May 2025

Assalamualaikum

We are, yet again, witnessing a mass demonization wave against Kashmiri Muslims by Hindutvadis. The Indian national consensus of annihilating Kashmiri Muslims has probably now touched its highest levels. Hindutvadis, including their political and religious leaders, are seen spitting venom against Kashmiri Muslims and preparing the ground for mass violence against them in Kashmir and in India, where hundreds of Kashmiris are stationed for educational and business purposes. We are already seeing a number of vicious attacks against them in numerous Indian states. It is, however, not surprising that they have come out of the closet and put aside their mask, behind which they have been unsuccessfully hiding their real intentions. The fact is that these modern-day Nazis have always viewed Kashmiri Muslims as inherently “troublemakers” and the main obstacle to their Hindutva fantasies for Kashmir. A Kashmiri body has always been an object for experimenting with numerous forms of violence to fulfill their fascist objectives one of which is to turn the Muslim-dominated disputed region into a Hindu land by executing its local population and settling Hindu settlers.

On the other hand, the occupational military has started a brazen campaign of blasting the ancestral homes of resistance fighters across the region after orchestrating a false flag operation in Pahalgam. Besides this, they have killed at least four civilians, dubbing them as resistance fighters in Bandipora, Baramulla, and Kupwara districts. There is also a huge crackdown against Kashmiris, where they have arrested more than five thousand people for no crime of theirs. This systematic campaign of oppression against Kashmiris is directly inspired by the Zionist war crimes against the Palestinian people. These sister ideologies—Zionism and Hindutva Nazism—have united in perpetrating unimaginable horrors against Palestinian and Kashmiri Muslim populations in their respective occupied territories. And despite all this, the Muslim world and the so-called defenders of human rights are only acting as mute spectators.

These are indeed testing times for us as a nation. But we must not lose hope and must remain firm against the vicious tide of violence and demonization by our oppressors. Allah says in His Holy Book, the Quran:

وَلَا تَهِنُوا وَلَا تَحْزَنُوا وَأَنْتُمُ الْأَعْلَوْنَ إِنْ كُنْتُمْ مُؤْمِنِينَ
(Do not weaken or grieve: you shall have the upper hand if you are believers)
(Sūrah Āl-‘Imrān)

Our struggle for liberation has seen many ups and downs, but we have, Alhamdulillah, remained firm against all odds over the years, and we will, InshaAllah, outlive the empire and break these chains of slavery and oppression. The nefarious designs of our oppressors will fail, and we will come out victorious in the end. During such searing times, I request people to make sure that the families affected by the brutal campaign of terror by the Indian military are helped in whatever way possible. Allah says in Surah Ash-Sharh:

فَإِنَّ مَعَ ٱلْعُسْرِ يُسْرًا
(So, surely with hardship comes ease)

May Allah help the people of Palestine and Kashmir in achieving their goals. Aameen.

Syed Salahuddin Ahmad

UJC Chief and Supreme Commander of Hizbul Mujahideen

The Dream of a Martyr

Muhammad Faisal

1979 had begun. Kashmir looked abnormally normal, its calmness betraying the storm that history had quietly queued in the wings. Beneath the surface of daily life, the valley was already restless, watchful and pregnant with political premonitions.

In the northern hamlet of Tujjar Sharief, Muhammad Akbar Lone, a member of Jamaat-e-Islami Jammu and Kashmir, was in a hurry. He was rushing towards Kashmir’s southern part to meet the then Ameer-e-Jamaat Mr. Saad-ud-Din Tarbali. The night before, in a dream, he had seen himself sitting in his home when someone knocked at the door. He opened it. There stood Imam Hussain (AS)! Without a word, the Imam took his hand, and they began to walk together into an unknown distance. Then he awoke.

He rushed to meet the Ameer Sahab to seek the meaning of this dream. The Ameer heard it, embraced him gently, kissed his forehead and declared, “You will attain martyrdom.” It was a time when Kashmiris had yet to take up arms in the path of Jihad-e-Feesabilillah against Indian occupation. The idea of achieving martyrdom immediately – though not entirely unthinkable – still felt somewhat distant. But Kashmir is a land where the unexpected is always close at hand. Who can ever predict when the tide will turn, when patience will harden into resolve, and silence into a storm?

