Muslim priests at 900-yr-old Shiva temple in Kashmir

[Gabbar]

Muslim priests at 900-yr-old Shiva temple in Kashmir​

PAHALGAM (JAMMU AND KASHMIR): Situated on the banks of the icy Lidder river, a 900-year old Shiva temple is the only Hindu shrine in Kashmir valley
which has Muslim priests.

After the migration of Kashmiri Pandits from a nearby village, two Muslim priests - Mohmmad Abdullah and Ghulam Hassan kept the doors of the Mamalaka temple open and bells continued to toll.

"We not only took care of temple but also held 'aartis' everyday," Ghulam Hasan told a correspondent.

Besides ensuring the safety of the 3-feet-long black stone "shivaling", Abdullah and Hassan have ensured no devotee goes without prasad even for a single day.

Built by Raja Jai Suria, the temple was once a must stop over for pilgrims going to the Amarnath cave shrine in South Kashmir Himalayas.

The temple was for long run by a local association of Kashmir Pandits headed by Pandit Radha Krishen.

After his migration from Kashmir in 1989, the temple became a property of the state archaeology, archives and museum department and a protected monument.

While leaving, Pandit gave the charge of the temple to his friend Abdul Bhat, a Muslim, and asked him to keep the gates of the temple open. Keeping the promise, Bhat took care of the temple till his transfer from the area in 2004.

After that Mohammad Abdullah and Ghulam Hassan were entrusted with the task of maintaining the temple.

"We have faith in Lord Shiva. We not only maintained the temple, undertook repairs but also ensured that the temple remains fully functional despite threats from the militants," they said.

"We have fulfilled our task of guarding this shrine for Kashmiri Pandits. It is theirs. We wish they return and take back the control of the temple," they said.

The temple, which has images of Ganesha, Parvati and Hanuman carved in stone, also houses a natural spring.

During the last four years, the number of Hindu devotees to the temple has increased slightly, they said adding these include some visiting Kashmiri Pandit families that left the area as well as tourists.

 

[Gabbar]

Muslim priests at 900-yr-old Hindu temple in Kashmir: india​

India is a land of surprises, what else one can ask in a country where secularism is written in preamble of constitution itself. In northern most state of Jammu & Kashmir 900 year old temple is maintains by the Muslim.J&K is facing the wrath of foreign sponcered terrorim on the name of Islam.


Situated on the banks of the icy Lidder river, a 900-year old Shiva temple is the only Hindu shrine in Kashmir




valley which has Muslim priests.

After the migration of Kashmiri Pandits from a nearby village, two Muslim priests - Mohmmad Abdullah and Ghulam Hassan kept the doors of the Mamalaka temple open and bells continued to toll.

"We not only took care of temple but also held 'aartis' everyday," Ghulam Hasan told a correspondent.

Besides ensuring the safety of the 3-feet-long black stone "shivaling", Abdullah and Hassan have ensured no devotee goes without prasad even for a single day.

Built by Raja Jai Suria, the temple was once a must stop over for pilgrims going to the Amarnath cave shrine in South Kashmir Himalayas.

The temple was for long run by a local association of Kashmir Pandits headed by Pandit Radha Krishen.

After his migration from Kashmir in 1989, the temple became a property of the state archaeology, archives and museum department and a protected monument.

While leaving, Pandit gave the charge of the temple to his friend Abdul Bhat, a Muslim, and asked him to keep the gates of the temple open. Keeping the promise, Bhat took care of the temple till his transfer from the area in 2004.

After that Mohammad Abdullah and Ghulam Hassan were entrusted with the task of maintaining the temple.

"We have faith in Lord Shiva. We not only maintained the temple, undertook repairs but also ensured that the temple remains fully functional despite threats from the militants," they said.

"We have fulfilled our task of guarding this shrine for Kashmiri Pandits. It is theirs. We wish they return and take back the control of the temple," they said.

The temple, which has images of Ganesha, Parvati and Hanuman carved in stone, also houses a natural spring.

During the last four years, the number of Hindu devotees to the temple has increased slightly, they said adding these include some visiting Kashmiri Pandit families that left the area as well as tourists.

 

[Zob]

muslim PRIESTS???? interesting title why not call them MUSLIM RABAI's or MUSLIM PANDITS??

