SRINAGAR – After four years of house confinement, Indian authorities freed a prominent Muslim cleric and permitted him to preside over Friday prayers in Srinagar, the capital of Indian occupied Kashmir.
As he addressed the crowd from the pulpit of Srinagar’s iconic mosque, the 50-year-old Mirwaiz cried. When the pro-freedom leader gave his first Friday sermon as a free man after four years of house imprisonment, many of others also sobbed.
Mirwaiz has been leading demonstrations against Indian authority in the contentious area.
He was imprisoned in advance of India revoking Kashmir’s special status in 2019 and ushering in political turbulence in the Himalayan region.
Mirwaiz Mohammad Umar Farooq, 50, is a Kashmiri separatist political leader of Kashmir. He is also an Islamic religious cleric of the Indian-occupied Kashmir Valley. In October 2014, Farooq was listed as one of The 500 Most Influential Muslims by the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre, Jordan.
