-- Women and Islam
Kerala women enter mosques
Cheryl Kanekar

"Women's faces are a source of corruption for men who are
not related to them."

--The Taliban attorney general's office, justifying the order that windows be
painted black in Afghanistan to prevent unveiled women being seen from
outside.

At a time when the word "Islam" conjures up images of fatwa- weilding mullahs
and veiled oppressed women, an imam in Kerala has stirred up a very different
controversy over women and Islam. P K K Ahmedkutty Maulvi, the imam (priest)
of the Palayam mosque in Thiruvananthapuram, threw open the doors of his
mosque to women this January, declaring that women have as much right to pray
in mosques as men under Islam. Immediately he had Islamic conservatives
baying at his doorstep. The Council of Imams met and passed a resolution
condemning the move. The Sunni Yuvajana Sangham organised a morcha to the
Palayam mosque in protest, while various clergymen all over the country
denounced the move as being against Islamic tradition.

But many other jamaats in the city and clergymen outside backed the imam.
More and more women have begun attending prayers in the mosque regularly
since Ramzan. Most important, hundreds of Muslim women took to the streets in
Kozhikode, voicing their support for the move and demanding that they too be
allowed unrestrained entry into mosques. Supporters of the Imam have stressed
the fact that there is nothing new about the move. They point out that women
not only prayed in mosques, but were also religious teachers during the
Prophet's lifetime and writers of the Hadith (collections of the sayings and
deeds of the Prophet) after his death. Moreover, women can freely pray in
mosques in many Islamic sects in India, such as the Bohras, Ahmediyas,
Mujahirs and the Ahle Hadith, and in countries like Egypt, Malaysia,
Indonesia, Thailand and parts of Saudi Arabia.

While this is true, the imam's stand is still a radical one for the Sunnis of
India and Pakistan, who for centuries now have banned women from entering
mosques. The reasoning behind this is expressed even today by opponents of
the move: women will be "a distraction"; they will "disturb devout men" and be
bad for "purity of thought". Women, in other words, are a source of
temptation, of evil, leading men astray. The decision of the Imam is radical
precisely because it challenges this view of women. It asserts the equality of
women and men at the most basic level of any religion -- prayer.

This challenge to accepted religious practice can be justified, in this case,
by referring to the Prophet's own practice. But more importantly, it is an
assertion from within the Muslim clergy that religion must change with
changing social circumstances, that doctrines and practices which arose in
particular circumstances cannot be deep- frozen and implemented forever in
very different times. Imam Ahmedkutty's decision is, more than anything else,
testimony to the changed position of women in Kerala today. With a general
literacy rate of 89.9%, more women in Kerala are educated and more highly
educated than anywhere else in India (64.5% of the state's women were
educated in 1981 as against 24.9% of women all over India and this was before
the 100% literacy campaign). Women have been working outside the home for
several generations now. With high unemployment resulting in thousands of
Keralite men migrating to the Gulf, many women have become the heads of their
households. Obviously, as more and more women take up social responsibilities
that men traditionally monopolised, more and more of them are also
questioning the lack of equality in religion. This also has its historical
basis in matriliny, which was the norm in many Kerala communities including
the coastal Muslims, up to the middle of this century.

Kerala has also had a long history of militant struggle for religious and
land reform. For example: the numerous campaigns for the entry of lower-caste
people into temples, which shook the state from the 1920s onwards. Today it
is hard to believe that, at the start of this century, no lower caste woman
could appear before a landlord with her upper body covered; or that the
lowest castes were not just untouchable but had to run to stay at least 30
yards away from any Brahmin; or that only upper-caste landlords could tile
their roofs or build second storeys or gateways. But that was how Kerala was
right up to the 1920s.

In fact, the Moplah Muslims, organised under the banner of Islam, played a
very important role in the battle against feudalism and imperialism. First,
in the 16th century, it was the Muslim spice traders along the coast who
strongly opposed the Portuguese attempts to take over the spice trade. Later,
when the Malabar province came under British rule, the Muslim tenants and
landless labourers there organised themselves against the upper-caste Hindu
landlords and their British backers. Islam, with its egalitarian principles,
became a rallying point for lower-caste Hindus, many of whom converted.
Islamic religious leaders who were associated with the Moplah revolts, like
Sayyid Fadl, preached that no Moplah was to accept left-over food from Hindus
(as the lower-castes were supposed to) or plough the land on Fridays or use
the honorific plural while addressing the upper-castes or stay 30 yards away
from Brahmins, and that no woman was to appear in public with her upper body
bare. These were deliberate efforts to build a sense of pride and
self-respect within lower-caste converts and to defy the authority of the
upper-castes.

The well-known Moplah revolts are said to have begun with the murder of a
Nair landlord after he ripped off the blouse of an Ezhava (low-caste) woman
convert, who had dared to appear before him clothed above the waist, stood
within 30 yards of him and called him by his name. The revolts were mostly a
series of attempts to take over land by groups of armed Muslim tenants or
suicidal attacks on landlords known for their atrocities, culminating in the
1921-22 Moplah Rebellion which aimed at setting up an "Islamic" state. Thus
even the militant (and sometimes reactionary) Islam of the Moplah Muslims had
its roots in their struggles against the stranglehold of the Hindu
upper-caste landlords and the British.

With this tradition of anti-feudal struggle and in the atmosphere of Kerala,
where successive Communist governments pushed through progressive
legislations and where other communities have undergone massive reform
struggles, it is hardly surprising that an Islamic version of liberation
theology is developing within Kerala today. Some maulvis and imams have been
demanding that the Shariat be re-interpreted to meet the demands of
modern-day society better. Imam Ahmedkutty's radical decision is one
expression of this move for change within Islam. 
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[Cheryl Kanekar is a free-lance writer and an activist of Stree Jagriti
Samiti, a women's organisation based in Mumbai, India. The above article
first appeared in The Voice of People Awakening, a monthly political
magazine, in April 1997. The address of the magazine is as follows: The Voice
of People Awakening, Post Box No. 19417, Mumbai 400 093, India.]