First things first: it is necessary to clear away the red herrings. Mannan asserts that I, along with Bhavuk Sharma, “overlook that Hindu religious activities already occupy the public space in Kanwariya processions, Jagratas, Durga Pujas, Bhandaras, Matki Phodna, etc.” According to him, this ignorance leads me to celebrate JNU as “the most ideal, secular, and diverse campus” without calling those who celebrate Holi there as “Hindu right-wing.” “However, when Muslims mark their presence,” Mannan notes, “their practices are quickly pathologised, evoking a strong sense of injustice. What is celebrated as culture by the majority is often labeled communal when practiced by minorities.” This is supposed to be illustrative of the “double standards” that he later accuses me of holding. 

I have never expressed any admiration for JNU’s practice of holding Holi. However, since Mannan raises this example, I can clarify my own position. My outlook is closer to that of K. N. Panikkar, a staunch secularist who served as Professor of Modern Indian History at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). Panikkar’s reflections emerge from both experience and theory. He recalls an incident soon after joining JNU, when students approached him for a contribution toward an Eid celebration. His refusal, grounded in the conviction that universities should remain free from public displays of religiosity, immediately provoked hostility. He was branded a “Hindu communalist” for declining to participate in a Muslim festival. Later, when he resisted a similar attempt to celebrate a Hindu festival, he met with the same disapproval and imagined that, had he not been Hindu by birth, he would have been dismissed as a Muslim communalist instead.

For Panikkar, the episodes of campus religiosity revealed more than just the personal difficulty of being misread; they crystallised the structural impossibility of escaping communal labeling once religion enters the campus as public spectacle. His critique of the Indian model of secularism is telling here: it circumscribes “social consciousness within religious parameters and thus keep[s] the possibility open for particularistic and antagonistic tendencies to re-emerge at opportune moments…It keeps religion in play and in turn enhances religiosity; it preserves and projects religious identities and thus increases the social distance between different religious communities.” Public celebration on campus, whether Hindu or Muslim, therefore cannot achieve neutrality or solidarity. It generates a long-term dynamic towards the religiocisation of social life, thus preparing the ground for the eventual emergence of communalism. This is also why such practices hold little appeal for me. The alternative to it is pithily outlined by Panikkar: “a frontal confrontation with religion – an all-out critique of religion, with a view to its eventual negation – ‘a resolute, positive, abolition’ in the words of Marx.”

The Exclusions of Religion

Now that the red herring is out of the way, I can address Mannan’s main arguments. Basing himself upon Dr. Ishtiaq Hussain’s article “The AMU Fee Hike Agitation and a Misleading Narrative,” Mannan says that the “Friday prayer is not a festival or a political act but a religious duty, a widespread and common culture of the Muslim students at the Indian universities all over the country”. I have already critiqued Hussain’s piece in my own article “The AMU Fee Hike Agitation and the Fallacy of Harmless Faith”. 

There, I argue that Hussain is plagued by a contradiction: on the one hand, he says that the Friday prayer was a “mere manifestation of religious identity or general religiosity”; on the other hand, he praises the students’ restraint in not continuing to organise prayers at the protest site: “they rejected calls from fringe groups to organise prayers on August 15 to prevent the protest from acquiring a religious overtone.” This shift negates Mannan’s celebratory rhetoric and implicitly acknowledges that prayer in public, especially when tied to a protest, cannot be reduced to “mere obligation” but is always susceptible to political meaning. If prayer were simply harmless, its repetition would not have required avoidance. The fact that Hussain frames its absence as evidence of political maturity suggests an awareness that faith and politics cannot be neatly separated, that there is no “general religiosity”. 

Religiosity itself is historically and institutionally constituted through political antagonisms: whether through colonial governance of religion, postcolonial state regulation of minority identity, or the identitarian agendas of Muslim elites. Hussain’s need both to defend prayer as harmless and to celebrate its absence already shows that religion cannot be cordoned off from politics, but is always entangled with it. By extension, Mannan’s attempt to portray the Bab-e-Syed prayer as a “religious duty” evades the question of what this religiosity means in its concrete setting. He asks us to accept religious obligation at face value, framing it as a call for “belonging, survival, and self-respect in a hostile political environment”. But “belonging, survival, and self-respect” for whom? Mannan presumes that the Islamic community he is addressing is an unproblematic entity, grounded in the simplicity and unity of all Muslims. But this is patently untrue, as is revealed by the analysis of the patriarchal Islamism embedded in the form of the Friday prayer at AMU.

