How Sunni Orthodoxy In Kerala Seeks To Witch-Hunt A Progressive Scholar
By Muhammed Thaiparambil, New Age Islam
11 October 2023
Faizy, Who Was Trained as A Cleric in The Sunni-Shafi'i Creed
and Graduated from Samastha’s Own Seminary in Kerala, Served as An Imam in Abu
Dhabi, The Capital of The United Arab Emirates (UAE) For A Decade
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Abdul Hakeem Faizy
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In late 2022, a council of orthodox Sunni-Shafi'i scholars in Kerala, called Samastha Kerala Jem-iyyathul Ulama (Samastha), stirred up a hornet's nest by axing a progressive cleric and educational activist and, subsequently, declaring him as persona non grata. Revisionism, promoting progressive thinking and blasphemy were a few among a litany of charges slapped on Abdul Hakeem Faizy, a dynamic and enterprising scholar who sought to revise and modernise the curriculum of Islamic seminaries in the state by introducing compulsory university-level secular education along with religious studies. He is also a strong proponent of moderate faith, religious pluralism, and women empowerment.
Faizy’s expulsion from Samastha, which arguably represented
the largest section of the mainstream Sunni Muslims in Kerala, came at a time
when the curriculum and courses designed by him and his team at the
Coordination of Islamic Colleges (CIC), an academic governing body functioning
as a private university, have gained traction in the academia and have been
widely adopted by Sunni seminaries in the state, with the number of affiliated
institutions surging to nearly 100. As
many as 34 among them are exclusive colleges for girls.
With its knee-jerk decision, Samastha provoked the ire of
its own followers, especially a substantial chunk of promising young scholars
who were mentored and influenced by Faizy, including the graduates, students,
and teachers at the CIC colleges. But
Samastha flexed its organisational muscle, threatening Faizy’s supporters with
disciplinary action and mounting a targeted campaign aimed at labelling him as
non-Sunni, liberalist, and even as a heretic. Faizy’s supporters took it to the
social media to defend their teacher, triggering a vicious social media warfare
between the two groups. In a couple of
media interviews, Faizy ruled out all allegations Samastha levelled against him
as baseless. He said he remained an avowed proponent of traditional Islam but
reiterated his “life-long commitment to enlighten, empower and uplift the young
generation through education”.
Cross-Fertilizing Knowledge-Systems
Faizy, who was trained as a cleric in the Sunni-Shafi'i
creed and graduated from Samastha’s own seminary in Kerala, served as an Imam
in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for a decade. He
came back to Kerala in mid 1990s to take charge as the head of a then
little-known seminary, where he embarked on developing an integrated,
multidisciplinary curriculum synthesising secular and religious streams of
education. He modernized the curriculum
and teaching methods and introduced several new disciplines such as comparative
religious studies and modern research methodology to develop what he terms “a
cross-fertilizing knowledge-systems”. This experiment culminated in the
formation of the CIC in 2000 as an academic confederation of like-minded
seminaries. The courses Faizy and his
team tailored and put into practice in the colleges affiliated to the CIC were
instrumental in producing a new breed of seminary graduates well-versed in Islamic
studies as well as in multiple secular disciplines. Within a short span of
time, the CIC has gone global, entering into academic collaborations with
several international universities and academic bodies, and Faizy became an
executive board member from India at the Cairo-headquartered League of Islamic
Universities. He is also a
representative from India at the Secretariat of the World Muslim Communities
Council headquartered in Abu Dhabi.
However, Faizy cannot be credited as the pioneer of
integrated education in Kerala, despite the fact he was instrumental in
modernising curriculum, bringing innovation, and introducing integrated
institutions of higher education for women. Kerala’s experience with integrated
Seminaries, where students pursued a combined syllabus of Islamic studies and
modern education, started in mid-1980s in a couple of religious schools, the
most prominent among them being Darul Huda Islamic Academy, which in 2009
became an autonomous university and currently has over 30 colleges affiliated
to it spread across Kerala and a few other states. Darul Huda has recently
expanded its integrated campuses to some North Indian states as well, aimed at
educating the disadvantaged sections of the society.
Abdul Hakeem Faizy
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The integrated experiment by Darul Huda and Faizy’s CIC
brought a paradigm shift in the way Sunni seminaries are run and managed in
Kerala. The popularity of these institutions prompted several traditional
seminaries to join the bandwagon by introducing multidisciplinary curriculum.
