Srinagar: For once, the Muslim majority Kashmir valley has given a shove to its predominant political discourse and has focused itself on a religious debate on whether Islam permits mob pelting stones on police and security forces.
The debate was triggered by the city police chief Afadul Mujtaba who claimed that there is a saying of the Prophet (Hadith) that prohibits stone pelting.
Some religious scholars supported him while others including the separatist leaders expressed their disagreement.
Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the firebrand separatist leader was one such Kashmir leader who joined issue with those holding opposite view and “justified pelting of police and Indian paramilitary forces by mobs” which has become a routine post-Friday prayer affair in summer capital Srinagar.
Anti-India protesters in other parts of Kashmir also give expression to their anger through pelting the police and paramilitary, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF).
Geelani termed stone throwing as “a weapon of resistance because people have no other means of showing their anger against the human rights violations.”
He said heavy presence of troops in the valley was responsible for stone pelting incidents.
“It is very hard for a youth to control his anger when troops kill innocents, molest the women and put people behind the bars.”
The Dukhtaran-e-Milat chief Asiya Andrabi said that “declaring stone pelting as un-Islamic was an anti-freedom movement statement.”
She said, “People in Kashmir fighting for their freedom, have no other means but to pelt stones to register protest.”
President of Jamiat-i-Ahlihadith Maulana Showkat Ahmad Shah was the spearhead of the lobby which holds ‘pelting as un-Islamic’.
“How can we as Muslims declare lawful what our revered Prophet Mohammad (pbub) has declared unlawful? If anyone has argument in the light of holy Qur’an and Sunnah to prove stone pelting as a lawful act in Islam, he should come forward with it, I promise that I will take my words back and tender an apology,” Shah said.
The debate recently led to a full fledged one-day seminar organized by Shakeel Ahmad Bakshi, president of the Islamic Students League (ISL) attended by a galaxy of religious scholars, intellectuals and separatist leaders to confabulate on the issue.
The seminar, however, concluded with the majority view holding stone pelting by Kashmiri youth on police and security forces as “not infringing on the Islamic tenants” and “seen as a potent weapon of resistance against the Indian security forces and in the situation the Kashmiris find themselves in.”
“They are using bullets against unarmed protesters and we have only stones to respond,” says Muzaffar Ahmad, a Srinagar resident.
