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 ------ 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. 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. 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