Women lead Friday prayers

2005-03-18 21:15

New York - Breaking with Muslim traditions that only men lead prayers, a small group of American women planned to conduct the practise on Friday, sending shockwaves through mosques in New York City.

Amina Wadud, professor of Islamic studies at Virginia Commonwealth University and a leader of the Muslim WakeUp group, was to lead and deliver a sermon to a mixed-gender gathering at the Synod House of the Cathedral of St John the Divine in the upper West side of Manhattan.

The group chose the Synod House after telling the media that it was under bomb threats if it were to conduct Friday prayers at the gallery owned by Sundaram Tagore in Manhattan's Lower East Side. Tagore is a strong supporter of the group.

Iman Omar, leader of the Islamic Cultural Centre in New York, said that Wadud was doing a "crazy thing".

"It's forbidden by (Islamic) laws," Omar said. "She's doing a crazy thing, and nobody is listening to her. But here, anybody can do anything; it's a democratic country."

Omar said he disagreed with breaking with the Muslim tradition requiring separate spaces for males and females in mosques, and that men should lead the Friday prayer.

Wadud, who is of African origin, has become a prominent leader for American women who have become Muslims. Her book, Qur'an and Women: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective, was considered groundbreaking in the interpretation of the Koran and the role of women.

The group's website claimed support from Muslim men as well as women. But the aim of the group is to allow women a more prominent place in the religion, particularly in the conduct of rites.

Asra Nomani, the lead organiser for the prayer at the Synod House, told The New York Times, "People have to really focus on the second-class status that women have in the Muslim world."

"We are taking actions that no one else would have dared to think about before," she said. "Nobody cared that we didn't have a place in the faith. We were just abandoned."

Other Muslim women feared a backlash.

"This kind of change has to come from within the community," said Aisha al-Adawiya. "It's being driven from the outside."

Nomani, an author and a former journalist for The Wall Street Journal, said on the Muslim WakeUp website that women will reclaim their right "to be spiritual equals and leaders".

"Women will move from the space tradition has relegated them in the back of the mosques and pray in the front rows," the website said. -dpa

- SAPA