Pan-Islamism threatens Kashmir's syncretic Islam

For most separatists, the biggest enemy of Islam is the valley's Rishi-Sufi tradition of Kashmiriyat, the philosophy of coexistence.

- Ghulam Rasool Dehlvi

At the very outset, let me explain what I mean by syncretic Islam in Kashmir. It stands in complete contrast to the present-day extremist strains of Islamic theology sprouted by the Wahhabi, Salafi (or Ahl-e-Hadithi), Deobandi, Barelwi, and other Takfiri groups or sectarian cults. The syncretic Kashmiri Islam was an inclusivist and non-Takfiri Islam which was never seen as exclusivist, totalitarian, supremacist, or puritanical ideology, unlike the radical Islam of the extremists who have consistently tried to propagate a dry and desiccated religion among the new generation of Kashmiri Muslims. In fact, Kashmiri Islam emanated from an amalgamation of the Shaivite-Buddhist mysticism imbued with Sufism. Central Asian Sufi saints such as Nund Rishi and local Kashmiri Sufi-Shaivite mystics like Lal Ded or Lalla Arifa propounded this beautiful spiritual tradition based on religious harmony, tolerance, and acceptance. This was the syncretic culture of Kashmiriyat that symbolized the unity of religious ideals creating a spiritual symbiosis of all faith traditions in the valley of Kashmir. As a result, Kashmiri Pandits, Muslims and Sikhs, all lived peacefully in the valley for centuries.

It is not difficult to understand what catapulted Kashmir from being a bastion of pluralism into a breeding ground of exclusivism, radicalism and Islamist militancy and insurgency.