This becomes clear when set against Tahrir Square in 2011, where prayer unsettled hierarchies. Muslims prayed under the protection of Coptic Christians and reciprocated by safeguarding a Coptic Mass, transforming ritual into a civic language of solidarity. Men and women prayed shoulder to shoulder, erasing the partitions that usually govern Salat. Even the khutba shifted, as Yusuf al-Qaradawi opened with “O Muslims and Copts! O children of Egypt!” dissolving the privilege of the ummah as sole addressee. In Tahrir, the form of prayer itself changed, becoming a medium for revolutionary equality and civic solidarity. Insofar as religiosity became a mode for bringing all Egyptians together against an authoritarian, neoliberal government, it lost the doctrinal exclusivist of faith, transforming into a broad-based culture. As Panikkar remarks, “The culture of the people, when divorced from faith, would provide the necessary channel for communication.”

The impossibility of imagining such a scene at AMU reveals the limits of Mannan’s narrative. The institutional history of AMU has been structured by women’s marginalisation, both spatially and ideologically. As Amber H. Abbas notes, women’s education has never been central to the university’s corporate life, with hostels situated kilometers from the centre and students’ visibility tightly controlled. The political culture of the campus has long been punctuated by moral panics over women’s public presence: the IYF’s 2024 statement against “indecency” in cultural programs, the 2019 poster depicting women as caged birds in need of protection from feminism, and the 2018 “blasphemous” picture case that criminalised students for a Facebook post. In each instance, religious and moral rhetoric has operated as a technology of control, limiting women’s movement, attire, and speech. 

This patriarchal Islamism has continued in the fee hike protests. Female fence-sitters have been branded as dalals, singled out through a steady churn of Instagram reels, WhatsApp clips, and public shaming rituals. These gendered attacks go beyond ordinary political name-calling. In one case, a young woman labelled a dalal publicly apologised for her stance, only to be praised not for her reasoning but for appearing in a dupatta and mask, which are visual markers of propriety in the Islamist worldview. In another, a leading female protester who had worn an abaya but opposed prolonging the agitation became the target of AI-morphed videos, abaya-clad parodies, and relentless online mimicry. 

Mannan’s framing of prayer as “duty” effaces the religio-patriarchal codes that structure the act and that spill over into other aspects of the protests. It asks us to treat ritual as self-contained, even when its performance re-inscribes institutional hierarchies. The contrast with Tahrir makes the stakes visible: if prayer can serve as a vehicle of revolutionary solidarity in Cairo and as an instrument of patriarchal closure in Aligarh, then it cannot be reduced to “general religiosity.” Mannan’s refusal to recognise this variability is itself political, since it secures the authority of religious form by denying that its meaning is always shaped by context, exclusion, and struggle.

Protecting Religion?

Mannan rightly stresses AMU as a “blessing for marginalised Muslim students who are left out of the mainstream of the Indian education system”. Why should “standing up” for AMU be imagined primarily in terms of praying in public or asserting religiosity? How is it that “strength, hope, and the existence of Indian Muslims” is made to signify faith above all else? This conflation is visible in the equivalence that Mannan draws between the protest slogan “Islam Ki Dawat Zinda Hai” and Qur’anic verse on AMU’s insignia, “Taught man what he knew not”. 

The verse, “Taught man what he knew not” (96:5), speaks about knowledge as a universal gift to humankind. Its reference is pedagogical, epistemic, and humanistic, placing education at the heart of AMU’s mission. It is a declaration of enlightenment and learning as common goods, accessible to every seeker, irrespective of faith. When this verse becomes the motto of AMU, it does not serve as a sectarian banner but as an emblem of secular modernity grounded in a universal conception of education. Its force lies in its generality, in its refusal to delimit who can or cannot partake in knowledge.

By contrast, the slogan “Islam Ki Dawat Zinda Hai” is not a neutral affirmation of knowledge but an assertive invocation of religious community. As Mannan puts it in his article, “A truly democratic system should enable Muslims to express their reality in their own terms, whether it is religious, cultural, or political, without being imposed into a pre-packaged ideology of others [emphasis mine]”. In other words, Islam should be a self-enclosed entity, immune from any influence exerted by non-Islamic others, or those who question the centrality of Islam in public life. In contrast, the Qur’anic verse addresses the universality of education, negating religious belonging to highlight the mission of imparting knowledge to those who need it. The verse invites all to the pursuit of knowledge, while the slogan calls forth only Muslims as a collective in struggle. To conflate the two, as Mannan does, obscures the fact that the verse is secular in scope while the slogan is sectarian in thrust.

