We were turning right onto Mason-Montgomery Road, the Mason Community Center behind us, when Z asked from the backseat, “Wait. Can women be imams?”
While I would’ve very much liked to have been prepared for this question and certainly would’ve preferred not to have addressed it while driving on freezing roads late in the evening—but I’d brought up the subject. See, Z had swim practice at the Community Center, but since that was only 45 minutes, I decided to walk the indoor track, getting some steps in, while she and her team did their thing.
But before I even got to the walking, I saw a WhatsApp notice from a mosque we frequent. Adult Education, January-June 2022. Intrigued, excited, hopeful, I clicked. And guess what, guest speakers? You’re all men. There isn’t a single woman. Many times, maybe because I’m not the kind of person who likes to start a confrontation, let alone a conflagration, I elect not to say anything.
But in this case, I could not be silent.
I wrote back that neglecting half the community was, to say the least, concerning; moreover, it seemed unlikely that there were not any number of qualified, compelling, engaging women who could come teach on any number of relevant topics. One of my favorite scholars, for example, is Dr. Ingrid Mattson, who many Muslims know from her time as President of the Islamic Society of North America.
I received a polite response, but I wasn’t satisfied. I mean, I really wasn’t okay with this. And I truly felt like my initial message didn’t convey my full exasperation. I mean, had the gender imbalance—no, gender absence—really occurred to no one else?
I wrote back, again trying to be generous: Perhaps, I mused, previous generations, and even alas our generation, submitted to such outcomes. But was this really going to hold in years to come? Young Muslim women, undeniably ambitious, very talented, broadly accomplished, and very credentialed, would hardly accept seeing more and more women in leadership spaces everywhere—except the masjid.
Moreover, as someone now partly responsible for the religious education of two teenage girls, this sin of omission was keenly and immediately felt in ways it hadn’t been before. That’s not to say the importance of representation is conditional on some kind of personal association. But we also can’t pretend that direct experience doesn’t significantly impact how we order our priorities.
If women are out of sight and out of mind, isn’t it reasonable to assume that a good number’ll be out the Muslim door sooner rather than later, too? That’s an entirely normal human response to marginalization. Sure, in theory, people can start their own communities, but given how many resources (spiritual, pedagogical, financial, temporal) that that requires, it’s unlikely at best.
And then what happens—to those who leave and those who stay?
If you care about your community, shouldn’t you care about—I don’t know—the sentiments of half the community, not to mention the continuity of the whole community?
Again, I received a thoughtful albeit brief response, encouraging me to contact the relevant Board members directly. But I was too upset to do so. Not with the conversation, which was quite respectful and decent, but with the larger context.
With the fact that this was still happening. (I won’t say “…in 2022” because I don’t believe and can’t understand the assumption that just because something is more recent in time means it’s more enlightened. We elected Trump after Obama.)
When Z texted to say she was coming to the front, done with her practice, I got in the car and got to the pickup lane.
So much for walking.
As soon as she climbed in, I told her what had happened. She was upset, disappointed, and concerned. Like me. The whole point of the halaqa—okay, one of the points of the halaqa—is to empower these kids with a rich religious life and the ability, should they choose, to share that. To pass it on.
As I explained the context and the conversation to her in more detail, though, she was silent, until the question came to her.
“Wait,” she said. “Can women lead prayers?”
Nobody Is That Smart
And, yes, usually gendered questions get addressed to their mom, for all kinds of reasons. And I’m okay with that—and those reasons. More than okay. Who am I to answer about what Z or F can wear and where? (I’ll have that conversation with R when he needs to have those conversations. Right now the greater jihad is convincing him to wear a coat when it’s twenty degrees out.)
All the same, I should be able to address a question this big and this heavy by myself.
I gave a short response during our short ride home, which either satisfied Z or gave her enough to think about that she was silent—because if Z doesn’t buy something, she’ll let you know. Right. Away. However, I knew my response wasn’t sufficient and set about planning a halaqa on this very subject, but only once I involved their mother, sought her advice, insight, perspective—and most importantly, permission.