This has opened up new career opportunities and better living standards for the
graduates. Instead of working in traditional religious sectors, the graduates
of Darul Huda, the CIC colleges, and other institutions who have adopted
multidisciplinary curriculum, are enabled to pursue higher studies in reputed
national and international universities, and excel as successful professionals
across public and private sectors in India, the Middle East, Europe, and the
United States. For many of them, Faizy
is an inspiration, and they were deeply hurt by Samsastha’s decision to expel
him.
Diktats Of Conservative Clerics
The decision to sack Faizy was a desperate move by the
diehard conservative clerics within Samastha to bring the CIC and its
institutions under its full control. From time to time, the scholarly body used
to exert pressure on Faizy and the CIC to correct what they feared a
progressive bent. A recent list of guidelines issued by the conservative body
to the CIC, Darul and other like-minded seminaries include the diktats to
change some of the prescribed texts in the syllabus and to purge the library of
all books, journals, and periodicals that do not sit well with conservative
Sunni ideology. Earlier Samastha asked Darul Huda to remove short film as a
competition item in the art festival and the CIC colleges not to conduct their
annual sports event at public places. Samastha has also sought to interfere in
some of the administrative affairs of the CIC. To prevent the excessive dropout
of girls mid-course due to early marriage, which was widespread in some of the
conservative belts, the CIC had allowed some of its colleges to reach an
agreement with its female students to the effect that they cannot marry before
completing the course, that is, in most cases, before they turn 20 years. But Samastha repeatedly asked the CIC to
revoke that decision, saying it is anti-Islamic to put age restrictions on
marriages. (Samastha, like many other
Muslim groups, had strongly opposed the BJP-led central government’s move to
increase the minimum age of marriage for women from 18 to 21 years.) Faizy’s attempts to resist some of these
interferences and protect the sovereignty of the CIC as an academic body with
its own senate and syndicate made him a bête noire of the hardliners within
Samastha leadership.
Although Samastha cobbled together a parallel academic body
and asked the CIC’s affiliated colleges to join it, it received a lukewarm
response. While the majority of the colleges decided to stay put with the CIC,
the decision by some of the colleges to leave the CIC was challenged by their
students and parents in the court.
However, the conservative lobby within Samastha still
remained hell bent on removing Faizy as the secretary of the CIC, by pressuring
the president of the CIC, Sadiq Ali Shihab Thangal, who is also the supremo of
Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), an influential political party which
considers Samastha followers as its loyal vote bank. Samstha brandished its vote bank as a
bargaining chip to press the IUML leadership to get Faizy sacked. While Sadiq
Ali stood by Faizy in the initial days of the dispute, even daring to attend a
graduation ceremony of the CIC ignoring Samastha’s plea to boycott it, he
eventually buckled under pressure from Samsatha and asked Faizy to tender his
resignation. This led to a mass resignation by Faizy’s supporters from the CIC
bringing the academic body to a standstill and forcing Sadiq Ali to freeze the
resignations for a couple of months. Students, teachers and parents thronged
Sadiq Ali’s residence in Panakkad, Malappuram, asking to reinstate Faizy as the
general secretary of the CIC. Although he later attempted a reconciliation by
appointing one of Faizy’s disciples as his successor, Samastha was not happy
with it. The conservative scholars are still asking Sadiq Ali to appoint one of
their nominees at the helm of the CIC and boycott Faizy from teaching and
attending any event in the CIC institutions. Sadiq Ali seems to be caught in a
limbo as the vote bank-obsessed leadership of his own party advises him to
bring the CIC to Samastha’s absolute control, while the rank-and-file of the
party, comprised of educated youngsters and professionals including some of
Sadiq Ali’s younger brothers and cousins, are largely critical of Samastha’s
high-handedness and its overtly conservative bent.
A lot hinges on Sadiq Ali's decision. If he chooses to
capitulate to Samastha's demands, by disowning Faizy and bringing the CIC under
Samastha's tutelage, he will be alienating a generation of talented young
scholars and educated professionals from the mainstream and leaving the Sunni
orthodoxy to the whims and fancies of a bunch of dyed-in-the-wool conservative
clerics. That, in the short run, might serve the vote-bank interests of the
IUML, but will ring death knell to one of the most promising progressive
streams that organically sprouted within Kerala's Sunni Orthodoxy.
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-politics/sunni-orthodoxy-kerala-scholar/d/130872
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