Many statements attributed to the Prophet Muhammad indicate the primary importance of the five daily prayers salawat as opportunities for forgiveness, spiritual refreshment and dialogue with God.
It is not obligatory that these prayers be made in congregation, unless one is in a setting that provides the necessary conditions for congregation. If we examine these conditions set by traditional Islamic scholarship, we see that maintaining a communal unity is an implicit goal. Thus, if one enters a setting where a congregational prayer is being held, one should join the group, and not establish another prayer group or pray by oneself.
According to the sunnah of the Prophet, all congregational prayers, even if the congregation is only a few people, need to be led by one person. Given the importance of congregational prayer in Islam, we expect Islamic traditon to pay significant attention to the requirements for leadership of the prayer.
What I find fascinating and significant is that the requirements are almost always relational and contextual. Other relative considerations that the various legal schools emphasize somewhat differently include age and piety. Some of the contextual considerations include the place in which the prayer is being held.
Many of the Hanafi scholars who reject the practice of women praying in congregation do not mention the example of the wives of the Prophet. It seems in this matter, as with a number of other issues, the Hanafi school retains a position that was formulated on the basis of reasoning early in Islamic history when they did not have access to all the hadith that were later compiled together for easy reference.
Many Sunni scholars claim that there is a consensus that women should not lead men in prayer, although they acknowledge that a few scholars have made exceptions for family congregations and the optional night prayers in Ramadan tarawih if the only qualified person available to lead in those situations is a woman.
The primary purpose of this arrangement seems to be to keep women from having to undergo scrutiny by men as they are praying, but there may be other reasons. The arrangements for congregational prayer established by the Prophet must therefore be followed—necessarily in order to be faithful to the sunnah—and then to maintain unity among Muslims in this fundamental part of ritual life.
In fact, like many of the religious institutions of traditional Islam, their establishment was a relatively simple case of form following function.
What is meant by innovation in this hadith is most innovations. Among the obligatory innovations are: organizing the proofs of the theologians against the heretics and innovators and things like that. Among the laudable innovations are writing books of religious knowledge, building madrasas religious schools and ribat religious retreats and other things. Thus, even the ubiquitous madrasas in the Muslim world can be considered innovations, albeit, laudable innovations. Alongside the establishment of religious schools and other institutions across the Muslim world, form following function also led to the specialization of religious professionals in all fields.
Islamic courts, for example, developed multiple specialized offices to ensure that the aims of the court were met. In any court of significance, the judge qadi may have been assisted by a number of the following professionals, among others: clerk katib , official character witness muzakki , advisors mashura , mufti jurisconsult and various expert witnesses shuhud , including female expert witnesses. Some scholars might not use the discourse of innovation with respect to these developments at all.
The lines are simply a way to achieve straight prayer rows; they have no meaning in themselves. Another example of the relationship between form and function in ritual law is the issue of the language in which the Friday sermon is delivered. Some Muslims insist that the sermon must be delivered in the Arabic language, because they consider the sermon to partake in the worship aspect of the prayer. However, in order to take advantage of the opportunity the Friday gathering provides to instruct a large number of people in important religious matters, those who hold this position often deliver a religious lesson in the vernacular before the formal Friday service begins.
Other Muslims consider it an innovation to give such a lesson before the Friday service and argue that the goal of the sermon is communication. To that end, the Prophet Muhammad spoke in the language of his congregation, and all preachers after him should do the same. All of this was done without violating the traditional rules of ritual law: female imams do not conduct Friday congregational prayer and, in accordance with their Hanafi legal tradition, they do not even lead other women in daily congregational prayer.
For many of us, this is a terrifying thought. The reality is that many American Muslims are unhappy with their religious leadership, but they have not taken the responsibility to reshape their institutions and do what is needed to cultivate better leadership. In recent years, the tendency in American Muslim communities has been to concentrate religious authority in the office of the imam, who is also expected to perform multiple, distinct functions for the community.
In addition to leading the daily prayers and giving the Friday sermon, the imam is expected to represent the community to the public, draft marriage contracts, issue judicial divorces, teach children, teach adults and counsel people with all kinds of problems, among other things. In addition, the imam may, whether he is explicitly authorized to do this or not, make policy decisions for the community, such as what kind of educational gatherings and spiritual practices will be permitted in the building, how the prayer space will be divided between men and women, and how charitable contributions will be spent.
It is no wonder that so many American Muslims are dissatisfied with their local religious leadership. No one person could perform all these functions well. Even if he could, given that the imam for the general congregation has to be male, placing all religious authority with the imam means that women will necessarily be excluded from this field.
