One month after Friday prayers allowed in Kashmir’s grand mosque

Bilal Bashir Bhat
Srinagar, Feb 16 (KNB): After one month Friday prayers were allowed at Kashmir’s grand mosque in Downtown Srinagar. The mosque remained locked for continuous three weeks due to the curfew-like restrictions in parts of Srinagar imposed in view of different occasions.
The last time Friday congregation prayers were offered on 19 January 2018. On the eve of India’s republic day and Shopian civilian killings no Friday prayers were allowed at Jama Masjid on 26th January and 02 February respectively.
According to the KNB monitoring desk, last week on 9th February in view of the anniversary of Afzal Guru the Jama masjid remain locked again for the third consecutive week, besides on these occasion curfew-like restrictions were imposed in and around old city Srinagar.



Meanwhile large numbers of devotees today thronged Jama Masjid Srinagar to offer the Friday congregational prayers, addressing on the occasion before prayers the chief cleric and Hurriyat (M) Chairman lashed out on the ruling regime for repeatedly barring Muslims from offering obligatory Friday prayers at Jamia Masjid and other Masjids across the valley.
He said that the Muslim collaborators under the influence of their masters need to be reminded, that in Islam mosque is a place of collective worship and not just individual. It is a community centre for the Muslims where besides other things the community comes together at prayer times and otherwise ,to discuss and deliberate the issues facing it and the Jumma Khutba delivered reflects those issues and problems of the community and their redressal in the light of Quran, Sunnah and ethics. (KNB)