Kerala Cleric Objects Girl Student Sharing Stage, Why Must Women Stay Secluded?

Kerala Governor Arif Mohammed Khan, on May 11, criticised a Muslim scholar for allegedly reprimanding organisers of an event in Malappuram for inviting a girl on stage. Khan said that it was another example of Muslim women being pushed into seclusion “in total defiance of Qur’anic commands”.

What elicited this response from Kerala’s governor? A video clip that was aired by news channels showed a senior functionary of Samastha Kerala Jem-iyyathul Ulma, a body of Muslim scholars, MT Abdulla Musaliyar reprimanding one of the organisers for calling upon a girl student from Class 10 on the dias to receive an award. This happened during an inauguration of a ‘madrassa’ building in the Malappuram district.

Muslim Cleric Humiliates Girl On Stage

Abdulla Musaliyar was heard criticising the organiser and suggesting that the student's parents should have accepted the award instead.

Many were displeased with the reaction and rightly so. What was so wrong with the girl receiving her award? Why should anyone accept the award on her behalf at all?

Kerala’s governor, who was also displeased, took to Twitter and wrote, “Sad to know that a young talented girl was humiliated on stage in Malappuram district while receiving a well-deserved award simply because she was born into a Muslim family.”

“This is yet another example of how Muslim clerics continue to push hard Muslim women into seclusion and suppress their personality in total defiance of Qur’anic commands and provisions of the Constitution,” he added.

Why are we still holding onto a regressive mentality in 2022? What is so threatening about a woman’s presence that men want to seclude her? Where does the thought of secluding women stem from?

It is difficult to trace back how the thought—women are subservient beings and weaker sex—developed. But the patriarchal society has conditioned people to believe ardently in the thought which has resulted in years of oppression of women. Even now, it’s a struggle to break through and make a name in a world that is largely male-dominated.

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Women have had to fight to earn the spaces they now are holding and paved the way for others to join them too. Don’t they deserve to reap the benefits of their hard work? Why must they back down because some man felt threatened by her presence?

Women are subjected to misogyny, chauvinism, and objectification every waking day which also spills over their education. Living in the midst of a patriarchal culture where our honour is by extension assumed to be our family’s honour, women’s seclusion and subordination result in restrictions on their ability to contribute to the labour force.

Qur’an, as Arif Khan tweeted, does not command that a woman be secluded from the world, rather it recognises and encourages women’s contribution to the world. However, people view all texts with a patriarchal lens that society has conditioned them to wear. While the rationale behind observing purdah or women's seclusion are many, the two forms it manifests in are: seclusion, dress, segregation of sexes and exercising control over women's lives by powerbrokers that use religion and tradition as their means to do so.

Women's systematic exclusion from participating in socio-political and economic life has implications not just for young women but also for society as it exacerbates poverty and perpetuates disparities in health, education and economic achievement. It leads to the slowing of a nation's progress and in achieving the Development Goals identified by the United Nations as benchmarks to reduce poverty.

It's high time we change our attitude and understand the importance of encouraging our women to break out of the confines that were constructed by the patriarchal society instead of pushing them away into seclusion. Secluding women is not the solution to "protecting their modesty" rather change your view of women and stop seeing them as just commodities who must be married off and bore children because women are more than that.

Views expressed are the author's own