Islam Discovers the Problem With Converting American Women

The conversion of Americans over to islam has long been a goal of the islamists involved in the "Soft Jihad" against this country but now, it appears that the islamists overlooked something when converting American women - apparently, some of those American women don't care too much for the third class role of women in the realm of islam. This story, from the Wall Street Journal, details how a small faction of American women are revolting against the practice of segregating women from males inside of mosques at prayer time.

From the article:

Muslim feminists call it the "penalty box." It's the area of a mosque where women, segregated from the men, pray. In Islam, prayer is required five times a day and Muslims often pray in congregation at mosques. During these prayers, women usually are partitioned off in a separate room or behind a curtain, "like naughty children," one Muslim woman tells me, while men pray in a grand main hall.

One Muslim, Fatima Thompson, describes the penalty box at her mosque in Maryland as an overheated, dark back room. Another Muslim woman, Asra Nomani, tells me that at a major Washington D.C. mosque, the female section was in a trailer, where the voice of the imam (the prayer leader) came from a crackling speaker. "It was so humiliating I never went back," says Ms. Nomani, a former reporter for the Journal.

Now these Muslim feminists have had enough. Hoping to reform Islam by making it more women-friendly, Ms. Thompson—an American convert to Islam—has organized several "pray-ins" at mosques in the D.C. area. These include the Islamic Center of Washington and the Dar Al-Hijra Islamic Center in Falls Church, Va., a mosque attended by several of the 9/11 hijackers and the Fort Hood mass killer Maj. Nidal Hasan. Ms. Thompson's next pray-in target is a mosque in Washington.

As for these American women who have converted to islam, one has to wonder about their intelligence on many levels but you can't tell me they join this moongod ideology without a clue about islam's treatment of women - no bloody way. This is like a person joining the military and then complaining because they don't like not being able to sleep in until noon.

But, in the end, the islamists will find many aspects of American culture that just don't mix well with their Dark Ages practices - these small revolt by the women is only a symptom of what will eventually work to tear at the seems of islam in this country, and one of the things I look forward to is the eventual exiting of islam by hundreds of these converts. They aren't going to fear the fatwa fate of apostates in other countries and once they are out of islam, there's going to be story after story of the evils, the hilarity and the quircks of following the pedophile prophet.

Islamic Feminists Storm Some Barricades


Muslim feminists call it the "penalty box." It's the area of a mosque where women, segregated from the men, pray. In Islam, prayer is required five times a day and Muslims often pray in congregation at mosques. During these prayers, women usually are partitioned off in a separate room or behind a curtain, "like naughty children," one Muslim woman tells me, while men pray in a grand main hall.

One Muslim, Fatima Thompson, describes the penalty box at her mosque in Maryland as an overheated, dark back room. Another Muslim woman, Asra Nomani, tells me that at a major Washington D.C. mosque, the female section was in a trailer, where the voice of the imam (the prayer leader) came from a crackling speaker. "It was so humiliating I never went back," says Ms. Nomani, a former reporter for the Journal.

Now these Muslim feminists have had enough. Hoping to reform Islam by making it more women-friendly, Ms. Thompson—an American convert to Islam—has organized several "pray-ins" at mosques in the D.C. area. These include the Islamic Center of Washington and the Dar Al-Hijra Islamic Center in Falls Church, Va., a mosque attended by several of the 9/11 hijackers and the Fort Hood mass killer Maj. Nidal Hasan. Ms. Thompson's next pray-in target is a mosque in Washington.

Like the civil rights activists of the 1960s, whose "sit-ins" were part of a movement that ended racial segregation, Ms. Thompson hopes her peaceful pray-ins will help initiate a movement that ends overt sexism in Islam, despite the conventional wisdom that regards Islam and feminism as anathema. Her efforts come at a time when, as of a 2001 study, 66% of American mosques segregate men from women during prayer, an increase of 14% from 1994.

During the pray-ins, Ms. Nomani, Ms. Thompson, and several other women walk through the front door of the mosque—many require women to enter through a side or back door—and into the main hall. They then seat themselves behind the rows of men to pray.

The Muslim men get rattled. Ms. Nomani remembers one bearded man who "furrow[ed] his brows and scream[ed]… 'Sisters go over there!'"—indicating the dreaded penalty box. Ms. Nomani humorously refers to him as the mosque's "bouncer." At one pray-in, the women didn't budge when they were asked to move, and the service began with them praying with the men.

Though neither Ms. Thompson nor Ms. Nomani has been arrested, say, for trespassing, Ms. Nomani—who has been fighting sexism at her mosque in West Virginia for seven years—says she has received several death threats. Such violence-oriented intolerance, which in the West has become the public image of Islam, seems irreconcilably at odds with the moderate feminism of the pray-in group.

While people like Ms. Nomani work for reform, other women question whether it is possible. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali author of "Infidel" and a former-Muslim-turned-atheist, agrees with the Islamic feminists that a mosque is "an island of gender apartheid." To her, however, such practices represent Islam's essential sexism. Being a Muslim and a feminist, she told me, are inherently contradictory.

For her bold denunciations of Islam, Ms. Hirsi Ali lives under constant threats against her life by Muslim fanatics. But anyone who questions, even from within the faith, risks trouble, she says. "A single attempt to change things, to innovate, invites accusations of blasphemy" she notes, "because you're considered to be someone putting [yourself] on Allah's [God's] throne." Islam means submission. Muslims must submit to the Quran's God, not change him.

Yet, nowhere in the Quran does it say that women and men should be segregated during prayer. The Hadith, a large body of holy Islamic texts chronicling the life and attributed sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, notes that for women at prayer, the "best rows are the last rows." And even then, some scholars, like UCLA's Islamic law expert Khaled Abou El Fadl, don't see this as an admonition. After all, in the seventh century, at the Prophet's mosque, women did not pray behind a partition. And today in Islam's holiest spot, Mecca, women and men can pray side-by-side.

Still, there is an undeniable sexism that gnaws away at many Muslim communities—communities that center around the social space of the mosques. Whether the pray-in movement will encourage mosques to grant women more rights is yet to be determined. Until then, Ms. Thompson and Ms. Nomani are initiating a much-needed debate about the status of women in Islam.