Discord over the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) appears set to boil over within the Samastha Kerala Jamiyyathul Ulama, the biggest organisation of Muslim scholars that serves as an umbrella body for different arms of the traditional Sunni Muslims in the State.
The organisation, mononymously known as Samastha, is heading for a split if the internecine strife within it is any indication.
The Samastha and its current leaders have been tired of watching the breakaway group headed by Kanthapuram A.P. Aboobacker Musliar overgrow them since the Sunni group split vertically in 1989. As the rival Kanthapuram group gleefully watches the wrangles within the Samastha, the facts that led to the 1989 historic split still loom large over the Samastha.
The Samastha is vertically divided over the influence and dominance of the IUML led by the Syed Shihab family of Panakkad.
When a section led by Samastha president Syed Jifri Muthukoya Thangal argues that the Sunni apex body cannot remain subservient to any political party, particularly the IUML, another section that reveres the Panakkad Syed Shihab family affirms that the Samastha and the IUML should go hand in hand.
The recent acrimonious standoff the Samastha leadership had with the Coordination of Islamic Colleges (CIC), an umbrella body of 80-odd colleges headed by IUML State president Syed Sadikali Shihab Thangal offering a synthesis of spiritual and temporal education, sharpened the discord among the scholars.
The rancorous end to an SKSSF (Samastha Kerala Sunni Students Federation) meeting headed by its State president Syed Hameedali Shihab Thangal in Malappuram a few days ago was an external reflection of the ongoing strife within the Samastha. The student arm SKSSF is the most vocal subsidiary unit of the Samastha. The divide is visible in all wings, including the SKSSF.
Even when the Samastha leadership is chalking out plans to conduct ideological meetings at district level, a section within the body is striving hard scuttle the moves of Mr. Jifri Thangal and his team. A leaked voice clip of a junior Samastha leader referring to Mr. Jifri Thangal disparagingly is viewed as the intensity of discord brewing within the Sunni body.
The Samastha watchers are of the opinion that the situation is almost similar to that of the late 1980s when Mr. Kanthapuram and his followers disagreed with the practice of the IUML leaders taking precedence over the Sunni leaders.
Mr. Kanthapuram and team broke away from the Samastha in 1989, formed a parallel Samastha, and strengthened Siraj , a newspaper that they had launched in 1984 as an alternative to the IUML mouthpiece Chandrika.
The Samastha, apparently not happy over the coverage it got in the Chandrika, launched the Suprabhatham daily in 2014. “The Kanthapuram group work and what happened in 1989 is not our present concern. We want the Samastha to remain a body with capability to take independent decisions concerning the community,” said a member of the Shajara group within the Samastha that campaigns against the IUML.
A senior member of the Kanthapuram group rechristened the Kerala Muslim Jamat, requesting anonymity, said that they were not happy to see the Samastha heading for a split. “We are watching the developments from the gallery. They may have stopped Ustad (Kanthapuram) bashing now. What goes around comes around. And it’s a universal truth.”