After some days (probably a week or more) that year on April 4, the news of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s execution pierced through the Valley. A cloud of sorrow quickly turned into a firestorm against those in the valley who had done nothing wrong to deserve all that. That grief was misdirected, misinformed, and manipulated.

In Srinagar, the National Conference, communists and Qadiyanee’s seized the public emotion and redirected it like a weapon. Bhutto was hanged, they declared, because of the Jamaat-e-Islami! No, it was the religious Jamaat that was to blame, they insisted. The accusation was absurd, but in a place where flames spread faster than facts, the damage had already begun.

That day, mobs swept through the streets like a flood uncontained. Shopian, Sopore, Baramulla, Islamabad, downtown Srinagar — from alley to avenue, the rage turned towards homes, mosques, schools, and libraries associated with Jamaat-e-Islami Jammu and Kashmir. A violent choreography had begun, and its dancers were neither spontaneous nor unled. The orchestrators watched the show silently.

Shops were looted, houses ransacked, and properties charred to ash. What made that day unforgettable was not just the destruction of homes, but the deliberate burning of minds. Copies of the Holy Qur’an were thrown into flames derided as “Jamati Quran”. Volumes of “Tafheem-ul-Quran” — Maulana Maududi’s monumental exegesis — were dragged out and set alight. It was indeed a day when ignorance masqueraded as justice.

The riots did not spare even the mosques. Mosques whom the mob thought were associated with the Jamaat were desecrated. Islamic schools were attacked. It was a painful irony: the people who wept for Bhutto were destroying the very institutions that had kept Islamic consciousness alive in Kashmir.

Behind it all stood an unholy alliance of politics and propaganda. The National Conference, never forgiving of Jamaat’s ideological influence, saw in this tragedy an opportunity to strike. With carefully planted rumors and amplified half-truths, they managed to turn popular grief into targeted hatred.

Amidst all this, Muhammad Akbar Lone, the man of the dream, was not spared either. He was on duty in a school when a mob suddenly attacked it and started setting on fire books in the library. It was a moment of shock for him and he was perhaps still not able to understand the situation around him. He took the half burnt holy book, trying save it from fire when someone from the mob struck his head with some hard object and he fell on the ground and breathed his last while holding the Quran against his chest. The dream had finally come true. He was a martyr now!

Going the Israeli way

Muntaha Kirmani

After the 22 April Pahalgam attack, Indian military has gone berserk in the valley. Over a dozen houses belonging to the family members of active and former armed resistance fighters were razed to rubble using high explosive devices.

It is no longer metaphorical to say that Kashmir is becoming another Palestine. It is literal now. The playbook is the same, the methods identical and the ideology is chillingly familiar. The occupier doesn’t even pretend anymore.

The high intensity blasts, demolition squads, spectacle of destruction carried out in broad daylight is the textbook Zionism exported to the Himalayas. Ironically enough, Israel calls it “deterrence,” while fascist state of India calls it “fight against terrorism”. But the victims call it what it is: punishment for existing.

This tactic of targeting families, destroying homes and making grief a generational inheritance is pulled straight from the Israeli arsenal of occupation. If you cannot kill the rebel, you destroy the roots that gave him birth, bury his memories under concrete and fire and teach the village what it means to dream of freedom under the shadow of a state that considers your very breath seditious.

The Indian state today mirrors Israel in military choreography and civilizational arrogance. Kashmiris, like Palestinians, are being suppressed, erased, fragmented, and rewritten into silence. The land is being weaponized. Laws are changed overnight. Settlements are being planned with sinister precision. Bureaucrats now sit as viceroys who engineer demographic shifts under the pretense of “development.” In Jerusalem, they call it Judaization and in Srinagar, it is Hinduisation. Both are soaked in the same ideological ink of the myth of divine entitlement, the claim of ancient sovereignty and the language of sacred conquest.

