The attacks, reported by The Indian Express, took place under Chandrakona police station limits on October 18, 19 and 20, amid allegations that the families had faced sustained harassment for embracing Christianity. The assailants allegedly threatened to kill them, burn their homes and force them to renounce their faith. Despite the families approaching the police, the intimidation continued for three days before a formal First Information Report (FIR) was registered on October 20.

Thirteen people have been named in the FIR. As reported by The Indian Express on October 23, no arrests had been made at the time of publication, although police personnel had been deployed near the families’ homes.

Women assaulted, clothes torn; families threatened over their faith

Lakshmi Mondal, one of the victims, told The Wire that the harassment intensified on October 16, when a group allegedly threatened the Christian families with consequences unless they abandoned their religion. Two days later, the threats escalated into physical violence.

Recounting the assault, Lakshmi said she was struck below her ear by Ranjit Dolui and lost consciousness. When she partially regained consciousness, she could feel people removing her sari and tearing her blouse. She subsequently learnt that Dolui, Pocha Patra and Bapi Mondal had allegedly stripped and assaulted her.

The attackers allegedly splashed water on her face to revive her before pouring water over her body in front of onlookers, chanting “Jai Shri Ram” and declaring that she had been purified. Lakshmi said she was left lying on the floor of her home in that condition. The group also allegedly took away a Bible kept in the house.

The violence was accompanied by explicit threats against her family. According to Lakshmi’s account to The Wire, the assailants threatened to rape her Class X daughter and burn the family alive if they refused to abandon Christianity and return to Hinduism. The group allegedly attacked the homes of two other Christian families, including that of Saraswati Mondal and her husband, Ashok Mondal. Saraswati’s 15-year-old daughter was allegedly subjected to an attempt to strangle her, according to the family.

The account provided by a 40-year-old victim to The Indian Express corroborated the allegations of assault and forced religious purification. She said that on October 18, a group dragged her and her husband out of their home, beat them and tore her clothes before making her consume Tulsi and Bel leaves and pouring water over her as a purification ritual.

The allegations point to more than physical violence. The victims describe being publicly humiliated and subjected to rituals intended to undermine their religious identity, in an apparent attempt to force them to abandon a faith they say they had adopted voluntarily.

Forced to offer anjali at Durga Puja pandal

The attacks allegedly continued on October 19, when members of the group forced the families to participate in Hindu religious rituals. Lakshmi told The Wire that Madan Manna and Bappaditya Chatterjee, who were allegedly part of the previous day’s assault, took her and her husband, Tapan Mondal, along with Saraswati and her husband, Gopal Mondal, to a Durga Puja pandal in Dangal.

“They took us there against our will and forced us to offer anjali,” she alleged.

The families said they were made to participate in the ritual in front of others despite having been assaulted the previous day. The incident, as described by the victims, illustrates how religious rituals were allegedly used as instruments of coercion rather than voluntary expressions of faith.

On October 20, the intimidation allegedly continued. Lakshmi said that Manna and his associates took the men of the affected families to an isolated location and threatened to kill them if they did not renounce their belief in Jesus Christ. According to the complaint, the accused also abused and threatened Lakshmi and other family members and confined her inside her house. The families said they were too frightened to leave their homes and sent three minor girls to stay with relatives for their safety. Lakshmi eventually approached the police station again and lodged a formal complaint naming 13 people. The families said a police picket was deployed only after the FIR was registered.

Harassment allegedly began last year

The families told The Wire that the hostility did not begin with the October attacks. According to their account, Lakshmi’s husband, Tapan, his brother Gopal and another villager had embraced Christianity several years ago. Other residents of neighbouring villages had also converted. Lakshmi maintained that the decision was voluntary and rooted in their religious beliefs. She said the families continued to respect other religions and had been practising Christianity peacefully inside their homes.

However, she alleged that her relatives, Asit, Arun, Barun and Tarun Mondal, began harassing the family during Durga Puja last year, questioning their decision to convert. The family said they had submitted a written complaint to Chandrakona police station at the time. Although the police visited the village, they alleged that no effective action was taken against those accused of harassment.

The families said the intimidation later intensified, particularly after the change of government in West Bengal in May. According to Lakshmi, the attackers allegedly invoked the arrival of a new government and claimed that the Bajrang Dal would ensure that the families abandoned Christianity. Several witnesses who spoke to The Wire reportedly corroborated aspects of the victims’ account. 

Police security offered, but families remain afraid

Patlapur, located around 15 kilometres from Chandrakona town, is home to approximately 150 families belonging to different social and religious communities. Agriculture and the manufacture of copper ornaments are among the principal sources of livelihood in the area. Local primary school teacher Soumitra Gharui told The Wire that the village had not witnessed caste-related disputes or violence of this nature for decades. Residents alleged that efforts to disturb the area’s social harmony had begun around a year ago.

The families said the three days of violence had left them traumatised. Lakshmi also expressed concern for her elderly father-in-law, Krishnapada Mondal, who has reportedly been living with paralysis for several years and witnessed the harassment of the family. Speaking to The Indian Express, one of the victims said that four police personnel had been stationed outside their homes. While welcoming the security, she expressed fear that the protection might not last.

“We are happy the police helped us. But threat calls are coming. One day the police will leave. What will we do then?” she said. She added that she wanted only to live peacefully in her own home.

On October 21, Paschim Medinipur Superintendent of Police Papiya Sultana told The Wire that an FIR had been registered and that the police would provide security to the families and investigate the incident. Speaking to The Indian Express, Sultana said a police picket had been deployed because the families felt insecure and that the police were taking steps to prevent further incidents. An advocate who assisted the victims told The Indian Express that the FIR was registered after he visited the police station on October 20, but the accused had not been arrested.

For the families, the immediate concern remains their safety. They have alleged that they were threatened, assaulted and pressured to abandon their faith despite seeking police intervention. While a police picket has been established, the absence of reported arrests has added to their apprehension.

Related:

Dalit Class XI student dies by suicide after alleged casteist harassment in Coimbatore

CJP helps secure Ajabha Khatun’s release after 772 days in Assam’s Matia detention camp

Six police personnel suspended after custodial death of Dilshad Ansari in Bihar

‘Free the Temple’, ‘Defend the Faith’, ‘Take Up Weapons’: How festivals became vehicles for anti-Muslim hate in September

Six Days, One Unanswered Question: What happened to Shaheen and Nafisa Khan at Saket Police Station?

The post Christian families assaulted, humiliated and forced into Durga Puja rituals in West Bengal village appeared first on SabrangIndia.

For Ajabha and her family, her release marked the end of an agonising wait. For CJP’s Assam team, it was a deeply significant milestone in 2026. But the relief was accompanied by a painful reminder of the many people who remain trapped in detention, separated from their families, their health deteriorating and their futures uncertain. Her freedom is also a reminder of what timely legal assistance can mean to someone who has been left without the resources to fight alone.

From a forgotten case to a sustained legal fight

On September 2, 2024, twenty-eight Bengali-speaking Muslims from Barpeta district were taken into custody and placed in a detention camp. When the CJP team met their families, it learnt that Ajabha’s family had not approached the Gauhati High Court on her behalf. The family was extremely marginalised and lacked the means to pursue the legal remedies available to her. At the family’s request, CJP took up Ajabha’s case, providing legal and paralegal assistance and helping bring her plight before the Gauhati High Court.

Detailed story may be read here.

On March 3, 2025, the Gauhati High Court stayed her deportation and sought the Foreigners Tribunal records to review the order declaring her a foreigner. The legal challenge, however, remained pending, and Ajabha continued to be held at Matia.

Detailed piece may be read here.

The High Court proceedings were crucial, but the immediate reality remained stark: an unwell woman was still confined in a detention camp, separated from her family, with no certainty about when she would return home. Without timely legal intervention, Ajabha could have remained without effective recourse to challenge her situation, while the threat of deportation continued to hang over her.

CJP’s work did not end with bringing her case before the Court. The team continued to stand by Ajabha and her family, pursuing every available avenue to secure her release while her substantive legal battle remained unresolved.

Two years in detention. A new effort to bring her home.

On September 1, 2026, Ajabha completed two years in the Matia Transit Camp. Her illness and prolonged confinement made the urgency of securing her release all the more pressing. Although her case was still pending before the Gauhati High Court, CJP’s Assam team began exploring additional avenues for her release on the grounds of her two years in detention and her deteriorating health. The effort drew upon the Supreme Court’s and Gauhati High Court’s suo-motu proceedings concerning detention during and around the COVID-19 period.

From August onwards, the team intensified its efforts. Alongside its continuing legal work, it counselled family members, visited the detention camp, documented her circumstances and initiated the administrative process required to secure her release. CJP Assam State In-charge Nanda Ghosh and legal team member Abhijeet Choudhury contacted the relevant authorities and submitted an application through Ajabha’s son. The work that followed was painstaking and often bureaucratic: identifying suitable bailors, verifying their documents and preparing the necessary applications, affidavits and supporting papers for submission to the District Border Police Office.

By October, Ajabha had spent more than two years and one month in detention. After the documents were submitted to the District Border Branch, officials informed the team that they would be forwarded to Guwahati and that the remaining process would depend on a favourable response. A few days later, the team received word that the processing in Guwahati had been completed and that the next steps could begin.

The team continued to follow up with the authorities through the following week. On October 11, the process was finalised for Ajabha’s release on conditional bail. On October 12, the Border Branch informally indicated that transportation difficulties could delay her release, but that an alternative arrangement might make it possible for her to leave the following day. CJP immediately coordinated with the Border Police and Ajabha’s family to ensure that the arrangements could be made. After more than two years of waiting, October 13 would finally bring her home.

