Kerala’s prominent Sunni Muslim leader Kanthapuram AP Aboobacker Musliar, known for his extremely conservative views on social and religious issues, on Saturday triggered a controversy by stating that gender equality was un-Islamic and that man and woman could not be equal in any way.
“Gender equality, male-female equality is not Islamic or intelligible and not even humanistic,” Kanthapuram, general secretary of the Sunni Jam-Iyat’ul Ulema and leader of a prominent Sunni Muslim sect of Kerala, said while addressing a Sunni Students’ Federation camp in Kozhikode on Saturday.
Kanthapuram’s statement came amidst the controversy over the refusal of a Muslim management college in Kozhikode district to allow male and female students to sit together in classes or elsewhere in the campus. The Sunni scholar’s statement has already drawn flak from various cultural personalities as well as from inside the Muslim community itself.
“The demand for the right for boys and girls to sit on the same bench is a secret arrow. It is part of a planned move to destroy Islam and its culture,” Kanthapuram said and asked whether anybody could prove man-woman equality. He added that gender equality was perennially impractical.
Stating that man should wield power while woman was to keep the family and house in order, the Sunni scholar said, “The role of the woman is to give birth to children and look after them with love, humility and patience. Woman alone can do this with the care and delicateness it requires. Can a woman take up that roleIJ He can never do that.”
Kanthapuram said that men always had better mental resolve and strength than women and tried to offer examples to prove his point. He said not more than one woman doctor could be seen among a thousand doctors doing major surgeries. likewise, there were no women among the Prophets or Khalifas, he added.
The Sunni leader termed as baseless the allegation leveled by a woman journalist that children were facing sexual abuse at Madrassas in the State. He said those who were making such allegations should produce evidence to support them.
However, Kanthapuram later claimed that he had not made any comments against women and that his speech was distorted by the media. He said he had not said in his speech that a woman was intended only to give birth to children.