Woman Leads Friday Sermon/Prayers
Published by Haseeb March 19th, 2005 in Current News, Islam
So im sure you all heard about yesterday’s infamous jummah prayer in Manhattan where a Dr. Amina Wadud (a woman) gave khutbah and led the salat. As far as the legality of this, it is entirely forbidden, and for a detailed explanation on why this is so I would like to refer you to the following link from sunnipath.com:
Audio: Women Leading Prayers and the Way of the Messenger of Allah 
(peace and blessings be upon him)
I think this is quite appalling that we reached this level, but this is the direction the world is heading. Each successive generation following the Prophet’s 
is only getting further corrupted and moving more astray. There is no myth of progression in Islam. Things generally will not get better, and will only get worse. This is just a sign of this regression, and people will always have differing views on everything. At least it is comforting to know that NO masjid or islamic center in the NY area would agree to hold this prayer in their masjid and it has been condemned by virtually everyone, except from a few progressive ultra-liberal feminist people who simply put, dont understand that islamic traditional world view. This has nothing to do with women’s equality or women’s rights, and to think that is being very foolish. How can one go against 1400+ years of tradtion like this? Islam is a deen and sets the boundaries for a complete way of life. Man and woman were created differently because they have different roles. One is not higher or superior that the other, just different! What’s wrong with that?
33 Responses to “Woman Leads Friday Sermon/Prayers”
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Pingback on Nov 26th, 2007 at 11:56 pm
please note the Mufti of Egypt has come out in support of women lead prayer: http://www.alarabiya.net/Article.aspx?v=11294
he says if the community where you are wants it then its fine.
I dont want to argue this issue. To each his own; for any given issue you will be able to find a view permitting basically all the different stances on it.
And God knows best.
perhaps you should have said that in your original entry “to each his[or her] own” rather than “it is entirely forbidden.”
It is forbidden in all the major schools of Islamic thought.
- by the way do u know me?
First of all it’s his blog and he can name it whatever he wants. Second, he’s right. It is completely forbidden. That mufti can support it as much as he wants, the Quran doesn’t, the Prophet (saw) didn’t, and Islam doesn’t. No mufti has authority higher than that. Islam prescribes specific gender roles for a reason and it’s a shame that some people feel the need to transgress those boundaries. I’m a girl btw, just in case anyone’s wondering.
admin, nope i don’t know you.
if the mufti says its cool, you better believe the Quran doesn’t say anything about it. you can bet the house on that one.
as for the girl, some slaves didn’t want to be free either.
funny how people find one obsure source and stick to it, in my opinion islam doesn’t work this way, in islam you’re supposed to do the research and then come to a conclusion, not arrive at a conclusion and look for any proof thats complacent w/ your conclusion. Furthermore, crossfader, you should really do some research on islamic law. There are certain levels and ranks of interpretation in islam… it is said that an opinion against the ‘ijma (or consensus) of the scholars isn’t acceptable whatsoever.
Let me get this straight. Are you implying that I need to be liberated from the role Islam prescribes for me? Just out of curiousity, are you Muslim? I assume you are and in that case, are you saying that Allah
(swt) in His infinite wisdom and mercy put me, as a woman, in a position of subjugation?
That mufti did not say it is ok what Wadud did, MWU as usual has made it up!
“please note the Mufti of Egypt has come out in support of women lead prayer”
Actually he did not. When asked about it he said that he has been lied upon. This is his formal fatwa. I have the Arabic if you like.
In the formal Fatwa from the Dar al-Ifta’ al-Masriyya, Shaykh Ali Jumu`a makes clear that it is not permitted for women to lead men in prayer, and affirms that the position permitting it–ascribed to some scholars–is an aberrant position (ra’y shadhdh); and states that there is no difference of opinion regarding the fact that it is impermissible and invalid for women to conduct the Friday khutba or to lead the Friday prayer.
(Note: Thank you Shaykh Faraz for providing this. The full text of the fatwa is available from the Dar al-Ifta’ al-Masriyya site)
so he changed his mind, so what? you expect him not to cave to peer pressure? that’s what the region thrives on. Otherwise people would (gasp) think for themselves.
the fact is most muslims cannot make a move without someone telling them what to do religiously. God gave the Prophet (pbuh) the Quran and the clerics took it away. the clerics don’t trust you to understand the Quran; neither do most muslims themselves. so they run to the adult in the room and say daddy please tell me what’s in my holy book.
and you are surprised?
consensus above rationality, that the motto.
What’s wrong with having a daddy to tell you what’s in your holy book?
If he knows the wisdom behind it, I’m all for it.
Sometimes you need to have an authority to explain the book of God to you, because this aint no physics textbook. Plus this wisdom is backed by 1400 years of scholarship, not an overnight course in fiqh or media pressure to reform.
