It is counter-productive spiritually and ethically for me to linger long in negativity, especially this month of all months. I take to heart the Prophet’s statement whoever believes “fal-yaqul khayr aw li-yasmut “Let (him or her) say (something) good or be quiet.” I also take to heart the adab or etiquette that prevails in Islamic cultures and traditions: cover the faults of your sister or brothers. So, although I have continued attending the tarawih prayers at my neighborhood mosque I have avoided critique. Actually, I am really thankful for both the convenience of the location and for the beautiful recitation of the hafiz who is leading the prayers. This does not mean I have not continued to observe some problems—but since these are mostly logistical, I let them go without comment.
Last night, I hit a breaking point. I thought about calling this entry “Is Silence Really Golden?” I thought about Fatimah Mernissi’s critique of the analogy between silence, invisibility and piety for women. I wonder what it would take for the women of this community to be positioned for better communications and facility of even this separated worship. It is not the separation that is the problem per se, it is the degree of it and the way it curtails communication even for the logistics I explain here.
As I have mentioned, the women’s section is totally separated from the men’s section. Although male and female children up to teen years move freely between these two sections, I don’t see any men come to the women’s side— ever. Last night I was asked twice by one of the girls in the go-between group if my name was Maryam. So I assumed some male was trying to locate such a woman, but had no access according to the mosque logistics, except for this group that moves about freely between the separate sections.
I also do not see the women going to the men’s side for anything. Now, I elaborated the possibilities for the men for a reason. If a man comes to the women’s side, this can only be for personal reasons. This is because the heart of the mosque and center of all mosque activity is on the men’s side. In addition to the larger male prayer hall, this includes the kitchen and (according to the emergency escape map) the library and the office.
This means that women need to have access or contact with the men’s side or the main section for many of the functional matters of just being in the mosque, let alone iftar. On the women’s side are classrooms — and these were overflowing with women and children when I came for iftar last Sunday.
I can see a kitchen door to the outside when I enter the courtyard and parking lot. It is in between the women’s entrance and the men’s entrance, and has always been open when I come. I don’t look in to it for long because it is always only inhabited by men. So there goes that theory about a woman’s place, right? What it means, though, is that the women cannot break fast or eat the meal until these are coordinated by the men. But how do they communicate? There seem to be no established rules.
At one point, we had no cups for drinking water, or the few containers of juice on the long serving table. So one of the women, almost randomly it seemed to me as I stood near her, called to what might have been a relative teenage male and requested additional cups (in Arabic).
The two major languages beside English are Urdu and Arabic, both in use for private conversation as well as in signs at various places around the building. While waiting for the meal a woman came in and gave a bunch of details in Urdu, which I don’t understand, and I said, “Could you say that in English please.”After that, I noticed she did every announcement in both languages.
She has made other announcements or repeated her version of the male announcement, so I already knew she spoke English. I was not being presumptuous. I notice the Arabic-speaking ladies only speak to each other, never making announcements as such, and so I assume there are different dynamics vis-à-vis mosque politics. The more Urdu visible in signs and used for announcements from the men’s side on the loudspeaker, and from the women’s side from this one woman (always the same woman), means it is a predominantly Pakistani mosque.
Arabic has a necessary privilege in the religion because of the text, and it was the language of the Prophet. So his statements might be placed on the walls or for decoration. Obviously, verses of the Qur’an might be there, in different beautiful calligraphic styles. But for Urdu to be there, especially elaborate or decorative, that is only mandated by Urdu speakers, not by the linguistics of the religion.
So anyway, communication between the women and the dominant half of the mosque is either facilitated by the go-betweens of medium age or literally shouted across the courtyard.
On the women’s section there is a sign prohibiting eating and drinking in the prayer area, so we either sit in the classrooms or in the long and wide corridor that wraps around the prayer hall and between the classrooms. The long serving tables are in this corridor and so are the shelves for shoes. In addition, one of the classrooms is supposed to be the nursery during prayer. I remember one of those busy weekends, I could hear the sound of the children playing as I went into sajdah, or, prostration.
With the sound of the imam coming over the loudspeaker during all the other positions of salah you cannot hear anything else. It takes this silence in prostration for me to notice. Not that they are playing quietly; on the contrary. It is just that the loudspeaker, although no longer at the shout of the first few days that I went there, is still quite loud.
That I focus on the recitation to keep posture I have also already mentioned. So last night when the speaker system went down I had a momentary panic. A few listened closely, this not being a weekend with as much children’s noise as I mentioned above, then we could still actually hear him, but only for the takbir, the saying of “Allahu Akbar” that designates the change from one posture to the next through the prayer regimen. We finished off one of those two rakat segments for tarawih, that I described earlier, but with no speaker to mediate.
This was what stayed on my mind, even through out the night and into suhur and prayer this morning, so here I am NOT covering my brothers’ and sisters’ backs.
It must be stated here that this kind of hyperbolic separation only exists in the mosques here in America. That is, nobody keeps this in their private lives, as a family, or in their community relations. Our society at large is well integrated enough that it would be impossible to function without also interacting at least in part in the way of the norm outside of the mosque. Unlike Europe, in America, Muslims do not live in ethnic ghettos. While there are class distinctions, Muslims live every where from the most wealthy neighborhoods to the poorest, not by religion but by class. It is less common, for example, for immigrant women to come to the US and know little or no English after two and three decades, for example. It happens but because the other networks of support services are well integrated this kind of exclusivity is nearly impossible.
It should also be noted that there are degrees to, or no separation at all, in different mosques in the U.S. This one is on the extreme end. Some mosques have women and men praying in the same room, front and back. Some have them praying side by side, with a short or tall barrier.
I have some theories why the mosque spaces are so conservative in America and it has to do with the oversensitivity about preserving the sacred space. I don’t get it though, because I know that Allah inhabits all spaces. So, when we remove even the facility of cross-communication in the mosques it borders on the ridiculous. I’m okay with separate spaces, mind you. I am comfortable in them, for the most part. I even prefer them in some situations. I feel more relaxed around only women, Muslim or otherwise.
Yesterday, for example, I wrote on Twitter that “I have more in common with a woman who is a stranger than I do with a man, no matter how closely we are related.” I once spent two weeks with a Sufi community in Albacin, Spain (across from Al-Hambra palace) in the month of December with no central heat. I got used to double and triple layers under my regular clothes, including a woolen cap under my hijab. Then they put me on a sleeper train without gender separation and my “bed” was literally on top of the heater. There I was unable to take off anything because there were strange men all around me, including in the bunk above me; and yet I was suffering from all the heat.
So, I see this separation thing as a matter of degrees. At all times there needs to be a reliable, unbiased medium of cross-communication. I said at all times. In this mosque there would be some sense that a problem such as broken speaker, missing cups and missing Maryams would be corrected because we do inhabit the world as well as the mosque— both men and women. For the larger issues, I think the separate spheres cannot be equal. Besides, I think we have something to learn from each other and I like the access that open communication makes to the ways that women and men think.
Anyway, in case you are wondering, as I did then, the word did get across that we had no sound, and I prayed the last two units and then went home to ponder this situation. How the word got across is a mystery to me and it is this that prompted my entry today. I still have no idea who and how the word got across. If it were more than a speaker not working what would we do I wonder? What would I do? What would you do?
