The Cathedral of St.John the Divine has a number of interesting features about it. It is the biggest church in the world. There is a convention among churchmen of all confessions that nobody builds a church bigger than St. Peter's Vatican; when this vainglorious edifice was started, it deliberately violated this piece of ecclesiastical good manners, showing that the builders thought that the Anglican Episcopalian diocese of New York City was more important than the Church of Rome.

Of course, the Episcopalian Church has become the empty, shapeless, thing we are familiar with, and is on the verge of being expelled from the Anglican Communion. In America, Episcopalians are barely 2,400,000 - less than the Catholics or Orthodo in single archdioceses. This church is rich in money (since most of its members belong to the irreligious upper crust of society) but hollow. There is nothing strange about it lending its biggest building to rootless Muslims trying to subvert their own religion. Not that I am making any comparison between the Catholic Church and Islam; but the relationship of the pseudo-Christian Episcopalians of New York to both is the same - that of failed subversives.

Posted by: Paolo at March 19, 2005 8:18 AM

I included links to some more articles about Amina Wadud in this post:

http://fjordman.blogspot.com/2005/03/woman-leads-muslim-prayer-service-in.html

Posted by: Norwegian kafir at March 19, 2005 9:13 AM

Of course the woman in question has a distinctly imperfect command of orthodox Islam, and it is the enraged Muslims who have it right. There is a large dose of publicity-seeking here, which is part of a pattern, discernable among some of those disoriented or worried Muslims who allow themselves to believe, or pretend to believe, that Islam is capable of real reform. It isn't. Neither this "professor of Islamic studies" nor her supporters can tell us how the Qur'an, Sunna, and Sira will be changed, which verses eliminated or interpreted out of existence. They won't; they can't. But they may persuade some non-Muslims that "see, things are changing in the Muslim world" and we need only hang on a bit, and relax, and not do anything serious to protect ourselves.

And then, of course, there are those "reformists" who will issue their own meaningless "fatwas" in the spirit of the Spanish Muslim group. Whether out of a spirit of pure taqiyya, or in order to promote the political or professional ambitions of its members in the Infidel world, we will be led down a garden path about "reform" in Islam, and the Macmillanesque winds of change, and so on.

Nonsense. Of course the spectacle, which made the menfolk in attendance most nervous, may make it harder for those other, phony "feminists" in Islam -- or Muslim women who claim to be working for "women's rights" but have backed far away from what they were once able to do, which was to connect the mistreatment of women in the Muslim countries with the teachings, and atmospherics, of Islam itself. One thinks of Leila Ahmed, now enjoying tenure as a "brave reformer" and "feminist" at Harvard Divinity School, of Fatimia Mernissi, and of Shirin Ebadi, who no doubt is brave with the kind of enemies she faces, but not intellectually brave enough to connect Islam with the problems of women in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Even the remarkable bestseller (that bestsellerdom owes a lot to the word "Lolita" in its title), Azar Nafisi's "Reading Lolita in Tehran" steeres clear, while so obviously furious at the current police state, never comes out, Ibn-Warraq style, to connect what goes on with Islam itself. She can't bring herself to do it, Ms. Nafisi, and so the book in the end is bought, and read, and understood, as a kind of feelgood book -- literature as salvation, with a moral in tow -- even the moral of inner freedom.

While Fatima Mernissi, and Leila Ahmed, and Shirin Ebadi, represent the "fighters-for-women's-rights" in Islam who now choose not to blame Islam for the problem (culture, culture, culture), and have rallied round the Qur'an, and the attractive and charming Aziz Nafisi refuses (and mentioning a sign outside an Armenian-owned restaurant about the "najis" or "unclean" nature of the establishment because it is Infidel-owned, does not amount to coming to grips with Islam) to engage in anything like what Naipaul or Ibn Warraq offer by way of relating the moral desarroi of Muslim societies to Islam itself (Nafisi might ask herself if she has found anything wrong, deeply wrong, with Islam -- something that overcomes her embarrassment, or her filiel piety, which always hold even the most intelligent and perceptive Muslims back, until they make that fateful decision to finally jump ship).

