Kashmir’s Oldest School Lost in Suspected Arson

One of the world’s oldest copies of the Koran and thousands of other rare Islamic texts were destroyed Monday in a suspected arson that destroyed Kashmir’s oldest school.

The loss of the 105-year-old Islamia Higher Secondary School and its 30,000-book library shocked many in the disputed Himalayan territory.

Hundreds of the school’s students and other people marched in protest of the blaze in Srinagar, the summer capital of India’s Jammu and Kashmir state.

The school, established in 1899, was a landmark symbol of the movement to modernize Islam, and was the region’s first religious school to offer courses in English and the sciences. The brick and wood structure, with high arched windows and ceilings of cedar logs, also had architectural value.

Some suspected that Islamic militants targeting moderate Muslim leaders had carried out the attack.

The school’s library included one of the rarest manuscripts of the Koran, handwritten by Uthman ibn Affan, the third rightly guided caliph of Islam, said Shahid-ul-Islam, party secretary of the Awami Action Committee.

The school was run by a religious and educational trust led by Mirwaiz Omar Farooq, Kashmir’s highest Islamic leader and head of the Awami Action Committee. Farooq has been targeted by suspected Islamic militants fighting for Kashmir’s independence from India or its merger with Pakistan.

Farooq is also a leader of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, a group that seeks Kashmiri independence from India through political methods, bringing accusations from militants that the movement is pro-India.

Farooq’s uncle was shot by unidentified attackers while praying in a mosque May 29, and he died a week later. Police blame Islamic insurgents.

“Those who were behind my uncle’s killing are responsible for Monday’s arson. By doing this, these people want to weaken us and our institutions,” Farooq said.

Ashraf Andrabi, a retired engineer and a former student, said tearfully: “The school was Kashmir’s first step toward modernity. It has been the alma mater of everybody who has been anybody in Kashmir.”