How AMU student politics prioritises Islamist ideologies rather than addressing campus-specific concerns
In his recent piece titled "Unmasking the Power Struggles of Soqme Teachers Behind the AMU Students’ Agitation," Mohammad Sajjad, professor of modern and contemporary Indian history at the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), has has approached the recent protests against fee increases at AMU with a skeptical eye. He portrays them not as a pure, student-led reaction to financial burdens, but as possibly intertwined with deeper institutional rivalries. While recognizing that the university administration faces ongoing demands from the government and the University Grants Commission (UGC) to boost self-generated revenue via fee adjustments, he highlights a key shortfall: neither the administration nor the protesters have shared clear, comparative data on fee structures or their rationale.
Professor Sajjad does not dismiss the possibility that the fee hike lacks justification; he keeps that debate alive. Instead, he argues that if the increase is truly the core issue, both sides should openly dissect the details—offering side-by-side fee comparisons, benchmarks against other institutions, and reasoned arguments for or against the change. The lack of such transparent dialogue fuels his suspicion that the unrest might stem more from concealed power dynamics within the university than from the fee issue alone.
He suggests that AMU's student demonstrations could be acting as stand-ins for influential faculty members embedded in administrative factions. Sajjad ties the timing of the protests to threats facing this group, including a Delhi High Court ruling jeopardizing their Old Pension Scheme benefits, ongoing vigilance investigations, delayed reorganizations, and questionable hiring practices in AMU-affiliated schools that favor certain regions. These individuals, he claims, exercise "power without accountability" and may be leveraging student activism to resist changes and safeguard their positions. Although students may genuinely resent the fee hike, Sajjad posits that many remain oblivious to these underlying machinations, which are embedded in AMU's internal political economy and bolstered by ties to external influencers and profitable deals.
Theatrics in AMU Protest Politics: Martyrs for Music, Warriors for Attire
Building on Professor Sajjad's analysis, I draw focus to a particular protest method employed on August 8, 2025: the collective Friday prayer at the Bab-e-Syed gate. If the demonstrations center on fee hikes, why incorporate Friday namaz as a tactic? The connection reveals itself in AMU's historical student politics. In an earlier essay, Professor Sajjad observed that AMU has lacked sustained, independent student movements with long-range goals. As he put it: "There have only been sporadic, spontaneous, short-lived protests, and relief distribution among Muslim victims of communal riots, at times inviting allegations of embezzlement of the relief fund by office-bearers of the students’ union. Besides, some outbursts on emotive issues like the Muslim personal law, Urdu and the Babri Masjid."
For a recent illustration of the Islamist bent in AMU student activism, recall the October 2020 controversy over Prophet Muhammad cartoons. It arose from the horrific beheading of French teacher Samuel Paty on October 16, 2020. Paty had displayed Charlie Hebdo caricatures of the Prophet in a lesson on free speech. An 18-year-old Chechen refugee later decapitated him in a Paris suburb, viewing it as retribution for perceived blasphemy against Islam.
France's President Emmanuel Macron denounced the act and upheld secularism (laïcité) and free expression, including the right to depict religious figures. In retort, an AMU student leader rallied protesters, proclaiming: "If anyone commits blasphemy, we will behead him. Because, our foundation and the foundation of Islam is based on the Kalma – La Ilaha Illallah, Mohammed-un-Rasool Allah (There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger). If anyone does wrong to our Creator, then we will not tolerate it." This incitement to violence over a distant blasphemy case exemplifies AMU's student politics: it prioritizes forging Islamist ideologies aimed at confronting imagined adversaries, rather than addressing campus-specific concerns. Participants gain a false sense of agency from envisioning themselves in a grand, aggressive clash against non-believers.
Another absurd case unfolded on October 6, 2022, during a musical performance at Kennedy Auditorium for Gandhi Jayanti. Singers performed six group songs in black outfits with red "Humanity Bands" across their shoulders—a distant resemblance to a dupatta or chunri. They also delivered the University Tarana in a fusion style with various instruments, diverging from its traditional rendition. Following complaints from senior students, the performers apologized unconditionally and vowed not to repeat the choices on or off campus.
