Standing Alone (29 page)

After one of the final nights of Ramadan, considered a “night of power,” my father, one of the men who had started the mosque in Morgantown, gave me an early
eidie
, a gift that elders give on Eid, the festival that marks the end of the holy month. He handed me a copy of the key to the mosque's front door, sold the night before at a fund-raiser. I traced the key's edge with my thumb and put it on my Statue of Liberty key chain, because it is in America that Muslims can truly liberate mosques from cultural traditions that belie Islam's teachings.

“Praise be to Allah,” my father told me. “Allah has given you the power to make change.” I rattled the keys in front of my son, who reached out for them, and I said to him, “Shibli, we've got the keys to the mosque. We've got the keys to a better world.”

MORGANTOWN
—The issue of gender discrimination at mosques raises a serious legal question: does the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees freedom of religion, allow religious organizations to discriminate against women?

I turned to the phone again to find answers. Marcus Owens, a tax attorney at Caplin & Drysdale and former director of the Internal Revenue Service's exempt organizations division, told me, “Muslim women are essentially in the same place as Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1950s and 1960s,” when the courts hadn't yet established legal precedents banning racial discrimination.

I was going into a field I didn't understand very well: the law. But it was becoming obvious to me that Muslim men used man-made Islamic law to deny women rights in every facet of life, from their bodies to governance. I had come to the educated conclusion that what these men were doing was not Islamic at all. Western society was not immune from this denial
of women's rights in the name of the law. It seemed to me that Western law had matured beyond Muslim communities but not beyond Islamic law, and that Western law and Islamic law were completely consistent in their interpretations of justice, equality, and punishment. Puritan Muslims defined justice with stonings, lashings, and amputations. But those sentences weren't taken from Islamic law. They came from puritan Muslims'
interpretations
of Islamic law. I didn't realize what blasphemy this was to the puritans. But I also didn't care. I wanted to test just how far Western law could go in helping a Muslim woman reclaim her Islamic rights.

What I knew was that most mosques, including the Islamic Center of Morgantown, enjoy the benefits of being designated charitable organizations with tax-exempt status. The Internal Revenue Service has stated that “tax-exempt organizations may jeopardize their exempt status if they engage in illegal activity.” Applying the “illegality doctrine” in 1983, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that the IRS could deny Bob Jones University tax-exempt status because of racial policies at the evangelical Christian university. Tax attorneys said the ruling established the public policy that tax-exempt organizations can't racially discriminate. The same protection has not been established, however, for gender discrimination; in addition, Bob Jones University is not just a private organization but more specifically an educational institution.

In a 1984 case against the Jaycees, a civic organization, the Supreme Court upheld the ruling that a private organization cannot discriminate based on gender. The case was important for another reason: the Minnesota Department of Human Rights had brought the case against the Jaycees. Even if the federal courts had limited jurisdiction, maybe Muslim women in America could seek recourse through the human rights commissions present in most cities and states.

Attorneys suggested that mosques could also be considered public organizations. The constitution of the Islamic Center of Morgantown addresses “Muslims in the northern West Virginia and other parts of the United States and Canada” and promotes “friendly relations and understanding between Muslims and non-Muslims.” A statute of the West Virginia Human Rights Commission establishes a “place of public accommodation” as “any establishment” that “offers its services, goods, facilities or accommodations to the general public.” The West Virginia statute doesn't allow an establishment to issue discriminatory rules “directly or indirectly.” The statute also prohibits establishments from engaging in “any form of reprisal or otherwise discriminat[ing] against any person because he or she has opposed any practices or acts forbidden” by
the state statute. Importantly, the statute protects individuals from being subject to “physical force or violence,” “actual or threatened.” Like many cities, Morgantown has a human rights commission, with the same mandate as the state's. Although courts tend to stay out of religious affairs, I came to the difficult decision that Muslim women must use the American legal system to restore Islamic rights, particularly when intimidation is used to enforce unfair rules.

