This article is part of TNM's Faith and Flux series where we explore the rise of a new wave of atheism and resistance to dogmatic religion in Kerala featuring rationalist groups and voices of people who have left organised religion.
Lifting up an old letter written by a child, Liyakkathali CM read out the angry words in it, penned for a lower primary school teacher in Palakkad. “Who are you to decide there is no Allah? If you talk badly of Muslims, we will not be quiet,” he read out, admitting at the end of it that he was the author of the decades-old letter. He was an 11-year-old then, a strong believer in his religion and unforgiving of a teacher who said Jesus, Allah, and the Hindu gods were all one. Liyakkathali has long since left the religion, apologised profusely to his teacher, and when he read out the letter, he was on stage as the president of the Ex-Muslims of Kerala (EMU).
The organisation was formed four years ago, for those who left Islam in Kerala. There are hundreds of members today, of varying ages and genders, supporting each other, offering discourses on what can be done within the religion, and holding discussions among themselves. There are other organisations such as the Non-Religious Citizens (NRC) which formed in recent years and have members who have left religion, but those are not specifically for Muslims.
The EMU is not as active as they would like to be, given the pressures some of the members face, Liyakkath says. “The after-effects of leaving Islam are many, mainly because of the clannish system that the religion follows. It is a very strict clan and when you leave it, you are seen as an enemy of the clan. Your life will be impacted, you will be isolated, banned from social life, your business boycotted, and your family life too would be affected,” he tells TNM.
There have been rational groups in Kerala for decades – free thinkers or atheists and the like – but this is perhaps the first one solely meant for Muslims. There is a reason for that, it is not an intersectional idea that people leaving other religions may understand, says Aysha Markerhouse, treasurer of the group.
“Someone leaving Hinduism or Christianity may not understand what an ex-Muslim goes through. Only those who grew up in a similar environment, following the same kind of rules under a jamaat, would understand,” she says. They, therefore, had to tag themselves ‘Ex-Muslim’, because it wasn’t enough that they were non-religious.
Though they have several reasons for leaving Islam, when they chose this path, they also fell into a dangerous place where the line between atheism and Islamophobia was quite thin. The Hindutva right wing took on board some ex-Muslims who went from criticising the religion to embracing Islamophobia. While the others - who left the religion and had no plans to join forces with the Sangh Parivar - still ran the risk of being mistaken for an Islamophobic. We delve into the many reasons why they exited the religion and the challenges they face after.
Liyakkath and Aysha both say they were staunch believers in their childhood, ready to fight anyone tooth and nail when questioned about their faith. “I began reading more just to know more points to fight for the religion,” Aysha says. But the reading led her to unexpected discoveries – mostly about how Islam treated women. It upset her to understand that the rules were different for men and women, she says. It is the conservatism that struck her (“even music and dance are not allowed”) more than a conflict with scientific thinking. When her reading became wider as she went to college and met more people, and finally when she got access to the internet, Aysha’s faith suffered drastically.
“The internet and social media opened arenas for Muslim women where we could discuss and ask questions that we couldn’t before. Women never sat face to face with an Ustad or Moulavi to ask questions. Their public life was cut off, there was no going out after a certain hour. The mosque and the library were places the men went to. Men always had their circles to discuss politics or religion, a space denied to women,” Aysha says.
But then for Liyakkath too, the doubting of faith began with this dissuasion of questions. He had gone to a madrassa till class 7, he says, and there, one of the first lessons was to suppress your questions. “They’d tell us such questions about god are planted by the devil. I was once beaten for a genuine doubt. That is when I began to study religion on my own,” Liyakkath says.
Learning about slavery – about which Islam is ambivalent – and discrimination against women among other things, drove Liyakkath towards the long path of leaving the religion. Being a woman is what led Aysha into it. “People staying in the religion could not talk about the space given to women in Islam,” she says.
One of the most heard protests against women’s discrimination came from Safiya, the general secretary of Ex-Muslims of Kerala. Unlike Liyakkath and Aysha, Safiya grew up as a non-practicing Muslim. Her father was non-religious, she says. In her late 20s however, she decided to study religion with the encouragement of relatives.
“Without childhood indoctrination, at the age of 28 – a time of spirituality and Sufi songs for me – I understood that women’s situation was very pathetic. I didn’t see any kindness towards women, most noticeably in the inheritance rights. Even in other ways, a woman is described as the farmland of a man, which he can harvest as he likes. Without the husband’s approval, a woman can’t even go to see a dying parent,” Sufiya says.
Gender discrimination – including an intolerant position against the LGBTQIA+ community - has driven many into leaving Islam. The most obvious discrimination against women came in property rights. Safiya says, when women are allowed to inherit only half of what a man inherits. A daughter gets half of the sons, a wife gets half of the husband’s, a mother gets half of the father’s estate through inheritance.
