Srinagar, India - Kashmir's top Islamic clerics asked the Indian government Thursday to stop the army from renovating mosques and shrines in the region as part of a goodwill campaign, calling the intervention un-Islamic.
The army has funded the repair and renovation of nearly two dozen mosques and shrines in the insurgency-wracked Indian portion of Kashmir under a campaign which officials say is aimed at winning the "hearts and minds" of the region's people.
But Mirwaiz Omar Farooq, the chief cleric in the Himayan region, said the campaign was "a blatant interference in religious affairs of Kashmir."
Farooq also heads the moderate faction of All Parties Hurriyat Conference, an alliance of two dozen political and religious groups, which has long wanted Kashmir to be independent of India's rule.
Farooq said he has written to the Indian president, who is the supreme commander of the armed forces, and the prime minister to stop the campaign.
"They should issue strict orders to the Indian army that they should not indulge into issues of religion," Farooq said after nearly 200 Muslim clerics met Thursday in Srinagar, the summer capital of India's Jammu-Kashmir state, to discuss the issue.
Farooq said the renovation was part of a conspiracy aimed at diluting the Kashmiri culture and religion.
"We will not tolerate this. The army is the biggest enemy of Kashmiris and they can never become our friends, neither can they win our hearts by expressing false sympathies with us," he said.
Mufti Mohammad Bashir-ud-din, head of Kashmir's Islamic court, has already issued a "fatwa" or religious decree against accepting money or help from the Indian Army in rebuilding mosques and shrines.
"The 'Shariat' (Islamic) law does not allow any person or persons other than the Muslims to do such an act (renovating or building mosques)."
According to Islamic jurisprudence, Mufti has an authority to issue legal opinions and decrees on interpretations of Islamic law.
However, Lt. Col. A. K. Mathur, the Indian Army's spokesman in Srinagar said that they only offer help for renovation of religious places at the request of local people.
"If the people don't want our help, there is no force from our side," Mathur said.
Anti-India sentiment runs deep in Kashmir, India's only Muslim majority state, where most people favor independence from mainly Hindu India, or a merger with Muslim Pakistan.
India has an estimated 700,000 soldiers in Kashmir, fighting nearly a dozen rebel groups since 1989. In many areas, the region has the feel of an occupied country, with soldiers in full combat gear patrolling streets and frisking civilians.