They demolish homes in Kashmir the same way they do in Gaza to crush the spirit of people and to flatten resistance. To remind every child born under occupation that their life is conditional, precarious, and surveilled. This is how you strengthen the chains of occupation by seizing land, turning memory into rubble, homes into warnings, and grief into a permanent national identity.

Nevertheless, Kashmir stands. Crushed but unbowed. Wounded but never silenced. Because like Palestine, Kashmir has learned how to turn ruins into resistance, loss into literature, and memory into a weapon that no bulldozer can flatten and no explosive material can blow up. The occupier may borrow Israeli tactics, may mimic their brutality, but they will inherit their failures too. Because no settler project, no matter how ruthless, can outlast a people who have named their graves after freedom.

There is a reason India looks to Israel. Both are haunted by the same fear that history will one day speak in the voice of the occupied. And when it does, no amount of rubble, barbed wire, or bulldozers will be enough to drown it out.

South Asia’s Nuclear Flashpoint Has Reared its Head Again!

Muhammad Iqbal Tantray

Kashmir has always been the nuclear flashpoint of South Asia. Besides a contested land, it has been a ticking time bomb buried beneath the snow-capped peaks and blood-stained valleys. Its unresolved status continues to cast a dark shadow over the entire region and threatening South Asia and the fragile equilibrium of the wider world. With two nuclear-armed neighbours – arch-rivals bound in a seventy-five-year-old animosity – locked in an ideological and territorial tug of war, the threat of escalation remains real and inevitable. This is a longstanding dispute and a volatile standoff with radioactive consequences.

India has always mistaken silence for surrender. It reads the occasional silence of Kashmiri people or international outcry as a sign of submission, as if the silence of the oppressed translates into the victory of the oppressor. But in a conflict zone like Kashmir, silence is not peace. It is the deep breath before the storm. India fails to grasp that in occupied lands, calm is a façade, often enforced at gunpoint, where the lull in resistance is merely the result of unrelenting militarisation and manufactured fear. What does victory mean in a place where resistance is older than the occupier’s propaganda?

As long as the last Kashmiri walks the soil of his homeland with defiance in his heart, the threat of a flashpoint escalating into catastrophe remains constant. The illusion of control that India projects is built on checkpoints, bunkers, surveillance drones, and the ever-growing shadow of military boots. But history has never been kind to empires that tried to bury the will of a people under the rubble of repression. You cannot imprison an entire nation behind concertina wire and expect submission to become tradition. You cannot turn valleys into open-air prisons, deploy millions of troops to suppress thought and soul, and believe that such tyranny will write itself into permanence. Aspiration does not die under siege, rather it sharpens.

Many sane voices have warned the world of the nuclear danger that Kashmir represents. The literature on Kashmir’s political status is replete with chilling foresight. Writers, statesmen, and diplomats have repeatedly underlined that the only sustainable solution lies in allowing the people of this tormented land to exercise their inalienable right to self-determination. But India, gripped by a colonial hangover and an inflated self-image of being the world’s largest democracy, continues to weave false tales of normalcy. It sells peace where it sows panic, and markets democracy where it practices occupation.

In 1953, Ralph Bunche, a senior United Nations official, observed that “Kashmir is the one situation you could never localize if it should flare up. It would influence the whole Muslim world. It is potentially the most dangerous in the world.” These words uttered in the infancy of the nuclear age now echo with a terrifying clarity. But India, consistent in its obstinacy, chose to ignore such warnings. Instead, it fortified the scaffolding of its occupation, unleashing brute force upon a population whose only crime has been their refusal to forget who they are.

Today, with the RSS-led BJP tightening its grip over Indian polity since 2014, a dangerous new era of fanaticism has dawned. The Hindutva-driven state machinery has acted with impunity, implementing iron-fist policies in Kashmir while stoking anti-Pakistan hysteria to gather votes across the mainland. The rhetoric grows shriller, the crackdown grows harsher, and the distance between New Delhi and the truth grows wider. The global community cannot ignore this anymore. The international silence, masquerading as neutrality, has only emboldened the oppressor and deepened the suffering of the oppressed. Every muted response from world powers is a tacit approval of repression.