October 13: The long journey back to freedom

CJP Team Assam with Ajabha Khatun after being released

The day began before dawn. At 3:40 a.m., Nanda Ghosh, on behalf of CJP’s Assam team, and office driver Ashikul Hussain set out for Barpeta. The journey involved multiple stops: the Border Branch police quarters, the local police station and Ajabha’s home, where family members had to be brought together with the police for the journey to the Matia Transit Camp in Goalpara. They reached Matia at around 9:30 a.m. After completing the required formalities, the team accompanied Ajabha out of the camp and began the return journey to Barpeta.

By around 1:30 p.m., after hours on the road without food, Ajabha, the CJP team and the three police personnel accompanying them stopped to eat. It was a small, ordinary moment, but one that underscored how much had gone into making this day possible. The journey continued to the Barpeta District Border Branch at the Superintendent of Police’s office, where Abhijeet Choudhury had already begun the necessary work. CJP’s Barpeta District DVM, Jafar Ali, and the two bailors were also present.

Once the team arrived, the remaining formalities involving Ajabha and the bailors were completed, and the Border Police handed her over to the bailors. There was one more official requirement. The team accompanied Ajabha, the two bailors and a family member to Barpeta Sadar Police Station, where she is required to report once a week under the conditions of her release. Only after all these formalities were completed could the team finally take Ajabha home.

“The suffering there is indescribable. Only those who have been there know that pain.”

As soon as Ajabha got into the car, the weight of her long ordeal began to surface. Overcome with emotion, she struggled to find words to express her gratitude to the CJP team. “Baba, may God bless you all!” she said.

Then, speaking about her time in detention, she described the suffering she had endured. “What can I say about the suffering in that detention camp? It is a hell. The suffering there is indescribable. Only those who have been there know that pain!”

But even in that moment of relief, Ajabha was thinking of someone she had left behind. She told the team about Sehera, a visually impaired woman from Barpeta district who remains in the detention camp. Ajabha had cared for her during their time together, bringing her food, washing her clothes and plate, and making her bed.

“Baba, there is a blind woman there who cannot see. She suffers a lot. I used to bring her food, wash her clothes, wash her plate and make her bed. Her name is Sehera. She is from Barpeta district itself, but I don’t know exactly where. I only know her name. Can you please get her released, Baba?”

Ajabha recalled that as she was leaving, Sehera had hugged her and wept. She had asked Ajabha to appeal to the people who had helped secure her release to do the same for her. When I was leaving, she hugged me and cried a lot. She told me to request those who got me released to get her released too. Please get her out of that detention camp just like me. Allah will surely bless you,” Ajabha pleaded.

The request was heartbreaking. After 772 days of confinement, after enduring illness, separation and the uncertainty of her own future, Ajabha’s first concern was for another woman still inside. The CJP team knew Sehera only by name. They assured Ajabha that they would make every effort to trace her and explore the legal avenues available to help secure her release, while acknowledging that they could not guarantee the outcome. Ajabha had finally found her way out. Yet, even as she returned to freedom, she carried with her the anguish of someone who had not.

A village waits. A family welcomes her home.

 

As the sun began to set, the CJP team reached Koetkuchi village with Ajabha. Word of her return had drawn almost the entire village to her home. The moment the car arrived, people rushed forward. Tears, cries and overwhelming emotion filled the scene. After such a long separation, the sight of Ajabha returning home proved almost too much to bear. She fainted several times amid the emotional upheaval.

The team finally handed her over to her family, urging them to take particular care of her physical and mental well-being over the coming days after her prolonged confinement and the strain of the journey. Ajabha’s son, Buddu, works as a migrant labourer in the coal mines of Meghalaya. Unable to be present throughout the release process, he called the team by telephone and expressed his heartfelt gratitude to CJP for helping bring his mother home.

For a family that had spent months grappling with uncertainty and helplessness, her return offered a moment of immense relief. Yet Ajabha knows that her release is conditional and that her case before the Gauhati High Court remains unresolved. Before the team departed, she folded her hands and made one final plea. “I pray that my case ends permanently, Baba, as soon as possible, so that I never have to go to the camp again!”She prayed to Allah for the CJP team.

It was around 9 p.m. when the team finally began its journey home. The day had been long, physically exhausting and emotionally overwhelming. For months, the distress of Ajabha’s family had weighed heavily on the team as it worked to find a way to bring her home. That night, there was finally some relief.

It was not the end of the legal battle. It was not yet the permanent resolution Ajabha desperately wants. But it was a moment when sustained legal work, careful documentation, administrative follow-up and the determination to stand by a marginalised family had helped make a tangible difference.

The fight is not over

Ajabha Khatun’s release is an important milestone for CJP’s Assam team in 2026. It demonstrates the importance of legal assistance that does not stop at filing a petition, but continues through the practical, often exhausting work required to secure relief for a person who may otherwise struggle to navigate the system alone.

Her case also brings into focus the human consequences of prolonged detention for people declared foreigners, particularly those who are ill, economically marginalised and separated from their families while legal proceedings remain pending.

For Ajabha, freedom has meant returning to her village, embracing her family and sleeping once again under the open sky. But her relief remains shadowed by the knowledge that Sehera and others continue to endure detention.

As CJP’s team celebrates Ajabha’s return, it also carries forward the responsibility her plea has placed before it: to try to trace Sehera, explore the available legal remedies and continue working towards relief for those still confined.

After 772 days, Ajabha is home. Her legal case must still reach its conclusion, and the conditions of her release must be respected. For now, a family has its mother back, a village has welcomed one of its own, and a woman who endured the suffering of detention has found the strength to speak for someone still inside. Her freedom is a milestone. Her plea for Sehera is a reminder of the work that remains.

Related:

CJP Win! Gauhati HC stays deportation of Ajabha Khatun, will address bail demand on April 4

Ajabha Khatun, among the 63 facing detention in Assam, seeks Supreme Court intervention, emphasis on pending legal remedies

From Detention to Deportation: The mass deportations and detention crisis at Assam’s Matia centre

How the Rajubala case in the Supreme Court, its genesis and context has now become the ground for ‘state expulsion”

Declared Foreigner, buried Indian: The tragic death of Abdul Matleb in Assam’s detention camp

The post After 772 Days in Detention, Ajabha Khatun Returns Home: CJP helps secure her release appeared first on SabrangIndia.

I don’t remember when I started praying and keeping my Rozas ( the fast during Ramzan). Every child starts aping their parents and I guess I used to do the same. During Ramzan as kids we had the half ticket concept, either fast for half a day “aadhe din ka roza” or the more popular was “aadhe mooh ka roza”: we were allowed to eat using one side of the mouth. The right side of the mouth was the favorite side to chew among us, kids.

We lived in a joint family and there were siblings and cousins of similar ages.

Even our pet parrot Mitthu used to ape the rituals of the home, he was taught to say “Nabiji Rozi bhejo” (Prophet Ji send us bounty). Often, we got confused on whether it was “Dada Abba” (Grandfather) praying or our Mitthu, he used to make gibberish-like sounds which resembled, in sound, the tilawat (Quran recital). Many a time we got up in the night wondering what was wrong with Dada Abba, why is he praying so loud at this hour, and found Mitthu happily busy with his tilawat.

We lived in the Rourkela Steel City. In Odisha, it was very cosmopolitan with neighbours from all over India. Many of my non-Muslim neighbors used to join us during Iftar (breaking the fast during Ramzan) and similarly we used join in the feasts after their Pooja(s) and Havan(s) (Hindu prayers).

I remember my first Roza, a serious Roza of not eating the entire day, it was one of the biggest achievements of my life; I wanted to prove that even I was grown up, I could achieve this; I was about 6 years old.

My mom dissuaded me initially saying it is not a compulsory ritual for children, but I did not think I was a child and insisted on keeping the Roza. Getting up during Sehri was an adventure, the most exciting part of keeping Roza, (Sehri was at about 4am in the morning) and the excitement lay in eating the last meal before fasting.

There was a Durga Pooja Pandal near our house, and those days the artisans used to make large installations of the Durga goddess on the site itself. Their work used to begin 2-3 months in advance. I was completely fascinated by the making of those elaborate Durga Pooja installations. Sometimes I used to spend entire day admiring the process and Amma (Mom) used send someone to call me for lunch.

When I insisted on keeping my first Roza, Amma knew I would not feel hungry if I was at the Pandal; so she asked my elder brother to drop me off at the Pandal in the morning. There I spent the entire day, at the Durga Pooja Pandal, chatting with the artisans, playing with their clay. Amma was right, I did not feel thirsty or hungry, did not even realize it was my first Roza, it was almost evening when my brother came to call me home, for Iftar.

After 40 years of my first Roza, when I look around at our mohallas and cities, society at large, I see a huge difference. Practising the faith was easy and relaxed, there was little conflict, parents had no problem sending Muslim children to play at the Pooja Pandal, non-Muslims never had any issue with Muslim festivals. There was no television and no religious preachers entered our lives. Our faiths and religious sentiments were not so fragile that we needed religious fatwas.

With the increasing influence of Arabian practices on Indian Islam, (an Arabisation, a sort of purification of Islam started taking place) and many Indian practices have started changing. “Khuda Hafiz” has become “Allah Hafiz” because Khuda is a Persian word. Ramzan is becoming Ramadan, because in Arabic it is pronounced with a “d”, not a “z”. And visiting Durga Pooja Pandal has become Shirk (the sin of practicing idolatry or polytheism).

I see similar changes in Hindu society, where people are going back to the so called “Vedic Era” and becoming more intolerant towards each other.

