth, that they are agents of Pakistan and in its pay, that they are fronts for militants—and so on. But it will take long for the ‘idea of India’ to live down this ignominy—an ancient and (sometimes) wise civilisation, representing elegant cultural and philosophical values, being shown the door by a few pesky girls who, just with their proud and confident symbolic gesture, bring that entire set of values and philosophies into question. I am called upon here to, radically, question my own citizenship.
Recovering memory

In fact, I have been thinking about this since I saw the recently released book of photographs, Witness: Kashmir 1986-2016/ Nine Photographers. Brilliantly curated and edited by filmmaker Sanjay Kak, the volume brings together 200 photographs of the past 30 years from the Valley, taken by nine photographers—the oldest being 58 and the youngest 20. In Kak’s words, it is an exercise in recovering and reconstituting memory through re-examining visual evidence. However, looking at the staggering body of work as an ‘outsider’, a non-Kashmiri, one is struck by the critical role of visual culture in sites of conflict. Seen as a compendium, it powerfully contextualises the conflict as well as one’s own implication in it—even if by silent consent. The book is, indubitably, one of the major events of our times.


In the 1970s, Susan Sontag, a pioneering theorist of the photographed image, had proposed that the photograph might have lost its ‘power to enrage’ and that a sensitive narrative might do this more effectively. However, the photographs from Kashmir prove otherwise. These images of the sheer takeover of the life and liberty of a people and the brutal violence they are subjected to; the constant interruption, disruption and dehumanisation of their lives; the blatant violation of local, national and international laws by instruments of the state; the impunity with which terror and torture is administered (by the state, not by ‘terrorists’); the unconscionable uses that AFSPA and pellet guns are put to, etc., certainly indicate how to transform outrage into political action. The young girls in the photograph are a product of that schooling.

Witness clearly establishes how the image itself has become an integral component of the waging of conflict. The public sphere gets constituted by the visual technologies integral to the conflict. Ironically, the photographer is often positioned within the perspective of the battle and even becomes a soldier/ reporter who visually consecrates the destructive acts of the conflict. The visual effects of the conflict, then, become the ground of everyday life, almost destroying our abilities of discrimination and focus. It is a situation where photographing a leaf or a bird or a bride could be interpreted as an act of betrayal.

It is interesting now to reflect on how, from the time of the Vietnam and Palestine wars and now recently in Iraq, Syria and Kashmir, the visual realm has converted the victim of aggression into a non-being, a metal (therefore, non-human) shield, who can be assaulted at will, without scruple or shame. The Indian army’s use of pellet guns on unarmed youngsters or of tying a civilian to the bonnet of a vehicle is a product of such immoral thinking. When the larger civil society does not respond to such acts is when this immorality becomes a collective crime.

And that is when little girls pick up stones and take to the streets to make us re-examine our conscience—and our nationhood.

The writer went with his camera, for 25 years, to many conflict situations; today he is conflicted about the role of photography.


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