Since August 2019, when India unilaterally abrogated Article 370 and dissolved Kashmir’s semi-autonomous status, the region has hovered on the brink of disaster multiple times. Each time, it has taken little more than a border skirmish, any action by resistance fighters, or, surprisingly, even a false flag, to bring two nuclear powers to the edge of confrontation. And in these moments, the world holds its breath and forgets that the cause of that breathlessness is a political miscalculation and a decades-long refusal to acknowledge the core issue.

It is high time that India sheds its arrogance and confronts the inevitable truth: no durable peace can be forged by force. Let Kashmiris decide their future in accordance with UN resolutions. Honour the promises made at the highest international platforms. Repeal the occupation. Restore dignity. Only then will the mountains of Kashmir stop trembling with the silence of unshed tears and unburied hopes.

Until then, the nuclear flashpoint remains – silent, simmering, and one step away from catastrophe.

The Bulldozer Has Moved — And It’s Headed for Kashmir

Asif Subhani

On April 12, 2025, a 20-year-old madrasa in BD Colony, Panna district in India’s Madhya Pradesh, was demolished, marking the first reported instance of a Muslim-owned property being targeted under the newly enforced Waqf Amendment Act. Bulldozer demolitions have become a grim norm in India over the past several years, but this action holds particular significance because it is the first one conducted under the shadow of the controversial Waqf Bill passed by the Indian Parliament.

This incident is not an isolated administrative action. It signals the beginning of a systematic assault on Muslim institutions under the convenient guise of legality. The Waqf Amendment Act has paved the way for the large-scale demolition of Muslim properties across India, and many fear that its devastating reach will soon extend into occupied Jammu and Kashmir, where India is already waging an unrelenting war against a people, their faith, identity, and memory.

In occupied Kashmir, the machinery of demographic change and cultural erasure is already well underway. From arbitrary property seizures to the undermining of Waqf Board autonomy, India has consistently used bureaucracy as a weapon against Kashmiri Muslims. With the Waqf Amendment Act now in force, the script has been finalized: bulldozers will soon come for Kashmir’s Masjids, khanqahs, graveyards, and religious schools under the pretexts of “development,” legality, and “public land.”

This is more about identity than land. It is about erasing history, dismantling legacy, and silencing memory. It is about rewriting the cultural and spiritual landscape of a people by destroying the very institutions that preserve it. India has already criminalized resistance in Kashmir and now it seeks to criminalize even presence. The objective is no longer control but complete erasure of anything that resembles with Islam.

The demolition under the Waqf amendment bill in Panna is just the beginning. What has long been tested in Kashmir is now being normalized in India. But in a reversal of India’s usual colonial experimentation, this time the “bulldozer justice” was trialed in India itself and will now be replicated in Kashmir with renewed force. The larger project of de-Islamizing the disputed region is already well in motion.

This campaign of destruction will advance unchallenged if Indian Muslims continue to remain in a state of denial. It is time to awaken from the deep slumber and devise serious strategies to safeguard their Muslim identity, institutions, and heritage. Unfortunately, much hope is lost when some of the most prominent Muslim leaders and politicians in India have become more loyal than the king himself, wearing the robes of Hindutva in a different shade and serving the majoritarian project in the name of pragmatism.

Kashmir, however, must remain alert. The bulldozers are on the move. The destruction has already begun. It is wrapped in silence, but it grows louder with each structure that falls.

Professor Khurshid Ahmad and the Integrity of Ideas

Syed Asif Iqbal Shah

There are men in history whose legacies are not measured by titles or timelines but by the vastness of the intellectual horizons they open. They do not simply engage with their age but they define, challenge, and, at times, transcend it. Professor Khurshid Ahmad belonged to that rare cadre. He was not a personality constructed for the gallery of fame, nor a thinker molded for the fashion of ideological convenience. He was, above all, a man of conviction and an architect of thought and a steward of Islamic intellectual tradition in the modern age.

