Jammu and Kashmir High Court on Tuesday said that a fundamentalist Muslim cannot be equated to an extremist or a separatist.
The court made the remarks while ordering the release of a 22-year-old man, who was detained last year under the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act for allegedly promoting terrorist activities in Kashmir’s Pulwama. The detenue had been accused of working as part of an Islamic terror outfit The Resistance Front (TRF), an offshoot of the Laskhar-e-Taiba.
“Muslim who is a fundamentalist is merely someone who believes in the fundamentals of Islam and steadfastly pursues the same. It cannot have a negative bearing on his personality. The same is as a fundamentalist Muslim cannot be equated with an extremist or a separatist. Therefore, the said ground also is vague and has been used lucidly without proper understanding,” the court said.
“The usage of the phrase “fundamentalist ideology” by the District Magistrate, does not necessarily mean that the detenue possesses an extremist or separatist ideology. The Oxford „Fundamentalist ideology‟ is part and parcel of the Abrahamic faith where the adherents have to necessarily believe in 4 certain fundamentals of the religion to be accepted as the adherents of that religion. Therefore, someone who steadfastly pursues or follows the fundamentals of an Abrahamic faith is undoubtedly a fundamentalist but there is no negativity associated with it and it is distinct from an extremist or a separatist,” the court observed.
One of the grounds on which his detention was done was that he was a hard-core fundamentalist.
Advocate Shabir Ahmad appeared for the detenue’s father, while deputy Advocate General Rais-u-din Ganie and Government Advocate Ilyas Nazir Laway appeared for the government authorities.