The danger in this conflation is that it justifies communal idioms in the name of institutional heritage. Mannan argues that using Islamic slogans is a continuation of AMU’s spirit, yet this argument ignores the categorical difference between Islam as a source of civilizational inspiration and Islam as a rallying cry of political identity. One can accept that AMU’s history draws on Islamic civilization without endorsing slogans that, in effect, doctrinally exclude non-Muslim students or cast political conflict in religious terms. His framing allows no distinction between cultural inheritance and religious mobilization, and thus erases the distinction required to preserve AMU’s universal educational mission.

The erasure of this distinction allows Mannan to naturalise religion/religiosity as a desirable good, whose possession has to be maintained at all costs. In fact, when Muslims occupy a position of dominance, Syed Jalaluddin Umri, former president of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (JIH), counsels them to establish an Islamic state and govern it according to the laws of sharia. JIH’s student wing, the Students Islamic Organization (SIO), counts Mannan, its national secretary, among its leaders.

But is religion really that desirable? This question is not explored by self-assured theologians. Does the debate over AMU really concern the ability of students to protect their “Muslim Subjectivity,” or “Islam,” as Mannan insists? Put in more mundane terms, this would mean that the entire debate over AMU pertains to the Muslim youth’s right to recite Quranic verses in university premises. This seems more like the theologian’s dream, rather than a socially and economically disadvantaged student’s wish. The Supreme Court is correct in noting that what is primary in the determination of the minority character of an institution is not the “existence of a religious place for prayer and worship” or “the existence of religious symbols” but the objective of providing “benefit” to “a religious or linguistic minority community”. This means that “educational institutions could be established for minorities to provide secular education without imparting any lessons on religion”.

The Supreme Court’s observation about the general goal of providing “benefit” to “a religious or linguistic minority community,” rather than narrowly promoting faith or theology, forces us to ask the following question: is the attack on Indian Muslims really an attack on Islam as a theological system? The right to practice faith is just one among many human capacities that are being restricted. Even Muslims who are not particularly religious, who do not pray or wear visibly Islamic symbols, still face discrimination. Consider the following example. A study conducted in India tested hiring discrimination by sending out two nearly identical resumes for entry-level jobs. Both candidates had similar educational backgrounds, locations, and skills, with no photographs included to avoid visual bias. The only significant difference between them was their names: one had a recognizably Muslim name (“Habiba Ali”), while the other had a Hindu name (“Priyanka Sharma”).

Over eight months, 2,000 applications were sent for over 1,000 job listings. Despite being equally qualified, the candidate with the Muslim name received only half as many positive responses. This study underscores that discrimination against Muslims operates even in the absence of visible religious markers like dress, prayer, or religious expressions. Simply having a Muslim name, an ascriptive identity beyond personal choice, was enough to reduce opportunities, showing that the bias faced by Muslims in India is not necessarily about religious practice but about their very existence as Muslims. The issue is not about faith per se, but about the political and social vulnerability of a historically constituted, denominationally marked group. 

When the oppression is located at the level of Muslims-as-a-people, it becomes misleading to frame the defense of AMU or of Muslim students in overtly religious terms. To do so cements the very caricature produced by Hindutva, namely that Muslims are excessively, even obsessively, religious, and that every act they undertake flows from Islamic identity. This discursive trap is visible in the proliferation of “jihad” labels — “love jihad,” “population jihad,” “economic jihad,” even “corona jihad.” Hindu nationalists have already transformed ordinary social and economic practices into religious threats. In such a climate, when anti-secularists like Mannan elevate faith as the center of political self-definition, they unwittingly mirror Hindutva’s framework, reinforcing the notion that Muslim life can only be understood through the lens of excessive religiosity, as if every action was done for the sake of Islam’s theological sanctity.

The consequence of this is double-edged: on the one hand, it narrows the grounds of Muslim struggle to the defense of religiosity; on the other, it erases the broader human capacities that are being curtailed – education, economic opportunity, political participation, cultural flourishing. Faith is one dimension of human life, but not the sole or even primary capacity under siege. To focus resistance on religion alone is to surrender the universality of the claim: that Muslims, as equal human beings and citizens, are being denied the full range of their rights. 

