Daughters of Hajar

Daughters of Hajar

On an overcast June day, eight Muslim women from across the nation marched through the front door of our local mosque here in Morgantown and into the main sanctuary. Cultural traditions and mosque policy had dictated that women enter through a back door and pray in a secluded balcony. It was a victorious day with the new organization employing a calculated strategy to deflect typical efforts used to marginalize and dismiss protest action.

The women had come together here to start a national Muslim feminist organization, the Daughters of Hajar. The march on the local mosque was their first action in a planned national campaign to reclaim rights Islam gave women in the 7^th century.

Daughters of Hajar came together behind the spirit of Hajar, or Hagar in Biblical and Jewish histories, a strong-willed woman who was the historical mother of Islam. It is dedicated to the empowerment of Muslim women and girls. As part of a broader agenda, the organization laid the groundwork for a national "Take Back Your Mosque" campaign with a mosque bill of rights for women.

The founders are strong women who follow in the footsteps of Hajar as longtime activists in the Muslim world: in New Jersey, Nabeelah Abdul-Ghafur, a community leader and poet; in Atlanta, her daughter, Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur, editor of a forthcoming book about the new generation of American Muslim women; in San Francisco, Samina Ali, author of Madras on Rainy Days, a novel; in New York, Sarah Eltantawi, an activist and frequent media contributor on Fox, CNN, and other networks; in Fayetteville, Ark., Mohja Kahf, associate professor of literature at the University of Arkansas and author of Western Representations of the Muslim Woman; in Morgantown, my mother, Sajida Nomani, a retired entrepreneur and president of Morgantown Muslims & Friends; and me, a former Wall Street Journal reporter and author of the forthcoming Standing Alone in Mecca.

Last November, my mother and I had been greeted with verbal harassment when we dared to pray in the main hall for the first time in the predawn morning of the 11^th day of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. After weeks of internally trying to get the mosque board to reverse its policy, we protested the policy publicly and continued our acts of non-violent civil disobedience. Without access to the main hall, women didn’t have access to important community meetings, the mosque library or announcements.

The situation in Morgantown underscores the greater challenges in bringing equity to other mosques. Leaders and members of the mosque banded together to isolate me as a troublemaker, convincing even women sympathetic to the issue of gender inequity to join their ranks. To placate women’s concerns, mosque leaders supported the election of the first woman to the mosque’s management committee, and mosque leaders gave an old house to women of the community to use as their own mosque.

Dr. Kahf, a leader in the Muslim community, said, "The situation in Morgantown relates to larger patterns of discrimination against women. The isolation of Asra and the way they pulled other potentially supportive women away from her is a classic pattern in these situations. So is diluting the whole issue until the original initiator of the request gets lost under self-doubts and confusion. Their attempt to deflect the issue by offering crumb concessions to women is classic too. We have knowledge of these patterns and came together to act to stop them from taking their usual course."

The day before our march, the mosque leadership told the Associated Press that women could enter through the front door and pray in the main hall (though they have not yet made the policy public at the mosque). The issue is far-reaching. According to a recent national survey of mosques by a group of Muslim organizations, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights group, about two of three mosques require women to pray behind a curtain, wall or barrier, and one of three mosques don’t allow women on the board.

Ms. Ali grew up in Minneapolis, MN, and attended the Islamic Center of Minnesota in Fridely, MN, where she confronted the inequity women experience in many mosques. "The prayer room for women in the mosque was as bad as I have seen in other places. We had a small bedroom in the rear of the mosque where 50 of us would try to squeeze in, no air conditioning, no air movement," she says. "The men had a large, open space up front that was so big it never was filled to capacity. However if some of the women came out and tried to pray in that area, they were looked down upon. It was best to stay in the cage. And that is what they want: to keep women in the cage. Now, through Daughters of Hajar, we are breaking those bars."

In Atlanta, Ms. Abdul-Ghafur has found a mosque in which women have active participation, but remembers her experience entering the Islamic Center in Washington, D.C., on Massachusetts Avenue. "It was breathtaking," she said. The richly-colored carpet, the breezy space and multi-tiered designs common to Islamic art and architecture struck her. "’Ahhh,’ I thought. I could look up and just meditate on the infinite nature of God," she recalls. Just then, a man told her she was in the wrong section and pointed her to the "sister’s section." "I headed for the sister’s section and was utterly dismayed to see that the sister’s section was a shack made of basic building materials literally leaned up against the outside of the mosque," she says.

That day was a defining moment for her. "Every time I see a photo of the President of the United States or some other dignitary visiting this mosque I remember the feeling of disempowerment I felt that day. I stand for transformation of the American Muslim community such that we affirm the Qur’anic teaching that men and women are equal and equally charged with attaining the highest level of God-consciousness."

News about the march in Morgantown and the organization of the Daughters of Hajar has swept through the Muslim community and, while there are detractors, the action clearly responds to a much-ignored issue. "Three cheers for the Daughters of Hajar," a Muslim woman wrote on the Internet.

- Asra Q. Nomani