Ramzan Mubarak,
Khuda Hafiz.

The post My First Roza was in a Durga Pooja Pandal: Amir Rizvi appeared first on SabrangIndia.

·         Muslim thinkers have often interpreted the West through Islamic ideals and secondary sources instead of studying Western civilization on its own terms.

·         The ideas of Shariati, Mawdudi, Qutb, and Nadwi provide important critiques of Western materialism, imperialism, and secularism, but remain largely reactive in their approach.

·         A balanced comparison must distinguish between Western ideals and practices, as well as Islamic ideals and the actual practices of Muslim societies.

·         Madrasas and Islamic universities should introduce specialized Western studies based on primary sources, including Western history, philosophy, political theory, and social institutions.

·         Genuine understanding of the West is essential for addressing modernity, migration, Islamophobia, democracy, liberty, feminism, and global political and economic challenges

Muslims have long struggled to understand the West, often relying on secondary sources and comparing Western practices with Islamic ideals rather than engaging with Western realities on their own terms. This fundamental methodological error has produced a distorted picture of Western civilization, fostering false notions of Islamic superiority while leaving Muslim societies ill-equipped to navigate the complexities of modernity, migration, Islamophobia, and ideological contestation. The path forward requires a radical reorientation: understanding the West from its own sources, recognizing its internal contradictions and achievements, and building specialized knowledge institutions, particularly in madrasas and Islamic universities, that can produce genuine comprehension rather than reactive polemic.

Westoxification and the Legacy of Shariati

The Iranian philosopher Ali Shariati coined the term “Westoxification” (Gharbzadegi) to describe a civilizational malaise afflicting Muslim societies, an intoxication with Western materialism, technology, and values that erodes Islamic identity and revolutionary potential. Shariati argued that Western-dominated modernization serves the market interests of European industrialists, converting non-Europeans into consumers of surplus production while blunting their resistance to imperialist domination. For Shariati, this was not merely cultural imitation but a deeper spiritual and political poisoning, the westernized Iranian generation abandoned religion as useless for resolving contemporary problems, accepting West-constructed values that declared Islam irrelevant to modern challenges.

Shariati’s critique extended beyond governments to Western intellectuals themselves, positioning Westoxification as a degenerative but ultimately rational disease with identifiable causes, symptoms, and potential cures. He distinguished between “Red Shi’ism” (revolutionary, populist, aligned with the oppressed) and “Black Shi’ism” (clericalized, state-sanctioned distortion), attempting to reformulate Islam as an ideology of liberation for the mustadh’afin (the dispossessed). Yet even Shariati’s sophisticated analysis remained partly reactive, framing Islam primarily in opposition to Western capitalism and imperialism rather than developing an independent epistemology for understanding Western civilization from within.

Mawdudi, Qutb, and Nadwi: Three Visions of the West

The twentieth-century Islamic thinkers Sayyid Abul A’la Mawdudi, Sayyid Qutb, and Syed Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi, each developed distinct approaches to understanding the West, yet all shared a tendency to interpret Western civilization through Islamic categories rather than engaging Western sources directly. Mawdudi’s political thought derived from Qur’anic interpretation provided an alternative to Western ideologies, but his framework treated Western concepts as responses to be countered rather than systems to be comprehended on their own terms. Qutb radicalized this approach, presenting the confrontation with Islam as motivated by an overriding objective to destroy Islamic doctrine.

Nadwi offered a more nuanced position, criticizing blind imitation and servility to Western civilization while advocating critical appraisal rather than complete severance from Western achievements. He identified the West’s nineteenth-century dominance as stemming from superior knowledge and education, not inherent civilizational superiority, and emphasized spirituality and morality in Islam as contrasts to Western materialism. Nadwi drew fault lines in Western philosophy by highlighting its dependence on the material while pushing spiritual and moral development behind, characterizing the modern world by imperialism, capitalism, and communism exported to the Third World. Yet even Nadwi, who cannot be accused of Westophobia and stood for proper understanding and appreciation of the West, ultimately framed his analysis within Islamic categories of knowledge rather than developing a methodology for reading Western thought from primary sources.

The Methodological Error: Comparing Practices with Ideals

The fundamental error in Muslim reformist and revivalist thought lies in comparing Western peoples’ practices with Islamic ideals, creating an illusion of Islamic superiority while obscuring the gap between Islamic ideals and Muslim masses’ actual practices. This methodological flaw produced what scholars have called a “wrong superiority” belief: reformists measured Western reality against Islamic perfection while measuring Islamic reality against Western imperfection, generating a distorted comparative framework. A proper approach would compare Western practices with Muslim practices of the masses, and Western ideals with Islamic ideals, revealing both civilizations’ gaps between aspiration and reality.

This error had profound consequences. By not understanding the West from its own sources, Muslim thinkers failed to grasp the internal dynamics of Western thought, the historical development of concepts like democracy and liberty, and the genuine achievements of Western science and philosophy. Instead, they produced reactive critiques that, while often insightful about Western materialism and imperialism, remained trapped within an Islamic epistemological framework that could not genuinely comprehend Occidental civilization. The result was a body of thought that could diagnose Westoxification but could not produce the specialized knowledge needed to navigate Western modernity strategically.

The West as Enigma: Why Understanding Matters

The West remains an enigma to many Muslims precisely because it has been understood through secondary sources, polemical frameworks, and reactive critiques rather than direct engagement with Western texts, institutions, and intellectual traditions. This ignorance has practical consequences: Muslim societies cannot effectively respond to Western foreign policy, cannot navigate migration and integration challenges, cannot counter Islamophobia with sophisticated arguments, and cannot build institutions that produce genuine knowledge about Occidental civilization. The West is not merely an enemy or a source of toxins; it is a complex civilization with internal contradictions, genuine achievements, and historical developments that must be understood on their own terms.

Understanding the West matters for strategic reasons. Muslim societies face Western military power, economic dominance, and cultural influence, without comprehension of Western motivations, decision-making processes, and ideological foundations, Muslim responses remain reactive and often counterproductive. Migration has brought millions of Muslims to Western countries, creating diaspora communities that must navigate Western legal systems, political institutions, and social norms, ignorance of these systems produces marginalization and vulnerability to Islamophobia. Furthermore, Western concepts like democracy, feminism, and liberty have global influence, Muslims must understand these ideologies in their historical context to engage them critically rather than simply rejecting or uncritically adopting them.

Oriental and Occidental: Different Trajectories of Religion and Science

A crucial dimension of understanding the West involves recognizing the different historical trajectories of religion in Oriental (Islamic) and Occidental (Western) civilizations, particularly regarding the relationship between religion and science. In the West, religion experienced retrogradation, decline and marginalization, partly because it was perceived as hampering scientific progress, leading to the Enlightenment’s secularization of knowledge and the separation of religious ethics from secular power. This historical development produced a Western civilization where religion has been pushed to the periphery, resulting in what Nadwi called moral degeneration and spiritual malaise, but also enabling scientific and technological advances that gave the West global dominance.

In the Muslim world, by contrast, religion maintained a more central role in intellectual and social life, with madrasas and Islamic universities preserving religious knowledge while often failing to develop specialized knowledge about Western civilization. This difference has profound implications: Western secularization enabled certain forms of scientific progress but produced spiritual crisis, while Islamic retention of religious centrality preserved spiritual continuity but often at the cost of scientific and institutional development needed to compete with Western power. Understanding this divergence is essential for Muslims seeking to navigate modernity: neither simple Westernization nor reactive Islamization offers a viable path; instead, Muslims must develop institutions that can produce both religious knowledge and sophisticated understanding of Western civilization.

Madrasas and the Missing Specialization

Madrasas, the traditional Islamic educational institutions, have failed to teach specialized knowledge about the West, focusing instead on Islamic sciences while leaving students ignorant of Western thought, history, and institutions. This gap is particularly striking given that madrasas could have developed specialized departments for Western studies, producing scholars who understand the Occident from primary sources rather than through reactive polemics. Instead, madrasa curricula often reproduce the methodological error of comparing Western practices with Islamic ideals, generating graduates who can critique the West from an Islamic standpoint but cannot genuinely comprehend it on its own terms.

The consequences of this educational gap are severe. Muslim societies lack the specialized knowledge needed to navigate Western diplomatic institutions, understand Western legal systems, engage Western media, or counter Islamophobia with sophisticated arguments based on genuine comprehension rather than reactive defensiveness. Furthermore, madrasas have not produced the intellectual infrastructure needed to understand Western ideologies like feminism, democracy, and liberty in their historical context, leaving Muslim societies vulnerable to both uncritical adoption and blanket rejection of these concepts. Reforming madrasa education to include specialized Western studies, taught from primary sources, with methodological rigor, and without reactive polemic, would be a crucial step toward producing a generation capable of genuine understanding rather than Westoxified imitation or Westophobic rejection.

Understanding Western Freedoms and Ideologies in Context

Western concepts like feminism, democracy, freedom, and liberty must be understood in their historical and philosophical context, recognizing both their achievements and their limitations. These ideologies emerged from specific historical circumstances: the Enlightenment’s reaction against religious authority, the French Revolution’s overthrow of monarchy, the industrial revolution’s transformation of social relations, and the Cold War’s ideological contestation with communism. Understanding this context reveals that Western freedoms are not universal truths but historically contingent developments with both emancipatory and oppressive dimensions.

