[Reader-list] A muslim woman breaks a taboo - the search for gender equality in mosques

[Shahnaz Habib]

1) Associated Press - Woman Fights for Equality in W. VA Mosque
2) Daily Times of Pakistan - How a Muslim woman broke a taboo by praying with men
3) More Information on Asra Nomani (Interviews, stories, and her web site)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1) From the Associated Press - January 25, 2004


Woman Fights for Equality in W.Va. Mosque 

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - For three months, Asra Nomani has been defying convention at the mosque she attends — by walking through the front door. 
Nomani, a journalist who has written for the Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, is trying to change a rule that women should enter the Morgantown mosque through a side staircase and pray separately from the men. A growing number of mosques have such rules. 


"I can interview the Taliban," said Nomani, 38, "but I can't walk through the front door of my mosque." 


Before ever approaching the front door, Nomani asked the mosque's board of trustees for equal access for women. But when she later went to the mosque, the board president stood at the front door and said, "Sister, please, the back entrance," Nomani noted in a discrimination complaint she filed with the Council on American-Islamic Relations. 


About three months ago, Nomani, her mother and her 12-year-old niece rejected the women's entrance for the front door. 


Once inside, the women chose not to pray in a balcony built for women in the rear of the mosque — where the main prayer space cannot be seen. Instead, they began praying under the same vaulted, sunny ceiling as the men — but several feet behind them. 


"The men interrupted the start of 'taraweeh' prayer," Nomani recalled in the discrimination complaint. "A man said, `We cannot pray until she leaves.' A group of men told my father to tell me to leave. He said he would not. 


"Four men assembled around me and told me to leave. Two men took positions directly behind me and started to pray. One of the men assembled around me asked in an intimidating way whether I wanted to remain with these men behind me. Another man poked his finger at me and spoke to me in a threatening way. I remained." 


Nomani and her father, Zafar, a professor emeritus of nutrition at West Virginia University, mosque founder and current board member, recently filed a police complaint saying that one man in the congregation yelled at her, called Zafar Nomani an idiot and waved his arms at them before other members of the congregation restrained him. 


"If women are not treated with respect and dignity in our mosques, we have failed," Zafar Nomani said. "I am concerned not only about women but the second generation of immigrant children growing up in America." 


Asad Khan, acting president of the mosque's board, said a meeting on the issue will be held soon but declined further comment until after the meeting. 


Morgantown's mosque is among a growing number of U.S. mosques that put women behind a partition or in another room to pray. In 1994, 52 percent of mosques had such a practice, but that rose to 66 percent in 2000, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations. 


The world's holiest mosque — in Mecca — allows women and men to pray together, said Nomani, who has prayed there. She was born in India and lived in New Jersey before moving to West Virginia. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2) From the Daily Times of Pakistan - January 29, 2004
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_30-12-2003_pg7_37

How a Muslim woman broke a taboo by praying with men

By Khalid Hasan

WASHINGTON: A young Muslim woman’s bid to pray in the same area of a mosque as men has triggered a controversy with the more conservative male members of a small West Virginia community up in arms at what they see as a heretical act.

The young woman who has triggered the storm is Asra Q Nomani, an Indian-American Muslim and a direct descendent of the great Islamic scholar Maulana Shibli Nomani. She is a former Wall Street Journal reporter who was in Karachi gathering material for a book and a series of articles when Daniel Pearl arrived there from Bombay with his wife Marion to investigate the Islamist terrorist network and its links to Al Qaeda. Mr Pearl and Ms Asra had been colleagues at the Wall Street Journal for nearly 10 years. The Pearls moved in with Ms Asra who had rented a house in Defence, Karachi. Mr Pearl was lured to an appointment, kidnapped and killed. The men said to be behind his killing, including the mastermind Omar Sheikh, were caught, tried and sentenced. They are now in jail pending an appeal.

Ms Asra, a freelance writer, journalist and single mother lives in Morgantown, West Virginia with her parents. During the month of Ramazan, she refused to be relegated to the women’s section of the local mosque, and she wanted to pray with the men, since it was her view that Islam placed no restrictions on where women should pray. 

In the Washington Post on Sunday, she wrote about her unique and courageous bid to be treat as an equal Muslim despite her gender. She walked in through the front door, accompanied by her mother, her niece, her father and her infant son and they all sat themselves down in the main prayer hall, about 20 feet behind the men. The reaction was immediate. She was told to go to the women’s section. She declined, saying. “Thank you, brother, I am happy praying here.”

The next day, the mosque board, all male, voted to make the main hall and the front entrance accessible solely to men. Her father, who set up the first mosque in Morgantown over 30 years ago, dissented and the matter is now receiving an internal legal review. Ms Asra has also filed a complaint with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which seeks to protect Muslim civil rights. Her “Eidi” this year from her father was the key to the front door of the mosque, which he had bought at a fund-raiser on the last day of Ramazan.

Despite the protests, Ms Asra has entered the mosque through the front door and prayed in the main hall about 30 times. But only four other women have joined her, one being a relation. She said during the first days of Ramazan this year, she tried to accept the status quo, entering the mosque through the rear entrance, praying upstairs in the women’s section and listening to sermons addressed to “brothers”. 

She writes that she had witnessed the marginalisation of women in many Muslim countries but she was not prepared to be treated this way in America. She began researching the practice and concluded that mosques that bar women from the main prayer space are not Islamic. In the US, a survey revealed that out of 66 American mosques sampled, women prayed separately in each mosque. The practice was less rampant 30 years earlier, which shows the creeping radicalisation of Islam in America.

Ms Asra writes that in the Prophet’s time (PBUH), women of Medina prayed in the mosque in the same space as men. However, by the third century of Islam, women’s rights began to be whittled away. She notes that the Fiqh Council of North America supports women’s rights in the mosque. In practice, however, mosques in America have become a male preserve where women and children are not welcome. Many American mosques have been taken over by conservative Arab men following Salafi teachings. 

The mosque libraries mostly carry books published by the Saudi government, which takes the view, Ms Asra points out, that partitions and separate rooms are required in mosques. She writes that in her mosque, only men are allowed to use a microphone. When she asked the reason, she was told, “A woman’s voice is not to be heard in the mosque” for fear that it would cause sexual titillation. 

When asked what her motivations were, Ms Asra answered, “I have prayed like this from Mecca to Jerusalem. It is legal within Islam.”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

3) More Information on Asra Nomani

Asra Nomani web site - http://www.asranomani.com/site/
Beliefnet Story - http://www.beliefnet.com/story/129/story_12945_1.html
Salon.Com - Asra's Stories - http://archive.salon.com/directory/topics/asra_q_nomani/