Some Muslim women have advanced professionally in this country by presenting themselves, to their trusting Infidel colleagues, as brave Muslim women "fighters for human rights." Their colleagues accept this at face value (though on the websites of some of these "brave fighters" they do not always show the faces of other Muslim women who apparently have succumbed to Muslim strictures about full facial nudity -- see Aziza al-Hibri's website, for example). But these people are engaged in what is really an effort not so much to fight for women, as to protect the "good name" of Islam (again, see the writings of Azizah al-Hibri, or her performance at the U.N. "Islamophobia" Day, and ask if her colleagues at the University of Richmond School of Law are not being mislead as to her "fight" for "women's rights" (not to mention Condoleeza Rice, who once addressed al-Hibri's groupuscule).

Perhaps the most telling part of this was not the the men in attendance, looking distinctly uneasy and nervous about the whole thing, nor the role of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine offering itself as the only place where "reformist" Muslim women could gather in safety, and get lots of good publicity. No, the most telling thing was Amina Wadud's language, the undigested leftovers from some MLA gala, where the speakers were, no doubt, Gayatri Spivak Chakravarty, Homi Bhabha, and Fredric Jameson:

``Women were not allowed to (have) input in the basic paradigms of what it means to be a Muslim,''

"Input." "Basic paradigms." And in a newspaper report on the event, Wadud even suggests, in pure businessese, that women in Islam should be able to assume "leadership positions."

This is what happens when you allow mass education, and deprive it of all meaning.

O God, or Samuel Johnson, or Jacques Barzun, or somebody, we humbly implore you: Protect our language from all who do it harm.

Posted by: Hugh at March 19, 2005 9:20 AM

Islamic theology:

It slices.

It dices!

And you can almost cut your way out of a paper bag with it.

Geoff

Posted by: Geoff at March 19, 2005 11:34 AM

I'm sorry, but I am not going to take sides here. The UPCI (United Pentecost Church International) is just as guilty as islamic treatment of women. And they should be rebuked and be ashamed of themselves. I should know because I used to belong to this cult.

Posted by: Ummagumma at March 19, 2005 3:04 PM

What's the problem?,females have their own enterance,own prayer romm,segragated washromm areas,own parking spaces for those allowed to drive,free Hijabs upon entry,and own access to Allah.

Plus,they should be thankfull that the sex-starved men that can't keep their dicks in their pants because of no self-control,are given a prayer area with a thick wall that keeps them contained.

A wall or fence has two purposes,to keep something out,orto keep something in.

Perception can become reality,Palestinians need to look at their fense/wall as keeping those "Jews" out, rather than the protest to remove it to let THEM enter Israel.

Posted by: ala-sux at March 19, 2005 4:37 PM

Professor Amina Wadud claims that she was trying to convince infidels that women are equal under Islam, it is clearly backfiring all over the world. The story of her leading muslims in prayers has picked up legs and has spread to media outlets everywhere. By the anger that is being directed by this male manipulated and directed religion , I would say that her life could be in as much danger as the Netherlands Ayaan Hirsi Ali. What was the good professor thinking? Had she fallen into the trappings of the western world and a modern and more civilized apostatic thinking among muslims? There is no question that Her efforts to attempt to practice taquiyya may have not been well thought out. You can speak taquiyya and kitman, but if you act it out as a woman and expect that the ummah is going to go along with you, than you are sadly mistaken. Are there those that are asking here the questions as to why she thought she could mislead infidels into believing what she was saying and doing? Did she think 4:34 and other surahs and hadiths where going to ignored by the ummah?

Posted by: Mackie at March 19, 2005 8:42 PM

Amina Wadud probably loves Islam for letting her know that there is a God and that there's more to life than what can be counted and touched. She probably also greatly appreciates the liberal culture of the American academy. There are probably thousands of people like her; and while I think it's a pity they don't all convert to my religion, I still respect the sort of struggle through which they are going.

Maybe we are seeing the emergence of a "liberal Protestant" Islam that will look like the American Episcopal Church in forty years' time; well-endowed and empty, its people gone to other religions. Hence, I'm not surprised why Muslim "Old Countries" aren't buying into the project.

