'Muslim women are not ornaments': ALIFA demands end to clerical patriarchy in Kerala

By A Representative 

The All-India Feminist Alliance (ALIFA), a constituent of the National Alliance of People's Movements (NAPM), has strongly condemned the recent circular issued by the Samastha Kerala Jamiyyathul Ulama faction led by Kanthapuram A.P. Aboobacker Musliyar, which directs that women should not appear in public spaces alongside men and that young women should not be brought into gatherings with unrelated men.

The circular, sent on August 27, 2026, to mahal and madrassa committees across Kerala ahead of the Milad-un-Nabi celebrations, has drawn sharp criticism from women's rights organizations and democratic groups across the country.

ALIFA has demanded the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the circular, which it describes as regressive and unacceptable. The alliance has also called for a public assurance from mahal and madrassa committees that no woman or girl will be removed from a stage, a procession, or a programme on the basis of this directive.

Additionally, ALIFA has urged all political parties in both fronts in Kerala, the UDF and LDF, to clarify their principled position on women's participation in public, religious, and social life, rather than adjusting it to the arithmetic of their alliances.

At the Hubbu Rasool Conference in Kochi on August 30, Kanthapuram defended the circular, citing the Quran and stating that bringing women onto public platforms causes great destruction. He compared a woman to a gold necklace kept safe in a box, set against a stone grinder left out at the roadside, and maintained that Islam mandates purdah for this reason.

He further claimed that the scholars of Samastha had taught this for a hundred years and that nobody could make them stop. On September 3, at Thrissur, Kanthapuram pointed to the madrassas and girls' schools run by his organizations as evidence that he and his associates do not believe women should be confined.

However, the circular has not been withdrawn, and organizations attached to his faction have since demanded an apology from the Chief Minister for criticizing his remarks.

ALIFA has extended solidarity to organizations and citizens challenging the circular, including the Bebaak Collective and the All India Democratic Women's Association (AIDWA), both of which have emphasized that Maulanas and Muftis do not speak for all Muslims or the whole of Islam.

AIDWA has stated that women do not need permission from religious authorities to move, study, work, travel, speak, organize, or take part in public life, and that no cleric or institution may place itself above the constitutional guarantees of equality, dignity, and freedom of movement.

The Bebaak Collective has cautioned that statements of this kind turn the names and identities of Muslim women into instruments of a politics conducted over their heads and objected to religious politics being done in their name.

Muslim women activists have responded powerfully to the circular. Raseena Noushad rejected the idea that a woman's place is to stay home, deliver babies, and cook, suggesting that men who object to women in public might stay home themselves.

Nadhiya Khadar questioned who is expected to pay for a woman who cannot leave the house and what she is to do if her husband refuses. Shimna Zeenath stated that the clergy is treating women as reproductive instruments, which she said is the opposite of the learning Islam set going in the Prophet's own time.

Filmmaker Aisha Sultana asked who it was that led the Battle of the Camel, referencing a historical event where a woman led an army. Writing in The Print, a Muslim woman answered the theology directly, citing Khadijah bint Khuwaylid, Islam's first convert and a trader who ran her own caravans, and Fatima al-Fihri, who founded at Fez in 859 CE the institution that became the University of al-Qarawiyyin, older than Oxford or Bologna.

The claim to speak for Islam has been contested from within the Muslim community as well. On September 4, P.N. Abdul Latheef Madani and T.K. Ashraf of the Wisdom Islamic Organisation issued a joint statement saying that Kanthapuram's position, which denies women even the freedom of worship due to them, is thoroughly anti-women and un-Islamic and must be corrected.

The Mujahid students' wing, ISM, asked Kanthapuram to correct the statement and called it a violation of individual rights, pointing out that women took part even in battle in the Prophet's time. The Kerala Amir of Jamaat-e-Islami, P. Mujeeb Rahman, has said that the disagreement with Kanthapuram's statement exists within the Muslim community itself.

Nisa, the Kozhikode-based Muslim women's forum, announced in October 2018 that it would go to the Supreme Court for women's entry into all mosques and for the right of women to lead prayer. When Kanthapuram said in January 2020 that women should not march on the streets shouting slogans as men do, V.P. Suhara of Nisa replied that the Prophet's own wife had gone to war and stood with him through his political struggles.

ALIFA has emphasized that an instruction of this kind does its work locally and quietly. Addressed to mahal and madrassa committees, it reaches the girl due to collect a prize at a madrassa function, the anganwadi worker on a Nabidinam stage, and the student organizing a neighbourhood programme.

It hands a religious sanction to every committee already inclined to remove her and to every household already inclined to keep her inside. ALIFA has rejected the cover offered by the Indian Union Muslim League, whose state president Sadiq Ali Shihab Thangal on September 1 called the remarks a scholarly expression and suggested they may have been about the safety of women.

The alliance has equally rejected the opportunistic role of the Sangh Parivar, which has always invoked the regressive Manusmriti on questions concerning women. While the Kerala BJP President has written about every girl's right to learn and live in freedom, and the BJP Mahila Morcha announced protests across Kerala on September 2, ALIFA has noted that these same Hindutva organizations refused to condemn the recent outrageous remarks by their lifelong ideologue Mr. Mohandas on certain women liking rape, with the RSS claiming these were thoughts of an individual.

The BJP went a step ahead in defense of Mr. Mohandas and criticized the FIR filed against him as discriminatory. These are the same formations that put their cadre and members on the roads of Kerala after September 2018 to stop women from walking up to Sabarimala and drove Bindu Ammini and Kanakadurga into hiding for doing what the Supreme Court had said they were entitled to do.

ALIFA has made clear that neither RSS nor BJP are interested in upholding constitutional guarantees for Muslim women or any women, and that their interest in this particular issue is to weaponize the circular to further their agenda of majoritarian communal politics.

ALIFA has called on feminist groups, women's organizations, and people's movements across the country to publicly assert that participation of women from all faiths in public life is not an internal matter to be settled by men who hold religious office or are ideologues, but is an inviolable fundamental and constitutional right.

The alliance has noted that over the decades, Muslim women in Kerala have come a long way and faith leaders must acknowledge this. Many of them are well-educated, articulate, and are asserting themselves as equal believers, partakers of the faith, and holders of constitutional rights, and are in fact a source of great strength to the community, as witnessed during the anti-CAA protests.

Treating them as equal will only strengthen the community, and patriarchs would do well by understanding this.