The Muslim world lacks the ecosystem that produced these ideologies: no Enlightenment, no industrial revolution, no bourgeois revolution, no Cold War ideological contestation. This absence means that importing Western concepts without understanding their historical genesis produces distorted outcomes: democracy becomes majoritarian tyranny without liberal protections, feminism becomes Western cultural imperialism without genuine gender justice, and liberty becomes license without moral responsibility. Muslims must understand these ideologies in their Western context to engage them critically: recognizing their genuine achievements (individual rights, rule of law, scientific progress) while identifying their limitations (materialism, spiritual crisis, imperialist deployment).

This understanding requires reading Western sources directly: Enlightenment philosophers, liberal political theorists, feminist thinkers, and democratic theorists must be studied in their own words, not through Islamic critiques or secondary summaries. Only through such direct engagement can Muslims develop the intellectual resources to engage Western ideologies strategically: adopting what serves Islamic values, rejecting what contradicts them, and transforming what can be Islamized. Without this comprehension, Muslim societies remain trapped between Westoxified imitation and Westophobic rejection, unable to navigate the complexities of modernity with intellectual independence.

Migration and Islamophobia: The Urgency of Understanding

Migration has brought millions of Muslims to Western countries, creating diaspora communities that must navigate Western legal systems, political institutions, and social norms while facing rising Islamophobia. This Islamophobia is not merely prejudice but a structured phenomenon with historical roots in Western Orientalism, colonial representations of Islam, and contemporary geopolitical conflicts. Understanding Islamophobia requires comprehending Western historical constructions of Islam, the role of media in reproducing stereotypes, and the political economy of xenophobia in post-industrial Western societies.

Muslim communities in the West face practical challenges that require sophisticated understanding of Western institutions: legal systems that protect religious freedom but also enforce secular norms, political institutions that offer representation but also reproduce structural discrimination, and social norms that value individual liberty but also produce isolation and anomie. Without comprehension of these dynamics, Muslim responses remain reactive: defensive assertions of Islamic identity that reinforce stereotypes, or assimilationist strategies that erase religious distinctiveness. A more strategic approach requires understanding Western institutions from within, identifying points of leverage for Muslim political participation, and developing arguments against Islamophobia based on genuine comprehension of Western values rather than reactive polemic.

Furthermore, Islamophobia is not merely a Western phenomenon but has global dimensions, affecting Muslim minorities worldwide and shaping Western foreign policy toward Muslim-majority countries. Understanding this global phenomenon requires comprehending Western strategic interests, the role of media in constructing Muslim threats, and the historical development of Orientalist representations that continue to shape Western perceptions of Islam. Without this understanding, Muslim responses remain trapped in reactive cycles that reinforce rather than challenge Islamophobic structures.

The West as Enemy, Criminal, and Crony Capitalist: Beyond Reactive Critique

Characterizing the West as enemy, criminal, or crony capitalist captures certain realities—Western imperialism, capitalist exploitation, and geopolitical aggression, while obscuring the complexity of Western civilization. The West has indeed exported imperialism, capitalism, and communism to the Third World, producing what Nadwi called aggressive nationalism destructive to the Muslim ummah. Western-dominated modernization serves market interests of European industrialists, converting non-Europeans into consumers while blunting resistance to domination. These critiques are valid and necessary.

Yet reducing the West to enemy or criminal obscures genuine achievements: scientific advances, legal innovations, philosophical developments, and institutional forms that have improved human welfare. Furthermore, this reactive framing traps Muslim thought in opposition rather than comprehension: the West becomes a caricature to be rejected rather than a civilization to be understood. A more sophisticated approach recognizes Western contradictions: genuine emancipation alongside imperialist domination, scientific progress alongside spiritual crisis, individual liberty alongside structural inequality.

This recognition enables strategic engagement rather than reactive rejection. Muslims can adopt Western scientific methods while rejecting materialist metaphysics, embrace rule of law while critiquing imperialist deployment, and value individual rights while insisting on moral responsibility. Such engagement requires understanding the West from its own sources, not through reactive polemics that capture partial truths while obscuring complexity. Only through such comprehension can Muslims navigate Western power strategically, adopting what serves Islamic values while rejecting what contradicts them.

Toward a New Epistemology: Understanding the West from Its Own Sources

The path forward requires a new epistemology for understanding the West: one that engages Western sources directly, recognizes Western complexity, and produces specialized knowledge institutions capable of genuine comprehension. This epistemology must overcome the methodological error of comparing Western practices with Islamic ideals, instead comparing Western practices with Muslim practices and Western ideals with Islamic ideals. It must read Western texts in their original languages, engage Western institutions through direct observation, and produce scholarship that comprehends rather than merely critiques.

Madrasas and Islamic universities must develop specialized departments for Western studies, producing scholars who understand the Occident from primary sources. These institutions should teach Western philosophy, political theory, history, and social science alongside Islamic sciences, enabling students to engage Western thought with intellectual rigor rather than reactive polemic. Furthermore, Muslim intellectuals must read Western sources directly: Enlightenment philosophers, liberal theorists, feminist thinkers, and democratic theorists must be studied in their own words, not through Islamic critiques.

This new epistemology must also recognize the different historical trajectories of Oriental and Occidental civilizations, particularly regarding religion and science. Understanding why religion experienced retrogradation in the West while maintaining centrality in the Muslim world enables Muslims to navigate modernity strategically: preserving spiritual continuity while developing the scientific and institutional capacities needed to compete with Western power. Such understanding requires comprehending Western freedoms and ideologies in their historical context, recognizing both their achievements and limitations, and engaging them critically rather than through uncritical adoption or blanket rejection.

Conclusion: The Imperative of Comprehension

Muslims must understand the West not as enemy or toxin but as enigma: a complex civilization with internal contradictions, genuine achievements, and historical developments that must be comprehended on their own terms. This understanding requires overcoming the methodological errors of past reformists, developing specialized knowledge institutions, and engaging Western sources directly rather than through reactive polemics. Without such comprehension, Muslim societies remain trapped between Westoxified imitation and Westophobic rejection, unable to navigate the complexities of modernity, migration, and Islamophobia with intellectual independence.

The stakes are high: Muslim communities face Western power, global Islamophobia, and ideological contestation that require sophisticated understanding rather than reactive critique. Only through genuine comprehension can Muslims develop the intellectual resources to engage Western civilization strategically: adopting what serves Islamic values, rejecting what contradicts them, and transforming what can be Islamized. This is not Westoxification but wisdom: understanding the Occident to navigate it, comprehend it, and ultimately transcend the false choice between imitation and rejection.

M. H. A. Sikander is Writer-Activist based in Srinagar, Kashmir.

Courtesy: New Age Islam

The post The West as Enigma: Why Muslims Must Understand the Occident on Its Own Terms appeared first on SabrangIndia.

·         Indian Muslims need not look to Pakistan-centric preachers or scholars for intellectual and religious direction—particularly when some of them have yet to fully internalise and articulate the demands of pluralism within their own national context.

·         Javed Ahmad Ghamidi’s intellectual trajectory itself reflects an important Indian influence: his thought was significantly shaped by the rationalist and reformist legacy of Maulana Wahiduddin Khan. What Indian Muslims need today is not a wholesale importation of religious discourse from across the border, but a creative regeneration of the reformist, rational and pluralist intellectual tradition that emerged on Indian soil.

·         We need to take that legacy forward—critically, creatively and in response to India’s own civilisational, constitutional and pluralistic realities. The real task before us is to recover, renew and radically regenerate the Indian tradition of Islamic thought—not merely repeat imported formulations. We need scholars who can engage Islam through the lived realities of India: its constitutional framework, civilisational diversity, interfaith encounters, Sufi heritage and deeply plural social fabric.

·         There is an irony here that deserves to be confronted. Javed Ahmad Ghamidi’s intellectual formation was significantly influenced by the rationalist and reformist thought of Maulana Wahiduddin Khan—an Indian Islamic thinker who spent decades arguing for peace, dialogue, intellectual renewal and a non-confrontational engagement with modernity. If that intellectual inheritance could travel from India to Pakistan, why should Indian Muslims now imagine that their intellectual regeneration must necessarily come from Pakistan?

·         Indian Muslims do not need borrowed certainties. They need an indigenous intellectual renaissance. The time has come to stop importing answers and start producing them. We must learn to think beyond perpetual reaction, beyond every immediate political provocation, and beyond the anxieties of the next news cycle. A community that may define its intellectual agenda primarily! An intellectual renewal must mean more than changing rhetoric. It must produce new institutions, new scholarship and new answers to contemporary questions.

If Maulana Abul A’la Maududi’s political project emerged from the specific crises of colonial India and was subsequently articulated within the political realities of Pakistan, can his political theology provide an adequate framework for Indian Muslims in the twenty-first century?

For me, the answer is increasingly clear: Indian Muslims need not make Maududi’s political Islam the organising framework of their contemporary intellectual life. But that immediately raises a more difficult and important question:

What about Javed Ahmad Ghamidi?

Here the answer cannot be as simple. Ghamidi represents a substantially different intellectual trajectory. His work has challenged a number of inherited assumptions about Islamic law, politics, religious authority and the relationship between revelation and historical circumstance. His approach gives considerable importance to the Qur’an as the primary source of religious understanding, distinguishes enduring religious principles from historically conditioned arrangements, and subjects inherited interpretations to renewed scrutiny.

For Indian Muslims searching for an intellectually serious alternative to political Islam, these features make Ghamidi’s thought worth studying.

But worth studying is not the same as suitable for wholesale adoption. That distinction is crucial.

Ghamidi’s Real Significance

Ghamidi’s importance lies less in providing a ready-made political programme for India than in demonstrating that Islamic thought can be reconstructed through disciplined interpretation rather than ideological repetition.

This is an important departure from the tendency to treat every inherited formulation as equally immutable.

