Kashmir Rejects Proposal for Unified Friday Sermons at Mosques

A proposal by the India-run Waqf Board in Kashmir to impose a unified Friday sermon across mosques in the region has triggered a wave of opposition from politicians and religious leaders. Critics accuse the authorities of seeking to assert control over Muslim religious spaces.

The Jammu and Kashmir Waqf Board is headed by Darakshan Andrabi, a local leader affiliated with the Hindu-majority Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Modi's government stripped the region of its former semi-autonomous status in 2019 and divided Jammu and Kashmir into two federally administered territories rather than allowing it to function as a full state.

The board, which oversees Islamic religious endowments under Islamic law, announced the controversial move late last week. It ignited political controversy as leading Islamic scholars in the region branded the proposal an "irresponsible interference in the religious affairs of Kashmiri Muslims".

Defending the imposition of a unified sermon, Andrabi told a major Indian newspaper that a committee expected to be formed under the board's auspices "will be solely responsible for determining matters related to the unified sermon… [This step] is necessary to address issues in [the region], particularly social ills, including drug abuse."

Andrabi told the media that religious scholars would approve the Friday sermon and that government officials would have no role in the decision.

'Dismissing our concerns'

On Sunday, the Waqf Board convened about 1,500 leading scholars and preachers from the Kashmir region. Some leaders attended in person, while others from remote areas joined online.

A scholar from the mountainous district of Rajouri, about 180 km from the region's largest city, Srinagar, who attended the meeting online, told Al Jazeera that Andrabi issued a directive that only a single pre-approved sermon drafted by a committee of the most senior scholars could be read uniformly from mosque pulpits on Fridays.

He said they were not told exactly who would be on the committee.

"When we objected, saying we would not follow the directive if the sermon was found to violate Islamic teachings, she dismissed our concerns and did not let us speak," the scholar said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals by the authorities. "She [Andrabi] said their decision was final because it had been prepared for four years."

A disputed territory claimed by both India and Pakistan, Kashmir has been at the centre of political unrest for four decades. Years of peaceful demands for a plebiscite to determine which country Kashmiris would choose turned into an armed insurgency against Indian rule in 1989, following allegations of electoral fraud.

In 2019, India scrapped Kashmir's semi-autonomous status and imposed direct federal rule. Elections were not held until 2024, when a local government was re-elected, albeit with limited powers. Real power remains with an administrative official appointed by New Delhi.

The special conditions under the old status had protected privileges related to land and residency, and allowed Kashmiris to make their own laws.

One consequence of the 2019 decision was that indigenous legal arrangements governing the management of waqf — charitable endowments that Muslims commit for the broader community's welfare — were replaced by regulations applied across India.

'Seeking to erode religious freedom'

The new system grants sweeping powers to the federally controlled bureaucracy in managing local religious boards such as waqf.

Since then, the Waqf Board has repeatedly been accused by local Kashmiri leaders of seeking to erode their religious freedom or interfering in how traditional religious practices are maintained across generations.

"The khutba, or central sermon, used to take place in the name of a sultan or khalifa (Islamic caliph) in medieval times. But that was sacred because Kashmir was then an Islamic state. Today, we are supposed to be living in a secular state," Nayeem Akhtar, a senior politician who served as Kashmir's education minister in the previously elected government when the special status was still in force, told Al Jazeera.

"As long as there is an audience, every cleric has the freedom to speak on any subject they choose. This freedom is written into the most fundamental foundations of the law," he added.

Akhtar said the new directives come from someone holding a position tied to the BJP, which is why the latest move has provoked such a backlash. "The board's job is only administration. They are overstepping their bounds when they try to preach or instruct clerics on how to do their work. Would a Muslim political party in India ever order a Hindu pujari how to conduct prayers, or a Christian pastor how to preach on Sunday?"

On Tuesday, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, the region's leading Muslim religious leader, warned that such a move would amount to "direct interference".

Mutahida Majlis-e-Ulema, an umbrella body of several religious organisations led by him, said that "determining the content of the sermon is the responsibility of Islamic scholars, not an administrative body."

The condemnation was also shared by Omar Abdullah, the region's elected head and a member of the pro-India National Conference party, albeit with the autonomy New Delhi nullified seven years ago.

After the backlash, Waqf Board head Andrabi retracted the announcement and said the matter was left to "independent scholars, preachers (and) lecturers" to speak freely about social issues such as rising suicides, mental trauma, substance abuse and more.

'Pressuring religious institutions'

This is not the first time the BJP-led government has been accused of seeking to pressure local religious institutions.

In January, Kashmiri Islamic scholars accused the government of discriminatory practices after police distributed a four-page form titled "mosque profile", seeking intrusive information about the imams, muezzins and khatibs (preachers) of mosques across the disputed region, including their biometric data.

For years, Muslim groups in the region have faced various restrictions on prayer, as the 600-year-old Jamia Masjid in Srinagar has often been closed on major religious occasions such as Eid prayers or Laylat-al-Qadr, the holiest night of the Islamic calendar, which falls during Ramadan.

The authorities argue the restrictions are imposed to ensure peace, but religious leaders insist such prohibitions constitute a "systematic assault on the religious identity, dignity and fundamental rights" of Kashmiri Muslims.

Farooq, the leading scholar, himself has frequently been subjected to such movement restrictions, preventing him from delivering Friday sermons on occasions when he was expected to speak on issues such as Israel's genocide in Gaza.

Previously, the Waqf Board also sought to ban the practice of distributing yellow rice on the premises of major shrines in the region, a centuries-old tradition tied to the Sufi missionary orders that spread Islam in Kashmir.

Religion as a factor of political mobilisation

In 2022, the board also banned the long-standing practice of accepting voluntary donations, nazr-o-niyaz, offered by devotees to spiritual masters, mujawirs (shrine caretakers) and khadims (attendants). The board cited newly applied federal laws as grounds to take direct control of all financial receipts and install new donation boxes, where all offerings go to the board.

Noor Ahmad Baba, a veteran political scientist and historian of Kashmir, argues that religion has always been a factor of political mobilisation in Kashmir, which is why efforts to manipulate or alter traditional religious arrangements provoke political outrage.

"The kind of political institution we have and the kind of politics it has conducted towards Muslims is what makes this whole process suspect," Baba told Al Jazeera, referring to the BJP. "If standardisation, for instance, came from clerics accepted by the public, it would not become an issue. No one can deny the need for religious leaders to speak on topics such as drug addiction, late marriage, climate change, social harmony and more."

A political analyst in Srinagar who has written about the Kashmir conflict for four decades said such decisions reflect an effort to pre-empt protests in Kashmir amid a rising tide of Hindu nationalism in India.

"A series of recent mosque demolitions in cities such as Ujjain and Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh shows how strongly far-right tendencies within the Indian ruling establishment are rising," the analyst told Al Jazeera, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. "This new ethnic confrontational posture of the Modi government is enough to provoke a reaction in a place like Kashmir. Efforts to assert control over mosques must be seen in that context."