In the meantime, the continuity of the halaqa went way out the window. That was becoming a trend.
But that’s okay. Life happens. Speaking of which.
What follows both summarizes what I said to Z and includes what’d be added in later, when we were all together and in the proper state of mind to discuss this all at length.
We’d already briefly covered Shari’ah in past halaqas; the term literally means “the path to the water,” but substantively refers to Revelation, the ways in which God teaches human beings how to be. The main sources of Shari’ah are the Qur’an, the unchanging word of God revealed to the blessed Prophet Muhammad, and the sunnah, the life and example of the blessed Prophet Muhammad.
Then I got technical. Not too technical, hopefully, but for an almost fourteen year-old and rising freshman in high school, I should think it makes enough sense to sit with.
In Islam, there are two types of actions. One’s called ibadah. That’s a word and a concept we studied. Then there’s mu‘amalat, which one we never covered. The first one refers to acts of worship and service to God. The second one refers to the rest of our lives, the actions we undertake. There’s a big difference here. In the first one, we have to do exactly what the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, taught us to.
Why?
Because, in our ordinary life—mu‘amalat—we can use our reason, our logic, our brains, individually and collectively, to figure out what to do. There’s plenty of moral guidance in the Shari’ah, which can help guide us in that process, but the Qur’an is not a science textbook. Islam doesn’t tell you how to fix a broken bone (although Islam can help guide conversations about, say, how we should pay for broken bones.)
In mu‘amalat, in daily life, our guiding principle is: Everything’s halal unless it’s proven otherwise.
But when it comes to talking to God, to serving God, this is something beyond the ability of human reason to determine. That doesn’t mean Islam is irrational. It means parts of Islam reach beyond reason. As such, we believe that we must adhere to the practice of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, and heaven forbid we change, modify, or edit in any meaningful way, in the context of worship. Ibadah.
Because we don’t know best.
We’d actually talked about this as a family, weeks back. Namely: We can guess why we prostrate twice in each cycle of prayer. We can make educated and meaningful conjectures about the value of prostration itself. But if two prostrations is so good, why not prostrate three times? Or four times? If it’s so good to read Surat al-Fatihah in every cycle of prayer, why not read it twice?
We don’t, for a bunch of reasons. Not only because that’s what God and His Prophet, peace be upon him, told us to do—but because this preserves the remarkable and fantastic coherence of Islam as a religion. I mean, think about it—you can go to a mosque almost anywhere in the world and pretty quickly figure out what it is they’re doing. Few religions have that kind of historic let alone contemporary consistency.
We are who we were. And we are, thus, who the blessed Prophet was.
In an age when old bonds are dying, and people are desperately searching for solid ground, is there any more secure footing than that?
So, I concluded, while a small number of Muslims have held that women can lead women and men in prayer, that is historically very much a dubitable and minority opinion, which did not seem to have been practiced by the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, in any consistent way. We do not innovate or experiment in ibadah because we don’t have the right to, the ability to, or any compelling reason to.
But nobody said mu‘amalat had to be treated like ibadah.
A Sharing Shariah is A Caring Shariah
I didn’t end there, though. Z concurred when I asked her if, because of the five daily congregational prayers at the masjid and Friday Prayers, men were thus in leadership positions numerous times across the day and across the religious calendar? Yes, I added, I didn’t believe that could or should be changed. But no, I didn’t want to end there. Anyone paying attention to 21st century America should get this next part.
If men are in that many leadership roles, the correct response is to make sure women are equally represented in equally significant ways—not through token gestures, but through substantive engagements. Since the Imam has to be a man, why not reserve the Presidency of the masjid for a woman? At the very least, this approach means there should be as many, if not more, women as guest speakers, teaching about, among other things, religion—as religious authorities, too.
If the resources are available, a scholarship-in-residence can be created. This doesn’t mean we discriminate against qualified candidates. It means we see the overall balance of the institution as essential to its long-term success.1
This presented an idea—about whether we were at home in the ways we wanted our community to be in the mosque.
But the idea itself presented a complication.