Then again, I've been told that when someone asked some female Reconstructionist rabbis what they needed to make their work more credible, they replied, "beards".

Frankly, much as I think wife-beating is shocking and criminal and believe in equal pay for equal work (woman suffrage, too), I still don't accept female ordination (Paul spoke on it to the Corinthians and his young colleague Timothy; the issue's settled) and belong to a Christian church that doesn't practice it. Yet while I believe that I've got the truth here, another BIG part of that truth is that the weapons God has given for his "holy war" are spiritual rather than carnal--prayer, preaching,ethical example, the Scriptures, and the Holy Spirit rather than guns and bombs.

Paolo, you are on the target about American Episcopalians. A number of their more traditional dissidents have already sought care from Anglican bishops in Africa (Nigeria and Kenya, especially), where Anglicanism is strongly Bible-oriented. When I was in the State Department, I recall some of my Episcopalian colleages shocked out of their heads by a "fundamentalist" Singaporean Anglican bishop who preached to them one Sunday. As a non-Episcopalian, I would've liked to have been there (I learned of it from my flabbergasted, gentlemanly liberal colleagues).

As for St. Peter's, are you sure it's larger than the Hagia Sophia? And didn't the late Pres. Hoiphuet-Boigne of Cote D'Ivoire build a slightly bigger Roman Catholic basilica in his hometown of Yamasoukrou, C. D'I.?

Posted by: Kepha at March 20, 2005 1:42 AM

Professor Amina made a fatal intellectual mistake:

she forgot to read the Koran ("Qur'an", "Quaran", whatever) before she spoke out.

If she had, she would have realized that it cannot be reformed (by its own 'eternally true' rules), and that she should just risk the sentence of death it imposes on all apostates who leave its clutches and come join the sane branch of the human race beyond its patriarchal cage.

(The Catholic Church many be 'unchristian'* and supernaturally silly for not allowing 'priestesses' in its pulpits, but its leaders and followers do not threaten to hang, kill, and slice and dice non-traditional women for simply trying.)

The professor's act is as absurd as Blacks trying to reform the KKK from within -or Jews attempting to modernize the Nazis.

The Koran, like these hate cults, is a document of war against human intelligence.

The professor's irrational example only proves my point.

* "...there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ..."

Posted by: BigSleep at March 20, 2005 1:48 AM

Excellent point BigSleep.

One might complain (endlessly, it seems) about inequalities in the religious heirarchies of the Christian denominations (which are not uniformly observed, at any rate), but they don't seem to be killing women for taking scriptural matters into their own hands.

But it's a religion of peace, of course.

Geoff

Posted by: Geoff at March 20, 2005 1:02 PM

Here is an excerpt from the March 19 article that ran in the Richmond Times-Dispatch (Wadud's hometown newspaper) - notice the lack of support she is receiving from local Muslim groups:

Some area Muslims are unhappy with a Richmond woman who led an Islamic prayer service attended by both men and women.

"Most Muslims would not agree with a woman leading prayers attended by men," said Malik Khan, president of the Islamic Center of Virginia. "I have nothing personally against Dr. Wadud, but I cannot accept what she has done."

Islamic law "clearly says this does not happen," he added. "The Prophet Muham- mad did not allow it."

"It's a matter of modesty," added Muhammad Sahli, acting director of A More Perfect Union, a Richmond-area group aimed at building bridges of understanding and respect across faiths, races and cultures. "It's not because she's a woman. It's because of the exposure of her buttocks to men who are praying behind her. That's what I object to."

When Muslims pray, they form ruler-straight lines. Resting on their knees, they lean forward until their foreheads touch the floor. Both the worshipers and the prayer leader face toward Mecca.

Sahli said he has no problem with a woman leading other women in prayer.

A More Perfect Union is a very interesting group. Note how they characterize themselves as a "group aimed at building bridges of understanding and respect across faiths, races and cultures."
Sound familiar?
Last year, the former head of this organization, Jonathan Zur, portrayed CAIR as ³Muslims who are promoting values of peace and compassion². Another member of this group, who I spoke with at an event in Richmond, was a Syrian expatriate who was a hardcore anti-American Chomskyite.

