PMU Prayer Initiative: Our Statement
Shattering the idol of spiritual patriarchy:
Towards a gender-fair notion of prayer in Islam
By Omid Safi, PMU Co-Chair
The imperative to undertake critical, independent reasoning within the framework of Islamic thought (ijtihad) has been one of the hallmarks of the creativity of Islamic thought through the centuries. As recent scholarship has established, the gates of ijtihad have always been open, and we assert that they continue to remain open today. The numerous traditions that have asserted the need for perpetual renewal (tajdid) of the religious tradition remind us of the need to perpetually articulate the timeless and eternal teachings of Islam in a way that addresses the timely challenges of the era in which we live. Part of the challenge before us is: how to articulate the core values of justice and compassion that are at the heart of the Islamic tradition in a way that addresses the contemporary challenges we all face as Muslims and as human beings.
Continue reading "PMU Prayer Initiative: Our Statement"
|
Comments (2)
Woman-led Prayer Resources
In this section you will find a link to a "meet-up" page for the Women Imams' Network where you can find other members of your community who want to take part in woman-led congregational prayers, minimum requirements for an imam, and a guide for giving khutbas.
The PMU affirms the validity of Islamic ritual and practice as an expression of love for God, while acknowledging that specific forms of ritual and practice are individual choices and should never be imposed through coercive means.
Continue reading "Woman-led Prayer Resources"
|
Comments (0)
Approvals of Woman-led Mixed Gender Friday Prayers
There have been four permissions so far given to woman-led prayer by Muslim religious authorities. We will update this page as more permissions become known to us.
- Muhammad Abdel Ghani Shamaa permits women to lead mixed-gender congregational prayers if she is more knowledgable than the men in her community.
- On Arab television, Sheikh Ali Gum'a states that women are permitted to lead mixed-gender congregational prayers as long as the community agrees to it. Please note that there is some controversy surrounding this opinion as an opposing fatwa was issued by the Dar al-Ifta' following his statement. Please click through to the extended entry for a short discussion of it. Please also read the full entry for Sheik Shamaa's fatwa which may also shed light on the matter.
- The Secretary General of the Islamic Commission of Spain likewise approves women to lead mixed gender congregational prayers as long as the community agrees to it.
- The Beverly Hills Islamic Center has issued an approval of woman-led prayer as well as suggestions for how it should be practiced.
- Javed Ghamidi, Islamic scholar and founding-president of the Al-Mawrid Institute of Islamic Sciences in Lahore, Pakistan said there is nothing in the Qur'an or the Prophetic tradition to prohibit women from leading congregations in prayer.
Full versions of the above permissions are reprinted or linked below.
Use this link to read Nevin Reda's argument for woman-led prayers.
Continue reading "Approvals of Woman-led Mixed Gender Friday Prayers"
|
Comments (3)
Notices of Woman-led Prayers from around the World
Muslims have been challenging the prohibition against woman-led mixed-gender congregational around the world for years. Here you will find notices of woman-led prayers past and present. Let these acts inspire us to move onward. If you would like your own community's prayer listed here please contact us at the e-mail address listed inside this section and we will post it as soon as possible.
Continue reading "Notices of Woman-led Prayers from around the World"
|
Comments (0)
Raheel Raza's Khutba at the Toronto Friday Prayers
Toronto, Canada, April 22, 2005
First Khutba
Bismillah – In The Name Of Allah, The Compassionate The Merciful
Salaam Alaikum.
I am humbled as I stand before you on this landmark occasion and I thank you for your trust and confidence in inviting me to lead you in prayer.
Your faith today is the only criterion really required in Islam to empower a person to lead prayer. This is especially heart-warming for me as I’ve lead prayers in churches, synagogues and temples and feel honoured as I stand here with my own community in prayer.
Continue reading "Raheel Raza's Khutba at the Toronto Friday Prayers"
|
Comments (3)
Ginan Rauf's Reflections on the Wadud Prayer
Personal Reflections on the Woman led Prayer in an American Church: ahlan wa sahlan fi amerika
While the woman led prayer was being organized in America I was on vacation in Egypt. So in a very real sense I was catapulted into a momentous event that I had played no part in organizing. The prayer initiative is really quite a peripheral concern in my personal life. Yet it is at the core of my commitment to universal egalitarian principles and my deep affection for the community. Attending the prayer, then, was an act of humility and an assertion of solidarity with my more religiously inclined sisters.
