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Plans for UK’s first women-led mosque

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Muslim Women's Council, women's mosque, BradfordMosques in the UK ‘are male-dominated, patriarchal spaces’.

The Muslim Women’s Council (MWC) has begun consultation on plans to create the UK’s first women-led mosque.

Speaking at the ‘Daughters of Eve’ conference earlier this month, the Muslim Women’s Council’s chief executive Bana Gora said the organisation planned to “build a mosque for women, and run by women”.

The first of its kind in the UK, the project follows a MWC “audit” of mosques.

In the Daughters of Eve announcement, published on the MWC website, the organisation said: “Muslim women have been marginalised for many decades by mosques in the UK, which are male-dominated, patriarchal spaces.”

The MWC says its plan is based on the core value of inclusivity, and the vision of creating a “safe space for all women”.

This would encompass an all-inclusive space for worship, a safe space where women’s issues can be discussed, discussion/debate space, an Islamic divorce service, a bereavement service, a legal advice service, a parenting advice service, feeding the homeless and above all a spiritual retreat and sanctuary.

Among the problems identified by the MWC audit of local mosques, Gora said women’s representation on governing bodies was currently “non-existent”.

She also described the continued use of segregated spaces as “dated and unwelcoming”, and said the current treatment of women in mosques undermines the belief that men and women are “spiritual equals”.

“[We] found that the services offered by mosques were not always adequate for women,” Gora said. “Rather than just complain, we decided to do something about it.”

The Muslim Women’s Council was itself formed following conversations with Muslim women in the northern UK city of Bradford, which is also the planned location for the new mosque.

The “alienation” and unequal treatment of women, MWC has said, has far-reaching consequences, particularly for young Muslims who may feel their religion is “no longer relevant” or who are “going to extremes”.

This sentiment has recently been echoed by former crown prosecutor Nazir Afzal. In a report for the BBC, Afzal highlighted the key role played by Muslim women’s groups in combating radicalisation.

The MWC will now commence consultations with Islamic scholars and experts from Bradford, elsewhere in the UK and further afield.

If successful, Gora has said she hopes to provide “a good practice guide of how mosques should be providing space for women – a sort of prototype of what mosques should be doing.”

The MWC project follows the opening of the US’s first women-only mosque in Los Angeles, in February this year. There is a long tradition of women’s mosques, or nüsi, in China.

And a decade ago Dr Amina Wadud made waves when she led Friday prayers for a mixed-gender congregation.

In general, however, there is little precedent for women leading mixed congregations, and the MWC has also said it disagrees with this idea.

The organisation now faces the challenge of balancing its vision of empowering women with its goal of avoiding divisiveness; moving the UK’s Islamic communities forward while deciding which religious practices are too deeply embedded to challenge – yet.

  1. JBiscuits says:

    It’s a step in the right direction! Still segregated but being entirely women-led seems an enormous step bearing in mind that female-led churches is a recent and still controversial matter in the Anglican church, let alone other Christian denominations.

  2. Yaqub Mughal says:

    I am pleased to hear that women are coming forward to lead in the mosque. Good news. Women’s will do much better job than men
    I congratulate those women who have taken the courage to come forward to deliver better services for the society

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