 

[gubbi]

muslim PRIESTS???? interesting title why not call them MUSLIM RABAI's or MUSLIM PANDITS??

Are you really that ignorant? Or is it sarcasm/hatred?

To the OP, I think this article had also appeared a few years back, but nice of you to post it. Says a lot about the secular fabric of our society. Despite all the efforts of those hatemonger militants, sanity still prevails!

 

[EagleEyes]

A Muslim cannot have "FAITH" in Shiva..whatever that is. Just seems to be an ignorant guy that got into the headlines.

 

[Gabbar]

^^ I guess you can debate the FAITH part but other than that it is a very nice gesture. There also examples where other people took care of Mosues after partition and they were handed back to muslims later on.

 

[Gabbar]

Are you really that ignorant? Or is it sarcasm/hatred?

To the OP, I think this article had also appeared a few years back, but nice of you to post it. Says a lot about the secular fabric of our society. Despite all the efforts of those hatemonger militants, sanity still prevails!

You are probably talking about this article.

Keeping the faith

GULMARG: Inside the sanctum sanctorum of the historic Maharani temple here, a diminutive-looking priest recites holy verses loudly. At first glance, he looks like any other Hindu priest, but in reality he is a devout Muslim. Thirty-year old Ghulam Mohammad Sheikh is the caretaker and priest of the 91-year old temple, which houses a Shiv Lingam and idol of Goddess Parvati.


Mohammad Imran / DNA
Ghulam Mohammad Sheikh, a MuslHe has been the priest of this Hindu temple for the last 14 years. Interestingly, he is well-versed in both the Gita and the Quran. He offers Namaaz regularly and also performs aarti at the temple

"When everyone left the valley, I was the only person who took care of this temple. Since then I am performing pujas regularly at this temple. And my antecedents have never been questioned. People respect me more when I tell them that I am Muslim," said Sheikh.The Maharani temple also known as Mohineshwari Shivalalaya was built by Mohini Bai Sisodhia, the wife of erstwhile ruler of Kashmir Maharaja Hari Singh, in 1915. The temple had a regular priest until the onset of militancy in the area. After the migration of the pandits, Sheikh's uncle became its priest and caretaker. Ghulam Mohammad Sheikh took over 14 years ago. Since then, he has donned the mantle of priest of this historic temple. "The temple remains open everyday from 6am to 9pm. Aarti is performed twice a day for devotees, mostly the tourists. After performing aarti, I offer namaaz," said Sheikh.

The custodians of the Maharani temple are paying him a paltry sum of Rs 1600 monthly to sustain his family. "I have no other income. But the devotees who come to know about my religion sometimes offer some money as a token of gratitude," he said.

Sheikh however, rues that the government has not done anything for him despite the fact he has kept the flame of secularism alive in tough times. "My residential quarter suffered damages during the October 8 quake. But not a single penny came my way. The pseudo secularists are being felicitated and I'm not even been recognised," he lamented.

Hindu devotees are grateful to him for setting a precedent of Hindu-Muslim unity.

"All religions preach brotherhood. God is one and he does not discriminate. It makes no difference for us who leads our prayers", said Asha Sadhu Dimri of Pune.Sheikh hasalso brought another Muslim relative to serve the temple. "We consider it our duty to serve the people no matter which religion caste or creed you belong to," said Manzoor Ahmad, a gardener at the temple.

 

[gubbi]

^^^ most probably that may be the one. I dont exactly remember.

A Muslim cannot have "FAITH" in Shiva..whatever that is. Just seems to be an ignorant guy that got into the headlines.

Do you mean Lord Shiva or faith? What a derogatory comment, that too from an admin! Sad to say, but you still have a LOT to learn my friend.

 

[josh18]

There is another thread on the same topic. Modertators please merge the threads.

 

[xebex]

Our pakistani members are having a hard time to understand the "Secularism" of India.

Catholic Church with Hindu and Buddhist Symbols

You will find the statue of Christ in padmasna posture at the Jagat Jyothi Mandir, a meditation centre constructed by the Quilon Social Service Society (QSSS), on the banks of Ashtamudi Lake at Parimanam in Kollam District, Kerala. The statue of Christ resembles Buddha. Christ and the 12 Apostles sit on the floor and are served on banana leaves in the famous last supper painting found here.

