The Woman Who Went To the Front of the Mosque

Members and observers in Morgantown say she's invited TV cameras into the mosque at the slightest provocation.

"People come here to worship," says Sohail Chaodhry, the mosque's religious coordinator, a tall Pakistani who wears the white cap and long beard of the devout Muslim. "Not to face cameras. . . . We are just regular people trying to follow our religion."

There are some women at the mosque who support what Nomani is trying to do. Says Christine Ajra, an American who converted to Islam before marrying her Lebanese husband, "There are a lot of people who don't want to give her credit, but she has opened doors and opened minds."

At the book reading in April in the District, one reader said he really didn't like her "Islamic Bill of Rights for Women in the Bedroom," in which she asserts, among other things, that Muslim women have an "Islamic right to respectful and pleasurable sexual experience" and a right "to make independent decisions about their choice of a partner." Even more egregious to her detractors is the fact that she had a child out of wedlock, in direct defiance, they say, of Islam's dictates.

"The main issue is people believe she made a very negative impact on the community," says Abdullah Ibraheem, a member of the five-person committee that will decide if she should be banned from the mosque. "People believe she made a very negative propaganda that doesn't reflect the reality 100 percent."

'My Heart's Work'

Nomani's mantra: It's time to take the slam out of

Islam.

Indeed, she says, she has often felt slammed by the religion that nurtured her when she was a child. The practice of gender separation at mosques pains her. She says it has no basis in the Koran. At the Morgantown mosque, the overwhelming majority of women enter through the rear, heads covered. They walk up steps that lead to a room overlooking the main hall, but with a wall so high the women cannot see. So they watch the service on closed-circuit TV. Women are not allowed to lead the prayer service.

The mosque is not unique, according to Islamic scholars. American mosques, with rare exceptions, separate the sexes, whether by dividing the main prayer hall into male and female sides or segregating them further as they do at the ICM.

"I refuse to sit in the back, that's so demeaning," says the small-boned Nomani, 39, whose soft voice contains both Valley Girl-esque inflections and a faint lilt of India. "The mosques are set up like a men's club. . . . I just want them to consider women as human beings. Not to throw us into corners. I want the Muslim world to fast-forward into the 21st century and not segregate us into women's ghettos."

Last year, when Nomani attended an all-men's prayer meeting with her father, Zafar, she was asked to sit at least 50 feet from the men. She refused. What happened after that is in dispute, but both sides agree that there was a lot of shouting, that things got out of hand, and that, later, Nomani filed an incident report with the police.

Then, in March, on a cold and snowy day, in a move echoing Martin Luther, she used electrical tape to post her views on the door of the Morgantown mosque, her "99 Precepts for Opening Hearts, Minds and Doors in the Muslim World," in which she asserts that women have a right to pray side by side with men.