Omar Abdullah is losing grip over his government and the Valley. He has been under attack for his failure to protect panchayat members who faced unidentified gunmen, for creating confusion over the Armed Forces Special Powers Act and for compromising with the tainted Congress ministers in his Cabinet. Now, the young chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir has failed to deal with the fatwa of the Grand Mufti Basheer-ud-din. Omar’s grandstanding support for the all-girls band Pragaash failed to inspire confidence as they faced abuses, and the Grand Mufti asked the girls to quit music. Omar’s was quick to support the girl with his tweet post, but he was faster in deleting it. Rather, he tacitly defended the Grand Mufti, saying that the man hadn’t threatened the girls.
So who is this Grand Mufti? To most Kashmiris his position remains an enigma. In the Kashmir administration Basheer-ud-din has no official standing, yet he is the “official Grand Mufti” of Kashmir heading the Supreme Court of Islamic Shariah. In this Islamic court he recently chose his son as the deputy. His other son is a government official. Interestingly, his daughter-in-law works as a scientist in Abu Dhabi.
Mufti has been like the Eid crescent. He would often appear on the state-run Doordarshan on the eve of Eid and announce that the moon had been spotted. Those who have some knowledge of this enigmatic man or have worked closely with him at some point in time say he spent last two decades mostly solving matrimonial and family discords under the Islamic law.“He has become more and more controversial day by day, perhaps realising the importance of staying in news,” one of his close aides, who parted ways with him last year, says.
He came to prominence during a conversion row recently when a video of an alleged forced conversion of Muslims to Christianity surfaced in Kashmir. He summoned Christian pastor CM Khanna who was shown in the video clip baptising Muslim youth. The pastor moved out of Valley after he appeared in the Supreme Court of Islamic Shariah.
Post his controversial decrees, the government and even Omar Abdullah’s ruling National Conference (NC) distanced itself from him. However, the Mufti is unperturbed. The bureaucracy here is also clueless. But Mufti says he was appointed by Omar’s grandfather Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah and also by successive governments. A political observer says Abdullah had attempted to create a parallel institution to that of the Mirwaiz, but it had no popular standing.
The separatists dub him as a religious novice and a part of government machinery. But the government’s silence on his decrees comes as he enjoys a strong religious clout. The controversial Mufti being from the Hanfi school of thought is the state head of the Muslim Personal Law Board which is closely identified with the Omar’s NC.