Continue reading "Ginan Rauf's Reflections on the Wadud Prayer"
Mona Eltahawy's Reflections on the Wadud Prayer
Meanwhile: Making history at Friday prayer
by Mona Eltahawy
NEW YORK On March 18, I put on my smartest clothes and my favorite jewelry, hailed a cab and tried my best not to cry as I rode to the Juma'h prayer that marks the highlight of the Muslim week. We are taught to look our best for the weekly prayer, and this was no ordinary Juma'h. It was the first time on record that a woman was to lead a mixed-gender Friday prayer.
Continue reading "Mona Eltahawy's Reflections on the Wadud Prayer"
Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur's Reflections on the Wadud Prayer
Preaching from the Ashes: Reclaiming the Legacy of Freedom
I will not defend my actions nor will I attempt to convince you of my thinking regarding woman-led prayer. I will however clarify my intentions in organizing this event and share my account of March 18, 2005.
Continue reading "Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur's Reflections on the Wadud Prayer"
Sarah Eltantawi's Reflections on the Wadud Prayer
Breaking a Scandal, Righting a Wrong
“In order to lead Muslims in their worldly affairs, the ruler must be eligible to lead them in their prayers, and since by consensus of the Muslim community women never lead men in prayers, they cannot rule them.” Nasr Fareed Wassel, former mufti of Egypt
A burden inside me had been lifted in the days after the prayer, and for weeks afterward I walked around New York consumed by a lightness I had never quite felt before. I wasn’t aware that I harbored the particular heaviness that seemed now to be dissipating, probably because I had been carrying it around most of my life.
Continue reading "Sarah Eltantawi's Reflections on the Wadud Prayer"
Michael Muhammad Knight's Reflections on the Wadud Prayer
Huggable Islam
I drove to New York because I believe in a woman’s right to lead prayer, and my own right to follow; but I didn’t come here to pray, and that’s the problem for many in the progressive scene. This crowd might be too “culturally” Muslim and too genuinely open-minded to produce too many imams, with or without penises. And for some it might just be a watered-down Islam for liberal chickenshits.
Continue reading "Michael Muhammad Knight's Reflections on the Wadud Prayer"
Pamela Taylor's Reflections on the Wadud Prayer
Each Friday, Muslims gather together for their weekly congregational service, consisting of a sermon and group prayers. This past Friday, one such service held in New York City made news because it was the first public, mixed gender service led by a Muslim woman. Reaction from the more conservative Imams in American and across the Middle East was predictable.
Continue reading "Pamela Taylor's Reflections on the Wadud Prayer"
Laury Silvers' Reflections on Woman-led Prayer
Islamic Jurisprudence, ‘Civil’ Disobedience, and Woman-led Prayer
Professor Hina Azam and Imam Zaid Shakir have presented well-argued pieces upholding the prohibition against woman-led prayer. Although it may seem to some of their readers that the matter has been settled, the question of woman-led prayer is still open to debate. In fact, Prof. Azam challenges the progressive movement to locate a new approach to the question of woman-led prayer since she finds it cannot be resolved through the currently accepted principles of interpretation. This essay is not an answer to that challenge, but a two-part call. First, it is a call for that challenge to be taken up by scholars of Islamic jurisprudence. Second, it is a call for Muslims to stand behind women in prayer as a matter of “civil” disobedience in the face of a clear injustice, even in the face of the discomfort of both men and women in the community at large. Through the Qur’an, the Sunna, and the principles of Islamic jurisprudence, we will, God willing, find a broadly accepted path that will permit woman-led mixed gender public congregational prayer.
Continue reading "Laury Silvers' Reflections on Woman-led Prayer"
|
Comments (1)
Statement from the Organizers of the March 18th Woman-led Prayer
As word has spread in our community and around the world about our intentions to hold a mixed-gender Friday congregational prayer led by a woman imam, we want to re-assert our motivations and objectives in organizing this event.