The walls of the mandir are decorated with symbols of `pancha boothas' and the four Gospels are represented as vulture (St. John), bull (St. Luke), lion (St. Mark) and angel (St. Matthew). Symbols of all religions are painted on the roof. In fact, the mandir looks like a typical Hindu temple with a 12-foot-tall stone lamp in front.


Incidentally, the Kollam diocese to which the new church belongs had adopted the Hindu symbol ‘OM’ two decades ago.

http://www.hindu-blog.com/2007/01/catholic-church-with-hindu-and-buddhist.html

 

[josh18]

A Muslim cannot have "FAITH" in Shiva..whatever that is. Just seems to be an ignorant guy that got into the headlines.

The famous Amarnath cave was descovered by a muslim shephard named Buta Malik. Bhai Mardana Ji was a muslim follower of Guru Nanak. Hindus hold that Taziya procession in Lucknow.

The point is not that these guys have FAITH in other's religion, I mean to say that we have respect for human values.

 

[shravan]

A Muslim cannot have "FAITH" in Shiva...

True. Usually Fatwa is issued against this kind of People.

 

[shravan]

The point is not that these guys have FAITH in other's religion, I mean to say that we have respect for human values.

The point is Muslims are not allowed to have Faith in others religion (Esp. Idols).

---

 

[xebex]

Ancient Christians in India

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: In southern India, in Kerala, there are millions of people known as St. Thomas Christians. Their ancestors, many believe, were converted by the Apostle Thomas in the first century. Portuguese missionaries later destroyed most of the ancient church writings, replacing them with their own. But now Benedictine monks at St. John’s Abbey in Minnesota are rediscovering the surviving texts. Fred de Sam Lazaro has a close-up view of all this. He is both our correspondent and journalist-in-residence at St. John’s University.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: St. John’s Abbey in Minnesota may be best known in the world of biblical manuscripts for its illuminated, hand-written Bible.

Reverend COLUMBA STEWART, OSB (St. John’s Abbey, Collegeville, MN, handing over manuscripts): Ethiopian manuscript, Latin manuscript.

DE SAM LAZARO: But also here, in the subterranean Hill Museum and Manuscript Library, is one of the most extensive records of sacred texts from around the world.

Reverend STEWART: This project of preserving manuscripts photographically was started out of our Benedictine tradition of being guardians of culture. The monasteries have been places where texts particularly have been treasured.

DE SAM LAZARO: Father Columba Stewart’s quest to record church history, to fill in its blanks, has taken him to the farthest trails of early Christianity — Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and, perhaps the least well-known destination, Kerala, a province in southwestern India where he recently brought a delegation of his museum’s benefactors.

Rev. STEWART: We got to India through the Middle East, and of course that’s how Christianity got to India in the first place. There’s an assumption that there were no Christians in India until the Western missionaries brought the Gospel to this land of pagans, and that’s not the truth at all.

DE SAM LAZARO: Long before it reached many parts of Europe, Christianity came across the Arabian Sea to Kerala along the thriving spice trade routes. Today about seven million people, a fifth of Kerala’s population, call themselves St. Thomas Christians after Jesus’ apostle, who many here believe arrived in India in 52 A.D. Even today, parts of some liturgies are sung in Syriac, close to the Aramaic language spoken by Christ.

Professor ISTVAN PERCZEL (Department of Medieval Studies, CEU): They claim to have been converted by St. Thomas the Apostle. This we cannot prove either or disprove. But from the, I don’t know, third, perhaps fourth century onwards we have testimony to their existence here.

DE SAM LAZARO: Professor Istvan Perczel, a Hungarian scholar of medieval Christianity, has championed the effort to document Kerala’s church history, bringing together the Minnesota monastery and local Indian scholars

Prof. PERCZEL (looking at manuscript): Hmmm. We have never seen this.

DE SAM LAZARO: He’s spent months in Kerala scouring dusty church closets for old texts and records.

Prof. PERCZEL (pointing at page in manuscript): Can we come back to digitize this?

