The Woman Who Went To the Front of the Mosque

In less than an hour, a mosque official tore it down.

She's got videotape of all of this. She understands the usefulness of bringing in a camera crew.

As to the claims that she's a publicity hound who timed her Freedom Tour to coincide with her book tour, Nomani says it made sense to combine the two since her publisher was picking up the bill to send her around the country.

"I feel like I'm doing my heart's work," Nomani says. "I think it's incumbent on Muslims with intellect, hope and love in our hearts . . . to go into the houses of worship and really try to transform the Muslim house from within. We have to take on this machine of extremism that's trying to take over the world."

She says there is a "Muslim Mafia" in town, a group aligned with Saudi Wahhabism, a fundamentalist branch of Islam. They bring sacks filled with cash to the mosque, she says. You have to challenge the power and control of those who run the society, she says.

"I intend to follow the money," she says, "We have to see what is propping up these societal traditions that keep our community closed. I'm trying to figure out what people are trying to protect, whether it's just ideology or a more intricate web.

"I know the stakes are high," she says.

"I really admire Asra for fighting the good fight," says Asma Gull Hasan, a Pakistani American lawyer and the author of "Why I Am a Muslim: An American Odyssey." "A lot of women our age, first-generation Americans, young Muslims who don't like the conservative attitudes of the mosque, either keep attending blindly and ignore the rhetoric or just stop attending altogether," she says. "I don't go to a mosque because I get so irritated with how women are treated. . . . I've given up, the situation in mosques is so abysmal."

The idea of separating men and women during prayer is not a matter of Koran teachings but tradition, pragmatism -- and modesty, says Safi, the mediator, since Islamic prayers require a good deal of bending over and prostrating.

"The rationale has been that this is more conducive to focusing on the prayer itself and to spirituality, rather than creating a situation where there is a lot of gazing, men looking at women, that would distract both," he says.

Nomani's mother isn't buying it. "If you can see a professor's butt as she's writing on the blackboard," says Sajida Nomani, what's the big deal with women praying with men or leading prayers?

In March, as part of the Muslim Women's Freedom Tour, Nomani helped organize a mixed-gender prayer service, led by Amina Wadud, a Virginia Commonwealth University professor and Arabic scholar. It was the first time in centuries that a woman publicly gave the khutba , or sermon, before a mixed-gender congregation, according to Aslan, the religious scholar and author. About 130 people showed up at the Synod House at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan, an Episcopal church, men and women praying side by side, shoulder to shoulder. (Three mosques had refused to host the prayer service and an art gallery pulled out after receiving a bomb threat.) A camera crew from al-Jazeera showed up, as well as a gaggle of protesters. People attending the service were searched before they were admitted into the chapel.