Prominent Sunni leader and president of the Kerala Muslim Jamaath Kanthapuram A.P Aboobacker Musliyar has said that the organisation will discuss in detail the Supreme Court verdict on legalising same-sex relations between consenting adults.
Replying to questions at a news conference here on Friday, the Musliyar, who showed his displeasure to respond to the issue, said that they will need to study the verdict in detail before responding. “If required we will meet the Prime Minister as well as approach the Supreme Court itself,” he said.
Several Muslim organisations, especially those affiliated to major Sunni sects in Kerala, have already publicly come out against the Supreme Court order. The Markazu Saqafathi Sunniyya, affiliated to the Kanthapuram faction of the Sunnis, said that the order will result in an increase in crimes but added that it would remove the stigma attached to sexual minorities.
The Sunni Yuvajana Sangham, a feeder outfit of the Samastha Kerala Jam’eyyath ul-Ulama, a religious organisation of the Sunni Muslim scholars and clerics, said that homosexuaility was a grave sin in Islam while the Ithihadul Subbanil Mujahideen said that homosexality is against human nature.
At the same time, the Kerala Catholic Bishops’ Council (KCBC) Family Commission has termed the Supreme Court verdict as “unfortunate”.
A five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously decriminalised part of the 158-year-old colonial era provisions of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) which criminalises consensual unnatural sex.
The Bench, headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra and comprising Justices R.F. Nariman, A.M. Khanwilkar, D.Y. Chandrachud and Indu Malhotra, termed the part of Section 377 of the IPC which crimiminalises unnatural sex irrational, indefensible and manifestly arbitrary.
