By Grace Mubashir
Historians do not have a uniform opinion as to when Islam came to the coast of Kerala. There are different opinions as to whether it is in the 7th century or the 8th century. Whatever the time, one thing is certain. Islam came here with a loose structure and character. It was not an Islam of extreme creeds or purity. If that were the case, Islam would not have received any acceptance here. It is because it is not too stubborn that people are ready to join it and it has been given the conditions to grow. These are some of the facts that we can understand from the available evidence about the social discourses of early Islam in keeping with the local culture.
Chronologically, Islam came to Kerala at a time when there were strong Arab and Chinese relations. Like Arab traders, Chinese traders also played a major role in spreading Islam along the Kerala coast. But when it comes to telling the Kerala history of Islam, religious organizations do not show much interest in revealing its Chinese connections. It must be because they only believe in the Arabic tradition of religion. Whether Arabs or Chinese, the business community is generally undemanding and prefers friendly conditions. An Islam that grew through trade would have a very different cultural environment from an Islam that grew through preachers and theoretical scholars or through political conditions formed after wars and conquests. The main reason why the Muslim community formed in Kerala has its historical and cultural characteristics is because it was one that came through the commercial stream. This characteristic can be seen in all the different Islamic streams of the world, which were cultivated by the mercantile people.
Muslim foreign traders used to marry from Kerala in the early days. Many of them were staying here for a long period of time. How could the Arab Muslims at that time have married natives of other religions who did not know the Arabic language or the doctrines of Islam and fully obeyed the religious principles?
If it is argued that they were taught religious doctrines, converted to Islam and married, there will be a question as to how and in what language the communication took place. According to religious doctrines, if one is simply captured and converted, can one marry? Muslim traders married women of other religions from here not following strict religious rules as seen today.
This was also the case when Mughal kings married Rajput women. The reason for that is simply that they held a much looser, less demanding, more inclusive religious outlook. Islam started as a loose structure and remained so for ages in the Kerala backwaters.
One thing becomes clear when we examine the Islamic tradition of Kerala. By spreading the religion, the Arabs did not convert indigenous new believers to their culture. Instead, they changed the religious beliefs they brought to the culture here. This cultural feature is formed not only in human life. A distinctive local Islam emerged on the Kerala coast, retaining an indigenization even in the manner of construction of places of worship, including customs and rituals.
A distinctive local Islam was formed on the Kerala coast, retaining an indigenization even in the manner of construction of places of worship, including customs and rituals.
Until recently, two or three decades ago to be precise, the costumes of Muslim men and women in Kerala were not as seen today. It is not about the change in the general costumes of the Malayalees. Especially the role of Muslim women. The unprecedented change in Muslim dress today is a product of the introduction of Puritanism into a people who, while religiously sanctioned, lived a life of self-denial. Puritanism has transformed many societies like Kerala, which have come to have their own cultural characteristics. The new generation may be surprised to learn that there was a past here when even the wives of religious scholars and imams of mosques lived in public life wearing mundus and half-sleeved shirts, later sarees and blouses. This liberal structure was the speciality of Islam that existed in Kerala. It was this liberal structure that made Muslim social life co-operative. Even Muslim names were Malayalised. Examples include hundreds of names like Maiteen, Aidrus, Vavakkunju, Utuman, Mammad, Pathumma, Asia, Anumma, and Biyathu. The history of the last half-century is that the entire cultural characteristics of a Muslim society, which even Malayalized the Arabic language and script, were destroyed. Muslims today live in a religious-societal structure dominated by extreme narratives, with no religious recognition of the religious and social lives Muslims lived unchallenged half a century ago. There needs to be further examination of how these extreme narratives were formed here.
There are many people who have left a unique mark on the social life of Kerala Muslims in the past. From historical men like Kunjali Marakare to Premnaseer, there is a huge list. We also need to examine what the religious life of such people, whom Muslims remember with pride even today, was like. None of them accepted the extreme narratives of religion. They all lived within the liberal framework of religion. Even the contents of the early religious reform efforts in Kerala contained liberal views. None of them were strict and rigorous in their views and practices. Efforts have been made to reinterpret religion to the extent that it can be socially and liberally interpreted to keep the religious stream close to the social mainstream of Kerala. Reform initiatives like the Kerala Muslim United Union have advanced by upholding the concepts of gender equality, modernity, democratic values, rationality, scientific consciousness, individual freedom and civic consciousness. The early religious reformers were the early religious reformers who interpreted bank interest, which is still considered taboo by the general Muslim community, with the support of modern economics and decided that it was not irreligious.
The reformer Sanaulla Makti Thangal fought against the society of that time and engaged in efforts to educate girls and boys in a class. Decades have passed since Makti Thangal. The contemporary Malayalee Muslim is characterized by anti-social interpretations of ‘Scriptural Islam’ by placing boys and girls in separate classes again with increased vigour, insisting that a Muslim woman’s dress is religious only if she covers her face, making the subsequent traditional Muslim social life anti-religious, and issuing many Fatwas that separate the ordinary Muslim life from the mainstream. Modern narratives to anti-Islamize the past, which tried to maintain the common culture in social life while incorporating religion, are not at all harmless. An extreme trend that has gradually introduced into the social life of Muslims in Kerala by advocating piety and true Islam has now become a challenge to their social life itself.
Every religious and ideological school in the world has extreme interpretations. When an ideology is formed, many other points of view that it does not have will later find their way into it. Radical religious schools are formed by the development of original ideas contributed to them by radical philosophers living in different eras. As sociology develops, religious theories that do not develop accordingly will later lead to rigid attitudes. This was the crisis that befell Arabian Islam after the world conditions of the nineteenth century. The religious narratives that came to be known as ‘scriptural Islam’ rejected the pluralistic traditions of Islam and the cultural combinations that formed them. Through a narrative that Muslim lives should change according to what the book says, radical interpretations full of socially undeveloped and unmodern views have entered various Muslim communities. It was the delay in distinguishing and understanding this line of interpretation that completely rejected Kerala’s unique Muslim tradition that gave them the opportunity to influence this society so much.
Fifteen centuries old, Islam has a variety of religious views and perspectives. There are many internal currents within it that are diametrically opposed to each other. But none of the currents with extreme arguments and views could survive. Textual Islam that create conflict with the external society and reject cultural pluralism will either become unstable or they will be gradually converted to liberal positions. If extreme ideas gain the upper hand somewhere, it is only a temporary phenomenon. The extreme ideas of religion are not strong enough to overcome the growth of time and the social development of man. Only liberal interpretations advance with time. Time and history are proof of that.