His engagement with questions of governance, jihad, citizenship, religious authority and Islamic law opens space for a different kind of Muslim intellectual conversation—one in which historical context, textual interpretation and reasoned argument matter.

In this respect, Ghamidi offers something that Indian Muslims urgently need: an example of intellectual disentanglement from the idea that every political claim made in the name of Islam is necessarily a religious obligation.

Yet there is a second side to the assessment.

Ghamidi’s intellectual framework was developed within the Pakistani context and within a particular South Asian scholarly genealogy. His formative relationship with Maududi and Maulana Amin Ahsan Islahi is significant, even where his later conclusions differ from theirs. The reformist thought of Maulana Wahiduddin Khan also provides an important Indian parallel, particularly in the movement away from confrontationist political readings of Islam towards peace, dialogue and intellectual engagement.

Therefore, it would be historically simplistic to present Ghamidi as an entirely independent intellectual phenomenon—or as a straightforward continuation of Wahiduddin Khan.

His significance is better understood as part of a larger South Asian argument over what Islam means in the modern age.

And that argument has not ended.

Where Ghamidi Helps—and Where Indian Ulema Must Go Further

For Indian Ulema, Ghamidi’s approach can be useful precisely where it encourages critical examination of inherited political theology.

But India presents questions that require more than a Pakistani reformist framework.

The Indian Muslim intellectual condition is shaped by a constitutional order, a multi-religious society, India’s own civilisational history, regional cultures and languages, and the lived experience of Muslims as a large religious minority. Therefore, the Indian question cannot simply be: What does Ghamidi say about the Islamic state?

It must be: What does Islam mean for Muslims living as equal citizens in India’s constitutional and plural social order?

That leads to an entirely different intellectual agenda. Can Islamic ethics provide a theological vocabulary for equal citizenship?

How should concepts such as adl (justice), ihsan (moral excellence), rahmah (mercy) and shura (consultation) be interpreted within democratic public life?

How should Muslim jurisprudence address freedom of conscience, interfaith relations, gender justice, economic participation and constitutional rights?

What can India’s Sufi, Rishi and Bhakti traditions contribute to an Islamic theology of coexistence?

And how should Muslim scholars respond to artificial intelligence, biotechnology, environmental crisis, economic inequality and technological transformation?

These questions require Indian Muslim thinkers thinking from India—not merely Indian Muslims reading thinkers from elsewhere.

The Missing Indian Dimension

India has never been intellectually barren in matters of Islam.

The subcontinent produced powerful traditions of Qur’anic scholarship, Islamic philosophy, Sufism, Persian literature and Urdu thought. The Sufi centres of Delhi, Ajmer and the Deccan, the Rishi–Sufi traditions of Kashmir, the encounters between Sufis and Bhakti saints, and the reformist and intellectual contributions of figures such as Shah Waliullah and Sir Syed Ahmad Khan all demonstrate that Indian Muslim thought has historically interacted creatively with its surrounding civilisation.

This inheritance needs to be recovered—not as nostalgia, but as raw material for a new intellectual synthesis.

Ghamidi can therefore be read alongside this Indian inheritance rather than above it.

His work may help Indian Muslims reconsider inherited assumptions. Wahiduddin Khan may offer another model of religious engagement. Maududi may remain important as an object of historical and intellectual study. Iqbal may reopen questions of selfhood and creativity. Indian Sufi and Bhakti traditions may provide resources for interreligious ethics.

But none should become the final template.

From Following Thinkers to Producing Thought

This is ultimately the central issue. Indian Muslims have spent too much intellectual energy asking which scholar to follow and too little asking which institutions, methods and questions will produce the next generation of scholarship.

The answer cannot be another personality-centred movement.

India needs research institutions devoted to Qur’anic studies, Islamic philosophy and theology; centres for Islam and constitutional citizenship; serious academic study of Indian Sufism and Rishi traditions; madrasa–university intellectual programmes; Muslim public-policy and data research; translation and publishing initiatives; and fellowships for young scholars.

The purpose should be to create an intellectual culture in which disagreement is possible, inherited positions can be examined, and new interpretations can emerge without fear. That is where the Ghamidi question becomes genuinely useful.

Ghamidi need not be the answer to India’s intellectual crisis. His example can instead become part of the reason Indian Muslims begin asking better questions.

Maududi’s political theology belongs to an important chapter of South Asian Islamic intellectual history, but its political premises cannot simply be transplanted into twenty-first-century India. Ghamidi represents a more reformist and interpretive trajectory, and therefore deserves serious engagement. Yet his framework too emerged from a particular historical and national context.

The Indian Muslim intellectual project must ultimately move beyond both. Not by rejecting the wider Muslim intellectual world, but by entering it as a producer rather than merely a consumer.

India should not merely import Islamic thought. It should generate Islamic thought rooted in India’s constitutional reality, civilisational plurality and lived Muslim experience.

The decisive question is: Can India produce a new generation of Muslim thinkers who are deeply rooted in Islam, intellectually independent of imported ideological templates, conscious of India’s civilisational inheritance, and capable of addressing the realities of the twenty-first century?

That is the intellectual renaissance Indian Muslims should now begin building.

Today, Indian Muslims have no shortage of pan-Islamic intellectuals, transnational preachers or scholars speaking in the name of a global Ummah. What we lack is not voices—but an intellectual vision and renewal adequate to modern India’s reality.

What would that renewal actually look like?

It would mean developing an Indian Islamic theology of constitutional citizenship—one that explains, in substantive theological terms, why equality before law, freedom of conscience, democratic participation and fraternity are not merely political compromises but can be understood through the ethical resources of Islam.

It would mean producing a serious Islamic intellectual response to science, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, climate change and the digital revolution, rather than allowing Muslim discourse to remain trapped in questions inherited from nineteenth- and twentieth-century ideological battles.

It would mean rethinking madrasa education so that classical disciplines—Qur’an, Hadith, Fiqh, Arabic and Islamic theology—are placed in meaningful conversation with constitutional law, philosophy, economics, history, sociology, comparative religion, technology and the natural sciences.

It would mean recovering India’s own Sufi, Rishi and Bhakti traditions of ethical coexistence, not as romantic folklore but as serious intellectual resources for understanding India’s religious pluralism, shared sacred spaces and the ethics of disagreement.

It would mean developing a contemporary fiqh of citizenship and minority participation appropriate to a constitutional democracy—moving beyond the old binaries of dār al-Islām and dār al-ḥarb and asking what Islamic ethics requires of citizens living together under a common constitutional order.

It would mean making women’s education, intellectual leadership and economic participation central to Muslim social reform, rather than treating them as peripheral questions.

It would mean creating research institutions that produce data-driven scholarship on Muslim education, employment, poverty, entrepreneurship and social mobility, replacing anecdote and political rhetoric with evidence.

It would mean cultivating a new generation of Muslim scholars capable of speaking to Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Christian and Jewish intellectual traditions without either polemical hostility or superficial interfaith symbolism.

And it would mean developing a distinctly Indian Muslim intellectual vocabulary around peace, pluralism, environmental responsibility, ethical economics, social justice and human dignity—drawing from the Qur’an and Islamic intellectual history while engaging seriously with the realities of contemporary India.

Contributing author at New Age Islam, Ghulam Rasool Dehlvi is an Indo-Islamic scholar, writer and researcher on Indian Sufism, interfaith ethics, and the spiritual history of Islam in South Asia. His latest book is “Ishq Sufiyana: Untold Stories of Divine Love”.

Courtesy: New Age Islam

The post Maududi Is Not Relevant for Indian Muslims — Nor Is Ghamidi appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The statement has been Initiated jointly by Javed Anand and Feroze Mithiborwala (Indian Muslims for Secular Democracy-IMSD), Zakia Soman and Noorjahan Safia Niaz (Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan-BMMA), Shamsuddin Tamboli (Muslim Satyashodhak Mandal) and Bader Saeed (Roshni).

The signatories to the statement include Naseeruddin Shah, Zeenat Shaukat Ali, Sultan Shaheen, Teesta Setalvad, Ram Puniyani, Tushar Gandhi, Amol Palekar, Mallika Sarabhai, Ratna Pathak.

Read the full statement below: 

Progressive Muslim activists, intellectuals and women’s rights advocates strongly oppose the ill-conceived nationwide ‘Save India, Save Shariat’ campaign launched by the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB).

• A Political Gift to Polarisation: 

Following the 2024 Lok Sabha elections where civil society and opposition parties rallied under ‘Save the Constitution’, the AIMPLB’s campaign inadvertently gives the BJP and the sangh parivar a platform to posture as defenders of constitutional norms. Ahead of crucial state assembly elections, this campaign reinforces false narratives and fuels propaganda that Indian Muslims reject the law of the land.

• Defending Patriarchy in the Name of Faith: 

The so-called “God-given Shariat Law’ in India is nothing but man-made personal laws, male interpreted patriarchal interpretations defended by the AIMPLB. In its September 2016 Supreme Court affidavit in the Triple Talaq case (Sayara Bano v. Union of India), the AIMPLB through its affidavit claimed divorce rights belong primarily to husbands because men allegedly possess “greater power of decision-making” and “control emotions.” It even argued that without quick separation option, a husband “may resort to illegal, criminal ways of murdering or burning her alive”—a disturbing rationalization of domestic violence. While claiming these laws are divine, the Board admitted in Paragraph 46 that “India is a patriarchal society, and therefore personal laws of all communities are aligned with the patriarchal notion…”

• Selective Use of the Constitution:

The AIMPLB selectively invokes Articles 25–30 (Religious Freedom), ignoring that these rights are explicitly subject to public order, morality, and health. They conveniently bypass Articles 14 and 15, which guarantee equality before the law and prohibit sex or religion-based discrimination.

