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WOMEN, ISLAM, AND MOSQUES
- Indiana University Press
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WOMEN, ISLAM, AND MOSQUES l 615 worldview that thrives on communalism. Women in the Muslim world, just like men, have been taught that at the bottom of any ladder the African American sits. Only since 1990 have immigrant Muslim women discovered the knowledge and resources that African American Muslims can bring to the Islamic world. SOURCES: Texts and articles on African American Muslim women are few. Thus, this essay used a variety of source materials on African Islam such as Allen Austin’s Muslim Slaves in Antebellum America (1997), and Sylvaine Diouf’s Servants of Allah (1998). Amina Wadud’s Qur’an and Woman (1992) provides an examination of the Qur’an’s view of women, while Aminah McCloud in African American Islam (1995) explores African American Muslim women culturally. African American Muslim women are often directly addressed in Muslim community literature such as the texts of the Nation of Islam— How to Eat to Live (1972), The Message to the Blackman (1965), Our Savior Has Arrived (1974), and the texts of the Moorish Science Temple, The Holy Koran of the Moorish Science Temple (1968). Additional information was obtained through interviews with women from some of the communities. WOMEN, ISLAM, AND MOSQUES Ingrid Mattson ONE DAY, AFTER a particularly frenzied day of driving her children between home, school, and the mosque, I heard an American Muslim mother exclaim, “Sometimes I wish women were forbidden to drive in this country.” With this tongue-in-cheek reference to the prohibition on women driving in Saudi Arabia (an uncommon edict in the Muslim world), this woman was clearly implying that such a restriction would be impossible in America. Indeed, urban planning and the exegencies of modern life not only force most American women into their cars many times a day, but they also require women to be involved in the public sphere to a greater extent than was true in the premodern West or is still true in many traditional Muslim societies. Significantly , the complexity of contemporary American life has also forced, and permitted, Muslim women to enter the public spaces of the Islamic community in numbers perhaps unprecedented in history. The mosque has always been the center of Islamic communal life and religious practice. The first mosque established by the Prophet Muhammad in Medina (Saudi Arabia) in 610 c.e., was alive with the presence of women. The Prophet’s wives and unmarried daughters lived on one side of the mosque. Another side was home to a number of poor and needy men and women, including a slave woman who had escaped an abusive master. Between these two sides of the mosque was the prayer space, where women could be found joining congregational prayers, performing individual acts of worship , or engaged in group discussion and learning. At the same time, there is evidence in the Qur’an and from reports about the Prophet Muhammad that women were discouraged from being too visible in the public sphere. The streets of Medina were not always safe, and young women in particular could attract unwanted attention . Consequently, women, especially young women and those who did not live near the Prophet’s mosque, were encouraged to pray at home. In any case, women were not required to attend Friday congregational prayer, nor was it considered better for them, as it was for men, to pray the obligatory five daily prayers in the mosque. Over time, as Islam spread throughout Asia, Africa, and Europe, Muslim authorities increasingly stressed the threat posed to chastity by the interaction of men and women outside the home, including the mosque. By the premodern period, it became unusual for any woman, other than very elderly women, to frequent the mosque. This situation began to change after the European colonization of the Muslim world. In the twentieth century , as secular, Western ideologies began to spread in the Muslim world, men and women who were interested in Islam “as a complete way of life” began to consciously organize for worship and to discuss strategy for changing society. With the spread of modern media, it also became increasingly unlikely that women who remained in their homes were better protected from temptation than those who went to the mosque. Perhaps most important , given that more and more women were seeking secular education and employment, some argued that discouraging them from coming to the mosque made them more vulnerable to secular trends. By the late 1960s, increasing numbers of women were worshipping in mosques in the larger...