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Asra Nomani is courageous, and deserves full support. "The Woman Who Went To the Front of the Mosque: Feminist Faces Ostracism -- or Worse -- for Praying Among Men," from the Washington Post, with thanks to Ruth King:
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. It was two days after she appeared on "Nightline" talking about her fight to change her mosque that the death threats began. The first call came on her cell phone. The caller left a message, in Urdu: "If you want to stay alive, keep your mouth shut." Otherwise, he said, he would "slaughter" her, halal style, saying a prayer as he slid a knife across her throat. If she didn't shut up, he'd slaughter her mother and her father, too. Think before you speak, he said. I know where you live. I know where your parents live.Then he called her parents' home 10 minutes later. Just to reinforce the message.
It's not a message that Asra Nomani, Muslim, unwed mother, former Wall Street Journal reporter, author and left-leaning feminist, is planning to heed (although she did contact the FBI and her local police). Yes, she's started locking her doors now, a rarity for her here in her hilly home town. But she won't be shutting up, definitely not, never.
There are those who see Nomani, a self-described "overambitious child of immigrants," as a crusader, an activist lobbying for the right of Muslim women to pray side by side with men. This spring she launched the Muslim Women's Freedom Tour, traveling from city to city (including a stop in April at the Islamic Center of Washington on Massachusetts Avenue NW) to encourage Muslim women to assert themselves in their mosques. As part of the tour, women pray in halls usually reserved for men and participate in mixed-gender prayer services led by women.
"It's about time," says religious scholar and historian Reza Aslan. "This conception of the separation of men and women is something that never occurred during the prophet's lifetime." He adds, "What she has done is perfectly in line with Islamic values, traditions and the prophet's own desire to have men and women working side by side, praying side by side and even fighting side by side."...
Asra Nomani is courageous, and deserves full support. Reza Aslan is another matter. Here he continues his now well-established practice of asserting what Hugh Fitzgerald would call his Own Private Islam, a fantasy that has little or no resemblance to actual Islam values and traditions, or to the actual example of Muhammad.
It is because Muslims themselves are well aware of this that she gets reactions like this:
"She's like a troublemaker," says Gamal Fahmy, 31, a British-born, Egyptian-raised assistant professor at West Virginia University and a mosque member who once clashed with Nomani and her father in a study session. "I don't think she's that religious, she's that zealous about Islam and being a Muslim," he says. "Bottom line, I believe she's doing this for profit reasons."Drama follows the Bombay-born and Morgantown-bred Nomani: Thirty-plus members of her 200-member mosque, the Islamic Center of Morgantown, the mosque her father, Zafar, helped found in 1981, are petitioning to have her banished for "disrupting worship and spreading misinformation about Islam."
Then there are the threatening e-mails; the articles, published around the world, accusing her of being a spy in cahoots with the CIA and Israeli intelligence; Jihadist message boards demanding that a fatwa be issued against a woman who led the first mixed-gender prayers and those who participated. An editorial writer for the India-based Web site Greater Kashmir writes that because Nomani had a child out of wedlock, "in Islam, punishment for an act for [which] Asra is proud of, is stoning till death."...
At the book reading in April in the District, one reader said he really didn't like her "Islamic Bill of Rights for Women in the Bedroom," in which she asserts, among other things, that Muslim women have an "Islamic right to respectful and pleasurable sexual experience" and a right "to make independent decisions about their choice of a partner."
Horror of horrors!
Even more egregious to her detractors is the fact that she had a child out of wedlock, in direct defiance, they say, of Islam's dictates...."I feel like I'm doing my heart's work," Nomani says. "I think it's incumbent on Muslims with intellect, hope and love in our hearts . . . to go into the houses of worship and really try to transform the Muslim house from within. We have to take on this machine of extremism that's trying to take over the world."
Hear, hear.
But there are powerful forces against her:
She says there is a "Muslim Mafia" in town, a group aligned with Saudi Wahhabism, a fundamentalist branch of Islam. They bring sacks filled with cash to the mosque, she says. You have to challenge the power and control of those who run the society, she says....
