The secular liberal cabal in India has traditionally been an Islamist apologist. However, even a slightest deviation by secular liberals from their ideological subservience to Islamists is met with backlash, ostracization from the Islamo-leftist ‘progressive’ ecosystem and pigeonholing as ‘Sanghi’ and even ‘Islamophobe’. Basically, Islamists hand a rude awakening to secular liberals that they are mere useful idiots for them and thus, they should stay in their lane.
Recently, videos and images from a ‘Profcon’ event was organised by Islamists at the Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT) in Kerala, went viral on social media.
The visuals showed segregation of female Hijab-clad Muslim students from male ones in Taliban-style restrictions. The male students were seated in the front rows facing the stage, while girls were made to sit behind them, a curtain was put up as a makeshift cloth partition. This essentially prevented male and female students from seeing each other during the event.
The on-campus debate event was organised on 15th September 2025, under the banner of the ‘Wisdom Islamic Organization’, affiliated with the Islamic fundamentalist ‘Mujahid movement’. Ironically, the debate’s topic was “Religion, Science and Morality”.
Notably, CUSAT has said that it will approach court against the use of its name for the conduct of the outrageous ‘Profcon’ event. The varsity’s registrar said that CUSAT’s name and emblem was used by the organisers of the event without the varsity’s approval.
The apparent segregation of Muslim women from Muslim men in the debate sparked a discussion on social media whether Kerala is getting radically Islamised and if institutionalised gender discrimination has deepened its roots in a state that often boasts its progressiveness and near-total literacy rate.
Ruchika Sharma, a self-declared ‘historian’ who has made it her life’s mission to whitewash the anti-Hindu crimes of Islamic tyrants of the Medieval era, shared the viral picture from the said ‘Profcon’. “Just a hijab is not enough, women must be segregated, made to sit at the back and screened off. Literally punish them for being born a woman but we will call it their choice [clown emoji],” she tweeted.
Just a hijab is not enough, women must be segregated, made to sit at the back and screened off. Literally punish them for being born a woman but we will call it their choice ? pic.twitter.com/YGMMyWyBDU
— Dr. Ruchika Sharma (@tishasaroyan) September 19, 2025
In a subsequent post, Sharma wrote, “I have 99 struggles as a woman in the subcontinent, but being literally invisiblised at a campus debate ain’t one! #Smallmercies.”
This post criticising deliberate invisibilisation of Muslim women, Ruchika Sharma, who otherwise gets praise from Mughal fanboys and fellow Islamist apologists, received severe backlash from Islamists.
One of the infamous Islamists, Saif Patel, who claims to ‘despise religious bigotry’, labelled Sharma, “Islamophobic” and even equated her to Shefali Vaidya and Nupur Sharma.
“Time and again your favorite “anti-BJP, pro-Palestine” liberal/leftist [clown emoji] will show you just how Islamophobic they are, and how performative their activism has been. When it comes to Muslims – people like Ruchika are no different from the Shefalis and Nupurs,” Patel wrote.
Such is the extent to Islamist intolerance for liberal viewpoints that they do not mind slandering even their useful idiots.
Amusingly, the newly-labelled ‘Islamophobe’ Ruchika Sharma, has once admitted to not calling out her Muslim abuser just so that ‘Sanghis’ do not use it further their ‘Islamophobic communal agenda’. Earlier, Ruchika Sharma did not name her Muslim abuser because she feared fanning Islamophobia but has now ended up getting herself labelled as an Islamophobe for simply voicing her opinion against gender discrimination and segregation in the name of Islamic faith, morality, modesty and whatnot.
In replies under Sharma’s post, Muslim men and even some women have defended the gender-based segregation of women.
Quoting Sharma’s post, Arfa Khanum Sherwani, a ‘journalist’ at the leftist propaganda portal The Wire, endorsed Sharma’s thoughts with a Hundred Points emoji. Sherwani, who otherwise writes long paragraphs and rants on her The Wire program when she has to criticise the BJP, the so-called ‘Hindutva bigotry’, however, when it came to calling out Islamic invisibilisation of Muslim women and Islamists defending the outrageous practice, she chose to play it safe.
— Arfa Khanum Sherwani (@khanumarfa) September 19, 2025
It, however, could not prevent Arfa from facing the wrath of misogynist Islamists, who schooled her on how free mixing of men and women is not allowed in Islam.
A reply to Arfa’s post seemed very interesting. A person named ‘Aurangzeb’ shared an image of Hijabi women and Muslim men sitting side by side in a room with a makeshift cloth partition in between. The person who shared this picture asked: “Fine??” However, is there an end to this sheer stupidity?
Fine ?? pic.twitter.com/lGqKtq57Rj
— Aurangzeb ?? (@Boloauri) September 20, 2025
The Islamist suggested that since Muslim women and men are seated next to each other, although with a partition preventing them to see each other, there is no discrimination. It further suggested that by this way a free mixing of men and women could also be prevented and women were also not discriminated against by making them sit behind. However, what if Islamists say that the male teacher can clearly see the women and is in their vicinity. This arrangement too will become ‘Unislamic’.
Also, if even Hijab and Burqa-clad Muslim women need to be segregated from Muslim men for their safety, protect their modesty and prevent
Fitna (temptation), then is it not appropriate to conclude that the problem lies with men and not women.