It is unfortunate that in a society increasingly seduced by surfaces, we reserve little space for minds that demand depth. Professor Khurshid Ahmad was neither a media figure, nor an orator of flamboyant gestures. He was a scholar of substance who spoke in paragraphs and not punchlines. And it is precisely for this reason that his absence is so difficult to bear, for such men do not leave behind mere memories; they leave behind silences that echo with what we should have asked and what we should have learned.

His intellectual trajectory was forged early within the ferment of ideological contestation and spiritual search. It was a journey that passed through the company of titans – none more formative than Maulana Syed Abul A‘la Maududi (RA), the seminal thinker whose ideas reshaped twentieth-century Muslim thought. Besides being a student of Syed Maududi, he was his interlocutor, translator, and trustee. He absorbed his master’s corpus with active reflection. In him, the thought of Syed Maududi did not fossilize but it flowed.

One of the most enduring examples of this continuity was his English rendering of Tafheem-ul-Qur’an, an endeavor that was not a mere act of translation but of cultural and intellectual transference. He carried Qur’anic interpretation across linguistic frontiers while remaining faithful to its conceptual integrity. That effort, like many others, underscored his commitment to Islamic thought.

In Professor Khurshid Ahmad’s vision, Islam was not a slogan nor a private pietism. It was an entire worldview – one that must speak to economics, education, political ethics, and social justice. As an economist, he stood apart. He critiqued capitalist excess not from a Marxist envy but from a Qur’anic ethic. His writings on Islamic economics were not exotic reinterpretations but coherent alternatives to a global financial order built on debt, deception, and dispossession.

Indeed, it was this ability – to think within tradition without being trapped by it – that made Professor Khurshid a formidable intellectual force. His establishment of the Institute of Policy Studies in Islamabad was a testament to this ethos: an institution meant not only to analyze but to reimagine policy in light of ethical imperatives rooted in Islamic civilization.

Yet, for all his erudition, he bore himself with the humility of those who know the weight of truth. He was not a scholar seduced by applause nor one unsettled by resistance. He was calm in argument and composed in disagreement, a mark not merely of temperament but of character refined by sincerity.

One must also highlight a less documented, yet deeply telling aspect of his life: his unwavering solidarity with the people of Kashmir. His connection with the Kashmiri cause was not episodic or performative. It was profound, strategic, and heartfelt. He was among the few Pakistani intellectuals whose support for Kashmir’s right to self-determination was informed by both historical legitimacy and ethical responsibility. Whenever the resistance camp in Azad Jammu and Kashmir found itself caught in ambiguity or adversity, it was Syed Ali Shah Geelani — the uncompromising symbol of Kashmiri resistance — who advised them to seek counsel from Professor Khurshid Ahmad. Such was the trust in his wisdom and foresight.

And now, that voice is silent.

We are left in an age where wisdom is algorithmic and knowledge is transactional. In such times, the passing of a thinker like Professor Khurshid Ahmad is not simply the loss of a scholar — it is the severing of a lineage, the dimming of a light once lit by sincerity, scholarship, and sacrifice. May Allah grant him highest place in Heavens. Aameen

Remebering Professor Mohammad Raafi Bhat

Shahnawaz Ganderbali

The month of May bleeds with memory. It carries within it the names and stories of our martyred commanders. Shaheed Reyaz Naikoo, Shaheed Junaid Ashraf Sehrai, Shaheed Professor Mohammad Rafi Bhat, and many other brave resistance fighters who laid down their lives in recent years. These were not ordinary men. They were the shining stars of our resistance and the torchbearers of a dream far greater than themselves. A dream of freedom, dignity, and self-respect for their people.

It is our collective moral and national responsibility to safeguard their legacy, to carry their stories in our hearts and pass them on to our next generations like sacred scripts. Nations are built on the blood of martyrs, and no nation can ever rise to a dignified future if it forgets those who gave everything to carve that path with their sacrifice. A nation that forgets its martyrs and fails to honour them, is doomed to lose not only its political soul but also its history, culture, and memory. Oblivion is the worst fate for a people and that is what awaits any society that allows the names of its martyrs to fade.