And even her father sounds as if he's been taking lessons from Reza Aslan:
Earlier her father had said, "Muhammad was one of the greatest feminists. Islam first gave rights to women 1,400 years ago. . . . When I see Islam today and the way people behave towards women, I am very sad. I am for women's rights, respect, women's equality. Islam teaches that."
The indefatigable Dr. Andrew Bostom succinctly sums up the problem with this: "If 'reformers' would simply acknowledge the ugly truth---that the orthodox Muslims have more than ample justification for their views -- based on Muslim sacred texts and Law -- and then say that they, the reformers, wish to change that tradition of 14 centuries by offering a modern, alternative approach, I would say, 'Great, go for it!' But the reformers never do this. They simply engage in historical negationism and invent a past that never existed."
Posted by Robert at June 5, 2005 3:11 PM
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Hard to imagine the Washington Post article would use a loaded word like "crusader" to describe Ms. Nomani unintentionally.
Are they upping the ante on her head?
As I noted when she first spoke out:
"If she can't stand the Islamic heat she should stay out of the Sharia kitchen."
Or doesn't she pay attention to the murderous activities, reported daily, of her co-Muslims -particularly against anyone trying to alter the 'perfect' words of 'God' in the Koran?
If she had any brains, and not just guts, she would have gotten the hell out of this 7th century thrillkill cult and its concommitant contempt for women already.
She does have a kid to worry about.
I'm sure the Universalist Unitarians would be glad to have an "unwed mother" and "left-leaning feminist" join their congregation.
Hell, she'll be a priestess in six weeks and have her own church by Christmas (and I don't mean EID).
In Islam, no man is going to forgive Nomani.
Posted by: BigSleep![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at June 5, 2005 4:38 PM
And yet the Muslims bleat that they are "profiled" and "harassed" and when the Muslims themselves exhibit such bigotry towards someone, not a peep out of anyone... not a word from CAIR defending this Muslim woman's rights. Then again their behavior is exactly as expected.
Posted by: sococm at June 5, 2005 5:43 PM
Exactly, CAIR is not the ACLU for 'moderate' muslims, more like the SS.
Posted by: reset at June 5, 2005 5:57 PM
Here's what Muslim men think of feminists.
http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/crime/spree-killers/marc-lepine/
at June 5, 2005 7:47 PM
Imagine a German Jew trying to "reform" the Nazi Party in 1940. By analogy, that's essentially what this Muslim woman is doing.
Posted by: metaxy at June 5, 2005 10:06 PM
This woman is either very brave or very crazy. Carry Nation and her band of bar(mosque) busters, would never be tolerated in Islam.
Muslims live with deep imbedded fear. They hope, but are never sure, that their good works and ferverent, frequent, prayers and moral lifestyles, will get them into Allahs heaven.
This fear substance creeps into every aspect of their lives. Their manhood has been damaged or eliminated by a slave master relationship with Allah. It is unnatural for the human to be in a state of slavery, even if it is to Allah.
Slavery or even dhimmitude puts the victim in a bad mood. Muslims have been slaves for so long, they think it's normal. Individually and as a group, this produces psychosis. It is mostly the result of fear. Of Allah. So all those self protecting methods, sexually insecure behavior toward women, agressive brutal behavior, jihad, world conquest, ect, are actually not due to the love of Allah, it is because they are scared shtless of him. The love of Allah is a smokescreen to cover the psychosis.
Nomani's movement wont grow, and she will probably end up dead, because she is stimulating muslim basic insecurities.The psychosis manifests and people die...It is the way of Islam...
at June 5, 2005 11:55 PM
I'd second the recommendation that Ms. Nomani join the Unitarian-Universalist Association. If she wants to continue to believe in a reinterpreted Qur'an among them, that will be just fine with them. If, by some faint ghost of a chance people like her change that Morgantown Mosque into something else, my guess is that Ms. Nomani will be shocked to find that the liberalized version just ain't the same thing that gave her her sense of the divine and whatever security it offered when she was young.
