Posted on 03/20/2005 7:18:37 AM PST by TexKat
CAIRO, Egypt - Muslims in the Middle East on Saturday 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 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 emphatic headline: "They are tarnishing Islam in America!" It referred to Wadud as "the deranged woman."
A female Islamic law professor condemned the act as apostasy, 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.
Sheik 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 of the Quran read in Arabic.
"Women were not allowed to (have) input in the basic paradigms of what it means to be a Muslim," Wadud said after the service. She added that while the Islamic holy book, the Quran, puts men and women on equal footing, men have distorted its teachings to leave women with no role other than "as sexual partners."
But in the conservative Middle East, Wadud's prayer service was frowned upon.
In Saudi Arabia, Grand Mufti Abdul-Aziz al-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 an apostasy, 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 veiled, stirs desire."
Saleh also suggested the prayer service was a ploy to weaken Islam.
"It's a foreign conspiracy, through secular (Muslim) organizations, to sow seeds of division between Muslims," she said. "But God will protect his religion."
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.
Not allowing women to lead mixed gender prayers "is not discrimination between women and men but is to safeguard men from being conflicted and torn by human desire while they are standing behind a woman while she's bowing and kneeling," Bayoumi said.
The prayer service and reactions of those who attended were covered by the two major Arab satellite networks, Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya.
One Web site known for postings by Islamic militants carried photos of women at the service who had failed to cover their heads.
Do you have proof, confirmation of your Ref: Coptic famiy?
The Islamist Muslim Cult teaches adolescents the opposite: That women are dirty, to be shuttered away, separated, feared and controlled.
Its no wonder that Muslims societies are degraded, unproductive, retrograde, Medieval, inefficient and backwards.
Psychologically, they are at war with themselves. They will never improve until they drop the teachings of a schizophrenic, pedophile.
JMHO
These people should wake up and realize that America ain't Egypt. We have something called freedom of religion here (notwithstanding the hard left's relentless assaults on it).
How did this small service get to be on TV abroad and in newspapers?
Yup!
That's why their societies are still and forever locked up in the seventh century.
"Just wait until they have a non-Muslim or some gay guy leading prayers"
I'll raise that with an "I don't give a flying rat's rearend" motion...
Eff the muzzie garbage!
No! Really?
It's totally in keeping with the behavior of Muslims that one of the first reactions to this should be a Bomb Threat.
I have to commend the women that are willing to put themselves in harms way to do the same.
I agree with you. As Islam spreads more and more into western countries, perhaps it will be the women who will strive to break out and discover a more humane way of life. I feel sorry for the poor women stuck in those 10th century countries.
"Just wait until they have a non-Muslim or some gay guy leading prayers"
Great post - it sure comes down to the old issue of 'It
s all about whose ox is being gored' doesn't it? Thanks for your thought-provoking post.
an art gallery backed out after receiving a bomb threat... Some suggested the event was a U.S. conspiracy to mold traditional Islam into a secular American religion.Or perhaps, into a non-violent one? ;') This is the liberal/DNC hand and bid in the big poker game of US politics. They've been manuevered into a corner. They've only got Hobson's Choice. Dang it, the metaphor wheel broke.
Temple Emmanuel must be very disappointed.
"the woman's body, even if veiled, stirs desire " Shows you how warped these people really are. 10th century trash religion at best.
No news there and nothing to get excited about. Homosexuals holding services in an Episcopalian church is NOT news.
Just this past week a prominent gay in San Fransisco was denied a funeral in a Roman Catholic church and guess where they had the service? An Episcopal church.
Apparently Moslems holding services on Episcopalian property isn't news either.
Doesn't St. John the Divine have a moslem cleric on their ecumenical staff? I am sure I read that they do.
Unbelievable! A supposed Christian church allowing a prayer service to a non-Christian god to be held within its house of worship. The Episcopals here are truly heretical.
"The link between a mother and child is a bridge of Unconditional Love."
A truly beautiful phrase. Kudos.
The Catholic church does not allow a woman to lead a mass either. Of course, she would only be excommunicated--not beheaded.
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