| Summary/Abstract |
This article calls for a re-evaluation of basic concepts
such as caste and status groups for making sense of the social
organisation of Muslims in Malabar. Muslim social groups, while
disseminating notions of egalitarian claims of Islam, rationalise
social divisions and discriminatory practices among themselves
largely in terms of Islamic juristic concepts of purity, knowledge,
piety and morality. Due to increasing Islamisation, these notions
have been reconstructed to sustain social divisions among Muslims.
Therefore, it is argued here that social divisions among Muslims in
Malabar today do not derive primarily from acculturative influences
of Hinduism. The article concludes that since sociological concepts
such as caste, ethnicity and status groups as used in South Asia have
failed to capture this Islamic cultural mediation, these phenomena
need to be further researched.
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