Despite no lockdown, Muslim women continue to be locked out from mosques this Ramadan

When we had to endure our first Ramadan in lockdown because of Covid, many Muslims shared their longing for the communal observance of the holy month. Muslim men in particular were heartbroken at not being able to visit the mosque for congregational prayer, iftar, or tarawih and other late-night worship. The women, meanwhile, thought ‘welcome to our world’.

As places of worship, many mosques have had a less than welcoming attitude to women.  Now, as we get to experience a Ramadan out of lockdown, we return not to communal observance in any inclusive sense but to a status quo that continues to let down and leave behind women and minorities.

In 2018, it was reported that “28 percent of mosques do not accommodate women, and a further breakdown of statistics highlighted that this is the case for almost half of all South-Asian run mosques in the UK”. For women with specific needs, or those seeking support from mosques for certain issues, the challenges are compounded and amplified.

''The onus is on the men to acknowledge their privilege in Muslim communities and Muslim spaces, and to use this privilege to share the women’s burden.''

Four such women shared their experiences with me. Their accounts point to an urgent need for our mosques to step up their efforts in serving the Muslim community as a whole.

One of the women I spoke to was Aisha, a disability advocate from Leicester. Aisha is a full-time wheelchair user with a rare genetic disorder. “Most of the mosques and madrasahs here are not so accommodating, which they should be because obviously someone can’t physically access a masjid unless they have all these [accommodations], and they want to be in that environment,” Aisha told me.

Her parents struggled with finding a madrasah that could meet her needs, until eventually she managed to pursue Islamic education at home with a tutor. She was later joined by some other girls from her neighbourhood, which made it a less isolating experience.

“I do attend mosques and Muslims spaces where I can,” Aisha said, but it’s not always ideal. She has a hearing impairment and needs to be able to lipread, which she can’t do from behind a partition in the women’s side. While Aisha tries to watch lectures online, she said “I do miss being part of the environment and seeing people”.

Natalie, a convert to Islam from California, told me her experience with her local mosque and how this impacted her journey. Following the death of her father, Natalie hoped to find a strong community, but she found it difficult to grapple with certain practices.

 “I was not content to watch discourse happen from behind a curtain. I wanted to engage other members of my community and examine [their] reasoning,” she said.

As someone who had previously expressed herself through music, Natalie also struggled to accept that women can’t recite the Quran in public. She ultimately faced a lot of judgment for either not being ‘correct’ in her practice or being ‘too performative’.

She eventually disengaged from her local mosque. Meanwhile she did find some comfort in spaces such as the Women’s Mosque of America in LA and in interactions with other Muslim women.

Regarding her local mosque, she said “I can't blame them for the current broken state of my iman, but if the purpose of a mosque is to spiritually uplift the members of its community you could say objectively that they failed at fulfilling it”.

A Response to “Sister, It’s Better for You to Pray at Home.” - @rumaysah_ https://t.co/OnJIiIzOZZ pic.twitter.com/w0MqJnzUuS

— A M A L I A H (@Amaliah_Tweets) April 12, 2021

Women seeking support from mosques for certain issues or vulnerable groups, such as survivors of domestic abuse, have also faced challenges in the past and continue to do so. Huda, a VAWG advocate from London, and Fatima, an active community member from Wisconsin, share similar experiences despite their geographical distance.

Huda found that rather than the Imams, it was the administrators and executive leadership, all of them male, that created obstacles and were the most resistant to change.

These administrators were mostly working professionals who Huda described as “career politicians” and “dinosaurs”. She felt conflicted when working in these spaces, having to hide her feminism and being extremely conscious of her appearance and demeanour. “I invisibilised myself, because it felt safer” she said. “But then,” she added, “you think to yourself, ‘Why should I have to hide?’”.

Fatima described similar resistance from male leadership while working for an educational non-profit organisation for Muslim women. She told me about an incident where she wanted to fundraise for the organisation to start a domestic violence (DV) shelter, as women from the community would contact her for support and she would need to signpost them elsewhere.

“I was told that starting a Muslim DV shelter would ‘fuel islamophobia’ and was not allowed to continue planning for the project,” she recounted.

To add insult to injury, a couple of years later the same non-profit applied for grant funding to start a Muslim women’s DV shelter, but only after the local news reported the murder of a Muslim woman and her children by her husband. In response to the news, the same manager who had shut down Fatima’s project made a public statement against DV. Fatima said, “It was infuriating and heartbreaking to me that the main concern was the perception of non-Muslims, and not that women of our community were begging for help for years and were ostracised or actively ignored”.

Clearly in some cases, this led to the death of women and children in the community – an egregious failure of leadership.

The largest mosque in the area also turned away women seeking nominal funds or support to escape DV. According to Fatima, this is a mosque that receives more than $1 million in donations annually.

The same mosque also turned away homeless people at its doorstep, refused to address anti-blackness in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, and failed to provide consistent support to Muslim refugees in the area.

As the mosque fails to address the needs of vulnerable congregants, “women in the community organise outside of the mainstream Muslim spaces to pool their resources and assist those in need,” Fatima said.

These stories provide a snapshot of the relentless challenges countless Muslim women have faced in dealing with mosques and Muslim organisations. On the one hand, their faith gives them the impetus to carry on lifting the burden of community service and advocacy. But on the other, the male-centric leadership in their communities, while seemingly preoccupied with egos and politicking, continues to hold them back.

When these women will get to rest is anyone’s guess. But one thing is for certain: the onus is on the men to acknowledge their privilege in Muslim communities and Muslim spaces, and to use this privilege to share the women’s burden.

Men need to start paying attention to the challenges women face; they need to speak out, even when they aren’t affected. Inclusivity, accessibility, community service and social justice are principles that require commitment from all Muslims. It’s really time that all Muslims started acting like this is the case.

Afroze Fatima Zaidi is a writer, editor and journalist. She has a background in academia and writing for online platforms.

Follow her on Twitter: @afrozefz.

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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.