M A I N   N E W S

In Valley today: Romance & religion under one roof
Azhar Qadri/TNS

Srinagar, August 31
Come Saturday, and love will be talk of the town in conservative Kashmir. For two consecutive days, young men and women in Srinagar will break taboos to discuss religion and romance and that too on a common platform. The occasion would be a seminar on ‘Marriage and its Ethics’ at Ibn Khaldun auditorium on the Kashmir University campus.

The two-day workshop is a brainchild of Inspire Me — a group of seven students, six from International Islamic University Malaysia and one from University of Nottingham.

“Apart from love and relationships, the participants would discuss concepts like ‘halaal dating’ (dating under a controlled environment so that the contact remains purely platonic until such time as the dating couple is joined in matrimony) and its validity in Islam. Other topics include spouse selection, engagement, ‘nikah’ and post-marital ties between husband and wife and their rights and duties for each other,” says Mubashir Ahmad Wani, a final-year student of Mechatronics Engineering at a Malaysian university and the programme manager for the event.

The Kashmiri society has for long maintained silence over such topics. A growing number of young couples, however, are opting for love marriages. “So there is a constant ideological tussle — reluctant conservative parents want to choose a spouse for their sons and daughters, but the new generation, which is exposed to global culture through social networking sites and cable television, believes in self-selection,” says Wani.

“In Malaysia, there are these marriage courses, so people know what marriage is in Islam. We want to organise something here on the same lines,” he adds.

“In Kashmir, marriages have become a celebration time for rich but a burden for the poor because of lavish rituals and customs,” Wani said. The Jammu and Kashmir Government had in 2004 tried to curtail extravagance in marriages by bringing the ceremonies under the Essential Commodities Act, limiting the number of guests and the food to be cooked at wedding feasts. The austerity measure failed.

Yaqeen-ul-Haq, a student of psychology at the Malaysian university, says the workshop also aims at imparting sex education to the youth in an ‘Islamic paradigm’.

“There is an Islamic Paradigm and the Western Paradigm (to sex education). (In Kashmir), we feel alarmed by the Western Paradigm. What we are talking here is the Islamic Paradigm. This is a platform for youth,” he says. On the choice of controversial topics, Haq says: “These things are already happening. Someone has to talk about it.”