Islam and Kashmir - The way forward

I think it is really unfair for institutions(religious or academic) to teach students the political islam before being introduced properly to the philosophy of islam. If we look at history of islam itself it was a gradual struggle of 13 yrs in mecca that laid foundations of islam. I feel the Meccan years were the ones where they fought with their own demons and reformed their nafs to get the gist and core of islamic doctrine. 

In a same fashion should the religious teachings be inculcated. The other approach where we teach children and involve them into the political maze which is a difficult task for an adult let alone for a child who doesn’t know any better. It gets even more tricky in a valley which has become a battleground for so many political ideologies that even our public intellectuals make laughable political choices. In such an atmosphere religion is weaponised as just another political ideology and all its fundamental tenets which are supposed to bring individual transformation get thrown out of window. 

The truth is that majority of islamic religion like other abrahamic religions is its theology and ethics that it imparts in an individual. The politics and power games that have been built on top of it, is human creativity or trickery.

Imagine a scenario where a preacher in Friday sermon says your faith,prayers and fasts and all and inconsequential when the state is oppressing people we as adults might understand the subliminal message. A child only understands the part where he has to do away with faith,prayers and fasting and if he is a little bright he might also start hating on the state not knowing fully what that even means. The result maybe that he labels friends as foes and sometimes foes as friends.

So the personal reformation that our religion is supposed to bring in us and consequently the peace and tranquility that it is supposed to bring to our households and neighbourhoods is lost in addition to the political hostility of the our state.

You can see it in our society. All the social vices, which have nothing to do with the political turmoil of valley like drug abuse, domestic violence, undignified acts towards women etc are there because very few sects focus on the reformation of individual. Rest of us are the metaphorical froth on the ocean hopeless from the situation we find ourselves in. 

Life is a struggle of an individual. It is so as much for a muslim as it is for the rest. Our islamic doctrine is a map that helps one navigate through this struggle with dignity and without causing corruption on this earth. Islamic principles match very closely with the stoic principles.

Islam is stoicism on steroids

Ideally political power is a choice of people of a particular place and time. We are unfortunate in a sense that people of Kashmir have no sovereignty. 

But the unrest in our youth is not all because of the political turmoil it is because we have unfortunately, owing to the circumstances , ignored the fundamental theology of islam that early islamic scholars devoted lifetimes to develop and focussed on the later political interpretation of islam.

The need of hour thus is individual reformation before everything else and we must inculcate the values that islam preaches. Only then will we identify the hijackers of history who have used islamic heritage of the valley for personal political careers.