The December 3 protest at mosques organized by the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) in opposition to the LDF authorities has thrown the opposition occasion into the limelight because it makes an attempt to keep up its grip on the neighborhood.
The IUML, a key constituent of the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) in Kerala, has urged many Muslim non secular and social teams to carry talks throughout Friday prayers in mosques in opposition to the CPI(M)-led authorities’s resolution handy over the waqfs. The teams had been rallied. Board Recruitment in Kerala Public Service Commission. But a day earlier than the scheduled protest, a strong physique of pro-IUML Muslim students in Kerala, popularly referred to as Samastha, Samastha Kerala Jemiyathul Ulema, together with the group’s president Syed Muhammad Jifri Muthukoya Thangal, had been saying in Kozhikode that they don’t need Mosques needs to be became sit-ins.
While the protest proceeded with solely mosques affiliated to the Mujahideen motion and the Jamaat-e-Islami taking part, the scaled-down occasion was a serious lack of face for the IUML, highlighting the allegation that it joined palms with the right-wing Was. and fringe muslim gown.
The incontrovertible fact that the IUML selected to carry protests in mosques is a brand new language for Kerala’s largest Muslim occasion that has largely been on the left wing of Kerala politics and has been a part of the UDF coalition for the previous 40 years. .
IUML has been credited for politically empowering Muslims within the state and has all the time taken the lead in furthering the reason for the neighborhood. IUML felt a chance when it comes to Waqf Board Recruitment whereas additionally with the ability to compete with LDF. But the mosque protests have challenged the management of the IUML on points affecting Muslims in Kerala and raised questions concerning the occasion’s grip on its vote base.
The occasion suffered a setback within the 2021 meeting elections, profitable solely 15 of the 27 seats it contested, down from 18 of the 23 seats it contested in 2016.
IUML may even be involved about how the CPI(M) is rising quickly in the neighborhood. During the anti-CAA protest, all of the leaders shared the stage with the CPI(M), together with Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, regardless of the objections expressed by the IUML. The physique had additionally lauded the Vijayan authorities for passing a decision in opposition to the CAA within the state meeting, the primary legislature to take action.
IUML must also be involved that the CPI(M) has an aggressive outreach to the neighborhood. The CPI(M) has been giving neighborhood members management roles within the occasion and its feeder organisations, amongst them PA Mohammad Riyas, the CM’s son-in-law who’s a outstanding member of the Vijayan cupboard and an rising Muslim face. Team. In addition, AA Rahim, a outstanding Muslim face within the CPI(M) youth wing DYFI, was not too long ago made the group’s nationwide president. Moreover, whereas the IUML has not managed to ship Muslim girls to the meeting to date, Kanathil Jameela of the CPI(M) gained from Koylandi constituency earlier this yr.
Samstha’s withdrawal from the protest is one other signal of the CPI(M)’s rising grip on the neighborhood. What made Samasta known as off the protest was the Chief Minister’s assurance that the federal government would contemplate the issues raised by the Muslim neighborhood over Waqf Board recruitment.
Samasta’s resolution in opposition to the IUML protest has saved Vijayan – who’s wooing the neighborhood and projecting it as a safeguard in opposition to the Sangh Parivar – from a politically embarrassing state of affairs.
Samasta is a physique of clerics from the EK faction of Samastha Kerala Jamiatul Ulama which break up in 1989 and is called pro-IUML. The different Sunni faction, the AP Sunni, led by orthodox cleric Kanthapuram AP Abubakar Musaliar, already recognized as pro-Left.
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With inputs from TheIndianEXPRESS
