Outrage in Indian Kashmir over move to introduce uniform Friday sermons

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - SRINAGAR — Aproposed move in Indian-administered Kashmir to introduce uniform Friday sermons at mosques across the region has sparked outrage after criticism from politicians and religious leaders alike.

The government-appointed Waqf Board, which oversees Muslim religious endowments as mandated by Islamic laws, announced the controversial move last weekend, prompting a political controversy as the region’s top Muslim scholars slammed the proposal as “irresponsible interference in the religious affairs of Kashmiri Muslims”.

Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Tuesday called the proposal “unacceptable,” accusing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of interfering in Muslim religious affairs, and urged the Jammu and Kashmir Waqf Board chairperson to withdraw it.

“The BJP-appointed chairperson must immediately halt this misplaced attempt to please her masters,” Abdullah said in a post on X.

People’s Democratic Party (PDP) President Mehbooba Mufti also criticized the move, questioning who would decide what imams should preach.

“Our imams and maulvis know what to say and when to speak,” she said, calling for the board to come under the administrative control of the Jammu and Kashmir government.

The Jammu and Kashmir Waqf Board is under the control of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party rather than the local elected government.

The Mutahida Majlis-e-Ulema (MMU), a grouping of religious organisations, headed by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, strongly condemned the move and said determining sermon content was the responsibility of Islamic scholars and not an administrative body.

It urged the board to focus on managing and protecting Waqf properties.

Former Srinagar Mayor Junaid Mattu also questioned the implications for religious freedom.

“If the BJP wants to decide what our Imams say in Friday sermons, what is left in this pretense of ‘freedom of religion’ Or the Constitution?” he wrote on X.

The controversy follows Waqf Board Chairperson Darakhshan Andrabi’s announcement of a core committee of muftis, imams and khateebs to identify and finalize common sermon topics for affiliated institutions.

However, she denied that the board had issued any order making common themes for Friday sermons compulsory in its affiliated mosques.

She maintained that religious scholars and preachers were free to decide the subjects of their sermons without interference from the board.

While defending the imposition of the uniform sermons, Andrabi told a leading Indian newspaper that a proposed committee formed under the board’s auspices “will be solely responsible for identifying the issue regarding the uniform sermon … [This step] is necessary to deal with issues in the [region], especially social evils, including drug abuse.”

Andrabi told the media that religious scholars will approve Friday sermons with no role for any government official in the decision.

A scholar from the mountainous Rajouri district, some 180 km from the region’s biggest city of Srinagar, who had attended the meeting online, told Al Jazeera that Andrabi had passed instructions stating that only a pre-approved sermon drafted by a committee of senior-most scholars would be uniformly recited at the mosque pulpits on Fridays.

He said they were not told exactly who would be part of this committee.

“When we objected, saying that we won’t adhere to the directives if the sermon was found to be violative of Islamic teachings, she brushed aside our concerns and didn’t let us speak,” the scholar said on condition of anonymity as he feared reprisals by the authorities. “She [Andrabi] said that their decision was final as it had been four years in the making.”

A disputed region claimed by India and Pakistan, Kashmir has been at the center of political turmoil for four decades. Years of peaceful demands for a referendum, to determine which country the Kashmiris would choose, transformed into an armed uprising against Indian rule in 1989 in response to allegations of election fixing.

In 2019, India scrapped the semi-autonomous status of Kashmir, imposing direct federal rule. The elections did not happen until 2024, when the local government was re-elected, albeit with a restricted mandate. De facto authority still rests with the New Delhi-appointed administrator.

The special conditions afforded under the erstwhile status had protected land and residency-related privileges while allowing Kashmiris to make their own laws.

One consequence of the 2019 decision was that Indigenous legal arrangements that governed the management of waqf, the charitable bequests that Muslims commit for the larger communal welfare, were replaced by those prevailing across India.

The new system gave broad powers to the federally controlled bureaucracy in the management of local religious boards such as waqf.

Since then, the Waqf Board has been accused multiple times by the local Kashmiri leaders of trying to undermine their religious freedoms or interfering with how the traditional religious practices have continued for generations.