{"id":4196,"date":"2020-05-15T15:57:20","date_gmt":"2020-05-15T10:27:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/?p=4196"},"modified":"2020-05-15T16:43:11","modified_gmt":"2020-05-15T11:13:11","slug":"a-word-with-pulpit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/point-of-view\/kashmir-talk\/a-word-with-pulpit\/","title":{"rendered":"A WORD WITH PULPIT"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/fb:like>\n

UNITY OF UMMAH IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN SECTARIAN DIVIDE <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Pulpit <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A Word With Pulpit<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I want to have a frank talk with \u2018the pulpit\u2019. I believe that I will not be committing any blasphemy in stating my mind to the preachers and sermonizers in my part of the world. Like an overwhelming majority, I was born and brought up in a Muslim family and have not received any formal education in Deen.  I have not been a student of any seminary or theological school.  Conscious of my limitations and lack of religious scholarship in articulating my concerns I will avoid taking recourse to any dogmatic school of thought but will strive to put my point of view before the sermonizers and preachers not as polemicist but as a humble student of Kashmir history. Having understood the essence of verse 103 of Aal-Imran, \u201cHold on firmly to the rope of Allah and do not allow differences to occur among yourself\u201d.  I will try to draw strength for my argument not from the history of any other nation but from our land that has witnessed the unparalleled peaceful transition to Islam. And relate it to the troublesome contemporary situation of schisms that have been surreptitiously seeping into our society and have created a threatening situation.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, sceptical one maybe,\nhistorically now for about eight decades Kashmir has been a battleground of\nideologies. Whether to its liking or disliking, the ideological battles that\nswept over British India not only affected but also ensnared its indigenous\nmovement against the scrapping of the \u201csale deed\u201d under which British had sold\nthe land and people as cheapest merchandise. This movement starting with the\ndrafting and presentation of a seventeen-point memorandum to Lording Reading in\nOctober 1924 four months after the revolt by the Silk Factory workers in 1931\nturned into a tidal wave.  It shook the\nroots of the feudal autocracy and caused the birth of the first major political\norganization the Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference. Immediately after its inception,\nthe narrative of this organization suffered the machinations from the feudal\nruler. History bears testimony that the war of political ideologies during the thirties\nin all its manifestation sucked into it the then top religious leaders,\nincluding top preachers causing a sectarian divide within the Muslim community.\nAnd accentuation of the political divide sharpened the sectarian divide adding\nsome ugliest pages of community squabbles and hatred to our history. This\ndivide, I see as one of the significant contributory factors to what British\nhistorian Alastair Lamb calls as the birth of a tragedy.  This schism has mainly been causing for the perpetuation\nof our agonies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is True, the schism within the\npolitical movement in the State has a history. But the fact remains that in the\npost-fifties scenario the pulpit has not been part of the political divide but\nwith the ostensible growing tug of war between the \u2018dominant narrative\u2019 and the\n\u2018peoples narrative\u2019 Kashmir society seems apprehensive about the pulpit getting\nsucked into it once again. There has been an unprecedented multiplication of\nreligious organization in the State, professing belief in one or the other\nsect; some of these sects have been hitherto unknown in the State. Some of them\nare \u201cwell-to-do\u201d. There are wide speculations about the cause behind the\nmultiplications of the religious organization. The multiplication of religious\norganization is in sync with the thinking of some \u201cpeace activists\u201d working on\nconflict resolution\u2019, Yogender Sikand\u2019s, Religion, Inter-communal relations and\nKashmir Conflict does provide some insight into this phenomenon. Still, there\nis a need for an in-depth study for understanding the dynamics of this growth\nin sectarian noise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am not here to pass judgment on\nany sectarian or religious organizations. Or sermonizer or to comment over\ndiatribe of one sectarian organization against another but any ordinary student\nof Kashmir history can predict that this trend can prove catastrophic for the\nMuslim community of the State. People have suffered immensely; society cannot\nafford to repeat the feuds within the society based on allegiance to sectarian\nor other organization. To steer out of any such situation Kashmir history\noffers many lessons in the spirit and style of great missionary Mir Syed Ali\nHamadani and Alamdar-e-Kashmir Sheikh Noor-u-Din.