When General H M Ershad was the president of Bangladesh, he often boasted that Sheikh Hasina Wazed, who was then the principal challenger, could never succeed. “This is a Muslim country” he would say. “The president has to be a man because he must lead the nation in prayers.” I mentioned this to Kamal Hossain, the barrister who was then in the Awami League and Sheikh Hasina’s foreign minister in waiting. Dr Hossain contemptuously dismissed the historical knowledge of military men. “Ershad has obviously not heard of Razia!”
Religion is only one aspect of the matter. The real challenge Gen Ershad touched upon was a woman’s ability to make it in a man’s world. Sheikh Hasina proved it in 1996 when she first became prime minister. This Republic Day, 34-year-old Jamida Beevi also made history by becoming the first Indian Muslim woman to lead the Friday prayer in a public place for a mixed congregation of both sexes at Vandoor village in Kerala’s Malappuram district. Ms Beevi’s achievement was as much a national landmark as Razia’s ascent to the throne of the sultanate of Delhi on November 10, 1236. The insistence of the only woman to rule the sultanate on being called “Razia Sultan” and not Razia Sultana was like Queen Elizabeth I declaring that although she had “the body but of a weak and feeble woman” she had “the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too”.
Ms Beevi was not,, however the first woman worldwide to perform the functions of an imam. Two women, Sherin Khankan and Saliha Marie Fetteh, imams of Copenhagen’s Mariam mosque above a fast-food outlet in a city centre street, had done so in 2016. More than 60 women participated in the ceremony as Ms Khankan sang the adhan and made an opening speech, and Ms Fetteh delivered the khutbah, or sermon, on the theme of “women and Islam in a modern world”. Actually, however, the first woman to break Islam’s men-only tradition in recent times outside of China was Amina Wadud, a revolutioinary American professor of religion and philosophy, who led the Friday prayer in New York in 2005.
China is a country with a long Islamic past, and not only in Xinjiang with its Muslim Uighur population. All Chinese called Ma – like China’s current consul general in Kolkata, Ma Zhanwu – are believed to be of Muslim descent, Ma being an abbreviated variation of Mohammed. The nüsi or women-only mosque is a unique feature of Chinese Islam. The imams and all the congregants are women, with men not even allowed into the buildings. A handful of women have been trained as imams in order to serve these mosques. As a reciprocal measure, women were not allowed in men’s mosques in some Chinese communities where the nüsi operated. Iran and India have tried in recent years to establish similar mosques but not with much success.
Judging by the current triple talaq controversy, Indian Muslims may be a relatively conservative group. Perhaps conservatism goes hand in hand with minority status. The constant fear of being absorbed by the majority tends to make all minority groups believe that their survival depends on retreat into uncompromising orthodoxy. Muslim majority countries like Egypt or Pakistan have been more reformist in personal laws than India. That may be one reason why Ms Beevi does not appear to have received much support. Another reason is that she belongs to the Khuran Sunnath Society, a small group of Malayali Muslims in Kerala that claims to work for reforming the Muslim community from within. Its members follow only the Quran while proscribing the Hadith, the reported sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, holding that they were written to malign him. This is anathema to the majority of Muslims for whom the Hadith, along with the Quran, is central to the Islamic doctrine. In Kerala, as in most of the world, Muslims mostly follow the Sunni faith.
The Khuran Sunnath Society was founded to propagate the teachings of P K Mohammed Abul Hassan, popularly known as Chekannur Moulavi, after he disappeared on July 29, 1993. The Muslim clergy from all sects and schools denounced Hassan as an apostate. In September 2010, the Central Bureau of Investigation court hearing the case concluded that Hassan had been murdered after being abducted and his body had been disposed of. One person was convicted of the murder but the court acquitted eight others. The society split vertically recently following a dispute over Hassan’s legacy. While some claimants to his mantle demanded “timely changes” in doctrine, others – including Ms Beevi – argued that Hassan’s teachings were sacrosanct and should not be tampered with.
Born in 1984 in Konni in Kerala’s Pathana-mthitta district, the youngest of 13 children of a soldier and a housewife, Ms Beevi is now the state general secretary of her faction. She joined the Jamia Nadwiyya Arabic College, run by the Salafist organisation Kerala Nadvathul Mujahideen, in Malappuram in 1991 to study Arabic. “I was an inquisitive student,” she is quoted as saying. “I used to trouble my teachers with questions on Islam. My intention was to gain knowledge, but the teachers misunderstood and called me a rebel. But I was adamant to know the truth. And my quest continues even now.” According to Ms Beevi, no sooner were her studies completed than her family forced her to marry against her will the man they had chosen. When she wanted a divorce, the family retorted that “Allah doesn’t like divorce.” She did finally get a divorce, but only in 2016, after 13 years of marriage and the birth of two children. After her marriage, Ms Beevi moved to Thiruvananthapuram where she taught Arabic to schoolchildren to earn some money.
By 2016, Ms Beevi claimed, the “hate campaign” became so intense she left Thiruvananthapuram and moved to Kozhikode, joined the Khuran Sunnath Society, and become an influential figure. The decision to organise a Friday prayer led by a woman was taken on January 23. “We wanted to spread the message that Islam never prohibited women from leading prayers,” Ms Beevi explained. She hopes her decision “will inspire more Muslim women to preside over prayers”. Apparently, there are messages circulating on social media accusing her of being “a kafir, a non-believer”. But she is not daunted. “I am not afraid of death,” she says. “I am ready to die for the cause.”
So was Razia Sultan. Whether or not, the heroine of the epic cinematic drama Padmavaat ever actually existed in the flesh, the daughter of Iltutmish was sultan of Delhi from 1236 to 1240. She made it in one man’s world. As Jameeda Beevi has now done in another.
The author was formerly Professor of Economics at IIM Bangalore.