Student leader Zaid Sherwani responded with an exaggerated triumphant statement: "This is a victory for our illustrious traditions and for the Alig fraternity’s love for its own heritage. The matter is simple: people like us, the humble servants of this institution, will never compromise on its traditions. This honour (ghairat) is the inheritance of our forefathers, and we are ready to sacrifice our lives for it. Thanks to the Alig fraternity, whose sensitivity immediately surges when it comes to the institution’s traditions. I appeal to Alig students: these traditions are the crowns upon our heads, do not trifle with them. Love the institution. The enemy is working day and night to destroy it. If we ourselves cannot love the institution and its traditions, then it would be a matter of shame so great we might as well drown."
Sherwani's rhetoric resembles a dramatic soliloquy from a colonial-era play, where the guardian of norms recoils at novelty. He frames the "victory"—an apology extracted for a musical tweak and accessory—as a pivotal win in a cultural war. Yet beneath this lies not a robust defense of heritage, but a fragile fear of innovation, where tradition shatters at a wardrobe adjustment.
Gender insecurities permeate the text. The red band is subtly eroticized through alarm at its likeness to women's clothing, implying that any blurring of male-female aesthetics poses a mortal danger. The invoked "ghairat" (honor) is a classic patriarchal tool, suggesting male pride is tarnished not by real inequities, but by symbolic deviations—like a hue or fabric hinting at femininity. Elevating this to an ancestral legacy worth dying for transforms taste into tribal purity.
Sherwani's warnings of "enemies" plotting AMU's downfall evoke a simplistic film plot: loyal guardians versus insidious saboteurs. This bunker mindset typifies regressive longing, viewing evolution as betrayal rather than growth. His plea to "love the institution" demands rote allegiance, enforcing unquestioned obedience to authority.
Notably, Sherwani claims humility as a "servant" while wielding authoritarian language. He praises the community's "sensitivity" to challenges as a strength, when it signals a reliance on unchanging rituals for identity. Here, creativity is heresy, demanding repentance.
The irony is profound: AMU, established to modernize Muslims for a evolving world, now sees its champions treating it as a delicate relic, shielded from blended tunes or stage props.
In AMU's conservative worldview, beheading answers a teacher's cartoons, and life-sacrifice counters a remixed song or mismatched sash. The stakes vary, but the pattern endures: inflating minor symbols into cataclysmic threats, as if society teeters on a note or thread. It's a fragile ideology, where manhood, religion, and pride demand perpetual vigilance against drawings, fabrics, and melodies.
Shifting from Fees to Faith: How a Protest Embraces Religious Rhetoric
Viewed through AMU's Islamist political lens, the Friday prayer at Bab-e-Syed gate appears as a tactic by student leaders to infuse fee protests with religious fervor. This subtly redirects focus from educational access to defending Islamic purity. Talha Mannan, national secretary of the Students Islamic Organization (SIO) and ex-AMU student, exemplifies this shift.
Mannan depicts himself as a vigilant recorder of a derailed protest—not due to burdensome fees on the underprivileged, but because the administration barred prayers at Bab-e-Syed. He romanticizes prior movements (like the Jinnah portrait dispute or anti-CAA campaigns), where namaz at sites was revered, with Hindu students shielding Muslim peers—a hallmark of AMU's "culture." Now, he alleges, state infiltrators, proctors, and police have disrupted worshippers. His verdict: those opposing prayer don't belong at AMU, and fees must drop.
Yet here's the calculated irony: demanding prayer amid protest deliberately invites conflict. Framing an assault on demonstrators as an assault on Islam eclipses the economic complaint, morphing a budget quarrel into a sacred crusade. It's masterful redirection: economics yields to theology, sidestepping fee details.
