The argument between the Indian “Muslim feminist” Asra Q. Nomani and her local mosque committee in Morgantown, WV, has somehow made it onto the BBC’s news website: “US Muslim woman defies hardliners”. The pictures on this report undermine any claim Nomani might have to be in a position to challenge Muslim ulama: for one thing, she does not even dress like a Muslim woman. According to this report, her dispute with the local “mullahs” comes from her entering the mosque through the front door and praying alongside the men, which has apparently started “heated discussions” in the US Muslim community. There is invariably more room in mosques for men than women, and for many good reasons. According to the majority of scholars, the Friday communal prayer is compulsory on men, but not on women. According to one view in the Hanafi school, it is not compulsory on anyone except in a city where the hudood have been established - which makes sense, as otherwise a small group of elderly men could establish the Friday prayer at a time convenient to them, and inconvenient to those who have to earn a living. So there is no real need for women to attend Friday prayers.

The second reason is that women are encouraged not to attend the mosque for other prayers. Mosques should, of course, provide praying room for women. There are all manner of reasons why a woman might want to pray in one - if it is difficult to pray at home (due to being a convert in a hostile family, for example), or if her home is far away from the mosque, and she is near to the mosque. That said, it has always been understood that it is better for a woman to pray as privately as possible. The hadeeth are abundantly clear on this issue.

Third, when women do pray in the communal prayer, they pray behind the men, not alongside them. There is no disagreement of opinion on this.

There are other false arguments alluded to in the BBC’s report. In the Morgantown mosque, women are not allowed to give announcements, because “a woman’s voice - even raised in prayer - is an instrument of sexual provocation to men”. Which is true: women are not allowed to entertain men with their voices. When they speak to men outside their families, they speak plainly. The mosque is quite right to reserve the microphone for men, or rather, a selected handful of men. Nomani would find the situation the same in every properly-run mosque anywhere in the Muslim world. Another false argument is that “Muslim women in California, Minnesota and Maryland are against the practice of ‘herding’ women in small rooms like sheep where much of the time they cannot hear the preacher”. This would be a genuine argument if it were not coming from a woman who does not wear hijab, and claims in any case that the sermons are hate-filled. On top of this, why does she only mention these three states? If there were sermons or teaching worth hearing in Georgia, New York or Oregon, women would want to hear them. Then again, only people willing to obey Allah and His Messenger (sall’ Allahu ‘alaihi wa sallam) are likely to benefit from them. This report says that Nomani and six other women are behind this campaign, which demonstrates that she is out of step with other Muslim women. In fact, schemes like LightStudy bring together Muslims in western countries to impart valuable knowledge, and they do not exclude women, but nor do they challenge the Islamic rules on interaction between men and women. We certainly don’t need the likes of Nomani and her supporters at the “liberal Muslim” websites we all know about being seen as the defenders of women’s rights in Islam.

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