Women in Islam

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Women in Islam

• Rels 400 / Wmns 410
• 24 oct 2006

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A Prayer Toward EqualityBy Mona Eltahawy
Friday, March 18, 2005

• NEW YORK -- Today, somewhere in New York, a
  Muslim woman will give the sermon that precedes
  the congregational noon prayers, called Jum'ah,
  that mark the highlight of the Muslim week. She
  will then lead men and women in prayer, becoming
  the first woman on record to lead a public,
  mixed-gender Friday prayer .... There is nothing
  in Islam that bars a woman from giving the Friday
  sermon or from leading a mixed-gender prayer. The
  fact that only men have done both for centuries
  is one of many things that Muslims have rarely
  questioned.

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Woman leads US Muslims to prayer

• More than 100 men and women attended the service
  and sermon given by Dr. Amina Wadud, professor of
  Islamic studies at Virginia Commonwealth
  University.

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It's not proper for men to look at the woman
whose body is in front of them Sayed Tantawi
sheik of Cairo's Al-Azhar mosque

• The location was moved to an Anglican Church
  building in New York after mosques refused to
  host the event.

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Mona Eltahawy

• Amina Wadud's decision to lead the Jum'ah is the
  most public example of setting our own agenda. It
  will be women who will change Islam and bring it
  into the 21st century, because we have nothing to
  lose. But many men support us in these efforts,
  because our fight is their fight.

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October 29, 2005

• Wadud was invited to lead a congregation by
  several Muslim women during a question and answer
  period following her talk at the International
  Congress on Islamic Feminism.

• Amina Wadud Leads Mixed Gender Friday Prayer in
  Barcelona

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http//asranomani.com/

• The Washington Post captures the revolution in a
  front page story for its Style section. Gandhi
  toppled the British Empire. Nelson Mandela
  dismantled the apartheid regime. Martin Luther
  King Jr. shook the world of racism. We can
  challenge and defeat the machinery of sexism,
  dogmatism and intolerance perpetuated in the name
  of religion -- to realize the most beautiful and
  uplifting spirit of faith.

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• Wall Street Journal correspondent Asra Nomani
  embarks on a dangerous journey from Middle
  America to the Middle East to join more than two
  million fellow Muslims on the hajj, the
  pilgrimage to Mecca required of all Muslims once
  in their lifetime.
• Mecca is Islam's most sacred city and strictly
  off limits to non-Muslims.

• On a journey perilous enough for any American
  reporter, Nomani is determined to take along her
  infant son, Shibli -- living proof that she, an
  unmarried Muslim woman, is guilty of zina, or
  "illegal sex."

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An Islamic Bill of Rights for Women in the
Bedroomhttp//www.asranomani.com/freedom/archives
/2005/02/an_islamic_bill_1.php

• 1. Women have an Islamic right to respectful and
  pleasurable sexual experience.
• 2. Women have an Islamic right to make
  independent decisions about their bodies,
  including the right to say no to sex.
• 3. Women have an Islamic right to make
  independent decisions about their partner,
  including the right to say no to a husband
  marrying a second wife.
• 4. Women have an Islamic right to make
  independent decisions about their choice of a
  partner.
• 5. Women have an Islamic right to make
  independent decisions about contraception and
  reproduction.

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An Islamic Bill of Rights for Women in the
Bedroom http//www.asranomani.com/freedom/archives
/2005/02/an_islamic_bill_1.php

• 6. Women have an Islamic right to protection from
  physical, emotional, and sexual abuse.
• 7. Women have an Islamic right to sexual privacy.
• 8. Women have an Islamic right to exemption from
  criminalization or punishment for consensual
  adult sex.
• 9. Women have an Islamic right to exemption from
  gossip and slander.
• 10. Women have an Islamic right to sexual health
  care and sex education.
• Posted on February 24, 2005

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http//www.pmuna.org/

• The Progressive Muslim Union of North America
  (PMU) is a grassroots organization that aims to
  provide a forum, voice, and organizing mechanism
  to North American Muslims who wish to pursue a
  progressive intellectual, social and political
  agenda.
• Our work is guided by the following principles
• 1) We affirm that a Muslim is anyone who
  identifies herself or himself as "Muslim,"
  including those whose identification is based on
  social commitments and cultural heritage.

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• 4) We affirm the equal status and equal worth of
  all human beings, regardless of religion, gender,
  race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. We oppose
  any restrictions on women's full participation in
  society and believe that separation and
  segregation of men and women is contrary to the
  equity among genders enshrined in the Quran.
• We endorse the human rights and liberties of
  lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans-sexual
  individuals. We believe that Muslim women and
  men, gay and straight, of all nationalities,
  ethnicities, and races should work together,
  shoulder-to-shoulder, in their effort to
  rejuvenate our community

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Shattering the idol of spiritual patriarchy
Towards a gender-fair notion of prayer in
IslamBy Omid Safi, PMU Co-Chair

• This exclusion of women from authoritative
  interpretations of religion can no longer be
  maintained. It is morally and socially
  unacceptable to support a system whereby half of
  all the human beings that God Almighty has
  created are prevented from engaging in religious
  thought and leadership.

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the majority of Muslim jurists in the past and
the present have reached a conclusion that if the
congregation consists of a thousand women and one
man, only a man may lead the prayer.

• Lets examine the presupposition of this
  position. It cannot be based on the spiritual
  worth of women as imams, as demonstrated above.
  If the one man in the above example were removed,
  then the female imam would pose no challenge to
  the consensus of the jurists. The underlying
  issue, then, is clearly not the spiritual
  qualification of the imam. It is something much
  more fundamental, and basic it is rather the
  concept of the spiritual authority of men over
  women.

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• In our reading, a Just and Loving God has created
  humanity, all of humanity, in the full possession
  of human dignity, and in a relationship of basic
  equality both towards the Divine and among
  themselves in human society.
• To use Islamic language, all of humanity, male
  and female, has been born with a primordially
  pure nature (fitrah), all of humanity has had the
  spirit of God breathed into them.

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• All human beings, male and female, are in full
  possession of their dignity and humanity
• Do we believe that God has created women in the
  fullness of physical, emotional, intellectual,
  and spiritual dignity, or not?
• Do we believe deep in our hearts that women are
  fully human, entitled to their humanity as a
  precious creation of God, or not?

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• What we are specifically opposing here is the
  absurd proposition that the same God who is
  al-Rahman and al-Rahim has made half of humanity
  spiritually deficient and subordinate by
  definition. That is not the God we know from the
  Quran. The problem is not the Quran, it is not
  God. It is patriarchy, a profound human error
  that must be addressed, resisted, and corrected.

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• http//www.muslimcanadiancongress.org/mission.html