Mannan executes this seamlessly, pivoting from finances to faith for greater resonance. The fee issue fades; the spotlight hits Islamic defense, urging expulsion of the irreverent. Economics was mere prelude—the prayer the centerpiece, indignation the reward, and the jump from "cut fees" to "oust prayer foes" preordained.
Embedding namaz in protests draws from a scholarly tradition viewing public prayer as a emblem of political dominion. Rooted in classical jurisprudence and modern Islamist ideas, "establishing prayer" signals legitimate rule and community dominance. For instance, Mufti Muhammad Taqi Usmani refutes secular views that prayer is apolitical.
He asserts governance shapes moral character beyond laws, instilling accountability to Allah. Prayer reinforces this, as "one cannot make people follow a system through the force of law alone." It integrates politics, economics, and spirituality, fostering duty via reminders of divine oversight. Quoting Qur’an 29:45—"The prayer deters from indecency and vice"—Usmani notes prayer's broad moral impact, with pray-ers generally exhibiting better conduct.
In an Islamic state, "establishing prayer" means state-facilitated moral education, not just private devotion. Applied to AMU's protest namaz (as in Mannan's narrative), it transforms worship into a political assertion: embedding salāh in activism reframes the fight as upholding divine order over secular governance. Material issues like fees or policing subordinate to theological primacy, recasting disputes as battles for faith's anchorage.
Contrasting Prayers: The Gate Versus the Square
The exclusionary tone of Bab-e-Syed's Friday prayer contrasts sharply with Tahrir Square's 2011 protests in Egypt. There, rituals bridged divides: Muslims prayed under Coptic Christian guards, then reciprocated at a Coptic Mass for revolutionary martyrs. This cross-faith engagement shattered norms of segregated worship, weaving faith into a shared public sphere rare in modern Egypt.
Tahrir's prayers also defied Islamic spatial rules. Men and women prayed side-by-side, forgoing mosque gender divisions—proximity in prostration symbolizing egalitarian unity over strict boundaries. Prayer adapted to revolution, prioritizing collective solidarity.
Even sermons transcended Muslim exclusivity. Yusuf al-Qaradawi addressed "O Muslims and Copts! O children of Egypt!" equating faiths as revolution's heirs, shifting khutba from religious to national discourse.
Envisioning this at AMU would dismantle entrenched patriarchy, where women's roles remain peripheral. As historian Amber H. Abbas notes, "Though much has changed in AMU since the 1940s, women’s education has never been central to AMU’s corporate life. Women’s hostels remain spatially marginalized as was true when Abdullah Hall, two and a half kilometers from AMU’s center, was the only option for female students." This isolation breeds ideological resentment, seen in moral outcries: the Islamic Youth Federation's (IYF) 2024 condemnation of "indecency" in events, veiled as controlling women's presence; a 2019 IYF poster likening women to protected birds against progressive ideologies; and the 2018 "blasphemous" photo case, where a woman and others faced charges for a social media post with beer and Iftar references. Each incident rallies defense of a "moral ethos" centered on surveilling women's behavior.
Women do appear prominently in AMU protests, but this doesn't upend hierarchies. Organizers schedule actions on Sundays—when hostel rules permit outings—thus conforming to, rather than challenging, restrictions. Protests reinforce patriarchal confines.
In this context, outcry over proctorial mishandling of female students extends patriarchal "protection," not equity. After years of policing women's visibility—from dress codes to post criminalization—such concerns often bolster male dominance, using women's "vulnerability" to consolidate power.
Tahrir's innovative rituals—flexing orthodoxy for unity—are alien to AMU's conservatism. Bab-e-Syed prayer narrows space, converting economic woes into religious litmus tests. Cairo's square made salat a bridge across divides; AMU's version enforces conformity and hierarchy. One risks pluralism; the other fortifies isolation. Picturing Tahrir at AMU—an institution distancing women kilometers away and raging over accessories, tunes, or posts—would demand a profound transformation, verging on the miraculous.
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*Studying at Aligarh Muslim University, 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
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