A cleric of an influential Muslim religious outfit has courted controversy in Kerala by strongly objecting to a teenaged girl being invited to the stage to accept a prize for academic excellence.
State joint secretary of the Samastha Kerala Jamiyyathul Ulama, M.T. Abdullah Musaliar, was caught on television cameras and a hot mic scolding his junior colleagues for inviting the Class X student to receive her certificate from the dignitaries on the stage at the inauguration of a building of a madrasa in Malappuram district recently.
“Is she a tenth standard student? Who called her? You will have to face the consequences if you do this ever again. You should not call such girls (of that age) to the stage. Don’t you know Samastha’s position? You should’ve asked the guardian to come over,” Musaliar can be heard in a video clip that has since gone viral on social media.
The angry cleric also took umbrage at being seen with the girl in photographs. “Are you doing unnecessary things with all of us here on stage? Won’t this appear in photographs? Wouldn’t this go live?” Musaliar said, as the girl clad in a hijab and burqa accepted the certificate and hurriedly left the stage.
The incident has sparked a row in Kerala.
Kerala Women’s Commission chairperson P. Sathidevi on Wednesday described the incident as “highly condemnable”.
“The remarks made by the Samastha leader are highly condemnable. It does not befit Kerala’s educational system that has been at the forefront of women’s empowerment. The remarks of a religious leader against a girl who went to receive her prize is not suitable for a progressive society,” Sathidevi said in a statement.
The Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), a member of the Opposition United Democratic Front, has not reacted. But the state president of its campus wing, the Muslim Students Federation, P.K. Navas, has defended the cleric.
“The ongoing cyber lynching of respected M.T. Ustad is not just incidental. Some communal organisations are behind the Islamophobic content being circulated in social media,” Navas said in a Facebook post on Tuesday.
“Liberal streams among us always portray Muslim scholars as regressive and anti-women. We should not follow their guidelines on how to become progressive,” Navas wrote, seeking the community’s support for the cleric under fire.
His remarks followed a statement by former national vice-president of the MSF, Fathima Thahiliya, who deplored the cleric’s words. “The community leaders should encourage such girls. We should be able to utilise their skills for the betterment of society. Keeping them away from a stage and insulting them will create serious consequences in our society. Girls who have to go through such bad experiences could eventually begin to hate religion and religious leadership,” Thahiliya wrote on Facebook.
Among the women leaders of the MSF who stood up against sexual harassment in the organisation and filed a case against Navas last year, Thahiliya told The Telegraph that the cleric’s action was misogynistic.
“Every such act is misogyny. She is a minor. But imagine the trauma even if an adult faces such an experience. No one can support such an anti-women act,” she said.
The silence on the part of the IUML, which draws a lot of support from Samastha during elections, did not deter leader of the Opposition, V.D. Satheesan of the Congress that helms the UDF, from expressing his disapproval of such anti-women decisions. “I won’t support any action that is against women,” Satheesan said when reporters sought his view on the incident.
Left Democratic Front MLA and former minister K.T. Jaleel slammed such a regressive attitude. “Why does the Muslim community want to shut its doors on progress and push women into darkness when the whole world is opening up?” Jaleel said.