For a genuinely emancipatory politics, the demand should shift from “protecting Islam” to “developing human capacities.” This means foregrounding the economic deprivation, lack of access to higher education, and structural discrimination that affect Muslims irrespective of their personal religiosity. It also means confronting internal hierarchies within the community: class divides, gender inequality, the marginalisation of Pasmanda Muslims, and the silencing of queer Muslims. Only such a politics can break from the religious template imposed both by Hindutva and by defensive communal rhetoric, moving toward a struggle that asserts Muslim dignity in its widest, most inclusive sense.

Indian Muslims thus are not just Muslims; they are full political, civic subjects whose rights and freedoms should not be contingent on religious identity. Instead of reacting to majoritarian pressures by asserting a religious counter-identity, the response of Indian Muslims should be: we refuse to be reduced to a religious category at all. The fight, then, is not for the recognition of Islam but for a secular space where no one – Muslim, Hindu, or otherwise – is pigeonholed by religious identity in the first place.

Questions

Given Mannan’s assertion that Muslims should “express their reality in their own terms” without paying attention the “pre-packaged ideology of others,” it is imperative to understand how such a politics of self-aggrandizement leads to the domination of those one considers to be “other”. I will attempt to show this through a series of questions for Mannan about the viewpoints espoused by his organization SIO (Student Islamic Organisation) or the parent organisation JIH (Jamaat-e-Islaami Hind). If Mannan’s vision is that Muslims should express their reality solipsistically, these questions expose the real-world implications of that worldview for gender, sexuality, and belonging.

On Sexuality and Homosexuality

• JIH describes homosexuality as “immoral and unnatural.” Do you believe that someone like Professor Ramchandra Siras of AMU deserved the humiliation, suspension, and eventual mysterious death he suffered simply for being gay?
• If homosexuality “destroys the family system,” as JIH says, do you acknowledge that many homosexuals themselves come from families, love their parents, siblings, and partners, and wish to build households of their own?
• Do you think the state has the right to police people’s private lives and consensual relationships inside their own homes?

On Women and Education

•  JIH calls for the abolition of co-education, effectively segregating women. While they are segregated, they should wear clothes that are “sober and dignified,” that “cover the body”. Can you explain why the burden of “preventing lust” falls entirely on women rather than teaching men self-restraint?
• Why should women’s dress be dictated by men in positions of authority? Does your logic not amount to blaming women for men’s violence?
• If women are forced into “separate” institutions and covered from head to toe, do you admit that what you call “modesty” is simply a system of control and surveillance over women’s bodies?

On Maududi and the SIO’s Intellectual Project

• Your student organization recommends Towards Understanding Islam, in which Maududi explicitly states, “there are certain women who do not mend their ways without a beating.” Do you condone the idea that men have the right to physically punish women in their households?
• Maududi asserts that men are naturally suited to govern the family because women have “natural limitations.” Given that Indian women today excel as doctors, engineers, judges, and university professors, do you claim these women are exceptions, or do you believe Maududi’s hierarchy still applies to all women?
• Maududi presents domestic confinement and withdrawal from public life as “freedom” for women. Do you agree that forcing women to stay at home, manage the household, and submit to male authority counts as true freedom?

On Equality and Democracy

• JIH advises Muslims to establish an Islamic state under sharia when they are in a position of dominance. Do you recognize that this vision is fundamentally at odds with the Indian Constitution, which guarantees equality before the law for all citizens?
• How do you justify advocating for laws that would make women second-class citizens, LGBT people criminals, and non-Muslims subjects of a religious order?
• If your worldview requires hierarchy, segregation, and surveillance to function, what place does it have in a modern secular university where equality is the very foundation?

Mannan will probably say that those who are raising such questions from a secular-liberal perspective are enacting “a kind of violence in the name of intellectualism”. His alternative, as we have seen, is to allow to “Muslims to express their reality in their own terms, whether it is religious, cultural, or political, without being imposed into a pre-packaged ideology of others.” Thus, instead of allowing the actions and thought processes of Muslims to be examined by others, Mannan wants the Muslim community to behave solipsistically, as if there is no disagreement about his religion-centric vision of politics. But I believe that it is only through democratic discussion and critique that Indian Muslims have any hope of reclaiming their future. 

 (The author is a student at the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), India. He is the author of the book “Education in the Age of Neoliberal Dystopia” (Midwestern Marx Publishing Press, 2024) and has a forthcoming book on Palestine and anti-imperialist political philosophy with Iskra Books)

Related:

Reluctant Democrats

Political History of India’s Two Muslim Universities since 1947

The post The Solipsism of Faith: A Response to Talha Mannan appeared first on SabrangIndia.