Women Fights for Equality in W.VA Mosque

Woman Fights for Equality in W.Va. Mosque 
        
Sun Jan 25,11:13 PM ET
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MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - For three months, Asra Nomani has been defying convention 
at the mosque she attends — by walking through the front door. 

        


Nomani, a journalist who has written for the Wall Street Journal and The 
Washington Post, is trying to change a rule that women should enter the Morgantown 
mosque through a side staircase and pray separately from the men. A growing 
number of mosques have such rules. 



"I can interview the Taliban," said Nomani, 38, "but I can't walk through the 
front door of my mosque." 



Before ever approaching the front door, Nomani asked the mosque's board of 
trustees for equal access for women. But when she later went to the mosque, the 
board president stood at the front door and said, "Sister, please, the back 
entrance," Nomani noted in a discrimination complaint she filed with the Council 
on American-Islamic Relations. 



About three months ago, Nomani, her mother and her 12-year-old niece rejected 
the women's entrance for the front door. 



Once inside, the women chose not to pray in a balcony built for women in the 
rear of the mosque — where the main prayer space cannot be seen. Instead, they 
began praying under the same vaulted, sunny ceiling as the men — but several 
feet behind them. 



"The men interrupted the start of 'taraweeh' prayer," Nomani recalled in the 
discrimination complaint. "A man said, `We cannot pray until she leaves.' A 
group of men told my father to tell me to leave. He said he would not. 



"Four men assembled around me and told me to leave. Two men took positions 
directly behind me and started to pray. One of the men assembled around me asked 
in an intimidating way whether I wanted to remain with these men behind me. 
Another man poked his finger at me and spoke to me in a threatening way. I 
remained." 



Nomani and her father, Zafar, a professor emeritus of nutrition at West 
Virginia University, mosque founder and current board member, recently filed a 
police complaint saying that one man in the congregation yelled at her, called 
Zafar Nomani an idiot and waved his arms at them before other members of the 
congregation restrained him. 



"If women are not treated with respect and dignity in our mosques, we have 
failed," Zafar Nomani said. "I am concerned not only about women but the second 
generation of immigrant children growing up in America." 



Asad Khan, acting president of the mosque's board, said a meeting on the 
issue will be held soon but declined further comment until after the meeting. 



Morgantown's mosque is among a growing number of U.S. mosques that put women 
behind a partition or in another room to pray. In 1994, 52 percent of mosques 
had such a practice, but that rose to 66 percent in 2000, according to the 
Council on American-Islamic Relations. 



The world's holiest mosque — in Mecca — allows women and men to pray 
together, said Nomani, who has prayed there. She was born in India and lived in New 
Jersey before moving to West Virginia.