On May 6, 2018, Professor Mohammad Rafi Bhat was martyred along with top Hizbul Mujahideen commanders Sadam Hussain Padder, Bilal Ahmad Mohand, Towseef Ahmad Sheikh and Adil Ahmad Malik in Shopian district of Jammu and Kashmir. Bhat, a 32-year-old assistant professor, was, prior to joining armed resistance against illegal Indian occupation, teaching sociology at Kashmir University, Hazratbal Srinagar. Professor Rafi, besides being a professor, was a symbol of the suffocating despair that pushes even the most learned to forsake pen for the gun. His transition from lecture halls to the battlefield was not a tale of indoctrination as many Indian journalists, academics, political figures and military officers would have you believe. It was an awakening and a cry against a brutal occupation that leaves no space for dignity or dreams. In his martyrdom, he rose into history. Their sacrifice reminds us that the resistance is not just carried by those born into it, but by those who choose it despite comforts, careers and consequences. It is a choice made in the heart, not forced by circumstances but compelled by conviction. May the memory of these martyrs guide our collective conscience, and may their blood water the roots of a free and dignified Kashmir.

CRISIS MANAGER: REMEMBERING THE GREAT REYAZ NAIKOO

Sheikh Eijaz Amin Shopiani

The month of May marks the martyrdom of Reyaz Naikoo, a name synonymous with bravery, courage and resistance in Kashmir. Kashmir’s armed resistance against Indian rule saw many great guerilla commanders since 1989 and Reyaz Naikoo is one among them. Confronting, with all his might, the occupation that outnumbered him exponentially, Reyaz’s prowess was not merely his physical presence that scared India’s military apparatus in Kashmir, he was a strategist and a visionary whose keen intellect, sharp tactical acumen and outstanding military mind shattered in tatters the arrogance of Indian military, paramilitary and JK Police. In an interview given to Aljazeera over phone in November 2018, Naikoo on being asked whether he still believed in armed resistance, said, while quoting Nelson Mandela, that a freedom fighter comes to realize through harsh experience that the oppressor sets the rules of the struggle, leaving the oppressed with no choice but to employ tactics reminiscent of those used by their oppressors. While he was leading the resistance on the armed front, he was not against the resolution of the conflict through dialogue given that it takes between parties that recognize each other as equals and is never meant aimed at deceiving the colonized or just a tactic of capitulation. He was of the opinion that certain Indian leaders advocate for dialogue within the framework of the Indian constitution, but their true intention is to enforce submission. They have no genuine interest in addressing our rightful political aspirations. Instead, they aim to implement policies and mechanisms that solidify the existing occupation, he believed.

Reyaz Naikoo’s leadership was unparalleled. Following Zakir Musa’s controversial decision to form Ansar Ghazwatul Hind, there was fear of disintegration and Kashmiris were looking at the situation with disappointment. The situation was getting out of hand with Zakir Musa openly threatening to behead Hurriyat leaders publicly at Srinagar’s historic Lal Chowk. It was indeed the most vulnerable time in the history of Kashmir’s armed struggle. There were defections as some fighters belonging to Hizbul Mujahideen left it to join Musa’s newly formed Ansar Ghazwatul Hind.

Recognizing the potential pitfalls of internal strife, Reyaz championed the cause of unity, and hosted meetings with top Hizbul Mujahideen commanders to foster dialogue and understanding. He held meetings where dozens of top HM commanders were present. His public addresses urged his fellow fighters and the Kashmiri populace to remain steadfast and unite against external provocations. It was indeed not so easy for any commander to keep his fellow fighters under one umbrella and avoid any huge confrontation when Indian agencies had cunningly started to exploit the situation in their favour. In a situation where the whole occupational apparatus was, armed with all available resources, trying very hard to trace him, commander Reyaz took it upon himself to personally visit different fighters at their locations. His ability to move stealthily through apple orchards and dense forests while evading detection and striking when it was least expected had frustrated his enemies to the extent that IG Kashmir Police and Indian military’s Lieutenant General had to call seven high profile meetings to review the situation and trace Reyaz Naikoo who was then serving as the operational chief of Hizbul Mujahideen in Jammu and Kashmir.

