Mosque for the 'unmosqued'

The 100 bare-footed women praying shoulder-to-shoulder at America’s first-ever female-only mosque were aware that they were standing on historic grounds. The Women’s Mosque of America held its first jumu’ah, or Friday prayer, on Jan. 30 at a century-old synagogue-turned-multifaith worship space near downtown Los Angeles.

To prepare the space for prayer, volunteers dragged wooden pews out to the parking lot, unfurled long prayer rugs into horizontal rows, and arranged crumpets and cookies for post-prayer tea. At 1 p.m., a volunteer politely requested that all men leave the room, and a young woman started chanting the adhan, or call to prayer: “Allaahu Akbar, Allaahu Akbar …”

That afternoon’s speaker (khateeba) was Rose Aslan, a religion professor at California Lutheran University. Aslan, saying she was inspired by a Methodist colleague, preached about what she said was the god of Islam’s mercy, self-accountability, and pluralism. She had written many khutbas for male speakers before, but this was the first time she delivered her own.

At the back of the room, Mona Hanouni, a young neonatologist, wiped her incessant tears. “Seriously, I had globs of snot coming out of my nose,” she told me later, showing me the bunched-up rolls of damp tissue paper. “I never dreamed in my life that I would hear the call for prayer in a female voice.”

Though the Women’s Mosque of America is not the first women-only mosque (China has several), it is the first of its kind among the 2,100-plus mosques in the United States. It also has no dress code: Most women wore headscarves in varying lengths, colors, and styles, but several did not. And while some women wore figure-hiding trousers with long tunics, others wore skinny jeans or leggings—taboo clothing in most mosques.

Hanouni, for example, has bleached hair shaved on both sides of her head. She’s painted her fingernails bright pink, there’s a tattoo of the Korean character “Mom” on her forearm, and more tattoos inch down the back of her neck. The first time she visited the women’s mosque, Hanouni brought with her a white headscarf to cover up the fashion choices that would have had her kicked out of some mosques. In fact, she had not attended a mosque in years because she “felt like an outsider.”

Hanouni is not the only Muslim woman who became “unmosqued”—a now-common word among American Muslims. American Muslim women are rising swiftly in academic and professional public squares, yet within their own religious community, many still feel marginalized and disrespected by fellow Muslims who judge them for their outward piety and dress.

According to a 2011 survey on American mosques co-sponsored by the Islamic Society of North America, about two-thirds of surveyed mosques segregate women from men, up from 52 percent in 1994. Women have to worship in basements, balconies, or other poorly maintained rooms, and some mosques require women to enter by a back entrance. Certain mosques even turn women away, quoting Muhammad that it’s best for women to pray at home. Muslim women are drifting away from their religious community, and U.S. mosques are increasingly losing their female and young members.

Co-founder Hasna Maznavi, a 29-year-old comedy writer, said she started formulating the idea of a women’s mosque after learning about the various roles female Muslims played in spreading and preserving the religion. Meanwhile, she was also hearing complaints from many fellow Muslim women who were “tired of feeling judged by other women” in mostly male-dominated mosques. So she decided to create a “safe space that is inclusive and non-judgmental” for Muslim women of all denominations, ethnicities, ideologies, and fashion styles.

The women gathered at the women’s mosque were housewives, doctors, human rights activists, lawyers, engineers, actors, filmmakers, writers, and graduate students. In one row sat two young Arab-American women with their wide-eyed toddlers, a 43-year-old African-American psychotherapist who followed Islam at 21, and a slim white woman who grew up in a United Methodist household but is considering converting to Islam. She thinks of Islam as a religion of peace, tolerance, and equality—even as past and present demonstrate otherwise.