Safiya is one of the parties in a petition given by the Khur’aan Sunnath Society, asking for equal property rights for women. But this is in her personal capacity and not as part of Ex-Muslims, for Khur’aan Sunnath Society is a group that advocates the correct reading of the Quran by interpreting it with fairness to women. Safiya did not officially leave her religion because then, she wouldn’t inherit any property from her parents, she says.
“More specifically, it is inheritance rights (and not property rights) that are gender discriminatory,” says KK Abdul Ali, one of the early critics of Islam who authored the book Muslim Succession Rules. He explains how men get double what the women in the family do – upon the death of their parents, spouse, siblings, or children.
In all three cases, they had studied the religion deeper before deciding to leave it, and their actions were similar to other ex-Muslim groups in the world.
There are also members who have left the religion for scientific reasons. Arif Hussain, member of the group and founder of the NRC, says that applying scientific temper had made him leave homeopathy (which he had earlier practiced), as well as his religion. “We were stopped and told that logic and science shouldn't be mixed with religion. On the other hand, they also try to say that Islam is scientific. When I studied these things deeply, I realised that most of the things that are claimed to be scientific are unscientific,” Arif says.
The reason there are such groups in Kerala, members say, has to do with the higher education and freedom of expression that is possible here. Liyakkath points out that attacks against those critical of the religion have happened in Kerala but these are considerably fewer.
Within the ex-Muslims group, the members support each other in different ways, including providing legal guidance. This becomes useful to fight for inheritance rights or for those who face the risk of ‘automatic’ divorce upon leaving the religion.
“According to Shariat law, if one person becomes Kafir, marriage becomes nullified. So we will be forced to read the Kalima (Islamic phrases),” concurs Arif Hussain. The NRC proposes that children should not be taught religion before they are 18 years old. Both Safiya and Aysha say that there have been multiple such cases of people coming to the verge of divorce, sometimes forced by families, when one of the partners leaves Islam. Some have been ousted by families, while the businesses of some others have been destroyed.
Safiya quotes the example of a man in his 50s who was ousted from home by his children for leaving the religion. The mullah (Muslim clergy) from the mosque had given the wife the option to divorce him through Whatsapp. “The man, who was unwell, was kicked out of his own home and he is now staying in a lodge,” says Safiya. Aysha gives the example of her great-grandfather, who had converted to Qadiani, an Ahmaddiya sect that others in the religion consider non-Muslim. His wife was taken away by the family the very next day, she says. This was in Kannur.
Liyakkath has examples from his own life when friends and family members were asked not to associate with him. “I got kudumba vilakku and ooru vilakku (ostracism from the family, ostracism from the homeland). My 80-year-old mother was asked not to allow me at home. My mother abided by that and told me that she would come to see me outside the house. Then they said she should not love a child who has become a murdath (apostate). But my mother said, ‘I will decide that. I gave birth to him and raised him and if my god puts me in hell for loving him, I will take that’. I didn’t need anything more after that,” Liyakkath said in a speech.
They all agree that family members will always suffer a lot even if they remain followers of the religion. Safiya says that everything including the burial of family members in the graveyard will be affected. Relations between the family members and the one who has turned apostate also get strained. Aysha says that some level of acceptance comes when they see “us lead happy, healthy lives”, but she adds, “I am not invited to family functions, and people I know would not talk to me.”
The ex-Muslims also fight against other practices such as the circumcision of children. “We see these as human rights violations and not just as religious practices. This is how we took it up as activism and it grew into an ex-Muslim movement,” says Arif.
Even though the internet has made it possible to form such groups and allow space for discussions, religious practices appear to have hardened in the past few decades, say members of EMU. Aysha attributes some of those changes to the Wahhabi culture that expat Malayalees brought back from West Asia. “Before that, the women wore what was comfortable and accessible to them – like kaachiyum kuppayavum (mundu and blouse). But now there is an idea of ‘One Muslim’ that is being propagated, where Muslims across the world are to live a particular way, by the book,” Aysha says.
Safiya says that the Muslim school she went to in Alappuzha did not have many girls covering their heads with hijabs or shawls in her time, but it is mandatory now for her daughter who goes to the same school. “I believe it was after the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992 that Muslims in Kerala began to feel more insecure and follow religious practices more intensely. It was not so in my college days or even my mother’s – when my aunts used to wear saris or pants and shirts to college, the way they saw it in Hindi movies of the time,” Safiya recalls.
