New Delhi: Ahead of his meeting with Kerala-based Islamic cleric Kanthapuram AP Aboobacker Musliar, Malaysian prime minister Anwar Ibrahim has said he does not agree with all the views of the former.
Ibrahim is scheduled to meet Musliar in Kozhikode and he has said that he would tell the cleric to his face that Malaysia guarantees women equal rights.
With nearly 63.5 per cent of the population in Malaysia practicing Islam, it is the state religion of the country. However, the non-Malay population is free to practice other religions.
The Malaysian leader was speaking to NDTV in an exclusive interview on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in New Delhi, and was asked about Musliar’s recent remarks that “women should remain confined within their homes”.
“[He is] a traditional religious scholar who has contribution in understanding the religious text, the Quran, the tradition, the Prophet; who is a great teacher in many ways. But we certainly do not necessarily share all his views,” Ibrahim said.
Pointing to the institutions that the cleric runs, such as a college for nursing, he argued that female students of such a college would anyway work in hospitals.
“If I look at the total context, I’m not terribly worried. But certainly if I’m asked publicly, even [by] him, I [would say], ‘No, in Malaysia, we have equal rights for the women’,” he said, adding, “We have more female students in our universities. My wife’s a medical doctor. All my kids, including the girls, have been given all the opportunity to study and have the freedom,” he said.
He mentioned it to Prime Minister Narendra Modi too, Ibrahim said. “You don’t necessarily agree with all scholars, and you don’t necessarily agree with all prime ministers or presidents,” he said.
The Malaysian PM stressed the importance of south India vis-à-vis the diaspora in Malaysia, and said he wanted to visit Tamil Nadu as well. “But then because the chief minister, Vijay, is overseas, I said let me postpone that and focus on Kerala.”
Musliar, general secretary of the All India Sunni Jamiyyathul Ulama, said at an Islamic conference in Kochi last month that the Quran states women should live confined within their homes and must not make public appearances, and that Islam mandated purdah because bringing women onto public platforms causes “great destruction”. The remarks followed a Samastha circular barring women from sharing stages with men.
Kerala chief minister V D Satheesan had said the position belonged to the 19th century and was a misreading of Islam. The cleric had later said he and those with him were not people who believed women should be confined.
