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U.S. Muslims struggle
with gender issues

Have you ever come to our local Islamic Center in Manoa? It is open to the public, so try to visit when you have a chance. In many places of worship, women and men pray together as a single family. But Muslim women locally pray in a separate room and follow prayers through closed-circuit television.

According to my research, this format was decided by male Muslims in the 1990s. Some of the women were against it, favoring the previous arrangement, in which women and men prayed in the same room, men in the front, women in the back. Today there is almost no opportunity for women to interact with the religious leader, the imam. As a woman, I do not have the same opportunity as the men who are in the room when he leads the prayer. I must go around the building, call for his attention from the men's side and hope nobody thinks I am breaking gender boundaries.

Equality for Muslim women in the mosques is a hot topic among Muslims worldwide. Conservative Muslims prefer social practices not to change, while progressive Muslims want to update Islamic social practices.

Knowing this, could one imagine that a Muslim woman would lead a mixed-gender congregational prayer? It happened on March 18 in New York City. The prayer was announced through a progressive Muslim Web site, www.muslim wakeup.com, which said "Being led by a woman can be a good thing."

This untraditional event has met with both cheers and heavy criticism. Many are struggling with the unthinkable: Can a Muslim woman really lead men in congregational prayers?

Traditional Muslims who oppose it argue that Islamic traditions are clear; women do not lead congregational prayers. They ask how a woman can bend her body during prayers, because it will distract men!

The history-making event was held in a Manhattan Anglican church annex, because mosques in New York City would not accept it. Amina Wadul, a Virginia Commonwealth University professor of Islamic studies, led the prayer for about 100 people, half of them men.

Supporters of this event agree that in the Quran, Islam's sacred book, there is nothing forbidding a Muslim woman from leading a mixed-gender prayer. Muslims are increasingly questioning why, if it was not required at the time of Prophet Muhammad, gender-separate prayer is the rule now.

This event highlights one of the current problems Muslim women face across the United States and the world -- having equality in every way with men inside places of worship. Muslim women usually have smaller worship space and must pray at the back of the mosque, with partitions and curtains separating genders.

Perhaps the Manhattan event, a Muslim woman leading congregational prayer, can be a first step for women to gain equality in our local mosque. It is a matter of equal respect.

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