Another issue was weighing on me. The national organization with which my mosque was affiliated, giving it tax-exempt status, was the same organization that had given me such a rich experience on the hajj—the Islamic Society of North America. My mosque's constitution said that the mosque couldn't do anything that violates Islamic standards; if it did, the society could send a representative to mediate. And then there was a national organization established as a sort of ACLU for the American Muslim world. I had first heard about it earlier in the year when I tried to help an Iranian graduate student who'd been detained in an FBI investigation. He ended up being deported. I learned from working on his case that the Council on American-Islamic Relations was set up in Washington to protect Muslims' civil liberties. I was a Muslim. My civil liberties were being violated through gender discrimination at the mosque.

The issue of women's civil liberties had been very much a taboo topic in the Muslim community. Even though the civil liberties group and other organizations knew about systemic gender discrimination at mosques, having done the survey that documented it, they hadn't done much to remedy the problem. The civil liberties group told me that it had never received a complaint from a Muslim woman citing discrimination at her mosque. I sat at my computer late into the evening and diligently wrote out the first complaint filed with the group for gender discrimination at a mosque. I alleged that my mosque's board imposed separate and unequal accommodations.

I wondered what would happen.

MORGANTOWN
—Halfway across the world, a band of strong-willed Muslim women in a village in India were giving me strength. An e-mail popped up on my computer with the headline: “Women in Indian Village Fed Up with Sexism, Build Their Own Mosque.”

The
Hindustan Times
, a leading daily in India, reported that in the village of Parambu in the state of Tamil Nadu in India's south, not only were women banned from the local mosque, but village men expected them to accept divorce rulings doled out by a male-only religious tribunal that met, of course, at the off-limits mosque. Through a fledgling organization called Chaaya, or “Shadow” in Sanskrit and Hindi, the women had decided to start their own mosque to educate women about their legal and Islamic rights. They were led by a woman identified only as Sharifa. In Arabic, Sharifa means “honorable.” I sent Dr. Mattson the article about the women in Tamil Nadu and a note: “Here are some Muslim women who know their rights!”

The courage of Sharifa and the women in Tamil Nadu meant so much to me, comfortable as I was in my life in America. They were women who were really taking a risk to defy tradition to defend their rights. They underscored for me that the battle over women's access to the Morgantown mosque wasn't just a fight over carpet space. It was emblematic of the systemic marginalization of women in Muslim communities. Even in Morgantown I had been able to see that the men used the mosque as a watering hole where they gathered to contemplate and reinforce decisions that intrinsically deny women their rights. For example, the man at our mosque who beat his wife got support from other men when his wife appropriately left him.

The women in Tamil Nadu reinforced for me that I had to exercise my talents to challenge the barriers to entry that women faced in their local mosques. I tapped at my keyboard until I had an essay. I pushed the
SEND
button, delivering it to the
Washington Post
. My editor there, a talented woman by the name of Kathleen Cahill, worked with me over the next days so that I could lay out the most convincing argument Islam offers for women's rights in mosques. To test the waters, I sent a draft to Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur, a young Muslim woman I was getting to know. She was one of the founders of a Muslim women's magazine,
Azizah
. A talented friend of mine, Kemba Dunham, a reporter at the
Wall Street Journal
, had introduced me to her earlier in the year after my first book came out, thinking Saleemah would appreciate the book. Saleemah wrote back quickly with an expression of support that I very much needed. “I acknowledge your courage for writing such a thoughtful and bold piece. I too have been
very
frustrated with the inequities that immigrant and indigenous Muslims practice in America. Indeed some take pride in their oppression. I am so glad that you didn't do as I and many others have done and just stopped attending mosques. You acted against wrong—the
strongest expression there can be of faith.” She ended with a salutation that I appreciated: “In solidarity.” And she made a point I little understood: “Asra, you're startin' a revolution.”

