Locked in a Box: The Dark Regression of Kerala’s Grand Mufti
In a appalling display of entrenched misogyny disguised as pious benevolence, Kerala’s Grand Mufti, Sheikh Abubakr Ahmad—popularly known as Kanthapuram AP Aboobacker Musliyar—has once again targeted the fundamental rights of women. Speaking at the Hubbul Rasool conference in Kochi, the senior Sunni cleric delivered a regressive rant demanding that women be completely banned from the public sphere and forcibly confined to their homes.
Kerala’s Grand Mufti Kanthapuram A.P. Aboobacker Musliyar said women should remain confined to their homes and that bringing women into the public sphere would lead to “great destruction.”
He defended purdah and compared women to a necklace, saying that “if the necklace has to…
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To justify his oppressive doctrine, Kanthapuram reached for a absurdly dehumanizing metaphor. He compared human beings to gold necklaces in a jewelry store, arguing that just as precious ornaments must be kept hidden inside wrapped boxes to retain their beauty, women must be locked away indoors. Allowing women to walk freely in public, he claimed, is akin to tossing jewelry on the roadside to be trampled, bringing about “great destruction.”
This argument is not just outdated; it is fundamentally toxic. By reducing living, thinking citizens to inanimate, sparkly trade goods, the cleric lays bare the core logic of extreme patriarchs: women are not autonomous individuals with free will, intellect, and constitutional agency, but fragile property requiring male custodianship.
The Weaponization of “Protection”
Kanthapuram attempted to soften his reactionary decree by insisting that secluding women is an act of respect rather than subjugation. This is classic gaslighting. Wrapping forced domestic confinement in the velvet cloak of “protection” is an age-old control tactic. It strips women of their rights under the patronizing pretense of keeping them safe, shifting the blame for societal ills onto women’s very presence rather than addressing systemic misogyny or male behavior.
The cleric further weaponized historical religious reforms—such as the prohibition of female infanticide in pre-Islamic Arabia—to argue that his rigid mandate honors women. But citing ancient historical progress to justify modern-day social imprisonment is a dishonest shell game. You cannot celebrate giving women inheritance rights fourteen centuries ago while actively demanding they be denied basic mobility, education, and economic independence today.
An Insult to Constitutional Democracy
When challenged on his autocratic claims, Kanthapuram doubled down with defiant arrogance, declaring: “We have studied the religion… We will say it, and we will continue to say it. Nobody can stop it.” He effectively warned critics and reformists to stay out of his domain, attempting to wall off half the population from the civil liberties guaranteed to every Indian citizen.
In a modern constitutional democracy, no religious authority holds a monopoly on human dignity. Denying women the right to walk in the public square, build careers, participate in politics, or simply exist outside a domestic cage is not a sacred tradition—it is a blatant assault on human rights. Society must outright reject this rhetoric. Women are not gold to be locked in a dark box at the whim of nervous old men; they are equal human beings who own the world outside just as much as anyone else.
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