Or, Ms. Nomani and like-minded Muslims could get together, draw up the papers for their own religious association, and build a mosque of their own where women and men can pray in the same space. They can even hire an imam of their own liking, for all of this is 150% legal under the First Amendment of the US Constitution. By the same token, more traditional Muslims who want the women and men to pray apart are protected by the same laws (as are Orthodox Jews and traditional Mennonites).
As a Protestant traditionalist, I get sick of religious liberals who loudly announce that they're out to change everything the men who baptized them swore to uphold in their ordination vows and then go on to whine, fuss, and complain about how bigoted and intolerant are those who want to honor those same ordination vows. Since the only denomination successfully built up by liberals (rather than destroyed by them) was the Unitarian (actually, the theologies of Michael Servetus, Lelius Socinus, and Jonathan Mayhew were far closer to the Jehovah's Witnesses than to today's Harvard Divinity School)--and even they had to lay their cuckoo's eggs in nests the Calvinists built--my bet is that Asra Nomani will simply be a gadfly in extant mosques; while those Muslims who believe God actually called Abraham but are disgusted by the terrorists may find that same merciful God leading them to Jesus Christ (the Word made flesh; God's last Word).
No, this is one in which I'm with the bearded kufi-wearers.
Posted by: Kepha at June 6, 2005 3:38 AM
Well, I'm not for the death threats, and hope that the FBI busts someone and throws whatever good old common law statutes there are at him; but Ms. Nomani ought to know what she was getting into.
Posted by: Kepha at June 6, 2005 3:39 AM
Is there any other religion in the world in which women are not allowed to walk into their House of God and commune with their God alongside men?
Churches
Synagogues
Hindu Temple
Sikh Temple
Buddhist Temple
In every single one of these religious places of worship women can access the place of worship. Now, I am sure that all of these religions are probably conservative and need to do more for womens equality in the institutions of the faith. But this just highlights the deep, deep hatred of women and the utter contempt and second rate status women are subjected to in Islam. I am frankly perplexed that this is even an issue, and the reaction it has provoked is irrefutable evidence that without someone to hate and opress and detest and despise, Islam shrivels up and has nothing.
OK, we know that the kufr are damned. But Islam's primary hatred, it seems to me, is of women. It is absolutely astonishing. Indeed, I wonder if all other hatreds can be traced back to this central, immutable hatred, with the dynamics of violence, inferiority-superiority complex it evokes. A bullying mindset and psychology is evoked, the psychology of the woman beater, one who preys on the weaker, ultimately a coward. Only cowards, after all, and the deeply insecure, can react so violently to such a small gesture of assertion of the basic existence of woman and their right to be treated equally.
Posted by: Zico at June 6, 2005 6:08 AM
I know how much muslim men hate women, my daughter was gang raped by 14 of the things.
Posted by: D.T. at June 6, 2005 6:31 AM
"In every single one of these religious places of worship women can access the place of worship."
This reminds me of something a teacher of my acquaintance told me. At that time (over 10 years ago) she taught in a primary school in a mixed area of East London. An RE programme was arranged for the 8/9 year olds to visit a different place of worship every few weeks. Church of England, no problem. Progressive synagogue, no problem. Hindu temple, an absolute delight. A warm welcome from a jolly man who had the children in fits of laughter. Moslem Mosque, oops. After much humming and arring they allowed the children to visit. First the man who met them wanted to talk to the boys separately. My friend refused, all the class were to be addressed together. Then he only wanted boys to enter a certain section. Again my friend insisted that girls go with, or none of them. Some of the mothers who were helping with the trip were Moslems. They stayed outside and seemed very uncomfortable. Then this man gave the teachers his views on education, and the value of a beating to encourage the brain to absorb information. I doubt that this teacher would have been able to stand her ground so effectively now. I also wonder whether the Moslem pupils would have been allowed by their families to enter a synagogue, temple or church now.
Posted by: Granny Weatherwax at June 6, 2005 7:36 AM
Zico, Orthodox Jews put the women in a balcony while the men are on the main floor and towards the front; the Mennonites put the women on one side of the church and the men on the other. Also, among the Orthodox Jews, it takes ten adult MEN to make a minyan (prayer quorum).
