'When Kashmir spoke in one voice': Why the world needs a Qazi Nisar model of Shia- Sunni unity

June 19, 2025 by News Desk

Javid Ahmad

In an age where sectarian rifts are deliberately widened, often by regimes and powers that benefit from Muslim disunity, the legacy of Dr. Qazi Nisar Ahmad offers a timeless and urgent lesson. His model of Shia-Sunni unity, born in the politically turbulent and religiously complex landscape of Kashmir in the 1980s, wasn’t a rhetorical plea for harmony — it was a lived, organized resistance to both internal division and external domination.

By early 1986, in the heart of South Kashmir, something rare unfolded. Different Islamic schools of thought — Deobandi, Ahli Hadith, Jamaat-e-Islami, and others — began offering joint Friday prayers, rotating between mosques across Anantnag and Sherbagh. It was neither symbolic nor ceremonial; it was a political and spiritual stand against sectarian fragmentation. At a time when global trends — from Saudi-Iranian rivalry to the Afghan jihad — were deepening Muslim divides, Qazi Nisar was creating a local antidote: collective worship as a form of resistance.

This model was soon elevated when he held a secret meeting with Molvi Abbas Ansari, a prominent Shia cleric in Srinagar, even as the regime had virtually outlawed such political and religious consultations. What they discussed wasn’t personal ambition — it was a vision for a unified Kashmiri Muslim identity that could resist both Indian state policies and sectarian manipulation.

When he taught at Kashmir University, Dr. Qazi Nisar would often be found leading evening prayers at Magarmal Bagh, not as an appointed imam, but because people asked him to. His presence was magnetic — not from charisma, but from clarity. His words felt less like sermons and more like prayers wrapped in thought. Those moments left a mark on the youth of Srinagar, many of whom had never seen a religious scholar so unpretentious, accessible, and politically awake.

In the run-up to the 1987 elections, he returned to Srinagar after three years, and the city responded with uncontainable affection. From Lal Chowk to Iqbal Park, the youth laid out a red carpet for him. Ashfaq Majeed, Hameed Sheikh, and other future resistance leaders were among those who welcomed him. It wasn’t just about an election. It was about a generation placing its hopes in a man who embodied unity over sect, resistance over silence, and humility over ambition.

What Made the Qazi Nisar Model Unique

To understand the Qazi Nisar model of Shia-Sunni unity, one must first recognize the long historical shadow of sectarian conflict in the Muslim world. From the massacres of Karbala commemorations under the Umayyads, to the persecution of Sunni scholars in Safavid Iran, and later the Ba’athist repression of Shias in Iraq and sectarian polarizations under colonial regimes, Muslim history has been repeatedly fractured along sectarian lines — often at the behest of political elites, not theologians.

By the 20th century, sectarian identity had become a tool of state policy and foreign interference. In the Middle East, regimes used it to divide opposition. Globally, Cold War rivalries turned Shia and Sunni theological differences into proxy battlefields. The creation of the Pakistani state saw increasing marginalization of Shias and Ahmadiyyas. The Saudi-Iranian rivalry, fuelled by petrodollars and global alliances, hardened sectarian boundaries from Karachi to Cairo. In such a charged landscape, Kashmir too was vulnerable — especially in the 1980s when Governor Jagmohan’s policies were widely seen as an attempt to weaken Muslims by dividing it from within.

It was in this tense period that Dr. Qazi Nisar Ahmad — a religious scholar, academic, and public thinker — began reshaping the narrative. He believed that Kashmir’s real strength lay in its plurality within Islam, and that sectarian fragmentation would only serve those who wished to silence Kashmiri voices politically and spiritually. He recognized that theological disagreements were not the issue; weaponization of those differences was. His work was not to erase sectarian identities but to bring them together under a shared ethical and political vision rooted in Islamic values of justice, dignity, and resistance to oppression.

Dr. Qazi Nisar achieved this not through abstract appeals, but through bold and often risky initiatives. Perhaps the most powerful was his success in bringing together the historically distinct and often rival Islamic movements in Kashmir: the Shia leadership under Molvi Abbas Ansari, the Ahli Hadith under Molana Qadri, and the Jamaat-e-Islami and Deobandi scholars. In a climate where even public meetings were under surveillance and frequently banned, his secret meeting with Molvi Abbas Ansari in Anantnag in March 1986 was nothing short of revolutionary. These meetings, held at great personal risk, laid the groundwork for a shared public agenda — not just for religious harmony, but for a unified Muslim front in the political struggle for Kashmiri self-determination.

Molana Qadri of Jamiat Ahli Hadith, known for his austere and scriptural approach to Islam, had traditionally remained at a distance from more politically inclined movements. But Qazi Nisar convinced him that the survival of Ahli Hadith thought in Kashmir was intertwined with the survival of the Muslim identity. He appealed not to compromise, but to common Quranic and prophetic principles — especially those concerning oppression, unity of the ummah, and collective accountability. His argument was compelling: in the face of a regime that sought to delegitimize Muslim voices by dividing them, unity was not optional — it was fard (obligation).

The result was a rare period in Kashmir’s history when Friday prayers alternated between Sunni and Ahli Hadith mosques, and members of Jamaat-e-Islami, Deobandi, and Shia communities joined in shared acts of worship and resistance. This was not just symbolic. It was a public refusal to let doctrinal differences be used as tools of political and social fragmentation. Through these shared prayers, public speeches, and educational campaigns, Qazi Nisar restructured the very vocabulary of faith in Kashmir, grounding it in the ethics of tolerance, justice.

His model taught that Shia-Sunni unity was not about theological agreement but about collective assertion against injustice. It drew from the memory of the Prophet’s (PBUH) Medinan Charter, where diverse religious groups cooperated for mutual protection and justice, and from the legacies of thinkers like Imam Khomeini, whom he studied critically but adapted locally. Unlike many leaders who were either trapped in sectarian isolation or co-opted by power structures, Qazi Nisar carved out a third space — religiously grounded, politically alert, and socially transformative.

In doing so, he gave Kashmir a living example of what unity looks like in practice — not just tolerance, but shared prayer; not just coexistence, but coordinated struggle. His model was difficult, delicate, and at times dangerous — but it was effective. And in today’s world, where sectarian bloodshed continues to destabilize Muslim societies, the Qazi Nisar model remains a beacon — not of idealism, but of tested, local resistance built on ethical foundations.

Dr. Qazi Nisar’s vision was not merely symbolic cooperation; it was a structured, lived unity, built on shared worship, political purpose, and ethical foundations. This level of coordination — between Shia, Deobandi, Ahli Hadith, and Jamaat-e-Islami scholars and communities — has scarcely been witnessed in Islamic history. While early Islam had its moments of plural coexistence, and later empires like the Ottomans or Mughals tolerated diversity within their folds, what Qazi Nisar achieved was unity as resistance, forged not by imperial design but by grassroots defiance. It was unity not under power, but in opposition to it.

Few examples in Islamic history match this model: not in its clarity of purpose, in its scale of participation, and in its context . That is what makes the Qazi Nisar model not just rare, but revolutionary — and why it holds enduring relevance for a Muslim world still torn by the very divisions he defied.

Javid Ahmed is a historian from the Srinagar’s Soura area. The opinions expressed in this essay are his own.