No, We Don’t Have More Important Issues: In Support of Women-Led Prayer

By Sarah Eltantawi

I am in strong support of the mixed gender woman-led prayer to take place on March 18, 2005, in New York City. While there is no question that Dr. Amina Wadud will make history during March 18th prayer, this event is at least as important for its symbolic value, what it implies about Muslim women and its shattering of a taboo.

Muslims – men and women – will sit down for Friday prayers and listen to the Qur’anic reflections of a sensitive, intelligent and pious member of our community. It will be an honor and a treat for me to precede my prayer by listening to what Dr. Wadud has to say about various Qur’anic ayat, or a more general theme, or perhaps she will simply reflect on the historic nature of the day. The point is that I will for the first time cease to be robbed of my right to hear the melodic spiritual reflections of a respected member of my community during the hour in which I am supposed to be in community with fellow Muslims.

Black, White, Asian, Arab, Female, Male: if you are learned and insightful, I want to hear you reflect on Islam during Friday prayer. And I want to hear it live, in a clean setting, with full view of the Imam and with full rights to ask questions.

I am an intellectually curious being and I will not be relegated to the dungeon of your mosque. No more, not ever again.

The circumstances of the March 18th prayer are not perfect, as many have been all too quick to point out. It would surely have been better had the official Muslim community been on board and had we had the support of the establishment. And yet the fact that they have ignored our persistent efforts to explain that this issue is vitally important is their problem, not ours. Just as many of our families fled tyranny in various countries to attempt to lead a better, freer life, a life that made sense, so too will Muslims flee tyrannical, patriarchal mosques in search of freedom, in search of a mosque, or for now, a congregation, that makes sense. This is the way of things, and we are not worried.

The responses that the organizers of this event received from the more conservative members of our community was to be expected. Many attacked the prayer as lacking grounding in Islamic legal sources, refuting attempts progressives made to ground their activities in precisely this way. When progressives supplied ahadith, conservatives asked why we chose ahadith selectively, supplying a slew of misogynistic, questionable hadith with which to sully the discussion. When progressives supplied verses from the Qur’an that upheld women’s equality, conservatives hurled more hadith.

What is truly disappointing, though unfortunately not shocking, is the response of the so-called "moderates" to the mixed prayer. I am not someone who believes that all of our institutions are "bad" or "extreme." I have worked in them long enough to know the terrain is much more complicated than that, and that there are some excellent, dedicated people working throughout our community. Indeed, on many issues, Muslims must stand united. But this is internal, and it’s important: I demand to know where the Muslim Women’s League stands on this issue. I demand to know where the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) stands on this issue. I demand to know where the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) stands on this issue. And KARAMAH, the American Sufi Muslim Association, Women in Islam, Azizah Magazine, and other groups who speak for Muslims and Muslim women. Please tell us clearly what you think. Though I disagree with him, at least Aslam Abdullah of the Muslim Observer has had the guts to add to the dialogue on this issue. He writes in Islamicity that:

Those who are seriously concerned about improving the status of Muslim women should devote themselves to identifying with the impoverished, underprivileged and powerless women that are scattered all over the world. To talk about equality in a country that protects equality through constitutional means is a meaningless effort. However, to identify with those who suffer at the grassroots is heroic.

I beg to differ. "Identifying" with the "impoverished" and "underprivileged" is what is meaningless. Those who believe that the rhetoric of identity politics is in and of itself "heroic" are the ones with the problem. An activist who is looking at the wider problems of misogyny understands that the same forces that prevent women from taking leadership roles in mosques, or indeed, entering mosques, are the same forces that encourage and even institutionalize illiteracy (among other forces, or course). An activist, a concerned citizen, should always choose "doing" over "identifying." No one needs over-privileged Western Muslims to "identify" with anything if they are just going to use that "identification" to be smug, self-righteous and give themselves a hip 21st century identity in America, sticking their noses in the air as they claim to be concerned about "more important things" than mere prayer space. This is a smoke screen, and it is cowardly. This behavior suggests nothing more than a lack of moral certitude and conviction.

Again, if you don’t believe women should lead prayers, then have the cojones to come out and say so.

And one more thing. I have worked in the mainstream Muslim community for a few years now, and I can tell you what these groups are actually doing about world-wide illiteracy and hunger: absolutely nothing.

"We Have More Important Issues"

American Muslims – including American Muslim women – are the most educated and politically free Muslims in the world. With all due respect, there is no point in pretending that we suffer the plight of refugees or illiterate women throughout the Muslim world. Such self-righteous bluster is in fact condescending and disrespectful to actual victims and the real under-privileged. Taking the world-wide view, most Muslims in the United States are under-privileged, unless of course they have been picked up and imprisoned without charge by Ashcroft’s goons, another issue entirely.

Absent concrete strategies to alleviate serious issues like ending world wide illiteracy, health issues affecting Muslim women, and other serious, deep, institutional social-ills, to prop up these issues as a greater priority amounts to a disingenuous dodge of actual, winnable issues right here and now. It is the singular advantage afforded to only the most over-privileged Muslims on the planet to point plaintively at all the suffering people around the world while systematically undermining and attacking the small steps toward change progressives right here and now, on the achievable planet earth, are affecting before their eyes. It is a cop out. It is cowardice.

Anyone who has ridden an airplane knows that one is instructed, in case of emergency landing, to put on one’s own oxygen mask before helping others put on theirs – even if that person is your own child. I ask the "moderate" detractors – how are we to address world-wide poverty, widespread illiteracy and the plight of refugees if the most privileged, educated, and politically free Muslim women in the world can not so much as pray in dignity in their own houses of worship? Are you not ashamed? What right do you have to talk of the plight of refugee women in Afghanistan if Muslims in this country of excess and privilege are busy discussing whether a woman is in her right mind while menstruating or worrying about whether a man will be able to concentrate on his prayers if confronted with a woman’s backside? Or if a woman should be allowed into a mosque at all?

How fantastically hypocritical for some women to speak of the ills of women’s illiteracy world-wide (a problem that is for those who worry about them, of course, only an abstraction) when these very same women do not believe that they themselves, or their sisters, are intellectually capable of being the spiritual or intellectual leaders of a community! What then, sisters, is the point of this literacy? Do you want to educate illiterate Indian Muslim sisters so that they may sit in the basement of their local mosque, breast-feeding? Should we educate illiterate Egyptian sisters, only to have them worry that raising their voice in the mosque will unleash misogynistic cries of "awra"? Should we educate illiterate Nigerian sisters, but prevent them from serving as judges in "Islamic" courts that would otherwise be content to sentence them to death by public stoning for adultery?

Those who want to undermine these efforts to uplift and progress our community must undergo some introspection. What is really fueling your distaste for the progressives? Is it because you didn’t do it first? Is it because on some level, you benefit from the current patriarchal structure, having always made compromises and concessions to be the "good" Muslim woman? Are you afraid to lose the approval of sexist men, not entirely sure you can stand on your own two feet?

Change is happening because it must. American Muslims must get our own house in order before we cry crocodile tears about refugees across the world. Pity is not an honorable emotion. Supporting the change for real equality for our community so that we may be strong enough to really effectively help our sisters and brothers around the world is. We can not be strong unless women are fully empowered. Until then, we can continue to point to refugees in Afghanistan over our lavish dinners and fine teas, lining up behind men, compromising ourselves yet again – for how long, no one can say, and no one bothers to ask.

Sarah Eltantawi is a co-founder and Communications Director of the Progressive Muslim Union.