An all-girl rock band in Jammu and Kashmir - a first for the region - has been forced to break up after a senior cleric called the musicians un-Islamic.

He banned them in a controversy that has gripped the north-west Indian state.

The three-member group Pragaash (meaning From Darkness to Light) was also targeted in an online hate campaign.

They had won a battle of the bands talent quest in December.

Now the grand mufti of Jammu and Kashmir, Bashiruddin Ahmad, has issued a fatwa, or religious ruling, ordering the girls to break up.

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Girls' right

But the girl band has its supporters, including sections of the media and those who feel that hardline Muslim conservatives should not dictate the cultural choices of Kashmiri society.

Many in the Kashmir Valley, it seems, support the girls' right to make music.

Prabod Janwal, editor of the Kashmir Times, told Radio Australia's Asia Pacific program the clash was "one of the major stories, since it involves all the civil society, general public, citizens and everybody in the whole of Jammu and Kashmir.

"It's a major issue, which has created a sort of controversy about the role of the clerics and those who were opposed to the playing of the rock band, and their performances in Jammu and Kashmir."

Asked if the row reflected a division in society, Janwal said he believed "Jammu and Kashmir is not a highly-conservative society, it has been very open society, very progressive.

"I think women have every right to education and performances and other sorts of activities related to culture, literature and the performing arts."

But "now and then, clerics have been acting on their own, or trying to enforce their own sort of Islamic fundamentals on the whole of the society."

The editor said that in the early 1990s, when women's education was targeted by some clerics, they (the clerics) were isolated by the entire society, people refused to listen to their dictates and the fatwas issued by them were also flouted.

"And in fact they were opposed by society as a whole."

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Posted abuse

He said the current problem started a month ago after some people "posted abuses" and objected to the performances of the all-girl rock band.

Before that, "when they were playing, they were open, they were holding their performances, nobody noticed it and nobody opposed it.

"People were very encouraging for the entire rock band group."

Janwa said the state government had been reluctant to stand up to the mufti.

"When the whole of the society is opposed to the utterances of the cleric, why should the government remain silent?" he asked

The music follows the local tradition of Sufi-ana, related to the Sufi heritage, "which have been considered by some of the fundamentalist Islamic clerics as un-Islamic," he said.

"But they (the Sufi singers) go ahead with it, society is with them, society listens to them, society follows them. And then, Sufis are always revered by the society."