KOZHIKODE: Sunni preacher Rahmatullah Qasimi has lashed out at internationally-acclaimed scholar Mahmood Kooria Hudavi for “defaming Islam by portraying Islamic Sharia as patriarchal”. In his Ramadan speech here last Sunday, Qasimi said Kooria had spoken things that were never raised by even anti-Sunni organisations such as the Muslim Education Society (MES) or the Mujahids.
Kooria, an alumnus of Darul Huda Islamic University in Malappuram, is currently working with the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh, UK. An author of several pioneering studies, Kooria was selected for the prestigious Infosys Prize in 2024 “for his truly outstanding and seminal contributions to the study of maritime Islam in a global perspective, with particular focus on Kerala in the pre-modern and early modern eras”.
Qasimi quoted a speech Kooria delivered at a literature festival in Kozhikode in 2019, where he said Sharia laws are male-centric because those who framed the laws were all males. Kooria also said that the Quran and Islamic laws are different and that Islamic laws were framed around two years after the Quran. He said that there is a misconception that Sharia cannot be altered, referring to the controversy over the ban on triple talaq, the Sunni preacher added.
Qasimi deplored that no Sunni scholar has come forward to contradict Kooria’s assertion though it touches the very base of the Sunni ideology. Instead, Darul Huda congratulated Kooria after he won the Infosys award. Qasimi requested Samastha Kerala Jem-Iyyathul Ulama president Syed Muhammad Jiffiri Muthukoya Thangal and Panakkad Syed Sadiq Ali Shihab Thangal to take the issue seriously and to intervene.
It is not an issue of one individual alone, there are other similar products, he said.
“Ninety per cent of Sunnis are on the correct path and only a few have deviated. It is high time we bring them back to the right track,” Qasimi said, adding that no Wahhabi or Maududi had ever said such dangerous things. Qasimi said the speech was delivered in 2019 and there was enough time for the scholars to correct Kooria.
Referring to the Infosys award, Qasimi said `84 lakh was given for activities worth `164 lakh to demolish Islam. “They have realised that he (Kooria) is the apt person for that. This does not mean that Darul Huda is wrong. It is an institution led by the scholars of Samastha and it should remain as it is,” Qasimi said.
Darul Huda has not officially reacted to Qasimi’s speech but there is a suspicion among a section that Qasimi’s speech at this juncture is ill-motivated. They feel that there is an ulterior motive behind raking up an old issue.