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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.”

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