As ironic as it gets, some Muslim women on X defended this biased arrangement as a matter of choice and comfort, however, how much ‘choice’ they would actually have in such a discriminating setting where modesty is protected by invisibilising women, would be known if they attempt to attend such events without a Hijab. They would not most likely not be allowed to be present there let alone getting to sit at the back behind a partition.
‘Progressive’ Kerala’s surrender to Islamist identity erasure: Making women invisible
Long hailed as India’s progressive outlier, Kerala, has over the years witnessed increased Islamist influence and spread of Wahhabi Islamic orthodoxy. This shift is fuelled by Islamist organisations and foreign funding from Gulf countries to Islamise a Hindu-majority secular India. Back in 2021, it was reported that radical Islamic organisations across the world have been financing projects that promote Islamism in India.
A Kerala-based journalist MP Basheer revealed that Islamist outfit Jamaat-e-Islami was allegedly receiving financial grants from universities in Saudi Arabia so that they could create awareness and promote Islamic dress code in Kerala and India. Jamaat-e-Islamic had started a project in India to promote the Islamic dress code for women and had access to funds from King Abdul Aziz University, an Islamic university in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Even Turkey and Pakistan have been forefront at funding radical Islamic thought in India, especially in Kashmir and Kerala.
Over the years, Kerala has become a hotbed of Islamic extremism. Be it unprecedented surge in love jihad/grooming jihad cases, imposition of Islamic beliefs in the region or participation of Keralite Muslims in Islamic terror organisations like ISIS, India’s most literate and ‘progressive’ state is becoming increasingly Talibanised or Islamised. This is not going to end well even for women defending gender-based segregation and other such regressive practices.
Back in 2021, a young Muslim cleric in Kerala, Maulana Swalih Bathery, said that those women going out at night after 9 PM are nothing but prostitutes, and they should be killed. This is how anti-women thoughts are spread and normalised. This is how new standards of a woman’s character are set and its violation is deemed an justification for rape and violence.
Over the past decade, Islamist outfits have leveraged on-campus events, minority institutions and cultural narratives to impose Taliban-like controls to render women invisible. This imposition of identity-erasing practices and its boastful display as empowerment is disturbing.
In 2017, a campus election poster reading “Discrimination free education, a friendly campus”, printed by members of Muslim Students Federation (MSF) at the MET Arts and Science College in Nadapuram in Malappuram.
Ironically, while the poster vouched for a discrimination free campus, it had faces of 12 men and 9 faceless women contestants. While proper images of men were put up along with their names, for women, dummy images were used. Of the 9 faceless women, one was a Hindu and was depicted without a Hijab, while the rest with Hijab.
Amusingly, the Muslim male member of MSF, defended their decision not to print original pictures of the women candidate, saying that it was their ‘constitutional right’ not to have their pictures published and that they ‘upheld a woman’s right of choice’.
Before this, in 2016, Student Federation of India unit of Ma’din Arts and Science College in Malappuram and Aspire college, Palakkad had also refrained from printing the pictures of women candidates.
A similar poster showing dummy pictures of Burqa-clad women instead of the original pictures of school toppers was published by a school named Al-Ahsan Academy in Karnataka’s Udupi district back in 2018.
Toppers but Faceless! Al-Ihsan Academy School and Women's college, Kerala, showcases the photos of the toppers. This hoarding suggests where Kerala is headed? #KeralaJihadisOwnCountry pic.twitter.com/24n5cvRNTF
— Ex-Comrade ☭ (@excomradekerala) June 5, 2018
In August 2022, several Muslim organisations told the communist government in Kerala not to impose gender-neutral ideas. A meeting in this regard was attended by the representatives of the Muslim Education Society, Jamaat-e-Islami, and Samastha Kerala Jam-Iyyathul Ulema, among others. IUML leader PMA Salam went on to declare that girls and boys sitting together in classrooms is “dangerous”. Unsurprisingly, the LDF government in Kerala caved in to Islamist pressure and dropped its plan to introduce gender-neutral seating in educational institutions. Apparently, Islamist intransigence trumps all progressiveness, reforms, and gender rights.
In 2015, the Farook College in Kerala’s Kozhikode, run by a Muslim management imposed a strict code of conduct which disallowing free intermingling between female and male students. Only those students who followed the diktat were allowed to attend classes. The CPM’s student wing SFI led a protest against this, however, they faced opposition from Muslim outfits like the Muslim Student Movement, the Students Islamic Organisation and the Kerala Students Union, who supported the regressive rule. The protests ended up in a violent altercation.
Reports said that the college had deployed Iran’s ‘morality police’ like groups to ensure strict implementation of gender-based segregation not only in classrooms but also across the campus.
This reflects a pivot to a Taliban-like stringent implementation of Sharia and reminds of how when Taliban took over Afghanistan in 2021, they defaced pictures of women on posters and hoardings displaying advertisements across Kabul. Today, Afghanistan is under proper Sharia governance and guess what, Muslim women as barred from getting secondary education. Attending classes with cloth partition is a rarity, in most cases, women are not allowed to enrol for classes let alone taking up jobs.
Defending faceless images of women or partitions segregating male and female students, with arguments that these practices reflect ‘choice’ and ‘Islamic faith’, preventing women from objectification, is nothing but Islamist sleight-of-hand that portrays coercion as consent, invisibility as independence and discrimination as dignity.