On December 28, 2003, the
Washington Post
published my essay under the headline “Rebel in the Mosque: Going Where I Know I Belong.” Inside was an illustration of our morning ascension, drawn by Samir, the new Mussalman. It showed the vast space between the men and us.

I had rarely confided my personal sense of disenfranchisement to fellow Muslims for fear of backlash. Outside of the hajj, I found that the community could be mean-spirited. Deciding to take the risk, I agreed to have the essay posted on an unconventional Muslim website I'd recently discovered, Muslim WakeUp! The reaction was immediate. Muslim women and men who shared a vision of equitable mosques responded swiftly with electronic messages of overwhelming support. “Beautiful, simply beautiful!” read the first remark posted by a woman named Maria on a comment page.

This website had empowered me through the voices it publishes, including a powerful poet named Mohja Kahf, a Syrian American literature professor at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. She made me laugh and cry every time I read a poem she wrote, “My Little Mosque,” about the crack addicts and Dumpsters that women have to pass before getting to the women's entrance at a mosque, that, while fictional, captures so many of our experiences. She wrote to congratulate me for speaking out. “The revolution has begun!” Her words meant the world to me. And other e-mails kept pouring in: “This is a powerful article and it has inspired me with hope and determination. I hope the author continues with her certitude and convictions and that many more sisters will join her. We need Muslim sisters who aren't scared to use their own intellects and wits in combating the extreme patriarchy which sees the woman as
awrah
[denoting forbidden] and
fitnah
[denoting conflict],” wrote a Muslim man named Adam Misbah al-Haqq. In the first month, about three hundred people e-mailed their thoughts directly to me or published their views in various Internet venues.

To analyze the responses, my father and I joined forces in a beautiful way. We co-authored an article for the
Journal of Islamic Law and Society
, “Gender Apartheid in Mosques: The Divide Between Men and Women.” My father did the statistical analysis on the letters I'd received and the messages that had been written about the article.

About nine out of ten Muslims, or 91 percent of 205 respondents, supported improved rights for women in mosques. Just about all non-Muslims,
or 99 percent of 108 respondents, expressed support. My father offered his special scientific endorsement of the results: the difference between the two groups was statistically significant, and the same findings could be extrapolated for larger populations. Men were slightly less supportive than women. All non-Muslim women expressed support, and almost all non-Muslim men expressed support. A non-Muslim woman sent a one-line e-mail: “Be strong—people like you are the salvation of Islam.”

The backlash caused me restless nights. Men expressed more judgmental attitudes than women. The judgmental reactions focused in large part on fifty-five words I had included in my fifteen-hundred-word essay to explain the intimate context of my relationship with Islam. “When I became pregnant last year while unmarried,” I had written, “I struggled with the edicts of some Muslims who condemned women to be stoned to death for having babies out of wedlock. I wrote in the
Washington Post
about such judgments being un-Islamic, and my faith was buoyed by the many Muslims who rallied to my side.”

About 20 percent of Muslim men were judgmental on either the issue of my unwed motherhood or the issue of public discussion of internal issues, compared to 10 percent of Muslim women who were judgmental. A Muslim WakeUp! reader who wrote that I should have put Shibli up for adoption by a two-parent household rather than raise him as a single parent later rescinded that suggestion and publicly apologized to me for it. In a Yahoo discussion group for Indian Muslims, a Muslim man wrote: “Asra Nomani is the latest publicity speaker/profiteer in the same string as Salman Rushdi and Taslima Nasreen. She is simply trying to malign the Muslim community in America.” Supporters of improved women's rights were critical on these two points. A Muslim man from Seattle wrote expressing support for sharing prayer space with women, but noted: “Never have I read, heard or seen any evidence that ‘it is o.k. to have a bastard' and brag about it. . . . May
Allah
show us [all] the righteous path, and forgive our sins.
Amin
[Let it be so]!!”