• Global Precedents of Reform:

Muslim-majority nations worldwide—including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Tunisia, and Morocco—have codified and reformed personal laws to protect women’s rights. Millions of Muslims live in secular democratic nations with uniform family codes without putting “Islam in danger.” The Muslim community’s current legal predicament in India is the direct result of the AIMPLB and conservative leaders failing to proactively reform and codify Muslim Personal Law.

• Exposing Political Exploitation:

While mainstream parties often ignore Muslim women’s civil rights, the Hindu Right exploits the UCC debate for political polarization. Genuine family law reform must guarantee Muslim women equal rights regarding minimum marriage age, abolition of polygamy, mutual divorce, equal inheritance, child custody, adoption, and a ban on female genital mutilation and halala.

• BJP, Sangh Parivar’s Hate Campaign:

While secular parties rarely support the rights of Muslim women, the BJP and the Hindu Right do so with an obvious motive: communal polarization. The sangh parivar sheds crocodile tears for Muslim women while ignoring relentless hate speech (love jihad, land jihad…) and hate crimes—mob lynching, bulldozing homes, demolishing masjids, and economic boycotts, with chants of Jai Shri Ram to strike fear and intimidation. This accompanies state actions targeting Muslims: Waqf Amendment Act, draconian anti-conversion laws, and a weaponised SIR (Special Intensive Revision of Electoral Rolls) to disenfranchise vast sections of the electorate.

• Ignoring Everyday Survival Concerns:

While ‘Saving Shariah’ tops the AIMPLB’s agenda, real life everyday challenges facing Indian Muslims—socio-economic marginalization, security, education, and employment—are ignored. The ulema must address survival issues rather than furthering retrogressive norms.

• Our Call:

We call upon all progressive forces, civil society organizations, and secular political parties to intervene actively to ensure that the demand for a gender-just, religion-neutral Uniform Civil Code is rooted in equality and human rights, rather than weaponized for communal division.

Signatories:

1. Javed Anand, Convenor, Indian Muslims for Secular Democracy (IMSD), Mumbai
2. Zakia Soman, Co-convenor, Bhartiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA), Ahmedabad
3. Noorjehan Safia Niaz, Co-convenor, BMMA, Mumbai
4. Feroze Mithiborwala, Co-Convenor, IMSD, Mumbai
5. Shamsuddin Tamboli, Muslim Satyashodhak Mandal, Pune
6. Bader Sayeed, Former MLA, lawyer, President, Roshni, Chennai
7. A. J. Jawad, Lawyer, Arbitrator, IMSD, Chennai
8. Afroz Javed Inamdar, Muslim Satyashodhak Mandal Bengaluru
9. Ajij Sayyed Muslim Satyashodhak Mandal Pune
10. Akbar Shaikh, Social Activist, IMSD, Farmer, Solapur
11. Altaphusen Ramjan Nabab, Muslim Satyashodhak Mandal, Satara
12. Amar Tamboli, Muslim Satyashodhak Mandal Satara
13. Amol Palekar – Actor, director, film producer – Pune
14. Anand Patwardhan, Documentary Filmmaker, Mumbai
15. Ani Zonneveld, President, Muslims for Progressive Values (MPV), USA, and Founder Member, Alliance of Inclusive Muslims (International)
16. Anita Cheria, Indian Christian Women’s Movement, Bangalore
17. Anjum Rajabali, Film Script writer, IMSD, Mumbai
18. Anwar Shaikh, Muslim Satyashodhak Mandal, Pune
19. Arshad Alam, Columnist, editor, IMSD, Delhi
20. Ashok Dhiware IPS, Rtd. Additional DIG of Maharashtra State, Pune
21. (Dr) Ashwini KP, UN independent Expert, Bangalore
22. Asim Sayyed, Muslim Satyashodhak Mandal, Pune
23. Askari Zaidi, Veteran journalist, IMSD, Delhi
24. (Prof) Azharuddin Patel, Muslim Satyashodhak Mandal, Satara
25. Azim Pathan, Muslim Satyashodhak Mandal, Pune
26. Benazeer Tamboli, Muslim Satyashodhak Mandal, Pune
27. Benazir Kazi, Muslim Satyashodhak Mandal, Solapur
28. Bismilla Sayyed, Muslim Satyashodhak Mandal, Jalana
29. Dilawar Shaikh, Muslim Satyashodhak Mandal, Pune
30. Gulab Attar, Muslim Satyashodhak Mandal, Kolhapur
31. Hasan Ibrahim Pasha, Writer, IMSD, Allahabad
32. Hasina Khan, Bebaak Collective, Mumbai
33. Hilal Ahmed, Scholar and Author, Asst Professor, CSDS, Delhi
34. Iqbal Ahmad, BBC, Delhi
35. Irshad Wadgavkar, Muslim Satyashodhak Mandal, Kolhapur
36. Jamir Momin, Muslim Satyashodhak Mandal, Satara
37. Jamir Shaikh, Muslim Satyashodhak Mandal, Pune
38. Jeibunnisa R, BMMA, Tamil Nadu
39. Jyothi Yedulla, Vice-President, Casteless Society of India, Hyderabad
40. Khadijah Faruqui, Feminist and human rights consultant, Delhi
41. Dr. Lata Pratibha Madhukar, Bahujan Feminist Writer and Critique, Founder of Manomitr
42. Madan Lal Hind, Samajwadi Jan Parishad, Delhi
43. Madhu Bhaduri, Retd. Ambassador, Indian Foreign Service, Delhi
44. Madhu Bhushan, feminist, social activist, Bangalore
45. Mallika Sarabhai, Classical dancer, activist and actress, Ahmedabad
46. Mariya Salim, feminist development professional, Delhi
47. Mohammad Waheed, President, Casteless Society of India, Hyderabad
48. (Dr) Mohd Farooque Khan, Associate Professor, Marathwada University, Sambhajinagar
49. Mufid Shaikh, Muslim Satyashodhak, Mandal, Pune
50. Munir  Shikalgar Muslim Satyashodhak Mandal, Sangli
51. Muniza Khan, IMSD, CJP, Varanasi
52. (Adv) Nazrana Ahemad, Social activist, academician, Dibrugarh (Assam)
53. Naseeruddin Shah, Actor, Mumbai
54. Nasreen Contractor, Co-convenor, IMSD, Mumbai
55. Nasreen M, BMMA, Karnataka
56. Naureen Sophie Musvee. EC member, Roshni, Chennai
57. Parvin Altaphusen Nabab, Muslim Satyashodhak Mandal, Satara
58. Peehu Pardeshi, PEHEL Foundation, Mumbai
59. Preeti Oza, Development Professional, Gandhinagar
60. Qaisar Pasha, Homemaker, Allahabad
61. (Prof.) Radha Kumar, renowned academic, former GOI Interlocutor for J&K, Kodaikanal
62. Rajesh Singhi, Social Sector Consultant, Alwar, Rajasthan
63. (Prof) Ram Puniyani, Author, Activist, President, CSSS, Mumbai
64. Ratna Pathak, Actor, Director, Mumbai
65. SR Darapuri, IPS(Retd), National President, All India Peoples Front, Lucknow
66. Sabah Khan, Parcham, Mumbai/Mumbra
67. Sachendra Pratap Yadav, Activist, Lucknow
68. Salim Momin Muslim Satyashodhak Mandal, Sangli
69. Samina Pathan Muslim Satyashodhak Mandal, Pune
70. Samreen Khan, Socio-political Blogger, Kolkata
71. Sandeep Pandey, General Secretary, Socialist Party of India, Lucknow
72. Sandhya Gokhale – Author and activist, Pune
73. Sayara Mulani Muslim Satyashodhak Mandal, Kolhapur
74. Shabana Dean, IMSD, Pune
75. Shagufta Musvee, President Soroptimist International, EC member, Roshni
76. Shahed Shaikh, Muslim Satyashodhak Mandal, Pune
77. Shaikh Yusuf Baba, Convenor, Duniyadari Social Reform Movement, Hyderabad
78. Shahjahan Patel, Muslim Satyashodhak Mandal, Mumbai
79. Shakun Mohini, feminist, social activist, Bangalore
80. Shama Zaidi, filmmaker, script writer, Mumbai
81. (Dr) Shaniya Zarina Khan, Dentist, Delhi
82. Shriya Maini, Advocate, Supreme Court, Delhi
83. (Dr) Shujaat Ali Quadri, Convener, Muslim Youth organization of India
84. Sultan Shahin, Editor-in-chief, New Age Islam (online portal), Delhi
85. (Dr) Suresh Khairnar, Social Activist, Nagpur
86. Suresh Nautiyal, India   Green Party (IGP), Garhwal, Uttarakhand
87. Teesta Setalvad, Journalist, activist, educationist, Secretary Citizens for Justice & Peace, IMSD, Mumbai
88. Tushar Gandhi, President, Hum Bharat ke Log, Mumbai
89. Ummid Shaikh Muslim Satyashodhak Mandal, Pune
90. Yash Paranjpe, Writer, Navi Mumbai
91. (Dr) Zaheer A Sayeed, Neurologist, Chennai
92. Zeenat Shaukat Ali, Islamic Scholar, Director-General, Wisdom Foundation, Mumbai

The post Shariat Campaign: Ulema’s Boon to Hindutva appeared first on SabrangIndia.

And where is the CCTV footage that could help establish what happened inside the station? Two journalists allege they were assaulted at Delhi’s Saket Police Station.

