What It Means - Day 209

My excellent friend and colleague Trish snapped this picture from the women's section at the back of the mosque in Pemba. The folks at the mosque could not have been kinder to us, so I do feel more than a bit using them as an example of a far broader problem, but the picture is simply too representative not to use.

In this blog stream, and more generally in the blog itself, I've always tried to be true to myself. Doubtless, I've shined myself up a bit, either consciously or unconsciously. As Freeland reminds us in her Portraits & Persons, the hero of your autobiography is a fictional person. However, I do try to be honest, and this plays itself out in this year of talking about faith is an effort to be honest when there are things about my faith which I simply don't agree. I'm not vain enough to claim, or even assume, that I have the definitively correct answer, but I am also not afraid to speak up when I think when I stand in opposition, even when I'm in the small minority. One of the areas where I routinely find myself out of step is my firm belief that men and women should pray together. Islam, like all religions, has many aspects which are portrayed as foundational parts of the faith which are actually merely cultural or have historical roots lost in the mists of time. The separation of men and women in the mosques have much more to do with traditional cultural legacies from patriarchal parts of the world and the Prophet's own complex family life than any valid spiritual reason. I'll talk more specifically about this issue later. If a desire to respect a woman's modesty becomes a justification for her to be further treated as a second class citizen, especially religiously, then we need to rethink the whole thing. And, yes, I know that I am in the minority on this front, but that's never stopped me in the past (as one of my brothers said, knowingly but also patiently, "you're just the brother who asks all the questions."). Check out the Twitter feed @SideEntrance which shares the experiences of women in mosques around the world; I retweet all of her photos and stories.