DE SAM LAZARO: Most of these go back only as far as the beginning of colonization around the 15th century, when the first European colonists — the Portuguese — arrived to find both spices and the St. Thomas Christians who, they discovered, were a distant branch of Middle Eastern Orthodox churches

Rev. STEWART: By their lights, viewing it through the lens of the 15th- and 16th-century European perspective, these people were heretics. They were concerned that their liturgies and their other writings be purified and corrected on the basis of what a Portuguese Latin-Rite Roman Catholic would expect to be normative. So there is very, very little manuscript evidence from before the Portuguese era, because the Portuguese were very good at collecting these manuscripts that they’d already found, destroying them, and issuing corrected copies of them.

(speaking to Father Ignatius): So, Father Ignatius, this is your oldest Syriac manuscript?

Reverend IGNATIUS PAYYAPPILLY (Director, Catholic Art Museum of the Archdiocese of Ernakulam-Angamaly, India): This is the oldest Syriac manuscript which I have here in these archives. It is written in 1563.

Rev. STEWART: It’s a Syriac manuscript, but there’s a Latin note that this manuscript belonged to the Carmelites, and it’s interesting that they write it in Latin. It, again, tells you something about the religious situation.

DE SAM LAZARO: Latin or Roman Catholic were introduced or imposed on the St. Thomas Christians, though Syriac continued in use in their liturgies. But many outlawed rites survived, as did factions that resisted pledging loyalty to a Syriac patriarch instead of the pope. Scribes from Kerala were later sent to the Middle East to recover texts destroyed by the Portuguese. The only surviving copies of many are now in Kerala.

Rev. STEWART: Those are treasures, because we can find manuscripts that may have disappeared in Middle Eastern libraries, some collections of East Syrian canon law, for example, preserved in unique manuscripts in Kerala, which haven’t survived because of the later persecution of these Christians in the Middle East in the 19th and 20th centuries.

DE SAM LAZARO: The Kerala church, meanwhile, has seen schisms both between and within the Western and Eastern branches. But through it all the St. Thomas Christians have maintained a distinctly Indian — that is non-European — character.

Rev. PAYYAPILLY: We are Christians in faith, and we are Indian in citizenship, and we are Hindus in culture.

DE SAM LAZARO: Father Ignatius Payyapilly started this museum a few years ago, collecting relics and statues mostly from demolished church buildings.

Rev. PAYYAPILLY: See the halo of Jesus around his head, Jesus, and see the long ears and his hair. These are all typical resemblance of the statue of Buddha.

DE SAM LAZARO: Although the Western scholars first came in search of Syriac manuscripts, they’ve also discovered a rich local history inscribed on palm leaves and in Malayalam, the local language, and tongues that preceded it. Much of it is everyday church accounts and records. Valuable history to scholars — just clutter to most priests in the local churches

SUSAN THOMAS (Church Scholar): And most of these palm leaves were, you know, either put in somewhere where you have them exposed to termites and mice, or just put up with the logs and water wells or the waste material. Sometimes they burn it up.

DE SAM LAZARO: The palm leaves reveal a community that could serve as a model of interfaith harmony in a larger region that’s often seen sectarian violence. The churches employed Hindu scribes, for example, and bishops enjoyed warm relations with the local kings who reigned in the area

Rev. PAYYAPILLY: I have seen here in these archives a beautiful document written by the bishop — handwritten together with the printed one — requesting all the churches belonging to the Cochin Kingdom — they should celebrate the 60th birthday of the king.

DE SAM LAZARO: The king is Hindu?

Rev. PAYYAPILLY: Yes, the king is a Hindu…and they have to say special mass, solemn high mass for the longevity of this king.

DE SAM LAZARO: There’s still much to be analyzed, much to be discovered. All of it will be digitized — rescued from moisture, termites, and neglect and stored here for scholars and for posterity. There will also be back-up copies in an unlikely safe haven: a monastery in central Minnesota.

April 24, 2009 ~ Ancient Christians in India | Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly

 

[EagleEyes]

^^^ most probably that may be the one. I dont exactly remember.



Do you mean Lord Shiva or faith? What a derogatory comment, that too from an admin! Sad to say, but you still have a LOT to learn my friend.

I of course meant Shiva.. i dont consider it a lord. Thats why i said.."whatever that is" to not hurt anybody. But seems like somebody got hurt. I will still say..A Muslim cannot have "faith" in Shiva, because it is non-existent to its religion. This has nothing to do with secularism. The guy is mis-guided, ignorant, or somebody who is Half-Hindu. The later being more appropriate.