Kerala, a tiny Indian state on the coast of the Arabian Sea, is well known for its vibrant civil society, a very high human development in...
Kerala, a tiny Indian state on the coast of the Arabian Sea, is well known for its vibrant civil society, a very high human development index and communal harmony. Popularly known as God’s own country, Kerala is the home of millions of Christians and Muslims, where they live in peace with majority of the Hindus. Also, communists and other left oriented parties play their role effectively making it a unique state of India noted for its Kerala model of political, economic, religious vibrancy and creativity. According to the locally accepted tradition, Islam came to Kerala during the first century of the Hijrah through the visit of a second generation Muslim scholar called Malik ibn Dinar and his followers.
Kerala Muslims, in spite of their theological and Fiqhi differences, have succeeded in building their own social, religious, economic, political and media institutions, with a wide audience across religions and cultures. A few months ago, I gave a long interview to Risala, a weekly magazine run by one of the factions of traditional Muslims in Kerala. In my Risala interview, serialised in its three weekly issues, I talked about the reconstruction of the Muslim epistemology. And the current issue of Prabodhanam weekly, the oldest, and perhaps one of the highly reputed Muslim weeklies of Kerala, with a huge educated readership in Kerala and elsewhere in India and the Gulf states, carries my long interview that talks about the intellectual challenges that contemporary Muslims are facing. The weekly also has devoted a long article, written by Dr.R Yusuf RY about his visit to Rome and the work that our Muslim think tank Tawasul Europe is doing to build bridges of understanding across religions and cultures. Please see the cover of the Prabodhanam weekly. And insha Allah, I will share the link to my interview as soon as it is available.
