All Parties Hurriyat Conference’s leader Maulana Muhammad Abbas Ansari passes away in Srinagar

SRINAGAR, Oct 25 (SABAH): All Parties Hurriyat Conference leader Maulana Muhammad Abbas Ansari, 86, breathed his last on Tuesday morning in Srinagar after protracted illness.

According to media reports, Maulana Abbas Ansari breathed his last at his residence in Khankhai Sokhta Nawakadal. Popularly known as Maulvi Abbas Ansari, he was the last surviving politician of Plebiscite Front era.

An alumni of famous Najaf seminary Maulana Abbas Ansari founded Anjuman-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen after his return from decade long stay in Iraq in 1962. Maulvi Abbas spent years behind bars for his relentless struggle for rights of Kashmiri people. He was also a key figure who helped to bring social, political and religious leaders under one political front, the Muslim United Front, in 1986.

After his release from prison, he co-founded All Parties Hurriyat Conference. He led several rounds of talks with New Delhi during Atal Bihari Vajpayee era as he was a strong proponent of peaceful settlement of Kashmir dispute. However his differences with Pakistan’s approach later led to his ouster from the multiparty combine. Abbas virtually retired from active political life and was mostly engrossed in spiritual pursuits. Maulvi Abbas has penned scores of books on spiritual aspects of Islam.

Ansari, who was not keeping well for quite sometime, was the founder of Ittihadul Muslimeen, a Shia socio-religious organisation that advocated unity between Shia and Sunni Muslims in Jammu and Kashmir.

Born in 1936, Ansari, a senior Kashmiri leader, was a scholar, preacher and reformer. He was heading the separatist conglomerate Hurriyat Conference when it engaged with New Delhi for talks and the Hurriyat delegation, for the first time, met the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the then home minister L K Advani. He was also part of the Hurriyat delegation that met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during the Hurriyat-Centre dialogue.

Ansari was also a part of the group of Hurriyat leaders that visited Pakistan, using the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service, on the invitation of then Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf and a nod from New Delhi.

While Ansari did his schooling from Srinagar, he shifted to Lucknow for higher education and then to Najaf in Iran where he spent eight years. He was a scholar of authority on Islamic jurisprudence, Arabic literature, Hadith and Quranic exegesis.

The 86-year-old was a key religious leader who helped to bring social, political and religious leaders under one political front – the Muslim United Front in 1986.  When organisations working for freedom in the Kashmir valley united under the umbrella of the Hurriyat Conference, Ansari’s Ittihadul Muslimeen was one of its founding constituents. He later became its chairman.