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Iran Seeks to Win Over Shia Muslims in Indian-Controlled Kashmir
(Ha'aretz) Abhinav Pandya - Tehran is targeting the hearts and minds of 1.4 million Shia Muslims who make up 15% of the population in Indian-controlled Kashmir. Despite a history of Shia-Sunni friction, the Sunnis in Kashmir mostly followed a locally-rooted Sufi form of Islam, known as Kashmiriyat, that was particularly amenable to coexistence with diverse faiths and sects within Islam. Traditionally, Kashmir's Shias have been pro-India, but this has begun to change as the younger generation of Shias are far more vulnerable to Iranian indoctrination. It's easy to observe the rapid rise in Iranian influence over Shias in Kashmir. In a series of recent visits, I saw plenty of billboards celebrating Ayatollah Khomeini and there is a burgeoning following that venerates him. Mohsen Hojaji, the iconic Iranian Revolutionary Guards officer beheaded by ISIS, also drew a huge following among Kashmir's Shias. Streets in Shia areas are named after the Shia martyrs of the Iran-Iraq war. Every year a significant number of Kashmiri Shia scholars visit seminaries in Iran and Iraq to study Shia Islam in its heartland. Shia congregational halls, religious processions, demonstrations, conventions and rallies feature posters of Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary general of Hizbullah. A progressive scholar from the Shia community told me that an overwhelming majority of the community has adopted Khamenei's geopolitical outlook, which classifies the world into the oppressors, that traditionally included the U.S., UK, Israel and the West in general, and the oppressed, also known as the "axis of resistance."