From Reuters:
RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi clerics want to impose restrictions on women praying at Islam's holiest shrine in Mecca, one of the few places where male and female worshippers can intermingle.
But women activists in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of the religion where a strict version of Islam is state orthodoxy, say the idea is discriminatory and have vowed to oppose it.
At present, women can pray in the immediate vicinity of the Kaaba, a cube-shaped structure inside the mosque which pilgrims walk around seven times during the haj pilgrimage according to ancient rites established by Prophet Mohammad.
Plans by the all-male committee overseeing the holy sites would place women in a distant section of the mosque while men would still be able to pray in the key space.
"The area is very small and so crowded. So we decided to get women out of the 'sahn' (Kaaba area) to a better place where they can see the Kaaba and have more space," said Osama al-Bar, head of the Institute for Haj Research.
"Some women thought it wasn't good, but from our point of view it will be better for them ... We can sit with them and explain to them what the decision is (about)," he said. The decision is not final and could be reversed, he added.
Pushing and shoving is common in the tight space around the Kaaba where thousands of pilgrims crowd during the haj season.
The plans are likely to provoke a furore among Muslim women in countries whose Islamic traditions are more liberal than Saudi Arabia.
Ordinary Muslims say it as a basic right to be able to pray as close as possible to the Kaaba which Islam regards as the place where God's presence is most felt on Earth. It is towards the Kaaba that Muslims around the world turn when praying.
"Both men and women have the right to pray in the 'House of God'. Men have no right to take it away," said Suhaila Hammad, Saudi woman member of a body of world Muslim scholars.
"Men and women mix when they circumambulate the Kaaba, so do they want to make us do that somewhere else too?" she asked. "This is discrimination against women."
Nothing new. For example, Bukhari 001.006.301:
Once Allah's Apostle went out to the Musalla (to offer the prayer) o 'Id-al-Adha or Al-Fitr prayer. Then he passed by the women and said, "O women! Give alms, as I have seen that the majority of the dwellers of Hell-fire were you (women)." They asked, "Why is it so, O Allah's Apostle ?" He replied, "You curse frequently and are ungrateful to your husbands. I have not seen anyone more deficient in intelligence and religion than you. A cautious sensible man could be led astray by some of you." The women asked, "O Allah's Apostle! What is deficient in our intelligence and religion?" He said, "Is not the evidence of two women equal to the witness of one man?" They replied in the affirmative. He said, "This is the deficiency in her intelligence. Isn't it true that a woman can neither pray nor fast during her menses?" The women replied in the affirmative. He said, "This is the deficiency in her religion."
Surely this contributes to the rationale for freeing up space that would otherwise be taken up by women in the heart of the Grand Mosque.
The Grand Mosque is one of the few places where men and women can pray together in Islam although technically there are separate spaces for each gender throughout the vast complex.
Religious police charged with imposing order according to Saudi Arabia's austere Wahhabi brand of Islam often harass women who decide to pray outside the prescribed areas.
Historian Hatoun al-Fassi said the move to restrict women's prayer in the mosque would be a first in Islamic history.
"Perhaps they want women to disappear from any public prayer area and when it comes to the holy mosques that's their ultimate aim," she said, adding the religious authorities recently restricted women's access at the Prophet's tomb in Medina.
Perhaps.
"From our point of view it will be better for them"
Ah. The eternal patriarchal know-how. Allah knows best! (And how to know that? Anyone talked with him lately? He's fickle, you know. He could have saved anyone he chose to; it's just that he's a 'playa'.)
"Sit and explain to them"
Not consult. Not debate. Never that. The word of the 'Prophet' is absolute. And absolutely to be interpreted by the relevant islamic authority - that is, he who is strongest or has the most recourse to violence or other pressure.
It makes one wonder what the 'submission' of islam really is to. Ah well. Best not to ask. Ignorance is best, sayeth the Quran. Though it be not necessarily bliss.
Prophet Geoff
Follow up: most dangerous job in the world?
Not crab fisherman.
"Women's activist in Saudi Arabia". (see above)
This ought to be ANOTHER wake up call for muslim women to abandon islam. As I've stated several times, "why would a woman stay in a religion that only respects one half of it's followers, and the half it respects, isn't yours".
Maybe they will fight this out and win. Or maybe they will be beat to death. Girls, islam does NOT respect you.
We need more rulings like this. Allah hates muslims most of the time, but always if they have vaginas - those he consigns to Hell. Muslim women are deficient in intelligence, faith and loyalty to their husbands, Muhammed said. He said it more than once too. It must be true. Those women who don't know their place and don't just lie down and take what's coming ( literally and figuratively ) need to be killed by the Ummah. It is through punishment that the lives of the muslims are secured. Isn't that the obvious truth?
We need more repression and discrimination from the leaders of Islam. The more pressure we put on the whole belief system and those who support it, the more we'll see this type of thing.
It helps the free world when this sort of thing keeps coming from the Mullahs, imams and Ayatollas...
They should push for that Sharia law in the UK that says a women's testemony in court is half that of a man's.
I might support that one...at least it could put Cherie Blair out of a job.
Well there ya go, the difference between Christian women and muslim women.