I sent my new friend Saleemah one of the e-mails from a critic, a Muslim man who wrote to ask whether I was “ashamed” to admit my unwed motherhood. “We don't need people like you to comment on Islam. Do you have any idea what is right and what is wrong in Islam? It seems that your father is also a shameless person like you. We don't need this type of new Islam. Either change yourself or be out of it,” he wrote from the e-mail address “onlythe_truth2003.” Saleemah sliced his arrogance with humor. She wrote back, “His email address should be ‘onlyhis_truth1803,'” recognizing
that his attitude was akin to Western cultural attitudes from the nineteenth century.

There was clear evidence of systematic discrimination against women around the country. Of all the responses, sixty-four women and men mentioned incidents of discrimination at mosques. A sixty-three-year-old convert to Islam said she regularly confronted men and women who wanted to move screens in front of her and other women during prayers and meetings. Other women wrote about hostile environments toward women at their mosques. Six women cited fair treatment at mosques.

The worst fears of some Muslims that critics of Islam would seize on the issue to demonize Islam didn't materialize. Only about one in ten non-Muslims negatively judged Islam because of the public disclosure of inequity at mosques. Instead, readers and the media made two important distinctions: they separated cultural traditions from Islam, and they recognized gender discrimination as a universal phenomenon. Five Christians cited discrimination against women at churches; four Jewish respondents cited discrimination against women at Orthodox Jewish synagogues.

In a letter to the editor of the
Dominion Post
, the Morgantown newspaper, that was headlined “Scarves Off to Nomani for Taking a Stand,” Morgantown photographer Sue Amos wrote: “Nothing like shining a little light on the darkness. . . . And we all know sex discrimination exists in most religions.” She cited a wedding she had photographed in a Baptist church where the minister declared, “Women are the weaker vessel and must submit to their husbands,” among guests whom the author knew included battered housewives. “No more back doors, Asra,” Amos wrote.

The
Charleston Gazette
ran an editorial, “Woman's Place: Taking a Stand for Equality,” arguing:

Amir Kanji, the Ismaili businessman from California who had invited me to the Ismaili health care professionals' conference in Atlanta, wrote
to me: “It is a tragedy that we perpetuate cultural mores in the name of Islam particularly in America and that in the year of 2003.” His life continued to express Islam's values of inclusion, tolerance, and respect. His eldest daughter had given birth to a daughter three weeks prematurely on what would have been his father's ninetieth birthday. Her parents gave her a name, Lyla Sofia Miller, that reflected the passing of Islam into a uniquely American Muslim identity. Amir planned on celebrating Thanksgiving in New York with his new granddaughter in his arms.

It became clear to me that it is a victory for Islam if Muslim men and women establish the rights of women to full participation in mosques in America. A combination of community organizing, education efforts, legal complaints, and cultural sensitivity training will be necessary to transform mosques from men's clubs into centers that welcome everyone—men, women, and children. There is clearly a groundswell of support among ordinary Muslim men and women around the world for such an effort. Acknowledging the injustice prompted me and others to devise a campaign to educate Muslim women and men about women's rights in the mosque. I started dreaming up a campaign that Dr. Godlas suggested we call “Take Back Your Mosque,” and I started drafting a “bill of rights” for women at mosques. I had the support of my new friends in Islam.

I talked to the editor of Muslim WakeUp!, an Egyptian American who had been raised in southern California, Ahmed Nassef. He was creative, visionary, and kind, having launched a “Hug a Jew” program. Born in Egypt, he moved to Los Angeles at age ten, majoring in Islamic studies at UCLA and working in marketing in New York and the Mideast before starting his unconventional website in 2003 to represent the “vanguard of the progressive Muslim movement” for social justice, gender equality, pluralism, and free inquiry into the full range of the religion's 1,400-year-old traditions. “It's time for action,” he told me. “The days of women being relegated to the attic and being forced to use the back entrance by the Dumpster are numbered.”