Functionaries of the Kerala Nadvathul Mujahideen (KNM) kept away from a meeting of the Muslim Coordination Committee, a platform of various Muslim organisations in the State led by the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), held here on Monday.
The event was organised to discuss issues such as the uniform civil code and the gender neutral content in school textbooks. This comes a day after the culmination of the four-day conference of the KNM here, which was “boycotted” by IUML leaders, reportedly under pressure from the influential Sunni scholars’ forum, the Samastha Kerala Jem-iyyathul Ulama.
In a Facebook post, A.I. Abdul Majeed Swalahi, State secretary, KNM, said that the organisation had officially informed the committee that its leaders would abstain from the meeting. “We can also boycott [from meetings] if the Panakkad Syed family that leads the IUML is threatened and kept away from the Mujahid conference. The Samastha leadership should rethink their position. The KNM invited the Panakkad Thangals because they are part of the political leadership,” the FB post said. If they were just heads of Samastha’s masjid committees, we would not have called them. How long the Samastha can go on like this, he added.
Panakkad Syed Sadiqali Shihab Thangal, IUML State president, however, said he was not aware if the KNM had informed the committee about boycotting the meeting. He said the meeting resolved to tell the government to correct its stand that the concept of gender was a “social construct” from the school curriculum framework. Ideas against religion should also be removed from there. Though the Education Minister had promised to remove “gender neutrality” from the syllabus, he had not kept his word, the Thangal alleged.