They allege the assault intensified after police learnt they were Muslim. Teesta Setalvad speaks with Shaheen Khan and Nafeesa Khan about journalism, their experience as Muslim women, their rights as citizens, and the unanswered questions around CCTV footage and police accountability.

The post They Asked Questions. Then Came the Assault: Shaheen & Nafeesa Khan | Teesta Setalvad appeared first on SabrangIndia.

I argue however that, when this 2026 defence of ancient Hindu jurisprudence is placed alongside Mahmood’s long-standing jurisprudential positions—most notably his January 11-24, 1986 Frontline interview during the Shah Bano controversy—a consistent ideological trajectory emerges.

Far from a progressive effort to humanise legal history, Mahmood’s intellectual framework represents a sophisticated defence of systemic patriarchy. Across four decades, his legal logic systematically rebrands female subordination as benevolent care, denies women’s non-monetary economic contributions, and reduces women to perpetual financial and social liabilities who require lifelong male custodianship.

A foundational pillar of Mahmood’s legal philosophy is the absolute rejection of women’s independent economic agency within the marital unit. In his January 11-24 1986 Frontline interview (“Secularism on the Bend”), Mahmood forcefully criticised the Supreme Court’s ruling (April 23, 1985) in Mohammed Ahmad Khan vs. Shah Bano Begum, which had granted a meagre maintenance allowance to a 73-year-old divorced woman under Section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code. Mahmood argued that Shah Bano (1916-1992) was not entitled to maintenance from her former husband because she was an affluent woman with three adult, solvent sons—one of whom was a practicing lawyer. Under his interpretation of Islamic jurisprudence, the primary financial liability to support an elderly mother falls squarely upon her male offspring rather than her former spouse, regardless of the duration of the marriage.

When directly (and publicly) challenged on whether a wife’s decades of domestic labour, childcare, and household management constitute an economic contribution to the marriage that justifies post-divorce support or a share in marital property, Mahmood’s response was unambiguous. He rejected the “Western concept of matrimonial property”, asserting that in India, an uneducated or homemaker wife does not make an economic contribution. Instead, he explicitly declared her to be a financial burden: “How is that an economic contribution? On the contrary, she is a liability. She needs to be maintained in any case”. He went so far as to claim that a wife could only legally demand financial compensation for her domestic services if she formally declared herself an “employee” or an “agent of the husband” rather than a mother.

This worldview is far from an isolated legal quirk; it aligns directly with a broader, long-standing tradition of South Asian patriarchal instructional literature designed to socialise women into absolute domestic servitude. A prime historical example is Ashraf Ali Thanwi’s reformist handbook Bihishti Zewar (Heavenly Ornaments, 1905). Written at the turn of the twentieth century as an instructional guide for Muslim women, Thanwi’s text systematically constructs a piety centered on female self-effacement, unquestioning submission, and absolute obedience to the husband. In Bihishti Zewar, a wife is instructed that her religious duty and spiritual salvation depend on serving her husband as her earthly lord—enduring his tempers without complaint, prioritizing his comfort over her basic needs, and viewing her presence in the household as an act of perpetual devotion.

What Thanwi codified as religious virtue in 1905, Mahmood “secularised” and operationalised as legal jurisprudence in 1986 and 2026. In both frameworks, the woman’s internal value is tied entirely to her domestic utility, while her structural status is reduced to an uncompensated, obedient dependent. Thanwi’s theological insistence that a woman must endure systemic domestic inequity in exchange for heavenly reward seamlessly mirrors Mahmood’s legal assertion that an uneducated homemaker generates no economic value and remains merely a financial liability.

Decades later, in his September 2026 analysis of the Manusmriti, Mahmood deploys this exact same paternalistic logic. By equating the verse’s prescription of lifelong male guardianship with modern maintenance obligations, Mahmood once again reduces female existence to an inherent financial dependency. In all these contexts—whether examining Thanwi’s reformist didactic manuals, classical Sanskrit codes, or medieval Islamic jurisprudence—there is a shared refusal to recognise women as equal economic or legal partners in a household. A woman’s labour inside the home is dismissed as non-existent or dutifully owed, her status is framed as an inherent liability, and her entitlement to survival is made contingent upon the paternalistic charity of male guardians.

This institutionalised denial of agency seamlessly informs Mahmood’s defence of structural male dominance and the restriction of female self-determination. In his discussion of divorce law, Mahmood attempted to construct a facade of gender parity by claiming that Islamic law grants equal rights of unilateral dissolution to both men and women. He argued that a woman can unilaterally discard her husband through khula just as a man can through talaq, and that seeking a judicial decree is merely a confirmatory remedy against male chauvinism rather than a structural requirement.

Yet, this assertion conveniently glossed over the severe, asymmetrical financial penalties embedded in the process. While a man pronouncing talaq retains his assets and merely pays the agreed mehr (dower), a woman initiating khula is legally required to forfeit or return her mehr. When pressed on how an economically dependent, illiterate woman could realistically exercise this right without facing total destitution, Mahmood shifted the entire burden back onto women and their families, insisting that financial terms should have been negotiated in the nikahnama (marriage contract) prior to the wedding. When reminded that young girls and illiterate women rarely possess the agency or leverage to negotiate such contracts, Mahmood dismissed the widespread grievances of Muslim women’s rights groups who characterized personal laws as instruments of oppression, attributing their critique to sheer “ignorance of law”.

This pattern of dismissing female agency culminates in Mahmood’s semantic reinterpretation of classical patriarchal texts. In his 2026 Indian Express column, Mahmood attempts to sanitize the phrase na stri swatantrayamarhati—traditionally translated by both classical commentators and colonial scholars as “a woman does not deserve independence”—by translating it as “never left unprotected”. In doing so, he deliberately conflates the denial of autonomy with an act of paternalistic devotion. By framing the institutionalized denial of female freedom as a sacred male duty of safety, Tahir Mahmood constructs an apologetic framework that shields historic patriarchy from legitimate critique.

As the historian, Mubarak Ali observes in his critical study “Behishti Zewar Aur Aurat” (in his Urdu language book, Tareekh Aur Aurat, 1993), textually mandated codes of female conduct invariably function to “confine the woman within the domestic sphere while sanctifying her subjugation as moral virtue”, and that such normative texts manipulate legal and religious rhetoric to stripping women of independent agency under the guise of protecting tradition.

When read together, Mahmood’s writings across forty years (1986 and 2026) reveal a cohesive, conservative worldview that normalises gender hierarchy under the guise of legal protectionism. Whether relying on didactic texts like Bihishti Zewar, or opposing the Supreme Court’s secular intervention (1985) in Shah Bano, or reinterpreting the Manusmriti for a modern readership, the core thesis remains unchanged: women do not require constitutional equality, independent legal agency, or economic recognition; they merely require male oversight. By recasting the denial of independence as an act of care and framing female domestic existence as a financial liability, Mahmood, relying upon the same rhetorical sleight of hand, provides an intellectual defence of systemic misogyny that ensures women remain perpetual wards of male authority. In both instances (Indian Express, Sept 1, 2026, and Frontline, January 11-24, 1986), systemic misogyny and the denial of gender justice are sanitized as reverence for scriptural tradition and personal law, reducing female autonomy to a negotiable casualty of cultural preservation.

(The author teaches Modern and Contemporary Indian History at the Aligarh Muslim University. His X handle is: @sajjadhist)

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The question has acquired renewed urgency following recent remarks by Kerala-based Sunni cleric Sheikh Kanthapuram A.P. Aboobacker Musliyar, popularly known as Sheikh Abubakr Ahmad and widely referred to as the “Grand Mufti of India”.

Speaking at a Hubbul Rasool conference in Kochi, the cleric reportedly said that women should remain confined to their homes and should not enter the public sphere. He defended purdah as a means of protecting women’s dignity and compared women to gold ornaments that, in his analogy, must be kept safely inside a box. He further argued that bringing women into the public sphere could lead to “great destruction” and attributed this position to the Qur’an.

Such remarks deserve serious theological scrutiny—not merely because they concern women’s rights, but because they raise a larger question about how scripture is interpreted and transmitted in contemporary Muslim society.

The issue is not whether Islam prescribes modesty. It unquestionably does. The Qur’an calls upon both believing men and believing women to observe modesty, chastity and moral restraint. The issue is whether modesty necessarily means confinement, whether purdah necessarily means social invisibility, and whether the Qur’an actually establishes a universal prohibition against women participating in public life. It does not.

The Qur’an is not a charter for female confinement!

The verse most commonly invoked to justify the confinement of women is Qur’an 33:33:

“And remain in your homes and do not display yourselves as was the display of the former days of ignorance.”

The verse occurs in a specific passage addressing the wives of the holy Prophet (pbuh). Its immediate context concerns the conduct, dignity and special responsibilities of the Prophet’s household. To extract one phrase from this context and transform it into an absolute command that every Muslim woman, in every society and historical circumstance, must remain inside her home is an interpretive decision—not an uncontested Qur’anic fact.

This distinction is fundamental!

The Qur’an repeatedly recognises women as autonomous moral subjects. It addresses believing women directly, assigns them religious responsibilities, grants them rights of inheritance and property, and describes believing men and women as mutual allies in establishing what is right and resisting what is wrong.

Most significantly, the Qur’an says:

“The believing men and believing women are allies of one another. They enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong.” (9:71)

How can women be described as moral partners in the collective ethical life of the ummah if they are simultaneously understood to be categorically barred from public life?

The answer cannot be obtained by isolating one phrase and ignoring the Qur’an’s wider moral vocabulary.

