Some excerpts (7 minutes) below of Delhi Jama Masjid Imam’s half hour sermon on a Friday in September 2019 –PM Narendra Modi had annexed the occupied Kashmir Valley on August 5, and there was silence in the international community –the global village had turned its social media spotlight on Kashmir lockdown.
Not much success though.
Come August 5, 2021, the situation in occupied Kashmir would become a 700-page non-fiction hard cover on the shelf for students of history and geopolitics.
The Imam is heard painting a woeful canvas from the pigments of conditions of the Muslim community (Muslim Ummah) worldwide and in India, including Kashmir.
Jama Masjid being Delhi’s principal mosque, is the place where the city’s Muslims traditionally gather for Friday communal prayer. The Imam’s Friday sermon echoed not only within the 220 million Muslims in India but across the border also and in the wider region of the Tropic of Cancer.
The Imam particularly highlights the situation in Yemen, Syria, Iraq.
Two years hence, his sermon remains fresh as a dew, its content and substance is like a vintage rose bookmark.
“I think the Imam was precise and on spot,” said Middle East media icon Khaled Almaeena.
“I do hope he continues to focus on relevant political and social issues…he should (also) talk about the plight of all minorities. The imam’s voice can be powerful and have a wider reach”, he said.
Kashmir is a flashpoint between nuclear armed neighbors India and Pakistan –despite Track II diplomacy ongoing. The two neighbors (with a long common border without natural barriers separating them) have fought several wars on the Kashmir dispute. PM Modi’s August 5 2019 gambit of changing the status of occupied Jammu & Kashmir Valley did not go well in the region…the international community choose to remain “unusually silent”, say some independent observers in the region.
A senior Pakistani military official while commenting on the Imam’s sermon highlighting Muslim Ummah’s condition worldwide and in India and Kashmir said, “We are heading for a showdown… something very big, nasty, bloody…even catastrophic”.
‘Ghazwa-e-Hind’ (a holy war in the subcontinent as mentioned in hadiths –a set of sayings by Prophet Mohammad) as highlighted by the official has made a return among scholars and security analysts, specially after the Narendra Modi government’s action on Article 370 annexing the occupied Kashmir valley followed by a lockdown.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity as he’s not authorized to comment officially.
Irshad Salim, Islamabad
