NEW YORK, March 19: Despite criticism from Islamic scholars , Ms Amina Wadud, a professor of Islamic studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, went ahead with her plan to lead Friday prayers (partly reported in Saturday’s Dawn). The prayers were attended by some one hundred men and women. The venue was the Cathedral of St John, an Anglican church in New York.
The women in attendance were modestly dressed and, in accordance with Islamic injunctions, covered their hair with the hijab. Ms Wadud conducted the prayers primarily in English.
Ms Asra Q. Nomani, an author and former Wall Street Journal 12:19 PM 3/20/2005reporter who helped organize the prayer, said the service intended to draw attention to the ‘inequality’ being faced by Muslim women. She dismissed criticism by some that the event was little more than feminist rabble-rousing.
She introduced a 10-item list she dubbed as “an Islamic bill of rights for women in the mosque”, which included the right to enter through the front door and to lead prayers.
“People have to really focus on the second-class status that women have in the Muslim world,” Ms Nomani said in an interview with the New York Times.
“We are taking actions that no one else would have dared to think about before. Nobody cared that we didn’t have a place in the faith. We were just abandoned.”