Continue reading "Statement from the Organizers of the March 18th Woman-led Prayer"
Sheikha Fariha al-Jerrahi's Reflections on the Wadud Prayer
This Luminous Path of Islam Cannot Be Dominated by One Gender
In the Name of Allah's Infinite Compassion and Mercy
I completely support Amina Wadud in her courageous dedication to opening the doors to our sisters in the practice of Islam and to bringing more knowledge of the true place of women in the origins of Islam.
Continue reading "Sheikha Fariha al-Jerrahi's Reflections on the Wadud Prayer"
Nevin Reda's Support of Woman-led Prayer
What Would the Prophet Do? The Islamic Basis for Female-Led Prayer
Praise be to God, Who has sent down the book to His servant, and has allowed therein no crookedness (Qur'an 18:1)
On Friday, March 18, 2005, Dr. Amina Wadud, professor of Islamic studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, will be the first woman to lead a public, mixed-gender Friday prayer in the modern day. She will also deliver the Friday sermon. Dr. Wadud, the author of the groundbreaking book Qur'an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective, is an esteemed scholar of Islam who affirms the right of Muslim women to be prayer leaders.
To see the critiques of this support click on the following links:
Please click here to see Imam Zaid Shakir's critique.
Please click here to see Hina Azam's critique.
Continue reading "Nevin Reda's Support of Woman-led Prayer"
Hussein Ibish's Response to Hina Azam
Erudition as dead-end: Hina Azam and the perils of legal dogmatism
Dr. Hina Azam’s A Critique Of The Argument For Woman-Led Friday Prayers, which challenges the legitimacy of the March 18 mixed-gender congregation prayer in New York City led by Dr. Amina Wadud, is a perfect example of what happens when the so-called "Islamic Sciences" of traditional jurisprudence are uncritically received and regurgitated by a young scholar who takes it as her mission to deploy legal expertise not in the quest of the love of God but in an attempt to discipline social transformation. It demonstrates exactly why the Progressive Muslim Union and others seek to open up texts and traditions to critical engagement, and to understand the way in which they have sometimes served as instruments of social repression rather than as vehicles of empowerment and liberation, and how they can impede rather than facilitate spiritual growth and the development of a truly just and compassionate society.
Continue reading "Hussein Ibish's Response to Hina Azam"
|
Comments (0)
Hussein Ibish's Critique of Louay Safi
The Cunning of Con-sensus
In a recent web article called "Islam's Encounter with American
Culture: Making Sense of the Progressive Muslim Agenda" Louay M. Safi
accuses the Progressive Muslim Union (PMU) of "progressive excesses
and provocations" and of "lashing out," mainly on the grounds that PMU
was a principle sponsor of the mixed-gender prayer on March 18 led by
Amina Wadud.
Use this link to read Safi's piece.
Continue reading "Hussein Ibish's Critique of Louay Safi"
|
Comments (0)
Ginan Rauf's Critique of Yasmin Mogahed
A Response to Yasmin Mogahed: Servant of God or Servant of Power?
Yasmin Mogahed’s article A Woman’s Reflection on Leading Prayer is a thinly disguised assault on women’s equality and a blatant misrepresentation of Western Feminism. In her article Ms. Mogahad writes, ‘’What we so often forget is that God has honored the woman by giving her value in relation to God- not in relation to men. But as western feminism erases God from the scene, there is no standard left- but men. As a result the western feminist is forced to find her value in relation to a man. And in so doing she has accepted a faulty assumption. She has accepted that man is the standard and thus a woman can never be a full human being until she becomes just like a man- the standard’’. Let me therefore direct Ms. Mogahad’s attention to a classical feminist text that argues for a women’s economic independence precisely so that a woman can achieve full autonomy in the intellectual sphere. This core feminist text self-consciously rejects the idea that a woman’s being can only have value in relation to a man’s. In fact, the quest for economic independence has as its goal full female autonomy.
Use this link to read Mogahed's article.
