KOZHIKODE : In the popular imagination, Salafis, or Mujahids, in Kerala are the progressive face of the Muslim community, who fought for the rights of women, while traditional Sunni Muslims are considered obscurantists and misogynists. But a researcher has come up with a finding that the Salafis have, in fact, dismantled the matrilineal system of family that allowed more rights to Muslim women, including property rights.
In a recent book, ‘Matrilineal, Matriarchal, and Matrifocal Islam: The World of Women-Centric Islam’, edited by Dr Abbas Panakkal, a historian with UK-based University of St Andrews’ School of History, argues that Salafis joined hands with British colonialists to destroy the ‘marumakkathayam’, or matrilineal, system existing among Muslims in Kerala. “Salafı-Wahhabi, and other political Islamist movements attacked the distinctive nature of matrilineal Islam and labelled its practices un-Islamic,” he writes.
Dr Panakkal argues that Wahhabis condemned the integration of local customs into Islam because they thought that it would corrupt the religion. They wanted to purge Islam from all its regional and local ‘contaminations’ and to impose the ‘real Islam’, which in effect was nothing but the Arab variety of the religion.
“From the last quarter of the nineteenth century onwards, these ‘reformists’ campaigned against local practices and admonished Malabar Muslims to revert to the ‘real Islam’,” writes Dr Panakkal.
Nothing ‘un-Islamic’ in incorporating local traditions: Dr Panakkal
Sanulla Makti Thangal, who is considered a pioneer of the Mujahid movement in Kerala, was critical of marumakkathayam, which was considered a relic of Hindu culture. “Animals would not follow a matrilineal system, and admirers of this practice would never be entitled to the benevolence of God and the Prophet,” Thangal was quoted as saying.
Dr Panakkal says there is nothing ‘un-Islamic’ in incorporating local traditions, if they are not against the basic tenets of the religion, as is done by various communities across the globe. “Great scholars like Sheikh Zainudin Makhdum in Kerala did not object to the matrilineal system because they thought it was compatible with Islam. In fact, the position of Valiya Thangal in Ponnani was handed down through matrilineal traditions,” he writes.
Curiously, the British also found the matrilineal system ‘un-Islamic’. C A Innes, the British settlement officer, is on record saying the marumakkathayam practised by Muslims in Malabar ‘is opposed to the precepts of the Koran’.
Muslims had raised objections when there were attempts to bring in legislation to ‘Islamify’ them and to curtail the rights that women enjoyed in local custom. Centuries-old matrilineal traditions were thus set aside because of the combined power of the colonial ideology and the Arab-centric Salafı movement, Dr Panakkal contends.
