It was not until the debate with my good friend Iqbal, which acted as an eye opener for me and probably the force that prompted me to seriously consider reading the Glorious Quran, before I really consider write something over the issue. Till that time, Holy Quran was merely a book of artistic value for me. But once after reading the book I am moved by the lyrical beauty of the verses of this brilliant book, encapsulating the insightful details that God wants us to know..simply known as revelations.
Coming back to the argument..the initial spark ..the debate. My good friend was of the opinion that women’s are treated as secondary being by all the religions. I detested his view from the perspective of a person believing in the inherent goodness of teachings of all religions. I citied many examples from literature found in other holy books. Finally our argument narrowed down and it was getting more refined. I asked him “Do Muslim women go to mosques??”
And that left him thinking. He said the views differs some goes and some don’t. In fact there is no unanimity amongst our community on this matter. Long uninterrupted silence followed after his concluding remark.
I think it set him thinking and as far as I was concerned something stirred inside me. It was quiet natural for the enquirer inside me to set on a lonesome journey to quench my thirst for knowledge. Especially I sensed it as my duty to reinstate about the stress laid on the gender equality emphasized in Holy Quran: About God entitling on each humanbeing equal mercy and also how he deters from differentiating humanbeings based on their gender, because for him all his creations are equal.
I remember reading John Green. John Green writes in a piece published forOpposing View that while many female Muslims “attend mosques throughout much of Islam [...] not all Muslims agree that women should be present in communal worship, and even mosques that accept the practice often treat women differently from men.” Careful to point out that the Quran “emphasize[s] equality and condemn[s] keeping people away from communal worship,” Green also discusses the “techniques” used by some mosques to segregate men from women — creating separate prayer areas or seating arrangements — and others that even go so far as to restrict female attendance altogether. Citing Islamic scholar Khaled Abou el Fadl, Green writes,
[A] number of fundamentalist leaders have banned or discouraged women from going to mosques, arguing that their presence creates sexual temptation for men and citing disputed hadith that say a woman's place for prayer is in the home. Among conservative Islamic leaders who do not go that far, it is nonetheless common to encounter such rules as a requirement that women arrive through a separate entrance or a ban on women attending mosques when they are menstruating.
While seating arrangements and attendance restrictions undoubtedly serve as a barrier to some Muslim women, Green writes that many progressive Muslims have “challenged the legitimacy of such practices… [and] are also open to having women lead services in mosques.”
It is one of the sorrowful state that One of the most progressive religious book like Glorious Quran is being misinterpreted, that book which for generations have provided guidance to thousands of believers to prepare them; to make us mortals stand with dignity before the God..the most Merciful and the most Gracious on the day of our Judgment. Some followers of Islam shun understanding the true spirit of the words sent to us via holy messenger. It is really a point to retrospect and ponder.
To conclude I quote the last verse from Sura LXVI (Tahrim)
And Mary the daughter
Of Imran, who guarded
Her chastity; and We breathed into (herbody)
Of our spirit; and she testified to the truth
Of the words of her Lord
And of his Revelations,
And was one of the
Devout(servants)
Mary had true faith and testified her faith in the prophet Jesus and in his revelation as well as in the revelations which he came to confirm (and to foreshadow). She was of the company of Devout of all ages. The fact that Qanitim (devout) is not used here in the feminine gender but implies that the highest spiritual dignity is independent of sex. And so we close the lesson of this Sura that while sex is a fact of our physical existence, the sexes should act in harmony and co-operation for in the highest of spiritual matters We all are One. We made her and her son a Sign for all people verily this Brotherhood of yours is a single Brotherhood and I am your Lord and Cherisher: therefore serve Me and no other.
My belief has strengthened.. that men has to raise above the mundane way thinking ..of categorsing souls in to genders and imposing stereotypic roles based on that. And also I beg to differ from the views and belief of those few who live in the conviction that just because they are born as man they possess superior qualities and hence it is their natural right to dictate terms for those who are termed as inferior as per their findings. At least such thinkers should not hide behind the veil of religion to propagate their subjective viewpoint. I am sure these views are not to the liking of God for whom all of his creations are one.
So I plead to all my fellow friends to ponder upon the issue and get our thinking spiritually corrected, and thus prevent the decaying of a great inheritance which has been passed to us.