If you are a woman in a Theravada Buddhist country (Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Sri Lanka), never sit on a seat reserved for the monks, touch, or hand an item directly to a monk. It will render him ritually polluted.
Frankly, I can't find much to object about such things, even if I sit with my wife in my church. If that's how some other community wants to do things, it's their business.
Hence, while I think the guys who threatened Ms. Nomani need to be arrested, jailed, and, if possible, deported (if non-citizens), I still have scant sympathy for Ms. Nomani. It seems to me she's a bit like the little girl who chooses to but into the playground of a bunch of very rough and badly socialized boys, and if they start playing a little rough with her, she's got only herself to blame if she gets hurt. And before she starts playing with fire, she ought to consider her responsibility to her kid, especially since she elected to have the poor thing fatherless. And it's not as if the mosque is public property, since America isn't governed by Sharia, and mosques are opened and fucntion as associations of like-minded believers. Come to think of it, Asraf Nomani strikes me as one over-ripe spoiled brat who thinks nothing of thinking she can get away with everything from publicly shaming her father who gave her half of her life (I doubt a first generation South Asian immigrant male, no matter how educated and at home in the New World, could have been thrilled at being the gradnfather of an out-of-wedlock child, not matter how forgiving he might have been later) to actual playing with fire.
For Pete's sake Asra, if you get yourself killed as a martyr to feminist posturing, may God give your poor, shamed yet forgiving father many, many years of excellent good health in which to raise the fatherless child you leave. But, before you poke that lion with a stick a few more times, do you really want to do one more thing to send your poor father's gray hairs down to the grave in sorrow--as the Tawrat says? No, be American, and kindly find a religion that's more to your likeing and more likely to provide a little bit of tranquility for you family, and cut the dramatic posturing. If some angry guy with power vows to harry you out of the land after the example of King James VI and I, find your own place where you can build your own city on the hill.
Posted by: Kepha at June 6, 2005 8:47 AM
Kepha
The average Jew, Buddhist or Christian can at least walk into their place of worship off the street and commune with their God. OK, there are examples of Orthodox sects where this is not so, but you are not comparing like with like. It simply is not the case that reform Judaism or Buddhism has this misogynist ethos. What is remarkable about this attempt by Asra is that at the most basic level it is being repudiated so violently. It is the default position of the entire religion. People like Asra are the abnormal. In other religions female access to the House of God is the norm and the default, and the restricted are abnormal, or at least outside the mainstream. It is diametrically opposed to every other religion in the World in this respect. Its about what is mainstream and what is marginal.
Granny
Shocking story but not surprising. I think it literally renders them unclean to have women in the sanctum of God. Women are literally polluting to them, women are literally filth.
Shiver just ran down my spine.
Posted by: Zico at June 6, 2005 11:49 AM
Sorry, in my last post, the first sentence should read:
The average female Jew, Buddhist or Christian can at least walk into their place of worship off the street and commune with their God.
at June 6, 2005 11:51 AM
Kepha
The trouble is, if she turned to another religion she would still be living under the threat of violence and death, that is the law for Islamic apostasty.
I take on board what you say about her tactics. Although I dont know if I agree with your sentiments.
Posted by: Zico at June 6, 2005 11:55 AM
Granted that they seem to be few in number, but can you imagine the horror of being a decent, humane person, born as a Moslem? You are totally trapped; totally f*cked.
Posted by: Seymour Paine at June 6, 2005 12:12 PM
Zico and Kepha
In all the other religions, somewhere in the mainstream there will be a useful and valued place for women. In the Church of England and certain non-conformist churches I am proud to work with ordained women. The Roman Catholic Church has female orders and has produced thinkers like Hildegard of Bingen and Dame Felicitas Corrigan. There are orders of Buddhist nuns, women priests in the Hindu religion and women Rabbis. The Sikhs claim they were the earliest religion to promote equality of the sexes in worship. Even among more conservative followers there is a role through Mothers Union or other family organisations. Islam seems to be the exception.
