A Rebel in the Mosque:Going Where I Know I Belong
By Asra Q. Nomani
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Asra interviewing a refugee who claimed to be a Taliban leader, Shamshato refugee camp outside Peshawar, 2001

The prophet himself prayed with women. And when he heard that some men positioned themselves in the mosque to be closer to an attractive woman, his solution wasn't to ban women but to admonish the men. In Medina, during the prophet's time and for some years thereafter, women prayed in the prophet's mosque without any partition between them and the men. Historians record women's presence in the mosque and participation in education, in political and literary debates, in asking questions of the prophet after his sermons, in transmitting religious knowledge and in providing social services. After the prophet's death, his wife Aisha related anecdotes about his life to scribes in the mosque. And Abdullah bin Umar, a leading companion of the Prophet and a son of Omar bin al-Khattab, the second caliph, or leader of Islam, reprimanded his son for trying to prevent women from going to the mosque. "By the third century of Islam, many [women's] rights slowly began to be whittled away as earlier Near Eastern . . . notions of female propriety and seclusion began to take hold," said Afsaruddin.

The Fiqh Council of North America, which issues legal rulings for the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), supports women's rights in the mosque. "It is perfectly Islamic to hold meetings of men and women inside the masjid," the mosque, says Muzammil H. Siddiqi, a Fiqh Council member. He adds that this is true "whether for prayers or for any other Islamic purpose, without separating them with a curtain, partition or wall."

All too often, however, the mosque in America "is a men's club where women and children aren't welcome," said Ingrid Mattson, an Islamic scholar at the Hartford Seminary and an ISNA vice president.

One of the issues working against American Muslim women -- an issue not much discussed outside the Muslim community -- is the de facto takeover of many U.S. mosques by conservative and traditionalist Muslims, many from the Arab world. Most of these are immigrants, many of them students, who follow the strict Wahhabi and Salafi schools of Islam, which largely exclude women from public spaces. They stack our mosque library with books printed by the government of Saudi Arabia, where Wahhabi teachings reign. Here in Morgantown, students from Saudi Arabia and Egypt, mostly male and conservative, were virtually nonexistent 10 years ago. More precisely, there were three. Today there are 55, and their wives regularly glide through the local Wal-Mart wearing black abayas, or gowns. (Ironically, the Saudi government says that partitions and separate rooms aren't required in mosques.)

Sadly, the students' presence emboldens (or in some places cows) American mosque leaders, many of whom try to rationalize the discrimination against women through a hadith, a saying of the prophet: "Do not prevent your women from (going to) the mosques, though their houses are best for them." But scholars consider this an allowance, not a restriction. The prophet made the statement after women complained when he said Muslims get 27 times more blessings when praying at the mosque.

Much of this discrimination is also practiced in the name of "protecting" women. If women and men are allowed to mix, the argument goes, the mosque will become a sexually charged place, dangerous for women and distracting to men. In our mosque, only the men are allowed to use a microphone to address the faithful. When I asked why, a mosque leader declared, "A woman's voice is not to be heard in the mosque." What he meant was that a woman's voice -- even raised in prayer -- is an instrument of sexual provocation to men. Many women accept these rulings; their apathy makes these rules the status quo.

I am heartened that some Muslim men are fighting for women's rights. On that 11th day of Ramadan last month, when I made clear that I would pray in the main hall, my 70-year-old father stood by me as a mosque elder said to him, "There will be no praying until she leaves."

"She is doing nothing wrong," my father insisted. "If you have an issue, talk to her." Four men bounded toward me. "Sister, please! We ask you in the spirit of Ramadan, leave. We cannot pray if you are here." But my answer was: I have prayed like this from Mecca to Jerusalem. It is legal within Islam, I said. I remained firm.

The next day, the mosque's all-male board voted 4-1 to make the main hall and front door accessible solely by men. My father dissented. Mosque leaders have not prevented me from worshiping in the main hall and suggest that I accept the rule as one that isn't enforced. "Grin and bear it. It will change one day," one American Muslim leader told me. A woman in my mosque pleaded with me not to talk about any of this publicly. But gentle ways protect gender apartheid in our mosques, and we do no one a service by allowing it to continue, least of all the Muslim community. So I have filed a complaint against my mosque with CAIR, whose mandate is to protect Muslim civil rights.

Still, the mosque board has refused to rescind the rule and affirm the right of women to enter through the front door and pray and learn in the main hall. Alas, one evening disintegrated into verbal abuse and physical threats, and my father and I felt so harassed we filed a police incident report. I had been sitting about 10 feet behind a small group of men at a regular Friday night haleeqa, or study session. A board member had ordered me about 50 feet away against the back wall where I couldn't have heard or participated. He threatened me with a restraining order for violating the ban on women's presence in the main hall. (The police later told me that there was little chance a judge would issue such an order.) A member of the congregation twice called my father an idiot for defending my right to participate, so wildly gesticulating his hands a member of the congregation ran over to restrain him.

We are optimistic, however, that Morgantown will go down in history as a place where the rights of Muslim women were affirmed. Having heard about our efforts, about 200 Muslim men and women have written to express support for our actions and sadness for the disenfranchisement they also feel at their local mosques. Importantly, also, our mosque board has indicated it is willing to back down from its rule banning women from the front door and the main hall.

After one of the final nights of Ramadan, considered a "night of power," my father had given me an early eidie, a gift elders give on Eid, the festival that marks the end of the holy month. He handed me a copy of the key to the mosque's front door, sold the night before at a fundraiser. I had traced the key's edge with my thumb and put it on my Statue of Liberty key chain, because it is here in America that Muslims can truly liberate mosques from cultural traditions that belie Islam's teachings.

"Praise be to Allah," my father had told me. "Allah has given you the power to make change."

I had rattled the keys in front of my son, who reached out for them, and I said to him, "Shibli, we've got the keys to the mosque. We've got the keys to a better world."

Author's e-mail: asra@asranomani.com

Asra Nomani, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, is the author of "Tantrika: Traveling the Road of Divine Love (HarperSanFrancisco)," and she is writing a forthcoming book about women in Islam told through the narrative of the Hajj.

This article is adapted from an article the author originally published in The Washington Post. It is published on Jazbah.org with permission from the author - Jazbah.org info@jazbah.org

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