Mirwaiz Umar's Delhi Visit Sparks Speculations in J&K Political Circles

 Srinagar: Kashmir’s chief Muslim cleric and chairman of his faction of separatist Hurriyat Conference alliance Mirwaiz Muhammad Umar Farooq flew to Delhi along with his mother and other family members late Monday evening after being allowed to travel outside Srinagar by the Jammu and Kashmir authorities.

A spokesman of Anjuman-i-Auqaf Jama Masjid said here that the Mirwaiz “was allowed by the state authorities to travel to New Delhi yesterday (Monday)”. The spokesman added, “The Mirwaiz had conveyed the personal nature of his visit after which the authorities allowed him…he will be back (in Srinagar) in a couple of weeks.” The Anjuman is the management body of Srinagar’s historic Grand Mosque currently headed by the 50-year-old cleric and politician.

The Mirwaiz’s sudden visit to the Union capital sparked speculations back home and beyond with a section of media and netizens seeking to attribute political motives to it. However, the Mirwaiz while speaking to this newspaper termed his visit to Delhi along with his mother and other family members as “purely private and personal”.

The Mirwaiz was released from a prolonged house arrest in September last year, but the authorities have over the past three and a half months curtailed his movement on several occasions including not allowing him to visit Srinagar’s Grand Mosque for offering prayers and delivering customary sermons on Fridays. The authorities privately claim that he is stopped from visiting places at times “in the interest of peace and his own security.”

But the Mirwaiz had last week strongly denounced his repeated house detention, especially on Fridays and said that after his release from four years of continued house detention since August 2019 he was permitted to go to Jama Masjid on three Fridays only. “Since then, every Friday, I’m put under house arrest without any reason given for it by the authorities”. He added that since October 13, the Grand Mosque itself was locked by the police on more than a dozen Fridays to prevent people from offering congregational prayers.

“This arbitrariness, disregard for religious rights and sentiments of Muslims, and strong-arm tactics of the authorities, even on the basic human principle of allowing the practice of religion uninterrupted, are telling signs of the time and situation we are living in,” he had said in a statement. I added, “It also mocks the authorities' own statements claiming, ‘Things are great in J&K and I am a free man who can go anywhere.”