Woman-led Friday prayer sparks controversy in the US
Pakistan Times Foreign Desk

NEW YORK (US): A Muslim woman writer, who was born in India and grew up in the US, says she helped organize the female-led Friday prayer here to draw attention to the inequality for women in Muslim spiritual life and Muslim life in general.

“We are standing up for our rights as women in Islam,” Asra Q Nomani, an author and former Wall Street Journal reporter who is a descendent of Maulana Shibli Nomani, told a crowded news conference before the prayer.

“We will no longer accept the back door or the shadows. At the end of the day, we’ll be leaders in the Muslim world,” she said as the move generated a raging debate.

Ms Nomani, a controversial figure who lives in Virginia, has been a focus of American media attention as she repeatedly entered her area Mosque from the front door and sat with men. Each time Ms Nomani was told to move to the area reserved for women in the back but she resisted.

Juma Prayers

The March-18 prayer, attended by a mixed gathering of about 100, was led by Dr Amina Wadud, an African American and a longtime convert to Islam, who is a professor of philosophy and religious studies at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Tight security was in place following threats to disrupt the event, which took place in an old church building.

Several Mosques turned down the request to host Friday’s prayer; a bomb threat then forced organizers to move the event from a Soho gallery to the cathedral, where police officers screened participants for weapons. Dr Amina Wadud was escorted by two muscular bodyguards, and about a dozen police patrolled outside Synod House, some carrying submachine guns.

Three men tried to interrupt the service before it started. One of them shouted in the lobby as police forced them to leave. Some 15 others protested outside, saying women cannot lead mixed-gender prayers. Ms Nomani said she had organized the service so that women would have “the right to enter a Mosque, to enter through the front door, and to be greeted as my brother greeted me earlier.”

Dr Amina Wadud

Addressing the press conference, Dr Wadud said, “The issue of gender equality is a very important one in Islam,” adding, “Muslims have unfortunately used highly restrictive interpretations of history to move backward.

With this prayer service, we are moving forward. This single act is symbolic of the possibilities within Islam.”

Imam Ahmed Dewidar

Imam Ahmed Dewidar of the Islamic Society of Mid-Manhattan said Friday of a woman leading a mixed-gender prayer: “It’s New York. Everyone can do whatever she wants, or he wants, but we never heard that the Holy Prophet (Peace be upon Him) allowed, or even his wife (May Allah be pleased with Her) ever allowed or did it.”

He said he told his congregation not to get angry about the service but also said he would have preferred that people would have discussed it as a community. Some Islamic scholars have said they were aware of a few other mixed-gender prayer meetings led by women, mostly in the West, but they are very rare.

The Azaan

The Azaan was recited by an American Muslim woman of Egyptian descent, Suehyla el-Attar, who was not wearing a Hijab.

Organizers said the service wasn’t meant as a protest against the Muslim traditions. “It was always meant as a spiritual worship opportunity, and it’s doing so in an equal space for women and men,” said Ahmed Nassef, whose group “Muslim Wake Up!” was a co-sponsor of the service.

“It’s not about telling other Muslims how they should worship,” Nassef said. “We just need to be open to new ideas.”

Yvonne Haddad

Yvonne Haddad, a professor of Islamic studies at Georgetown University, said the service goes against the religion’s traditions.

“It’s a time when people can get away with anything,” Haddad said. “When people have a breakdown of traditional leadership, largely because the US government has de-legitimized the Muslim leadership in America, American Muslims are searching for new leaders more able to address their daily needs.

“People in America think they are going to be the vanguards of change,” Haddad said. “But for Arab Muslims in the Middle East, American Muslims continue to be viewed on the margins of the Faith.”

Shaikh of Al-Azhar Mosque

The Shaikh of Cairo’s Al-Azhar Mosque, one of the world’s top Islamic institutions, said Islam permits women to lead other women in prayer but not a congregation with men in it.

“A woman’s body is private,” Shaikh Sayed Tantawi wrote in a column in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram, in which he was asked about Wadud’s planned prayer.

Abdul-Aziz al-Khayyat, a former minister of religious affairs in Jordan, also said it would be forbidden under Islamic doctrine, and that the prayers of men who participated would not count.

Study

In about two-thirds of the Mosques in the US, women pray behind partitions, curtains or in separate rooms from men, according to a study conducted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The practice is not dictated by the Holy Quran, but is the result of social traditions, said Khaled Abou El Fadl, a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles who specializes in Islamic law.

Yet Ms Nomani said she opts to dispel. “The voices of women have been silenced by centuries of man-made traditions, and we’re saying, ‘No more!,“ she said as she stood before a tangle of microphones. “We’re going to move from the back of the Mosque to the front of the Mosque", she viewed.●