One of Reyaz’s most audacious moves was his response to the abduction of armed fighters’ family members by the notorious Kashmir police. In a strategic counter-move, Reyaz orchestrated the abduction of police family members from various parts of the occupied region. This bold maneuver sent shockwaves through the military administration, leading to the dismissal of the then police chief, SP Vaid, who was deemed unfit to counter Reyaz’s tactical brilliance.

After being active for nearly a decade in different areas of the occupied territory, Reyaz Naikoo met his martyrdom in his beloved Beghpora village on May 6, 2020, surrounded by a massive contingent of Indian occupational forces. Thousands of India’s military and paramilitary troops cornered him in his village where he had come to visit his ailing mother. Whole Kashmir was put on red alert as India feared mass agitation knowing well that the commander was loved by Kashmiris from all walks of life. He fought bravely for many hours and wrote his verdict with his own warm blood. We will forever remember this brave commander who will continue to inspire freedom loving people across the globe.

JUNAID SEHRAI: CARRYING FORWARD THE LEGACY OF PROPHET ISMAIL (A.S)

Gowar Farooq

In Kashmir, Junaid Sehrai’s story challenges common beliefs about the role of political leaders’ children in freedom movements. Many in Kashmir, often belonging to the pro-Indian camp, would argue that the children of resistance leaders are protected from danger and have been living comfortably away from real struggles due to their family’s position. This narrative was fueled and promoted by the Indian state to discourage the common masses from joining the resistance movement. However, Junaid Sehrai’s active participation in armed resistance challenged this perception. While Junaid is not the only martyr son of a resistance political leader, many others including the martyr son of former Ameer Jamaat e Islami J&K Sheikh Muhammad Hassan and other Arkans of Jamaat have sacrificed their youth for the sacred cause of Kashmir’s war of liberation.

Choosing to leave a comfortable life, Junaid joined Hizbul Mujahideen on 24 March 2018. This was a significant decision that showed his dedication and belief in his father’s cause. His active role in the armed resistance and his martyrdom on 19 May 2020 during a gunfight with the Indian occupational forces broke the stereotype that the children and families of resistance leadership are distant from actual sacrifices. Instead, his actions served as an example of “leading from the front” or “charity begins at home” and highlighted a story of shared sacrifice and unity, closing the gap between leaders and common people. The statements of his father, Shaheed Ashraf Sehrai, remind us of the character of the companions of the Prophet (SAW), and Junaid reminds us about the legacy of Prophet Ismail (A.S) and Imaam Hussain (RA). This example set by the Sehrai family is unmatched and unparalleled. It is also a lesson for those children and families of the so called people belonging to “resistance” who sold Kashmir resistance for personnel benefits. It took a person like Sehari to sacrifice his beloved son, an MBA graduate, to answer the critics that the men of resistance are the men of the book (Quran). They are not like the privileged children of the elite politicians in the pro-Indian political camp. There is a huge difference between the two; on the resistance side, “charity begins at home,” while in the pro-Indian camp, there are dynasties, the children of the elite clients of India are bound to replace their parents, and there is no space for low-rung clients to head stoogery. The only place for a common person in the pro-Indian camp is that of a puppet, a lowest one.

When his father Shaheed Muhammad Ashraf Sehrai publicly acknowledged Junaid’s decisions—from taking up arms to his martyrdom—it solidified Junaid’s status as a martyr and a hero. This acknowledgment paralleled the recent sentiments expressed by Ismail Haniyeh, the chief of Hamas, when he spoke about the martyrdom of his own children and grandchildren in Israeli strikes, emphasizing that his children were no different from other Palestinian children. Such statements from leaders underscore the shared sacrifices made by families of resistance.

Junaid Sehrai’s life and death exemplify that leadership and sacrifice in the fight for freedom and rights are not exclusive to those outside leadership. By engaging directly in the struggle, Junaid honored his father’s legacy and reinforced the call for continued resistance against the Indian rule. His actions encourage the people of Kashmir to not only remember his sacrifices but to actively support and uphold the cause he and his father stood for.

یہ فیضانِ نظر تھا کہ مکتب کی کرامت تھی

سِکھائے کس نے اسماعیلؔ کو آدابِ فرزندی