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chroniclers have very candidly\nrecorded the arrival and spread of Islam in Kashmir. History of Islam in\n\u2018Kashmir does not originate with the establishment of the Muslim Sultanate in the\nfourteenth century\u2019 quoting Kalhana and other sources many historiographers\nincluding G.M.D. Sufi and Prof. M.A. Wani, has restarted it. It was the\ncharacter,  commitment and moral strength\nof the missionaries that brought what many call as a silent revolution in\nKashmir. Prof Ashraf citing from Moti Chandra\u2019s \u2018the Courtesans of Kashmir\u2019\nnarrates the incident of a courtesan refusing to take her fee in the presence\nof a \u201cmleecha gayanah\u2019<\/em> Muslim\nManqabibkhan. He writes, \u201cThese mleccha <\/em>singers\nof Sanskrit scholar had gained so much prestige and influence because for their\nrighteousness that the courtesans (who otherwise freely indulged in\nprostitution under the very nose of local religious gurus and state\nauthorities). But,  on seeing<\/a>[ZGM1]<\/a>   Muslim\nManqabibkhans refused to entertain clients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For contemporary religious\npreachers there is a lesson;   how Mir Syed Ali Hamadani carried forward the\nmission of spreading the word of Allah initiated by his predecessors  Sayyid Sharaf  Din, Sayyid Hussain Samnani, Sayyid Taj-u-Din\nand a couple of others.   They did not allow the disagreements and\ncomplexities of sects to come in the way of a smooth transition of the society\nto Islam.  And for his achievements,\nevery historian including Sir Walter Lawrence say it was Shah Hamadan who\npractically established Islam in the valley. The mission of Sheikh Noor-u-Din\nWali should serve as a lodestar for religious leaders. He was no ascetic but a\nmissionary with revolutionary zeal. In the words of Yoginder Skind, \u201cNuruddin \u2018s\nchampioning of the cause of the poor and his bitter critique of the \u2018worldly\u2019\nMuslim \u2018ulama, Hindu priests and the political elites, won him the wrath of the\nestablishment.\u201dIn the contemporary context, there is a need to understand the significance\nof the meeting between Mir Muhammad Hamadani and Alamadar and   (khat-e-Irshad).   I\nbelieve it was for serving a greater cause. Not only these great missionaries\nbut even sermonizers,  preachers and\nDervishes have left great lessons for the posterity.  G.T. Vigne in his book Travel in Kashmir\u2026is\nall praise for Sudu Bayu, At 110, he talked of ending of Sikh Rule as Vigne\nsays, \u201cHoped to see the day when Kashmir would be in possession of my\ncountrymen\u201d. He spurned the offers of money and estate by Sikh Governor and\neven declined to meet him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are the traditions that our\nsermonizers need to emulate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

 [ZGM1]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/fb:like><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UNITY OF UMMAH IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN SECTARIAN DIVIDE <\/p>\n

Pulpit <\/p>\n

A Word With Pulpit<\/p>\n

I want to have a frank talk with \u2018the pulpit\u2019. I believe that I will not be committing any blasphemy in stating my mind to the preachers and sermonizers in my part of the world. Like an overwhelming majority, I was born and brought up in a Muslim family and have not received any formal education in Deen.  I have not been a student of any seminary or theological school.  Conscious of my limitations and lack of religious scholarship in articulating my concerns I will avoid taking recourse to any dogmatic school of thought but will strive to put my point of view before the sermonizers and preachers not as polemicist but as a humble student of Kashmir history. Having understood the essence of verse 103 of Aal-Imran, \u201cHold on firmly to the rope of Allah …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kashmir-talk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4196"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4196"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4201,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4196\/revisions\/4201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}