Shameful to demand that I should be returned: Ladakh woman who married a Muslim

Shifah, formerly called Stanzin Saldon, said she had decided to become a Muslim as an outcome of her “spiritual quest” and not because she “disliked” Buddhism.

A Buddhist woman whose marriage to a Muslim man stoked communal tension in Jammu and Kashmir’s Ladakh wrote in an article for the The Indian Express on Tuesday that she ‘abhorred’ the politics being played on her personal decision.

Shifah, from Ladakh, converted to Islam in 2015 and married a Muslim man last year. (Representative image)

Shifah, formerly called Stanzin Saldon, said in the article she had decided to become a Muslim as an outcome of her “spiritual quest” and not because she “disliked her religion”. She added that she converted long before she met her husband Syed Murtaza Aga.

Shifah, 30, converted to Islam in 2015 and married Aga, an engineer, last year.

Earlier this month, the region’s apex religious body Ladakh Buddhist Association (LBA) had threatened communal unrest unless Shifah was “brought back”. LBA wrote to chief minister Mehbooba Mufti, asking for an annulment of Shifah and Mustaza’s marriage.

“It is shameful to demand that I should be returned, because nobody has taken me or stolen me. I am here and I have made my choices out of my free will,” Shifah said, adding that the portrayal of women as a “mere baby-making machine to save the community” was another reason she questioned her life choices.

Shifah had also written to CM Mehbooba Mufti on September 10. She dismissed the LBA’s claim and alleged that she was being unduly threatened, saying that choosing Islam was her spiritual choice that had little to do with her marriage.

“I am Saldon and also Shifah. I choose to be both and will always be a daughter of my family and Ladakh,” she concluded.