Interestingly, from at least the 70s, there have been rationalist or freethinking groups that look differently at religion, just not specifically for Muslims. One of the earliest such groups is the Kerala Yukthivadhi Sangham (Kerala Rationalist Association) which included people who left religions including Islam and tried to spread rational ideas among the public. Abdul Ali, who spoke to us, has been a member. Joseph Edamaruku, one of the most famous rationalists from Kerala, was president in his final years. EA Jabbar, another rationalist and known critic of Islam, joined the group in the 70s.
"Those days, the group did not take up Muslim issues much. Even non-Muslim rationalists were afraid of criticizing Islam. It was in those days that Abdul Ali, Usman Koya -- a doctor from Cherannur, and I began working together," says Jabbar. Fewer Muslims had joined rational groups in those years, and even those who did, rarely came out in public. We would conduct small events, and talks, and write articles that would reach people. Messages about meetings would be sent through postcards. Very slowly, more people began joining us," Jabbar says.
He mentions a few more names from the early days -- Abdulla Meppayyur, Anakkayam Saidh Mohammed, and others. All of them had begun to think differently because of their reading or exposure to Science. AT Kovoor was one of the most influential figures of the time, the famous rationalist who in his late years exposed fraud godmen and called out those who claimed to have supernatural powers. Edamaruku translated all his works into Malayalam. "Edamaruku who spoke up against Christianity also wrote a book Quran Oru Vimarsana Patanam (Quran: A Critical Study)," Jabbar says.
When the 90s came, the Babri Masjid demolition happened, and as Safiya says, insecurity drove preachers across Kerala to spread the fear of more mosques being destroyed. It sowed the seeds for fundamentalist groups to form, she says. “Earlier, Sunnis in Kerala were more tolerant of other religions, even though there were some dogmatic beliefs. But when people went further into religion, leaders like M Balussery began preaching that Muslims should not eat the Onam feast or hang Christmas stars. When our secularism was so affected, and humans could not see each other as humans anymore, such a group as Ex-Muslims had to be formed,” Safiya says.
It would take the coming of the internet and social media for the activities of Islam critics and rationalists to gain popularity. Jabbar began blogging in 2007 and after that, posting on Facebook. Liyakkath agrees it has made it easier for people to connect with each other. “During COVID-19 time, people had time, and such groups became active,” he says.
But social media also paved the way for some to turn Islamophobic in their posts, going from critiquing the religion to speaking with hatred against it. Liyakkath, Aysha, Safiya, and old-timers like Jabbar and Ali all speak against such practices. “You cannot violate basic human rights because you are an ex-Muslim. Groups such as ours are formed not to destroy Islam, but to fight for the right to life that ex-Muslims have as much as others,” Liyakkath says.
The political scenario in the country is such that any critiquing of Muslims may be used to further discriminate against them. “It makes it difficult for us to speak about our experiences, for it may be used against Muslims. It is a vulnerable situation,” Aysha concedes. But it is also not a time to keep brushing things under the carpet, she says. You cannot stop talking about girls' education or against queerphobia. There are LGBTQIA+ members in the group, but they haven’t mentioned their reason for joining, she says.
Nevertheless, there is a section of people who left Islam and play to the tunes of the Sangh and sometimes even get paid for it. Aysha and others in Ex Muslims of Kerala are particular about not siding with the Hindutva right-wing in any way.
Jabbar says such instances of Islamophobia may come out as a reaction to the pressures they might have faced on leaving religion. “This comes from people who quit religion for personal or emotional reasons. But it is different for those of us who have societal reasons too. Sometimes this goes to another extreme where they associate with Sangh Parivar forces. I don’t condone that.”
As a group, Ex Muslims of Kerala are not anti-Muslim, but there is a difference between Muslims and Islam, Safiya reminds. “It is not Muslims we speak against, but the ideology,” she says. There are, she is sure, many more Muslims who wish to renounce religion but cannot because of societal, financial, and other implications. The reason you find so many people leaving religion or forming such groups in Kerala must have to do with the free-thinking, educational, and scientific temperament of the people here, Jabbar reasons.
Not that it has all been easy in Kerala. Chekannur Maulavi, a secular Islamist who advocated the correct reading of the Quran, as opposed to the conventional interpretation, disappeared mysteriously in 1993, and many believe he was murdered. He was the founder of the Khur’aan Sunnath Society mentioned above. Jabbar himself was beaten up more than once. And the new age rationalists are attacked on social media. “But sometimes all the speeches against us – and there were many at the time the group formed – help spread the word about the group and more people come to know about us,” Safiya says.
In 12 Islamic countries, leaving the religion can invite capital punishment but India is a secular country and the law does not allow it. “Only, you will become a social outcast,” Liyakkath says. Despite that, more people, though sometimes via fake identities on social media, are now vocal about their lack of faith.
Inputs - Azeefa Fathima