SRINAGAR, Nov 2, 2026: Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s marriage to journalist Nidhi Razdan has been declared unlawful under Sharia law by All India Muslim Jamaat president Maulana Mufti Shahabuddin Razvi Barelvi, setting off a religious row over the union.

Razvi’s objection is specific, and it rests on the faith’s rules on marriage. According to him, a marriage under Sharia must involve two Muslim partners. Abdullah is a Muslim. Razdan, the report says, is not, and that gap sits at the heart of the cleric’s argument. He said the nikah did not follow Islamic principles and that the union runs against Islamic law.

The condition Razvi says could have changed everything

Razvi went further than a simple objection. He said the marriage could have carried value if Razdan had embraced Islam before the nikah. Converting first and then marrying through Islamic rites would have made the union permissible, in his view. Because she did not take that step, he argued the marriage is not valid under Islamic principles, and he said he is objecting for exactly that reason.

“If Nidhi Razdan had embraced Islam before the nikah, the marriage would have had value,” Razvi said.

Islamic marriage, he said, comes with its own rules and conditions. The bride and the groom must both be Muslim. If either one is not, he said, the marriage has no legal standing under the faith. He stressed that Razdan has not adopted Islam, which is why he believes the pairing falls outside the religion’s law.

A post, a photo and a new beginning

Abdullah, for his part, has not engaged with the cleric’s statement in the reports available. On Saturday, he said a new journey had begun with Razdan and shared a photo of the two of them together on Instagram. He wrote that the new journey had started from the previous day.

The timing puts the controversy in sharper focus. The Chief Minister is not a private citizen discovering a new chapter quietly. He announced the new relationship publicly, and within days a senior religious figure answered with a formal declaration that the marriage is unlawful.

The Supreme Court and the first marriage

Abdullah’s earlier marriage has only recently been legally closed. On July 31, the Supreme Court agreed to grant a divorce to his wife, Payal, who has been living apart from him. Both of them told the court they had decided to end the marriage by mutual consent.

They also agreed to settle the disputes between them and to withdraw the cases each had filed against the other. Together, they asked the court to grant the divorce under Article 142 of the Constitution.

Abdullah and Payal married in 1994 and have two sons, Zahir and Zameer. The couple has lived separately since 2009. Abdullah made the separation public in 2011. He has now revealed that he has married Razdan, the journalist whose name has become the centre of this religious dispute.

Where the row goes from here

The cleric’s ruling comes from a religious leader, not from a court. The report presents it as his view of Islamic law, and it does not describe any legal action or formal challenge tied to the statement. What it does show is how quickly a personal life can move into the arena of religious law once a public figure makes a new marriage public.

For now, the facts are stark. A sitting Chief Minister has married again, a senior Muslim cleric has declared that marriage unlawful under Sharia, and the woman at the centre of it has not embraced Islam, according to the report. Abdullah has chosen to celebrate the new chapter in public. Razvi has chosen to call it void. Both positions are now on the record, and the reaction is only just beginning.