The Mosque and the Mezzanine

By Laila Suhana

I haven’t been to the mosque in years. Nothing that the mosque stands for today speaks to me in any way. In fact, the mere thought of going to the mosque creates a churning discomfort in my stomach.

The last time I set foot in one was when we had the riot police hot on our heels, pelting us with abuse and tear-gas. That was five years ago, after one of the peaceful demonstrations that took place in the streets of Kuala Lumpur almost weekly towards the last few months of 1998. The unceremonious sacking of the then Deputy Prime Minister in Malaysia, Anwar Ibrahim, unleashed a new-found awakening in the lives of many. Never had I seen so many people in the streets of Kuala Lumpur waving banners and placards, exercising vocal chords that had been asleep for decades. When you are pushed to the wall, you take your voice to the streets because there is no other way to be heard. That said, I don’t for a minute believe all those who had gone to the streets were there for the same reason. I for one was not there for Anwar Ibrahim per se. But that’s another story.

Our peaceful protests were apparently disrupting the peace, so the state set their foot soldiers bearing shields and batons onto us and we sought refuge in the mosque.

Not for long though. The “peace keepers” were soon in the compound of the mosque, flushing the rest of us out every which way we could run, hitting those that dared to hold their ground. I will never forget that acrid stench and sting of tear gas, nor will I forget the sound of the bell on top of the water cannons that got rung seconds before they would launch unforgiving jets of irritant-laced water onto the crowd.

It is not that I never tried. Whenever I attempted to establish some kind of affinity to the mosque, it became clear that it was never going to serve my need for a place of comfort, nor provide me with any sense of community – not as a woman, anyway.

As a child, I had always disliked the large ominous, preacher-of-doom-type signs outside the gates of mosques. “Pray before you are prayed for,” I remember one saying. That is supposed to make me love the religion more, draw me to the mosque and make me want to pray?

There is another sign on Malaysian mosques that warns me, as a woman, that I am persona non grata. Muslim I may be, but an uncovered woman is “wrong,” so I am not to even set foot in the masjid compound. There is this great big cross next to the drawing of a woman whose head is covered with her hair, while the woman whose head is covered with a cloth gets a big tick.

I wanted to scream “yes, yes, YES!” when Mohja Kahf wrote of the men’s and women’s spaces in the mosques. How was I to feel good about my mosque when the male entrance was always the grand and unmistakable front of the mosque that screamed “Welcome” while I had to enter from the back, go up two flights of steps and into an enclosure where the musty air spoke of countless other disappointed women.

Women must enter via the back entrance, I was told, because the male congregation would otherwise be tempted by the sight of women walking past. How rich is that? My walking in through the front would invalidate their prayers, so I am the one who has to walk in through the back? How about “guarding their modesty and casting their gaze downwards” or getting some horse blinkers perhaps? I remember as a teenager thinking that if it was this easy for men to get tempted, then what business have they got running a country. Better that women took charge of these things!

I used to grudgingly go up to the mezzanine floor, every step reminding me of how the mosque seemed to barely tolerate my being there, and how little I would be missed if I stopped coming.

My mother, for some time, used to drag herself up those steps for Eid prayers, in great pain from an arthritic knee. One year, she just could not make it up those darned steps, so we stayed with her downstairs, but we had to stand to the back, outside the building – we welcomed Shawwal on the pavement. The next year, she stopped going altogether. She blamed her arthritic knees. I blamed the cold mosque.

The mosque, for so long constructed to be the community center of care and compassion, for me, began to expose its hypocrisy and continues to do so till today.

Back to the mezzanine. I hated that mezzanine which walled us off from rest of the mosque. There is this oft-repeated story that the Prophet, peace be upon him, once said that it was better to walk behind a lion than to walk behind a woman, such is the danger that she is. Perhaps that’s why we have to stay in enclosures.

There are a few small holes in the wall through which the women peer to check if the prayers are about to start. Every now and then I would grumble about how unfair it was for women to be relegated to the back, hidden. I would mumble about not believing that God intended for women to be made invisible and second to men.

But there would always be the “sober” muslima who would remind me that God had reasons for why we were to complement (read “serve”) men and of the supportive and important role (read “doing the menial work”) that we had to play. There was also the muslima who chirpily sought comfort from a dubious silver lining – “at least we can take off our headcovers and not have to worry that the men will see.” Eventually, I came to realize that the numerous “explanations” and justifications skirted the real issues facing Muslim women at the mosque.

My strained relationship with the mosque is also laced with embarrassment at the increasingly obscene amounts of money that are poured into huge mosques that blare opulence and arrogance – and are locked up after congregational prayers, to keep the “riff raff” out apparently.

I wonder what my friends from other faiths must think. In a country divided along ethnic and religious lines, what messages must these bedecked “Islamic” symbols send? Or has the arrogance become so everyday, so normal, that non-Muslims internalize the anger yet feel too powerless to say anything?

An indignant “hmph” often leaps out of me whenever I walk past a masjid these days. I can’t help but feel that the masjid is a microcosm of the state of political Islam in this country today. There is no place for non-Muslims in this exclusive club that privileges membership. They can watch from the periphery, but never be at the center. If at all they are acknowledged, they are spoken of unkindly, as the “kafirs” from whom Muslims need to protect the “fragile” religion. They are never able to participate in the discourse.

The status of Muslim women in this club is so “elevated” that they are out of sight! The proverbial “they” are so afraid of what the mind of the woman will unleash that they had to pack her away and declare even her voice as ‘awra.

I have no wish to be subjected to this anymore. I do not want to subject myself to being treated as second, tolerated as a necessary evil. I want to be around people who celebrate and respect my being, acknowledge my warts and encourage my growth.

I need to be away from that mezzanine, so that I may feel closer to this religion. To borrow Mohja Kahf’s words, I need to believe that “The Mosque is under my feet, wherever I walk each day.”