Continue reading "Ginan Rauf's Critique of Yasmin Mogahed"
|
Comments (0)
Disclaimer
Continue reading "Disclaimer"
PMU Press Release on Female-led Prayer Initiative
Click here to download Press Release.
Nasr Abu Zaid on the Wadud Prayer
Islamic scholar hails actions of VCU professor
He says Wadud's act is important for Muslim women in America
BY ALBERTA LINDSEY
A Richmond professor who enraged some Middle Eastern Muslims by leading a prayer service attended by both men and women is right on target, says an exiled Egyptian Islamic studies scholar.
Amina Wadud, a professor of Islamic studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, has succeeded in breaking the taboo of the male-dominated mosque, said Nasr Abu Zaid, who fled his home country in 1995. Abu Zaid now teaches at Leiden University in the Netherlands.
Continue reading "Nasr Abu Zaid on the Wadud Prayer"
Imtiyaz Yusef: Women's Place in Islam Debated
WOMEN'S PLACE IN ISLAM DEBATED
The recent controversy over the leading of Friday prayers by an African-American woman has brought the gender issue to the forefront of the Muslim world, writes IMTIYAZ YUSUF
On 18 March 2005, a female African-American professor, Amina Wadud, led a group of New York Muslims in the obligatory Friday congregational prayer. This was the first time that a woman had performed as an Imam prayer leader, causing much controversy within the Muslim world. The incident raised an intense debate ranging from the ritualistic to the legalistic aspects of the act, covering issues such as whether the Islamic religion allows a woman to lead in the prayer service, what are its implications for Islamic law and gender issues in the Muslim world.
Continue reading "Imtiyaz Yusef: Women's Place in Islam Debated"
Eltantawi and Zonnenfeld's article on the Town Hall Meeting
‘As You Are, You Will be Led’: Khaled Abou El Fadl Leads a Town Hall Meeting on Woman-Led Prayer in Los Angeles
By Sarah Eltantawi and Zuriani Zonneveld
Since the March 18th prayer led by Amina Wadud in New York and co-sponsored by muslimwakeup.com and the Muslim Women’s Freedom Tour, the Muslim community’s excitement, confusion, and even outrage led the Progressive Muslim Union of North America (PMU), which endorsed the prayer, to take two concrete actions in an attempt to alleviate our community's confusion. First, we started a Prayer Initiative which houses information about female-led prayer, including arguments for and against it and first hand accounts of the New York prayer. Secondly, we committed ourselves to organizing as many town hall meetings around the country as we could on the subject of female led prayer. PMU put on its first such town hall meeting in Los Angeles on June 5, and invited UCLA Law Professor Khaled Abou El Fadl to give the keynote speech.
Continue reading "Eltantawi and Zonnenfeld's article on the Town Hall Meeting"
PMU Response to "Women-Friendly Mosque Brochure"
The Progressive Muslim Union welcomes the release of the brochure, "Women Friendly Mosques and Community Centers: Working Together to Reclaim Our Heritage," written and distributed by several conservative North American Muslim organizations.
We are pleased by the realization that justice issues in the Muslim community are always linked to gender issues, and that Muslims from a wide range of backgrounds can work together to achieve gender-just communities.
The PMU feels that Mosques and community centers should adopt and implement these guidelines, however not as a final answer to the alienation and exclusion of women from these institutions, but as a first step towards complete gender equality. The brochure rightly calls for the full participation of women, but unfortunately the guidelines stop short of actually achieving this goal.
Until the right of women to give sermons and lead mixed-gender congregational prayers is recognized, their participation will, of a necessity, be less than complete. In sum, we welcome the release of the brochure, encourage its adoption, and yet simultaneously urge all Muslims to settle for no less than the complete gender equality in our mosques and community centers
Click here for a pdf of the response on PMU letterhead.
Shahed Amanullah's "'Women-Friendly Mosques' Document Leaves Unanswered Questions"
"Women-Friendly Mosques" Document Leaves Unanswered Questions
The "women-friendly mosques" document allows male-run mosques to obey the
letter of the law without significantly improving the situation of women in
US mosques today.
Continue reading "Shahed Amanullah's "'Women-Friendly Mosques' Document Leaves Unanswered Questions""
