Masked ISIS men seen in Srinagar's Grand Mosque

Srinagar: A group of masked youth proclaiming their allegiance to Daesh or the Islamic State (ISIS) on Friday afternoon appeared in Srinagar’s historic Grand Mosque, captured the pulpit and chanted slogans in favour of making Jammu and Kashmir part of “Islamic caliphate”.

A viral video and photographs appearing in social media show them climbing the wooden pulpit of the place of worship and chanting slogans. They were also waving the ISIS flag- showing the seal of Muhammad within a white circle, with the phrase ‘There’s no god but Allah’ written above it. It is not know if they were carrying weapons also.

‘Joint Resistance Leadership (JRL)’, the alliance of key Kashmiri separatist leaders Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Muhammad Yasin Malik has strongly condemned the incident and accused these youth of “violating all Islamic teaching, values and sanctity of the mosque and exploiting the Kalima (the first of the Muslims’ six significant religious beliefs declaring ‘There is no god but Allah, [and] Muhammad is the messenger of Allah) and in the name of Islam.”

The alliance termed the incident as an “attempted desecration” of the sacred pulpit and said that such “anti-Islamic acts” will not be tolerated at any cost.

The Joint Resistance Leadership also said that it is not the first time that such a “shameful act of hooliganism” has been committed.