To bore with another ancedote, a Moslem colleague and his wife were worried about their young sister-in-law recently arrived from Pakistan. Her husband worked shifts and she was lonely. What about activities at your mosque? I said naively, thinking of respectable things like Young Wives. Oh no,was the answer, nothing at the mosque, our women don't go outside the home much.
Asra Nomani may be spolit and unwise, but so were St Francis and St Claire and look how well they grew up. The world needs some youthful hotheads to temper age and experience. I just hope for the sake of her child she gets the chance to mature.
Posted by: Granny Weatherwax at June 6, 2005 12:40 PM
Granny W.,
The hotheads need to keep their heads, -especially if they have a kid to support.
St. Francis was a bachelor.
Let the bachelorette Boadicias fight in the aisles with the imams if they have a thinly-veiled deathwish. (Otherwise known as a mind in Islam.)
Good parenting does not involve theocratic bear-baiting.
Posted by: BigSleep at June 6, 2005 3:56 PM
Big Sleep
Women like me can afford to think only of our children because we have decent men, like you and my husband to do the fighting. She does not.
at June 6, 2005 5:06 PM
I'm sorry, Granny Weatherwax, but if Buddhism on its home turf sees woman as the epitome of evil and temptation. I've lived pretty close to it in Chinese-Speaking Asia and Thailand for a good chunk of my adult life. While Reform Judaism is nothing but good-old-19th-century-German-liberal-Protestantism-and-American-Unitarianism minus any mention of Jesus Christ; I'm reminded of an old Yiddish saying:
Beser a bort on a Rav vi a Rav on a bort (better a beard without a rabbi than a rabbi without a beard--speaking of nagging wives; now applied in parts of Williamsburg on "Lung Guyland" to disparage Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism)
Also, I still retain scant sympathy for Asra Nomani--save that the people making death threats should be caught, charged, tried, jailed, and, if possible, deported. American mosques aren't something set up by some central authority and thus something in which American Muslims have little choice, but set up and maintained by groups of like-minded people. If some Muslim men think they're polluted by a possibly menstruous woman from a distance of six feet--or whatever their rationale is--why the dickens should I want to inflict some screaming meemie of gadfly on them over it? Hence, if Asraf Nomani is so bugged by the way the Morgantown Mosque has treated her, she can get a bunch of likeminded people together and start their own mosque. She strikes me as someone self-confident and mentally adventurous enough to do that rather than make trouble for people whose freedom of conscience and religion are just as protected as hers. I mean, if so many of us are bothered by the way the foam-at-the-mouth mullahs try to police everyone else's consciences, shouldn't we also be bothered by a bunch of narcissistic, arrogant feminists trying to do the same?
Similarly, I see people of Middle Eastern and South Asian origins already starting their exodus from Islam. It wouldn't hurt if Americans rediscovered a little confidence in their own political liberties--why, it might even draw off the children of our Muslim immigrants.
Posted by: Kepha at June 6, 2005 11:59 PM
Hi Kepha
I'm interested in your knowledge of Buddhisim on home turf as my only direct experience of it is through an English retreat centre. As you know from our conversations before I am an Anglican. Several of my in-laws are Anglican clergy. For a time one relative was vicar of a rural parish where there was a Buddhist retreat house. So when we went to stay they were amongst the people we would meet.
I often hear agnostics, who know that I am a Christian, say that the only religion they have time for is Buddhism, so peaceful and gentle (vegetarian as well!!) and has never fought a war. Depending on mood I usually refrain from mentioning Shinto as I am not completely certain how that actually connected to Buddhism.
So I am interested to hear that Buddhism on its home turf sees woman as the epitome of evil and temptation. How do the orders of nuns fit into that where you are? Again in Britain I have come across Buddhist nuns described as the Rev *** or Sister **** and their work seems to merit respect. But the point I was making is that women do have a formal place or status in the religion for their work, which is lacking in Islam.
We can agree to differ on details, I believe we are in agreement on essentials. Peace be with you.
Posted by: Granny Weatherwax at June 7, 2005 3:22 AM
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