BOB FAW: Outside this sanctuary, this oasis of calm, a storm is brewing.
Dr. INGRID MATTSON (Professor of Islamic Studies, Hartford Seminary): I would say there's a large group of women who feel that change isn't happening quickly enough.
FAW: Here, where the only voice heard is that of the prayer leader, or imam, other voices -- women's voices -- are trying to be heard.
DR. MUQTEDAR KHAN (Director of International Studies, Adrian College, Michigan): They are not being treated as they see us men are being treated. They resent it; they are being discriminated [against]; they are very angry.FAW: Women like journalist Asra Nomani. From her hometown in West Virginia she's taken to the streets, arguing that in mosques women are second-class -- that when it comes to prayer, Muslim women should be treated just like men.
ASRA NOMANI (Journalist): Ultimately, barriers that are placed in front of women are barriers to full participation and leadership in our communities. They're symbolic of this greater denial of women's rights that we have to confront in the Muslim world.FAW: By "barriers" she means women praying in balconies, behind glass; praying not with men but behind unwieldy partitions; cordoned off from men by lace curtains -- shunted aside, she argues, where they can't see or hear as well as the men.
Ms. NOMANI: I felt so depressed. I felt angry. I felt like I was nothing.
FAW: She's not the only Muslim woman complaining. In this Boston mosque, Nakia Jackson and other women pray facing not the imam, but shelves used for shoes. Nakia is offended that women here are relegated to cramped and dirty quarters.NAKIA JACKSON: They are urine stains. There was someone staying here who was ill and therefore incontinent, and these stains have been here for a number of years. And it is often used as an all-purpose room that has been shown very little respect, and I see that as a disrespect to the women who pray there.
FAW: Two voices in a movement that is growing.
Dr. MATTSON: I do find in many communities, maybe most communities, women feeling that they still need more voice in their community.
FAW: There were no barriers initially when women prayed in the same hall as the Prophet Muhammad, and many Muslims maintain that separation of the sexes is necessary to avoid distractions.
Dr. KHAN: Over a period of time, a body of law emerged. In order to protect the wife, to have more security, they started introducing the whole business of veiling and separating women from the society and so on. So that sort of encouraged patriarchy. That group continued to marginalize women from the public sphere, and their unequal status in the mosque is a reflection of that same marginalization.FAW: But clerics like Imam Abdullah Farruuq point out that attendance at Friday service is mandatory for men and merely optional for women, and often, he says, small mosques like his in Boston must be practical.
ABDULLAH FARRUUQ (Mosque for the Praising of Allah): We don't have adequate room to provide on the same level prayer space for both men and women around. We are a poor group, and we are doing the best we can. It's an economic issue.
FAW: For many Muslim women, the present prayer arrangements are acceptable.
HAFEEZA BELL: When you are with the women, you are with the women. You talk about things, you know. Womanly things, you know. With the brothers, you don't. We don't mingle with the brothers. That's the way it's stated. You know, women should be with the women, and men should be with the brothers.
Ms. NOMANI: It's not at all about carpet space. It's not at all about how many chandeliers the men have versus the women. It's about whether our voices can be heard. It's just that simple.
Dr. KHAN: Muslim women are beginning to ask this question as to what is our role in speaking for Islam. I think the debate of Muslim women's place in the mosque is actually a metaphor for the debate in the community about the role of Muslim women in the public sphere and leadership.
Dr. MATTSON: Often the problem is people who do not have a very strong education, a solid theological education in Islamic sciences, mistake rigidity for piety, because they have a very narrow knowledge base. Whatever they know, they stick to.
Imam FARRUUQ: When men pray with men, they are not attracted to the opposite sex; when women pray with women, they are not attracted to the opposite sex. I am living a tradition that is 1,400 years old; nothing is going to change from it.
FAW: It's a struggle others have waged when they've come to this country and found that equality -- applauded and sought outside -- was not carried over into places of worship. A struggle here which will not only shape the practice of Islam in America, but also its character.
