Kerala Muslim scholar’s remark against girl student flayed

Kerala Governor Arif Mohammed Khan flayed the critical remarks by a Muslim scholar against inviting girl students to the stage.

Khan said that it was yet another example of how Muslim clerics were pushing hard Muslim women into seclusion and suppressing their personalities in total defiance of Quranic commands and provisions of the Constitution.

Kerala Opposition leader V D Satheesan of the Congress also flayed the Muslim scholar’s statement. Congress could not accept any sort of discrimination towards women, he said.

Kerala Women’s Commission chairperson and CPM leader P Sathidevi said in a statement that such discrimination toward women needs to be strongly resisted.

M T Abdulla Musaliyar, a senior member of the Samastha Kerala Jem-iyyathul Ulama (Samastha), a supreme body of Islamic scholars of Kerala, had criticised inviting girls to the stage for receiving educational awards during a madrassa building inauguration at Malappuram district in north Kerala the other day.

The memento was handed over to the girl by Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) leader Panakkad Sayed Abbas Ali Shihab Thangal.

Soon after the award was handed over, Musaliyar questioned the organisers as to why the girl was invited on stage.

“Who invited a Class 10 girl to the stage? If you do this again... Don’t call such girls here. Don’t you know the rules of Samastha? Were you the one who called her? Ask her parents to come to the stage to collect the award. Don’t do such things while we are sitting here. This will appear in photos and be telecast,” a visibly angry Musaliyar was seen telling the organisers, while Thangal was standing next to him.

The person who announced the name of the girl was seen apologising to Musaliyar.