From modesty to misogyny: where interpretation goes wrong

The second important word in Qur’an 33:33 is tabarruj. It is often translated as displaying oneself or one’s adornments in an ostentatious manner.

Classical exegetes associated tabarruj with conspicuous self-display, affected mannerisms and the public exhibition of beauty or adornment intended to attract sensual attention. In other words, the Qur’anic concern is with ostentatious and sexually provocative display, not with the mere physical presence of women outside their homes.

This distinction is essential!

A woman who goes to a university, teaches in a school, works in a hospital, runs a business, attends a conference, visits a market or participates in civic life does not thereby commit tabarruj.

To equate a woman’s physical presence in public with tabarruj is to expand the Qur’anic concept beyond its moral meaning.

Purdah, likewise, cannot simply be transformed from an ethic of modesty into an architecture of female imprisonment.

What happened to Bibi Khadija (RA)?

There is also a profound historical problem with treating women’s public presence as inherently destructive.

Khadija al-Kubra, the first wife of the Prophet (pbuh) was a successful businesswoman before her marriage to him. Her commercial activity was not presented in Islamic tradition as a moral failure. She was not described as having compromised her dignity merely because she participated in economic life.

The Prophet’s own community included women who transmitted knowledge, engaged in commerce, sought medical treatment, participated in communal affairs and contributed to the social and intellectual life of the Muslim community.

Women were not invisible in Medina!

Nor was the mosque exclusively a male social institution. Women attended the Prophet’s mosque. They listened to his sermons, asked questions, transmitted hadith and participated in the religious life of the community.

The historical record therefore does not support the simplistic proposition that Islam’s ideal woman is one who never enters public space.

The “gold in a box” analogy is particularly revealing!

The analogy comparing women with gold ornaments deserves special attention. A woman is not jewellery.

She is not an object whose value increases because she is locked away from society. She is a human being endowed by God with intellect, conscience, moral responsibility and spiritual agency.

The Qur’an does not describe women as commodities whose social value depends upon physical concealment. Indeed, the Qur’anic account of human dignity begins at a level far deeper than gender:

“Indeed, We have honoured the children of Adam.” (17:70)

The Qur’an speaks of Bani Adam—the children of Adam—not merely men. Human dignity precedes gender.

The “gold in a box” analogy may have been intended to express protection and honour. But theological language must also be judged by the social meaning it produces. When women are repeatedly described as precious objects who must be hidden, protected and controlled, the distinction between protection and possession becomes dangerously blurred.

A woman does not need to be locked away to possess dignity. She needs education, security, freedom from violence, economic rights, social respect and the ability to exercise her God-given moral agency.

Protection cannot become prohibition!

There is a legitimate Islamic concern for women’s safety. Muslim societies, like all societies, must protect women from harassment, exploitation and violence.

If a public space is unsafe because men harass women, the Islamic response cannot reasonably be to imprison women at home. The ethical response should be to discipline those who harass, educate society, strengthen public safety and uphold the dignity of every human being. Otherwise, the victim is effectively punished for the misconduct of the perpetrator.

The Indian Muslim tradition is more complex!

The proposition that Muslim women belong exclusively to the domestic sphere also sits uneasily with India’s own Muslim social history.

Indian Islam has never been a monolithic civilisation of female seclusion. From the courts of Muslim rulers to the intellectual circles of scholars, from women poets and mystics to educators and reformers, Muslim women have participated in India’s cultural and intellectual history in diverse ways.

The subcontinent’s Sufi traditions, in particular, cannot be reduced to a theology of female invisibility. The spiritual vocabulary of Islam speaks of taqwa, ilm, ihsan, adl and karamah—God-consciousness, knowledge, excellence, justice and human dignity. None of these virtues is exclusively male.

The Qur’an itself declares:

“Surely the Muslim men and Muslim women, the believing men and believing women, the devout men and devout women, the truthful men and truthful women…” (33:35)

The verse then proceeds to promise forgiveness and an immense reward to both.

The spiritual subject of Islam is therefore neither exclusively male nor domestically confined.

A dangerous hermeneutical shortcut!

The deeper problem exposed by Sheikh Abubakr Ahmad’s statement is not simply one controversial sermon. It is a recurring hermeneutical tendency within certain strands of Muslim clerical discourse: a social custom is elevated into an immutable divine command, and a particular historical interpretation is presented as though it were the only possible meaning of revelation.

This is precisely where Muslim scholarship needs intellectual courage. The Qur’an must be read holistically.

A verse cannot be separated from its linguistic context, historical context, rhetorical context and the broader ethical trajectory of the Qur’an. Nor should the opinions of medieval or modern exegetes—however respected—be treated as revelation itself.

The Qur’an is divine. Our interpretations of the Qur’an are human. That distinction is indispensable. The Qur’an asks women and men alike to become people of faith, knowledge and righteousness. It does not ask half of humanity to disappear from society.

When clerics tell women that their presence in public spaces will lead to “great destruction”, they are ultimately constructing a theology of fear around the female body. But Islam did not come to make women afraid of their own existence.

The Qur’an came to liberate human beings especially the womenfolk from forms of domination—spiritual, social and moral. The Prophet (pbuh) did not establish a community in which women ceased to exist beyond the threshold of their homes. He established a community in which women were recognised as believers, mothers, daughters, wives, teachers, narrators, benefactors and moral agents.

That historical reality should make contemporary Muslims cautious about transforming one interpretation of one verse into an absolute social doctrine.

The future of Indian Islam does not depend upon keeping Muslim women inside four walls. It depends upon creating a society in which women can walk outside those walls with dignity, modesty, security and equal moral agency.

A regular contributor to New Age Islam, the author is an Indo-Islamic scholar, researcher on Indian Sufism, an author of “Ishq Sufiyana: Untold Stories of Divine Love”

Courtesy: The New Age Islam

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“Muslim women are not objects to be locked away in rooms or told where they can and cannot go. We have agency, autonomy, and every right to participate fully in public life,” said the statement by Bebaak released on social media. “What is especially concerning is that such views are being expressed from a position of religious scholarship. When influential religious figures promote restrictions on women, it can reinforce regressive ideas within the community. But let us be clear: Maulanas and Muftis do not represent all Muslims, nor do they speak for Islam in its entirety.

The Bebaak statement also states, “More importantly, we must recognise how statements like these are used to play dirty politics in the name of Muslim women. When religious figures make regressive statements about Muslim women, our identities and our names are turned into political tools. And as a consequence, we are forced to face discrimination and hostility from other quarters as well.

“Stop doing religious politics in our name. Muslim women are not political pawns. Our lives, our choices, and our identities do not belong to politicians, religious leaders, or anyone else to weaponise.

“Islamic history itself tells a different story. Muslim women have been scholars, teachers, entrepreneurs, traders, and active participants in public life. If women could occupy these spaces centuries ago, why are they being pushed back into the home today?

“Muslim women will not be confined by outdated interpretations of our place in society. We will define our own lives, our own choices, and our own futures.”

It had been widely reported in the media, and also in The Hindu, that Kanthapuram A.P. Aboobacker Musliar, known for many as the Grand Mufti of India, recently issued a “joint-circular” to mahallus in his capacity as general secretary of the Samstha Kerala Jamiyyathul Ulama, asking them “not to exhibit women in front of other men on the streets or stages” during Islamic celebrations. Aboobacker Musliar, known for his proximity to various political formations, has been a leading figure in Kerala’s traditional Sunni Muslim community for more than five decades. The widely publicised diktat was reportedly issued in the context of the Milad festivities. Specifically, the circular courted controversy, following which Kanthapuram said bringing women to public forums would cause serious “chaos” and that Islam prescribed purdah for women to prevent this. These comments had been criticised both by the ruling United Democratic Front (UDF)’s leading party, the Indian National Congress (INC) with Chief Minister V.D. Satheesan and the CPI(M), also a long-term ally of the Mufti. Interestingly, the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), a component of the ruling UDF has been silent.

Background

The ‘Grand Mufti’ who is at the centre of this controversy that significant influence extending across India and to Muslim communities abroad. Kanthapuram, Ustad in Kerala, is known as Sheikh Abubakr Ahmad in the wider Muslim world. He is the founder of Jamia Markaz at Karanthur near Kozhikode, around which he has built a large religious, educational and social network. At 89, he continues to teach the Hadith collection regarded by Muslims as the most authentic collection of reports on Prophet Muhammad’s teachings and practices.

Kanthapuram’s rise began within the Samastha Kerala Jamiyyathul Ulama, the traditional body of Islamic scholars in Kerala. He was one of its prominent secretaries under Shamsul Ulama E.K. Aboobacker Musliar. In 1989, differences over the influence of the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) led to a split. Kanthapuram and his followers walked out and formed a separate organisation. The division continues, leaving Keralam’s traditional Sunni community broadly divided between the E.K. and A.P. factions. He built his organisation around Markazu Saquafathi Sunniyya, founded at Karanthur in 1978.

His reach extends well beyond politics. He was also been associated with the Amman Message and A Common Word, international initiatives promoting Islamic unity and Muslim-Christian understanding. His organisation has also reportedly used these networks for humanitarian causes. In 2025, he intervened in the case of Kerala nurse Nimisha Priya, who was facing execution in Yemen, and saved her from the gallows through contacts with influential Yemeni religious figures.

Few religious leaders in the southern state of Kerala have remained so influential for decades. From a scholar in Kozhikode to the chief of an international network, Kanthapuram’s influence extends far beyond Karanthur. To his followers, he is a scholar, teacher and institution-builder; to his critics, a conservative cleric with deep influence over public and political life.

The statement by Bebaak collective may be read here.

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