A Gender Jihad For Islam's Future

Women and Islam: Amina Lawal, left, was initially sentenced to death by a Nigerian court for having a child outside marriage; a mother, below, reads the Koran during Ramadan; author Asra Nomani, right, outside the mosque where she broke tradition and prayed alongside men. (By George Osodi -- Associated Press)

The challenge isn't just in poor villages in Nigeria or Mali. It's in the wealthy and supposedly well-educated West. In 2003, I set off a debate over the rights of Muslim women when I wrote in The Post's Outlook section about walking through the front door of my hometown mosque in Morgantown, W.Va., and praying in the main hall, thus defying an order that women enter through a back door and pray in a secluded balcony. Since then, I've been harassed in mosques from New York City to Seattle for refusing to accept separate quarters. After almost two years of public campaigning with other women, the country's major Muslim organizations, including the Islamic Society of North America, issued a 28-page report in July titled, "Women Friendly Mosques and Community Centers: Working Together to Reclaim Our Heritage," recommending reform, including an affirmative action program to get women on mosque boards.

Our movement also caused a stir earlier this year when Wadud led a congregation of about 125 women and men in a New York prayer service. As the chief organizer, I wondered what the impact of her action would be as I unfurled the massive roll of carpet I'd purchased from the ABC home furnishing store to serve as our prayer rug. Many clerics around the world attacked us at fiery Friday sermons for undermining our religion, and Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi claimed that our prayer "creates millions of bin Ladens" by challenging male authority. We're up against a formidable machinery of opposition, but we're convinced that now is the moment to coordinate the legal and policy reforms that Islamic feminism is promoting. Initially, I thought it was time for a new madhhab. But Islamic scholars have persuaded me that that would be too limiting. We need to focus instead on broad societal initiatives.

We see our struggle as part of a wider peace jihad. It was a national Islamic leader who oversees the Catalan Islamic Board, Mansur Escudero, who issued the first fatwa against Osama bin Laden, months before U.S. Muslim organizations issued their own. The organizers of the conference say they don't Vaccept support from Saudi Arabia, which has funded much of the spread of ultraconservative Islamic orthodoxy in the world.

At the Barcelona conference, I proposed a plan called "The Islamic Dream" -- an effort to connect our disparate efforts and develop a new approach for Islam in the 21st century. I would like to see us organize a summit of Islam's progressive thinkers to establish the terms of reform and define a 20-year plan to transform our world. That is where we are headed.

During Wadud's presentation on one of the last days of the conference, a Spanish American woman stood up and asked: "Would you lead us in prayer today?" Wadud assented. A group of about 30 Muslims gathered in a hotel conference room to pray behind her,men and women standing shoulder to shoulder -- grounds for banishment in mosques around the world. A Pakistani Canadian activist, Raheel Raza, ran to join the line, not far from a Pakistani American scholar, Asma Barlas, dubbed one of "the mothers of Islamic feminism." Together, we opened our hands as Wadud prayed, "We ask for Your protection."

Our prayer complete, we declared with one voice, "Ameen." "Please accept."

Author's e-mail:

asranomani@theislamicdream.com

Asra Nomani, a former reporter for the Wall Street Journal, is the author of the book "Standing Alone in Mecca" (HarperSanFrancisco).