Its not about consensus being over rationality. You’re missing the entire point. When you dont know something about a particular topic, lets say a disease or an illness will you go read up the medical texts and learn for urself, or rather go to a couple of doctor experts in the field and see what they have to say about it. These Muslim Scholars whose consensus we are trying to obtain have studied the traditional texts for years and it only makes sense to value their opinion the most. According to our tradtion “If you don’t know you should ask those who know.” (Quran: 21:7 and 16:43)
However this does not imply that Islam is a clerical religion where the clerics derive all laws and rulings themselves and “dont trust the laymen” to understand the quran. There is no official hierarchal clergy in Islam. Any person, including you and I has the innate ability to achieve the status of an imam, a shyakh, a mufti etc. Many of the greatest scholars of Islam that I admire and respect were converts who began their study around my age! Nonetheless, as regards to your final point, yes consesnsus is required over rationale. If rationale sufficed why would God need to send prophets? or reveal texts? This is our faith, that God gave us intelligence and reason, but on top of that he has sent us prophets and books, take our beliefs for waht they are. And when you have people “thinking for themselves” what you often get are groups of people who dont have the proper traditional understanding interpret scripture however they see fit, often times out of context, and ignoring the 1425 years of tradition. (i.e. Islamist extremist terrorists and terrorist sympathizers.)
I dont expect you, or most people of todays world in their secular scientistic worldview to believe a religion such as Islam and its mythical sacred truths. But at least have respect for our 1400+ years of tradition and for the almost 2 billion adherents of our faith. If you would like to discuss this further I will be more than happy to.
when God revealed the Quran to the Prophet (pbuh) there was just the Quran. Not 1400 years of tradition, just the word of God and the word of God is all God said we needed. Now the cleric tells you you need his word too. That’s crap. The cleric isn’t God and all I need to know from God is in the Quran and I can read it just like you can.
muslims like to kid themselve by saying there is no clergy. Ha! it’s all clergy. they don’t want you to read the Quran, they want you to listen to their interpretation of what’s in the Quran. Sorry. God revealed the Quran. Man revealed the Sunnah and Hadiths.
If you are telling me i need help to understand the Quran then you are claiming that God did not make the Quran for me to understand. Then who then?
What hadiths did the Prophet (pbuh) follow? what was his madhab?
all i see is islamic clergy when God said the Quran is all we need.
God sent the message through the prophets, not the clerics.
“This is our faith, that God gave us intelligence and reason, but on top of that he has sent us prophets and books, take our beliefs for waht they are.” Books? what books? the God revealed the Quran. that’s one book.
kids, kids…seriously stop bickering… islam says to speak with knowledge and compassion rather than being defensive and offensive
i’m sorry, i realize now that its only really crossfader thats bickering
everyone else is talking
call it what you will. you have no answer for it . . .
The fact that Progressive Muslims are using ONE Hadith to justify the leading of prayer by women is pretty sad.
Note that people who say that Suicide Bombing is halaal use just one example of the Prophet, where he did something that contradicts Sunnah and Hadith during wartime to justify that action.
In essence, the Progressive Movement is no different than the Extremists, the only difference between the two is that they are on opposite poles, and for this reason they will remain fringe groups with only isolated cores of fanatical supporters.
A, your a girl, NO Freakiing Waaay!
what school system taught you that effed up logic? for one thing the muslim world for the large part loves extremists. note the bin laden t-shirts, jihadis by the butt streaming into iraq, recent bombings in qatar, etc.
mind you if progressive islam is even half as successful as extremist islam this world would be a better place. the progressives are the only muslims will to get off their ass and do something about their world. rather sat sit of yack away.
the one thing i like about the extremists is they follow through. they say their gonna cut your head off they do it.
the progressive are going to follow through to. they will establish a mosque lead by women and women will be treated fairly and you can’t stop it.
Neither extremist Islamism nor progressive Islam will survive for they are both extreme offshoots of true Islam. Instead of worrying about extremists and progressive vs. extreme islam, lets focus on why these divisions are taking place. Diversity in Islamic thought and difference of opinion is respected and always has been in traditional Islam. But the modern phenomonon of extremist Islamism and even more recent progressive Islam are both extreme reactionary movenments in response to the condition of Muslims to various historical socio-political situations across the Muslim world. They are both extreme because they fundamentally contradict essential Islamic tradition. However they both were made in response to important injustices, and those root reasons as to why these have formed do need to be addressed! We can discuss these issues if you like.
Crossfader stop relying on the news to tell me that the Muslim world loves extremists. I am sick and tired of arm-chair newsreporters like you who think that because you read a book you qualify on speaking about what is actually happening on the ground. For some strange reason, through my personal experience, Progressive Muslims largely fall into this category since their excursions to the Muslim world are limited to taking Flubright Scholarships to study at AUC and attend one lecture at Al-Azhar so that they can come back to the States and pretend that they have studied fiqh under a real scholar.
salam.im a sisiter 4m london n wen i 1st heard about a WOMAN leading a MIXED congregation i was WHAAAAAAAAAAAAT?! as far as i kniw, its not permitted, especially a mixed congregation.
