Question:
Why Muslim youth oppose the traditional Kandhuri festivals held at dargahs in Tamil Nadu?
Answer:
A dargah is the burial place of a person who died long ago. Some people go to those graves and worship them. Islam strictly teaches that worship should be directed only to God. The person buried there was a human being. He died, and therefore he was buried. If someone dies, it proves he was not God. The Prophetﷺ Muhammad himself warned Muslims not to exaggerate in praising him and not to turn his grave into a place of worship. He said no acts of worship should be performed at his burial place. If even the Prophetﷺ’s grave is not to be worshipped, how can the graves of ordinary people become objects of worship?
Islam teaches that building elaborate tombs and treating them as sacred places is wrong. Therefore, Muslim youth today oppose such practices because they read the Qur’an and understand its teachings.
In earlier centuries many Muslims did not have access to Qur’an translations in Tamil. Only in recent times has the Qur’an been widely translated and explained in Tamil. Now that people understand its meaning, they realize that such practices contradict Islamic teachings.
So Muslim youth reject those practices and call people back to the original teaching: worship only one God. That is not a bad thing. If Muslims claim to believe in one God, should they not worship correctly according to that belief? If someone claims to be Muslim but acts against Islamic teachings, naturally we will ask why he is acting against his own religion.
This question is not meant to create hostility; it is actually a reformative idea.