Posted by: Mike at March 20, 2005 1:47 PM

Here's the story that ran today on this today in the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

Mideast Muslims Condemn Service
The Associated Press
March 20, 2005

Cairo, Egypt - Muslims in the Middle East yesterday angrily denounced a mixed-gender Islamic prayer service led by a woman in New York as a violation of their religion.
Amina Wadud, a professor of Islamic studies at Richmond's Virginia Commonwealth University, led the service on Friday before a congregation of 80 to 100 men and women at Synod House at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan, an Episcopal church.
Three mosques had refused to hold the service, and an art gallery backed out after receiving a bomb threat. Organizers said the service was intended to draw attention to the inequality faced by Muslim women.
The Egyptian newspaper Al-Messa reported the service on its front page with the headline: "They are tarnishing Islam in America!" It referred to Wadud as "the deranged woman."
A female Islamic law professor condemned the act as apostacy, explaining that a woman's body "stirs desire" in men. Some suggested the event was a U.S. conspiracy to mold traditional Islam into a secular American religion.
Muslims are required to pray five times a day. On Friday, the Muslim holy day, many try to perform their midday prayers at a mosque. A male imam leads the prayer, followed by lines of men and, behind them, women. Most mosques have different halls, or different floors for the women, as well as separate entrances.
Sheikh Sayed Tantawi, head of Egypt's Al-Azhar mosque, the leading Sunni Muslim institution, said Islam permits women to lead other women in prayer but not a congregation that includes men.
Many of the women who attended the service in New York were modestly dressed and, in accordance with Islamic tradition, covered their hair with the hijab, or head scarf. Wadud conducted the service primarily in English with verses in the Quran read in Arabic.
In Saudi Arabia, Grand Mufti Abdul-Aziz qal-Sheik spoke out against it in Friday prayers at a Riyadh mosque.
"Those who defended this issue are violating God's law," he said. "Enemies of Islam are using women's issues to corrupt the community."
Soad Saleh, who heads the Islamic department of the women's college at Al-Azhar University considered the act apostacy, which is punishable by death in Islam.
"It is categorically forbidden for women to lead prayers [if they include men worshippers] and intentionally violates the basics of Islam," she said. She said women should not lead prayers because "the woman's body, even if it is veiled, stirs desire."
Abdul-Moti Bayoumi, of the Islamic Research Center at Al-Azhar, said Wadud had carried out "a bad and deviant innovation" that contradicted the Prophet Mohammed's sayings and deeds.

Posted by: Mike at March 20, 2005 1:51 PM

Interesting how it all becomes a question of Muslim men not being able to concentrate on the Divine -all because of the proximity of a woman's magnetically alluring "buttocks".

And disappointing that even the brainwashed Muslim female Soad Saleh goes along with this 'he-man' rationale for her second class status in the eyes of Allah... since, 'even veiled, a woman's body stirs desire'.

Don't any Muslim men have bodies that stir the desire in Islamic women? (Not to mention gay Muslim men.) If so, how can anyone ever lead ANY prayers anywhere in Islam?

They're all too busy getting hot and bothered in the mosque, each trying to picture what the other looks like without their clothes on, to take the time to penetrate the holy idea of their God.

Pathetic.

Maybe they need some saltpeter in their Zam Zam water.

Posted by: BigSleep at March 20, 2005 2:29 PM

Hugh and all,

It's safe to assume al-Hibri's colleagues at the University of Richmond have bought into her act - I personally know members of the faculty of UR, and they're the types who buy into her ideas in the concluding paragraph here:

http://chronicle.com/free/v48/i05/05b00501.htm

Fortunately she receives no media attention in this area. The Richmond Times-Dispatch is a decidedly right wing newspaper that has been outspoken regarding issues concerning jihadism and other indelicate issues concerning Islam. The TV stations don't bother with this spewing fountain of misinformation, either.

Posted by: Mike at March 20, 2005 5:41 PM

Interesting post, Mike.

Question: how did other muslims get wind of this professor wanting to hold the event in the art museum?

Methinks her supporters infiltrated with non-supporters be.

Geoff

Posted by: Geoff at March 20, 2005 11:24 PM