A Jordan-based Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre (RISSC), an independent research centre, has put separatist and the Valley’s head priest Mirwaiz Umar Farooq among the top 10 influential Muslim faces of the world.
Releasing the seventh annual issue of ‘The Muslim 500: The World’s 500 Most Influential Muslims’ the RISSC survey says it focused on any person who has the power, be it cultural, ideological, financial, political or otherwise, to make a change that will have a significant impact, positive or negative, on the Muslim world.
Listing the Mirwaiz in the top 10 influential faces in the political section rather than religious, the survey says he has inherited as the 14th Mirwaiz (a Kashmiri term for head priest) in 1990 at the age of 17 after the assassination of his father.
“At the young age of 20, he became chairman and founder of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, a grassroots coalition of pro-freedom parties in Jammu & Kashmir. He has raised the Kashmiri problem at the UN, the EU parliament, and the OIC while advocating dialogue with both India and Pakistan so that the aspirations of the Kashmiri people may be realized,” read the survey report.
The Mirwaiz is a lone face as Muslim political figure from India who the survey sees as an influential political figure. He figured at the number nine in the list of ‘Top-10 Muslim Leaders.’
“People who are trailblazers or the lone voice in a remote area are also taken into account,” the report said.
The top 10 personalities in the list of 500 influential Muslims included the names of King Abdullah II, Professor Dr. Sheikh Ahmad Muhammad Al-Tayyeb, the Grand Sheikh of the Al-Azhar University, King Salman bin Abdul Aziz, Ayatollah Hajj Sayyid Ali Khamenei, King Muhammed VI, Sultan Qaboos Bin Said, General Al-Sheikh Mohammed, Recep Tayyip, Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Hussein Sistani and Hajji Muhammed Abdul-Wahhab Amir of Tablighi Jamaat, Pakistan.
Pakistan’s Imran Khan and Malala Yousufzai also figure in the list of influential Muslims.