How, then, should we structure the leadership of our communities? I divided the women into groups and asked each group to come up with a list of the functions they felt needed to be performed in a competent manner by someone in their local mosque. Then I asked them to create positions that would allow different people to perform those functions. In the end, I asked each group to share their ideal slate of leaders and officials for their community.
At the same time, the women agreed that they did not want the person who was charged with carrying that blessed recitation to do anything disgraceful or dishonorable. Many of the women did agree that their communities needed women in leadership positions.
Some felt that a female scholar or spiritual leader would be most helpful, others felt that their communities needed a female counselor or social worker, in particular, to help the imam understand the dynamics of family conflict. Some of the women said that if their mosque could afford to pay for only one professional, they would like to hire a youth director, and the community members could take turns leading the prayers.
It is my hope that all American Muslim communities will undertake this kind of creative, visionary and thoughtful dialogue about their priorities and needs. Unfortunately, because the present leadership of many local communities is so poor, it is difficult to even begin a process of renewal. Many Muslim communities do not have clear governance procedures and there is often confusion over who is authorized to make important decisions. Muslim communities must establish better procedures for decision-making.
At the same time, the urgency of a sound decision-making process does not mean that Muslims will arrive at a clear and easy method of determining religious authority. It is my opinion that this should not necessarily be viewed negatively. Rather, I believe it is only proper that religious authority should continually be negotiated informally and formally among fellow believers in the Muslim community. The planned mosque will be open to women and men.
Prayers where both women and men partake will be led by a male imam. A more radical innovation is the Inclusive Mosque Initiative established in London in , which offers a space for worship without gender segregation and works with women imams such as Naima Khan. American female imam Amina Wadud has led gender-mixed prayers in Oxford, London and elsewhere. My interview study with Muslim women in the UK and Norway found that they were highly appreciative of dedicated mosque spaces for women.
Some also wanted greater influence for women in mosque governance. The participants agreed, however, that only men can be imams and lead prayers for gender-mixed audiences.
This rule was seen as rooted in religious prescriptions and as such was not up for debate. I believe the issue may seem simple, but is more complicated than it appears. So I'd like to contribute a few ideas to the discussion, rather than put forward a clear opinion. The first point to make is that it's absolutely unclear what we're talking about. In the Koran, the word is used in a more fundamental way and refers to leading exemplary figures like Abraham Sura or the judges of the Children of Israel Sura or the potential of all upright people in general Sura ; ; but it can also refer misleadingly to characters like Pharaoh and others like him, who lead one "to the fire" Sura The second apparently unclear point in the current debate is one of methodology.
Both supporters and critics of the Friday prayers in New York draw hasty conclusions either from specific traditions since the Koran itself doesn't deal with the issue directly or from assumed principles, without examining their background or taking account of their context.
One of the most frequent arguments is that "this has never happened before and has never been considered possible in the past, and therefore should never happen.
But there have been changes even in liturgical matters: while we assume that we are following the example of the prophet in such matters as ritual prayer which in principle we no doubt do , in fact we follow the standardised instructions of Muslim teachers from the formative period of Islam, whose details can vary from one school to another. And at least in the diaspora, we tend to feel the need to simplify even those differences for the sake of Muslim unity, rather than to use the dynamic which they offer as a way of deepening the riches of our spiritual and cultural life.
On the other hand, the supporters of change cite the ontological equality of man and woman in the Koran and the fact that the same terms are used to refer to their practical and spiritual responsibilities e.
Sura , , etc. They overlook impatiently the development of Islamic tradition in the past and demand immediate reform in the direction of justice and equality here and now.
Islam knows no hierarchy of office. All the same, in the classical Fiqh, questions of priority regarding who should lead communal prayers were often not decided solely on the basis of knowledge, skill in recitation or piety. Issues of social hierarchy also played a role. Within the patriarchal structures which ruled in the largest part of the Muslim world at that time, the idea that a woman might lead public prayer would have been seen as very strange.
Most schools of law consider that women can lead prayers for women. We are far from knowing all the debates of the past on this subject. We only have access to that which was recorded in writing and has been preserved. We don't know many details of the arguments they used, but we also have no evidence that their positions called forth a storm of protest in their time or that they were condemned by their contemporaries. On the other hand, one could understand such exceptions as confirmation of the theory that it's not reasons of theology or principle, but social reasons which are decisive in these rulings.
The case of Umm Waraqa is often given as a precedent in the current debate. On the other hand, the example is used uncritically to back the demand for equal rights for women in leading public prayers. Between these extreme positions, a debate is taking place as to who the members of her household were and whether the situation was a private or a public one. There seem to be no examples of women who led Friday prayers, but there were many women who became famous as preachers on other occasions.
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