SUBHANALLAH!wot has da world come 2?! sisters feeling dey neeed to ‘fight 4 their rights, 4 equality’. der is no place 4 feminism in islam.Allah made men and women equal not identical. equal in the sense that both male and female will be accounted 4 their actions, rewarded and punished respectively, regardless of their sex. its so sad. dis event has caused quite a stir here, i can only imagine wot it must be like in over in america? i dont fink dat kinda fing wud happen in england. its weird, dese kinda ‘liberal’ fings seem 2 happen more in america…i remember hearing on the radio bout sisters making a legal case about not having a front door 2 enter the masjid!!! subhanallah, y not use all dat effort 4 more important issues,like, i dno, our brothers and sisters in palestine maybe..or iraq…kashmir etc…?
neway i fink i got my point across.MAY Allah
GUIDE US ALL 2 DA STR8 PATH.ameen
haseeb….you sound like a more academic version of the (dare i say it) incoherent arguments given by many of the authors one finds in a islamic bookstore, you know those books where words are misspelled and arguments are presented that under critical reflection make no sense whatsoever, given to such broad oversimplifications that you wonder if its a book analyzing issues or if its simply a book whose contents are to be memorized by a fourth grader…your implicit overglorification of tradition is disappointing, moreover your lack of appreciation for the reasons behind the off shoots whatever they may be put you within a manchiean perspective of still being obsessed with right and wrong, us, the good guys who possess the truth vs. them the bad guys who possess falsehood when history demonstrates that its never that simple….if you take the incidence of when ali (ra) was killed and splinter groups came into fruition, you realize that each was reacting to a set of conditions and no one was persuing truth in a vacous manner, their experiences, situations in life, and thoughts contributed and shaped their views and opinions and this includes people like al-ashari and abu hanifa and others who were working on the foundations of the traditional edifice if you will, so when you go back to that time and you read about their times and the politics and the enviornments which spurred these people to action, you’ll see something spectacular, that its not as simple as a perfect truth and shades of lies but rather one “truth” pervailing while another “truth” losing ground with the Truth watching over the entire stage. There is definately a complexity required to understand what happened during the early times, especially the uthman and ali scenerio….i’m not saying i understand it, but what i do now is that islam has to be dynamic. All in all i’m not so much intrested in wether the clergy is there or not or if some woman leads a prayer or not, rather we need to know more about our history, our real history (far more prone to conflict) rather than the one we’ve been told (entirely based on a functionalist perspective).
what is curious is the idea that women’s equility is somehow wrong in a faith based on justice. is justice the guide? or what somebody said justice was a long time ago?
it all leads to a profound sense of apathy. that nothing can change, nor should anything really change but the clerics say so . . .
The question is not if women are equal, but how women are equal. Noone is trying to say that women and men should not be equal, but whether you like it or not, Islam has made it is so that men are different but equal. Men and women play different roles in society. This isn’t just a throwback to the 6th century, we have scientific evidence that demonstrates the vast differences between men and women in nature. These differences are greater than the differences present between races.
I wonder if the Progressive movement will later say that Allah
and the Quran were biased. They have already began attacking 1400 years of Islamic scholarship (not unlike Wahhabis), and since the Quran never mentions any female prophets, perhaps they will begin protesting this.
Face it, the Progressive movement is based in western ideals that have arisen in the last 50 years. They cannot affect change in Islam without distorting it into something that it is not. Those of us who oppose them seek to maintain the integrity of our religion, while they claim to be seeking it. The problem is that they are so far-sighted that they cannot see what is right in front of them.
a women led a prayer. that’s all. a prayer.
Yes and that womAn shouldn’t have done that.
Have any of the people who are jumping to condemn Amina Wadud leading the prayer heard her, or read her work. I had a chance to listen to her lecture the night before the famous Jumma namaz and I am reading her book now.
She is an extremly spritual and knowledgable person. I find her view very enlighhtening. She has done extensive studyon Islam. Like her there are other female scholars like Aziza AlHibri, Sharifa Alkhateeb to name a few.
These women are studying Islam and trying to remove the distortions in meaning that have resulted from 1400 years of patriarchial cultures.
Islam is a religion for all, men and women alike, Islam talked about gender equity , it addresses both men and women through out the Quran in its final verses on men and women it
Quran says “the best among you is the one with the most piety or Taqwa” and not one who happens to be of this or that gender.
1400 years of history is great and we should respect that but we have stoped riding the camels and started using airplanes. It is time to adapt to the modern times. Present times require both men and women to work side by side , to respect each others opinion.
Many of you young men who are appalled at a woman leading the prayer ,when you enter work force will have female bosses and superiors. How will you manage in life if you continue to expect women to be behind you and subservient to you.
Weather you like it or now women have moved out of the home in the past 1400 years and are taking up leadership roles not just in your schools, offices but now in the religious arena too.
Women were leaders in the area of religion after the Prophet died, noone has denied that. Your whole rant smacks of the 60s liberation movement which has failed.
All the gains made by women in the west are cosmetic. Men are still in control, yet unfortunately westerners think they have made great progress and are suceeding in getting Muslims to take our religion somewhere where it will no longer be Islam, and be nothing more than a byproduct of modern movements.
NO MORE COMMENTS HERE PLEASE, if you would like to continue discussing this issue read my post from March 23, 2005 on More on The Woman-Led Jummah Last Week… and leave comments following that entry please.