Since 9/11, Muslims have been routinely dehumanised and demonised. Systemic and institutionalised anti-Muslim racism has targeted Muslims all over the world, especially in the West. Using fear of terrorsim, governments have undermined fundamental human rights and civil liberties of their Muslim citizens. And the well-oiled pseudo-expert Islamophobia industry has fostered stigmatisation of all Muslims, and promoted Islam as a source of universal “terror”.

Kashmiris indigenous struggle for self-determination predates the partition of India in 1947. Except for a short period of armed resistance in the early 1990s, the movement has been primarily non-violent. The response to Kashmiri resistance, however, has always been violent. India portrays the Kashmiri struggle for self-determination as a fanatical religious movement, a jihad against India – an image that helps project Kashmir as an issue of “terrorism”.

In my own research on Muslim youth resistance in Kashmir, while some youth invoked religion as a reason for fighting against oppression, there was no evidence they considered their struggle as a religious one. At the same time, the youth did predict that if the Indian government continued to suppress non-violent resistance, some may once again be inclined to pick up arms. That change became evident in 2016 when reports surfaced of some young men resorting to armed struggle.

The government of India recently estimated there are 200 militants active in Kashmir. Inspite of such a small number of suspected militants, the recent reinforcement of tens of thousands of additional forces in the world’s most militarised region was once again justified in terms of curbing terrorism. In reality, as we know now, the military build up was merely to impose and manage unilateral changes to the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir without the will of the people.

The scale of death and destruction in Kashmir in the last 30 years is hard for some to fathom. To date, close to an estimated 100,000 Kashmiris have been killed, thousands disappeared, 10,000s injured and maimed, and 1,000s tortured. Women and children have been victims of the violence, including sexual violence.