Were any men to try and pull this crap at my Lutheran Free church they would find themselves hanging upside down from the basement ceiling, naked flogged and coated with scalding tater-tot hotdish (Im from Minnesota).
My sincere hope is that one fine day the women of islam find themselves a warrior woman willing to put herself square in the middle of the fight and take back their human rights.
First Class representation of Womens Rights in Islam.
Keep em locked up away from temptation and sin. Chained to the Bed awaiting his Masters pleasure, fetch wood carry water...bring up the babies , fetch wood carry water....feed the babies. Yup these Mullahs sure know how to put a women in her place......
And they will explain this so they understand ...no room for error..any gross breaches will be dealt with
severely .....fetch stick carry bruises.
Yup Islam ....you sure treat your Mothers , wives and daughters with reverence and respect....provided ...yeah you got it ...they fetch wood , carry water !!
The Muslims know what they are doing. They understand the insane, beastly male libido of the Arab Muslim. They are protecting the women from the men.
The best protection would be to obliteration this satanic cult of death.
Funny that Islam is so anti female, perhaps not seeing that there is a of of speculation that theri "prophet" Mohammed was bisexual!
US infidel has an interesting point - though I hesitate to generalize, I recently saw a documentary on the forced imposition of the burkha/veil in islamic countries (suitably sympathetic, to this imposition, of course, of course - the narrator spoke lovingly of the "many benefits of the veil") and a Pakistan Christian woman that they interviewed spoke unreservedly about the kind of harassment experienced by those that go without the veil - "Oh, yes. Absolutely" was her comment, or somesuch.
So the problem is the males. Isn't it generally males that support fascism the most? Is it not we XYers that end up most easily on the side of the devils, rather than the angels? Seems about right. Not quite a truism, maybe.
Though, to be fair, namby-pamby moral equivalence is as bad - and if you think that POV biased...well, hell: I'm male. Sue me.
But you'll have to sue Allah, because I'm only:
Prophet Geoff
Bacon - I disagree on the "warrior woman" prospect, for the same reason that I doubt completely that women can ever form this mythical "body of reformation" for islam.
It's a fine game to talk about how women could "rise up" and "deny services" etc etc. But Mohammed simply borrowed a solution already in existence around that period: physical punishment. Few can stand up forever to that, nor to eternal emotional segregation.
Or in other words: So long as muslim men have arms, hands and sticks, there can never, ultimately, be freedom.
Prophet Geoff
"At present, women can pray in the immediate vicinity of the Kaaba, a cube-shaped structure inside the mosque which pilgrims walk around seven times during the haj pilgrimage according to ancient rites established by Prophet Mohammad."
Just as a point of fact, the haj preceded Mohammad; like many other facets of Islam, it was co-opted and adapted for his purposes.
Geoff,
Thats why I hope for a warrior or somesuch strong-willed woman. I agree that the males will continue to use physical punishment to keep their ladies in line, but how might they react were the women to fight back.
The myth of the muslim fighter is built on their subjugation of females, they are used to others not returning the violence.
Im not saying such an uprising would be easy, cheap or non-violent, but then you have to ask yourself how many men would condone the resultant savage attacks on their own wives and daughters by other men were such a thing to happen.
Is this revolution possible? Sure. Probable? Nein, but I can still hope. Other subjugated people have thrown off the yoke of violent masters, why not muslim women?
But Mohammedan women really are less intelligent than the men!
Why else would they put up with this crap for so long?
"...in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of the religion where a strict version of Islam is...
A strict version?
Well, if I were to revert, I certainly wouldn't want to sign up for the blood and guts version.
It'd be the Irshad Manji/Muhammad Ali/Cat Stevens version for me.
You know, the 'moderate' version.
Well, others may well have thrown off violent masters - but such revolutions constitute (in the ultimate end) physical force. This is something that islamic women as a body are not able to threaten their oppressors with, for Sura 4: 34 could simply be applied - and froth, and lather, and repeat, and so on. There are no Maternal Minutewomen, no Daughters of the Independent Islamic Revolution.
I think the state of islam is, as far as female self-determination goes, permanent. Sticks, chastizing, beating, threats, divorce, impoverishment, torture, 'morality squads' and ultimately honour killings and beheadings - islam is a One-Stop Oppression Warehouse for the suppression of women's rights. Not to mention those women that collude in it - who, for example, held down the woman who recently had her throat slit in England? Her aunts and mother.
Not only do the foxes guard the henhouse, but the hens are hard at work and their beaks are bloody.
Prophet Geoff
hmmm... This may have a positive side effect. If women cannot go to Saudia Arabia to peform their religious obligations, maybe they will boycott the haj until Saudi Arabia changes its mind, thus depriving the them of financial resources that they use to wage jihad.
It that wishful thinking or what?
According to ole' mo, women are going to hell anyway. So sad really. Life in Hell on earth...life in Hell in the afterlife.
Maybe the all male committee that oversees the holy(?) places think the women figured out the whole farce -
"At present, women can pray in the immediate vicinity of the Kaaba, a cube-shaped structure inside the mosque which pilgrims walk around seven times during the haj pilgrimage according to ancient rites established by Prophet Mohammad."
The farce - the men are all praying to a stupid meteorite that fell on that spot, they are not praying to any god or anything, just a stupid rock!