NEW
YORK, March 19, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – An
American woman led on Friday, March 18, a mixed congregation of men
and women in New York in the Friday prayer against a backdrop of
protests and calls of blasphemy from American Muslims.
More
than a hundred men and women knelt in adjacent rows, with no curtain
to divide them as Amina Wadud, an associate professor of Islamic
studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, led the prayer.
The
Adhan (call to prayer) was raised by another woman, Suehyla El-Attar,
who did not wear hijab, The New York Times reported.
The
prayer was held at the heavily-guarded Synod House at the Episcopal
Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan, after several mosques
refused to host it.
Wadud
conducted the service primarily in English with verses of the Noble
Qur’an read in Arabic.
Her
controversial sermon centered on the idea that men and women should
treat each other as equals.
“I
don't want to change Muslim mosques. I want to encourage the hearts of
Muslims to believe that they are equal,” CNN quoted Wadud as telling
a crowded news conference before the prayer.
She
said she wished to remove “artificial and inconvenient
restrictions” imposed on Muslim women.
Furor
For
the most part, New York City Muslims have been unreceptive to the
event, but many proposed outside, said The Times.
“That
woman does not represent Islam at all. This is blasphemy, and the
penalty for blasphemy is death and that is what this woman
deserves,” the American daily quoted a protester named Nussrah as
saying.
Another
protester said that Wadud was trying to change the Noble Qur’an.
“If
Islam goes with what you feel, then it is not a religion, it is an
option. We are against her because she is trying to offend 1.4 billion
Muslims and as a Muslim it is our duty to forbid what we see as
evil,” the protester, who refused to be named, told Voice of America
radio.
“I
am against what she is saying because it has never been allowed, since
the 14th century until now all the religious scholars never allowed a
woman to be an imam,” in Friday prayer, a woman protester added.
The
protesters further carried placards with one of them reading:
“Mixed-Gender Prayers Today, Hellfire Tomorrow.”
Also
read
