Who Speaks For Muslims?

The recent setting up of three parallel Muslim Personal Law Boards, bysections of the Barelvis, Shias and some Muslim women respectively, has caused aconsiderable flutter in Indian Muslim circles. This has been widely commented onin both the Muslim as well as the mainstream Indian press. 

Some traditionalist ulama and Islamist ideologues have reacted to the settingup of parallel boards by denouncing them as alleged ploys by the ‘enemies ofIslam’. This, of course, is their standard technique of stamping out dissent,explanations for challenges to their authority being typically framed aconspiratorial mode. Others have welcomed these developments, arguing that theAIMPLB had been reduced to a conservative, largely Deobandi, institution, thatwas insensitive to the concerns of other Muslim sects as well as for Muslimwomen.

The infighting within the All-Indian Muslim Personal Board (AIMPLB) had beengathering momentum for some time now, with some members, such as the noted Shiascholar Maulana Kalbe Sadiq, increasingly  voicing their criticism ofconservatives in the board for their vehement opposition to legal reform. To addto this was the forceful critique of the Board by several Barelvi and Shia ulama,who argued that the Board had become a virtual monopoly of their Deobandiarch-rivals. Finally, as the setting up of a women’s Muslim Personal Law Boardsuggests, at least some Muslim women managed to garner the courage to take onthe Board for its perceived hostility to women’s concerns.  

That the irreconcilable contradictions of sect and gender should have finallysucceeded in dividing the Board should come as no surprise. It underlines thefact that the Muslims of India, like their Hindu counterparts, are hardly ahomogenous community. The notion of a seamless Muslim monolith, equally dear toradical Islamists as well as unrelenting Islamophobes, has actually no basis inreality. 

Muslims are fiercely divided on the basis of sect or maslak, and each maslakthinks of itself as the sole ‘true’ Muslim community, faithfully followingin the path of the Prophet. Consequently, all other maslaks are dismissed as‘aberrant’, if not totally out of the pale of Islam. The deep-rootedsectarianism within the larger Muslim community seems to have proved toodoggedly resistant to the efforts by the Board to present a united Muslim frontor maintain a sense of Muslim unity. This explains why sections of the Barelviand Shia ulama have now decided to set up their own personal law boards, arguingthat the AIMPLB, being Deobandi-dominated, is unwilling to listen to theirconcerns.

The Board’s inability to address the sectarian question,which has led to the split in its ranks, reflects the fact that, by and large,the traditionalist ulama have been consistently indifferent, if not plainlyhostile, to genuine dialogue between the representatives of different maslaks. 

It is remarkable that while some Muslim groups in India today are engaged ina limited form of dialogue with people of other faiths (often for a missionarypurpose), no single Muslim organization is engaged in promoting genuine (asopposed to cosmetic) dialogue between the different Muslim maslaks. At most,appeals are issued from time to time for Muslims, irrespective of maslak, toclose their ranks and present a united front against what are routinelydenounced as ‘enemies of Islam’. This, of course, in no way, constitutesinter-maslak dialogue in the true sense of the term.

The hostility of large sections of the traditionalist ulama to intra-maslakdialogue has to do, in large measure, with simple mundane bread-and-butterissues. Unlike Catholicism, Islam does not have a church that lays down theofficial doctrine. This opens the way for diverse, even mutually opposed,interpretations of Islam, each of which purports to represent the singlenormative Islamic tradition. The ulama of the rival maslaks claim to be theauthorities or representatives of the single ‘genuinely’ Islamic sect, andit is on this claim that their authority and influence rests.  This claimis sought to be further bolstered by routine denunciations of rival Muslimsects, amply evident in the writings and fatwas of the ulama, and in thecurriculum of the madrasas, each of which is associated with one maslak or theother.

Sectarian rivalries among the traditionalist ulama reflect a fundamentalinability to come to terms with the theological ‘other’. Whether it be thenon-Muslim ‘other’ or the sectarian Muslim ‘other’, they are alltypically seen and defined as ‘enemies’ or ‘deviants’, threatening thepurity of the faith, which comes to be reduced to a narrowly defined sectarianvision of Islam. This explains why the ulama in general have shown little or nointerest at all in promoting Muslim genuine ecumenism. This also explains whythe Board has been unable to solve the sectarian problem within its own ranksthat has lead finally to multiple splits in the Board itself.

In addition to the inability of the Board to sensitivelyhandle the sectarian question is the hostility of many of its members to anylegal reform that might help mitigate the plight of Muslim women. The setting upof a women’s Muslim Personal Law Board reflects a growing protest on the partof at least some Indian Muslim women against the deeply rooted patriarchalprejudice of the traditionalist ulama, which cuts across sectarian lines. Itdirectly questions the claims of the traditionalist ulama on the Board to speakon behalf of all Muslims, women included. 

After all, as many Muslims would themselves stress, the Board is certainlynot a representative body. Its members were not elected by the community and,thus, it cannot presume to have the support of the community as a whole. Thevast majority of the Muslims have probably never even heard of the Board,although it claims to speak in their name. As the founders of the women’sPersonal Law Board probably see it, the traditionalist ulama in the AIMPLB haveno right to claim the sole monopoly to interpret Islam. If, as the Qur’anitself insists, religious knowledge is incumbent on all Muslims, men as well aswomen, there is no reason why Muslim women cannot interpret Islam forthemselves, or so these women seem to be arguing.

In all, then, the multiple splits in the Board and the setting up of threeparallel personal boards points to a fracturing of the ‘hegemonic consensus’that brought together the traditionalist ulama across sectarian boundaries. Inaddition, it suggests a growing challenge to the claims of the traditionalistulama by ‘ordinary’ Muslims. What this would mean for notions of communityleadership, for who has the right to speak for or about Islam and, inparticular, for Muslim women’s legal status, remains to be seen.

Yoginder Sikand is the author of Sacred Spaces: Exploring Traditions of Shared Faith in India and Inter-Religious Dialogue and Liberation Theology: Interviews with Indian Theologians and Activists