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| Denying Women Access to the
Mosque: A Betrayal of the Prophet (pbuh) Shamima Sheikh An ‘Ignorance’ that's frightening I was prompted to put together these few
thoughts after a meeting with a group of architects (who are also popular
mosque designers in South Africa) and students who presented their
proposals for the WITS mosque. The architects expressed their certainty as
to where a woman may be located in a mosque, saying that any other
accommodation was bid'ah (innovation). A young student presenting his
design said women and men reading alongside were unacceptable; they had to
be completely separated (he said that women should be accommodated in a
gallery). His other assumption was that men at WITS could not control
their libidos. It was their certainty that their beliefs
and perspectives were actually the Prophetic tradition and that anything
else was bid'ah that I found frightening. I was in no doubt about the
sincerity and love these men have for the Prophet (pbuh). It is because of
this and my own love for Islam and the Prophet (pbuh) that I feel the need
to inform them about what I've come to learn about women and the space
they occupied in the Prophet's mosque. Women's Space in the Prophet's Mosque Women occupied the back rows of the
Prophet's mosque; where they could be seen and heard by the rest of the
congregation. (Remember that the Prophet's mosque was fairly small.) Ibn Abaas (ra) said: "Once the Prophet
came out (for the 'Id prayers) as if I were just observing him waving to
the people to sit down. He then, accompanied by Bilal, came crossing the
rows till he reached the women. He recited verse 12 of chapter 60 to them
and asked: 'O ladies, are you fulfilling your covenant?' None except one
woman said 'Yes'. The Prophet then said: 'Then give sadaqah.' Bilal (ra)
then spread his garment and said 'Keep on giving alms'. 1 Access to the Imam Direct contact between the Prophet, as the
imam who led the prayers, and those who attended the prayers seems to have
been an important element in the Friday khutba: ". . . On Friday he (the Prophet)
preached the khutba leaning on a staff. . .. And the people were in front
of him, their faces raised toward him, they listened as they watched him.
. . ."˛ The idea that the mosque is a privileged
place, the collective space where the leader debates with all the members
of the community before making decisions, is the key idea of Islam which
today is presented to us as the bastion of despotism. Everything passed
through the mosque which became the school for teaching new converts how
to do the ritual prayer, the principles of lslam, how to behave towards
others in places of worship and elsewhere. Was it fitting to come armed or
not? Could one do buying and selling there (the Prophet and his Makkan
supporters were originally merchants)? Could one keep prisoners of war in
the mosque courtyard (to keep better watch on them) or not. The mosque was a space where dialogue
between the leader and the people could take place. The apparently simple
decision to install a mimbar in the mosque was treated by the Prophet as a
matter that concerned all Muslims. The Prophet used to say the Friday prayers
standing, leaning against a palm trunk. One day he announced that standing
made him tired. Tamim al-Dari answered: 'Why not build a pulpit like I
have seen in Syria?' The Prophet asked their advice on the question, and
they agreed to the suggestion. (4) A
Madinah carpenter cut a tree and built a pulpit with a seat and two steps
up to it. Other versions say that the Prophet was
urged to take his place on the mimbar at the time of prayer so that
everybody could see him, because in a few months the number of Muslims had
grown considerably, and this seemed a more plausible reason than fatigue.
The Prophet was only 54 years old at the time of the Hijra and was in the
prime of life. From access to denial of access In the Kitab al-Jum'a (Book of Friday) of
Imam Bhukhari (d. 256H),(5) who wrote two centuries after the death of the
Prophet (pbuh), he quotes the hadith: A half-century later (300H), Imam Nasa'i,
wrote his al-Sunan. In his chapter on al-masjid, he gives specifications
for the rows between men and women: how crowded they may be and how far
from each other. He states that a man has no right to forbid
his wife to go to the mosque. He quotes the Prophet: Ibn al-Jawzi (d. 597H), wrote a book on the
laws that govern women in Islam and devoted his chapter 24 to 'Women's
Friday Service'. He had to acknowledge that they had a right to the
service since the hadith on the subject was incontrovertible. However he
raises four issues: On the question of rows he said 'the
prayers of men who are seated behind women are worthless.'(7) It often
happened that men came to the mosque late and were blocked by the rows of
women. It is very easy to imagine the fatal next step: ban women from the
mosque, since the mere presence of women risked creating a problem. Ibn al-Jawzi than asks a question which in
itself contains a betrayal of the ancient texts: 'Is it permitted for
women to go to the mosque?' And his answer: 'If she fears disturbing men's
minds, it is better for her to pray at home.'(8) He cites Bukhari's key hadith in which the
Prophet stresses that the mosques of Allah are not forbidden to women. He
concludes by saying that 'the Friday service is not a duty for women'.(9)
And, 'A woman should try to avoid going out as much as she can.'(10) But it is in reading modern authors like
Muhammad Sadiq al-Qannuji, the twentieth-century Indian scholar (d.
1308H), that one notes the institutionalisation of the exclusion of women
from such a crucial place as a mosque. In his chapter on "What has
been said on the fact that the Friday sermon is not a duty for
women", he brings out a dubious hadith which says: "The Friday
service is a duty for all Muslims, with four exceptions: slaves, women,
children, and the ill."(11) We are certainly a long way from the
Prophet's mosque, open to all, welcoming all those interested in Islam,
including women. The mosque now suffers a betrayal of Muhammad's (pbuh)
ideal community: women are declared strangers to the place of worship.
Women, who had the privilege of access to the mosque as sahabiyyaat,
companions of the Prophet, very quickly became polluting, evil beings. Sexual Men and Invisible Women The premise that women 'distract' men from
their spiritual endeavors and that they stimulate sexual urges rests on a
certain understanding of what it means to be human, and a certain
understanding of what constitutes maleness and femaleness. This argument operates from the premise
that our focus of control, and our focus of self as human beings, as
Muslims, is outside ourselves, and that men have weak inner centres since,
upon seeing and listening to women, they are overcome by irresistible
uncontrollable sexual urges. By such reasoning we imply that man are
incapable of taking moral responsibility for their behaviour and
relations. The solution is to manipulate the external
environment - women must be invisible - to keep men's responses in check.
This raises important questions: What does this say about man's capacity
to take full responsibility for his spirituality? On what understanding of
humanity are these arguments based? In order that we believing men and
believing women, God-conscious men and God-conscious women, can reclaim
our full humanity, reclaim our Islam, we need to revolutionize our
categories of maleness and femaleness. We must reject the idea of
uncontrollable male sexuality and evil women. Allah says in the Qur'an: Therapy for Male 'Sexuality' For those men and women who view each other
only as sexual beings, the mosque precinct - a holy precinct - can be
therapeutic. On seeing women in the holy precinct, the depraved soul has
to recognise that women are not just sexy beings but spiritual beings,
members of the ummah, their sisters in faith. If women are invisible in
this holy precinct his perception of women as just sexy beings will not be
challenged and he will never be able to reclaim his full humanity, his
Islam. May Allah guide us and help us respect each other (1) Bukhari, vol. 2, no. 95 Sources: Fatima Mernissi, The Forgotten Queens of
Islam. Presented to the Jamaat Khanna Committee of
the University of the Witwatersrand - 1995. Shamima was a 'community
member' of the committee that was negotiating with the university
administration for a new Mosque complex and participating in decisions
regarding the design of the complex. She argued for women to be
accommodated in the 'main space' of the mosque.
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