Courageous Muslim women challenge segregation at U.S. mosques

Here is an excellent story about some brave Muslim women in the U.S. who are working towards equality in their mosque, from the Wall Street Journal:

Muslim feminists call it the "penalty box." It's the area of a mosque where women, segregated from the men, pray. In Islam, prayer is required five times a day and Muslims often pray in congregation at mosques. During these prayers, women usually are partitioned off in a separate room or behind a curtain, "like naughty children," one Muslim woman tells me, while men pray in a grand main hall.

One Muslim, Fatima Thompson, describes the penalty box at her mosque in Maryland as an overheated, dark back room. Another Muslim woman, Asra Nomani, tells me that at a major Washington D.C. mosque, the female section was in a trailer, where the voice of the imam (the prayer leader) came from a crackling speaker. "It was so humiliating I never went back," says Ms. Nomani, a former reporter for the Journal.

Now these Muslim feminists have had enough. Hoping to reform Islam by making it more women-friendly, Ms. Thompson—an American convert to Islam—has organized several "pray-ins" at mosques in the D.C. area. These include the Islamic Center of Washington and the Dar Al-Hijra Islamic Center in Falls Church, Va., a mosque attended by several of the 9/11 hijackers and the Fort Hood mass killer Maj. Nidal Hasan. Ms. Thompson's next pray-in target is a mosque in Washington.

...Though neither Ms. Thompson nor Ms. Nomani has been arrested, say, for trespassing, Ms. Nomani—who has been fighting sexism at her mosque in West Virginia for seven years—says she has received several death threats. Such violence-oriented intolerance, which in the West has become the public image of Islam, seems irreconcilably at odds with the moderate feminism of the pray-in group...

Comments

[william kinloch]

just like so many other things it has never been the will of Allah that men and women should be segregated in the mosque or in any group meeting of muslims because Allah is all knowing wise, and all understanding and generous in his love. yet mankind has replaced the natural love and compassion of god with man made decrees and observancies which do not reflect the grace and mercy of their lord.
indeed both my wife and i were married in the mosque yet are not allowed to pray there together which is against the will and glory of the word of Allah. for how can a man and woman be married in gods house then not permitted to come into the mosque together and pray alongside what should be family members of both sexes. The lord Allah himself ordained that both men and women should freely associate with each other in this life and then marry and pray and council with each other in a decent and respectful manner not be refused the same place or value in the house of their lord.
and islam itself states that the family is the greatest asset in islam, yet it reduces the true value of the female and disallows complete families to pray to their lord as they would wish to do so with the blessing of Allah. woe to mankinds great arrogance that only men know the will of the lord allah.