Usually, when we pray maghrib (the sunset) prayer together as a family, R is often the imam; although he’s just 9, he does a great job, feels invested as a result, and enthusiastically offers to lead the du‘a after (that’s the informal supplication, most all of which we do in English and tailor to the moment.) But if we want to institutionally embody the spirit I describe above, shouldn’t we practice it domestically, too?
Shouldn’t the girls lead the du‘a and thus take religious leadership roles?
But that’s a challenge for two reasons. First, maybe it’s because of their age, but they seem to prefer their brother doing it. (When you’re a teenager, generally speaking, there’s less enthusiasm for these kinds of things—at least there was for me back then.) And second, if we take it away from our youngest, won’t he experience that as a kind of demotion? So I just don’t know.
I’ll have to talk to the wife about this at length.
Talks To The Wife At Length
Here’s What I Learned
This is really why I’m so blessed to be married to who I’m married to. Why it’s so important to have a life partner who is strong where you (being me) are weak. Whereas I’d been worried that R would take losing the chance to lead, or initiate, the supplication after prayers, she framed it differently.
He should become more thoughtful about who’s in the room—and how much room he’s taking, versus how much room others get. Not because he has any instinct to monopolize—at least, no more than anyone his age—but because he’s soon going to be a young man.
A young man who’s taken a liking to leading religious services.
He should learn to ask: Are the women in the room meaningfully involved? Is everyone in the room meaningfully involved or, at least, feeling engaged and represented?
Our blessed Prophet was praised and loved for, among other things, his attention to everyone, including and especially the people who were used to being ignored.
He elevated, uplifted, and cherished them. We should too.
Of course, everyone’s qualified for different tasks, and not everyone wants to, or needs to, fulfill the same roles—but people should have the opportunity to step up (and, at the same time, be empowered so that they can stand up.) We decided we’ll talk to the girls about their leading, or at least starting, the supplication after prayers, and seeing it not only as a right but as a responsibility.
One of the hadith I love to go back to in our halaqas is the one in which the blessed Prophet said, “Seeking knowledge is an obligation on every Muslim man and every Muslim woman.” If that’s the case, that means we can also seek knowledge from Muslim men and women—and that we should encourage Muslim women to learn, and to teach, our religious tradition, beyond what is the case today.
I can’t know what F and Z will choose to do with their lives yet (though I have some ideas). But I hope a big part of that life will be learning, living, sharing, and protecting and preserving faith. It’s their obligation, yeah.
They’ll have to answer to God for it.
But it’s their right, too.
We’ll have to answer to God for it.
A Barnes and Noble Sale
On entirely a different note.
My next book, Two Billion Caliphs: A Vision of a Muslim Future, drops on April 12. It’s a really intimate work of faith, spirituality, and community that explores how we can reconstruct Islamic life, practice, spirituality, art, and community for the coming decades, which are definitely going to be so very different from what’s come before.
We as individuals, families, and communities need to start thinking deeply about what that means for the future of our faith.
In fact, Two Billion Caliphs is a foundation for this Substack—and, I dare say, you couldn’t get the most out of this Substack without it.
Which is why I’m sharing this very good news.
Right now, Barnes and Noble is offering twenty-five percent off all preorders, including Two Billion Caliphs. So order now and use the code “preorder25” at checkout. But please note: the offer only lasts through this Friday, January 28th.
With Ramadan and Eid just a few months away—I can’t wait!—Two Billion Caliphs is not only a wonderful read for your spiritual nourishment, if I dare say so myself, but it can serve as a really rich source of inspiration for the vital conversations we need to be having with our loved ones and our communities now more than ever.
And if you don’t believe me, take Eboo Patel’s word for it:
This is a book that only Haroon Moghul could write. It is honest and hopeful, beautiful and painful, visionary and personal. It is at once a history of Islam and a guidebook to your soul. There are paragraphs so perfect, I read them aloud to family and friends.
I know that, for many communities, this is a hardship. Because the money just isn’t there. But where there’s a will, there’s a way—which can include pooling resources or sharing scholars between institutions. Though that might be problematic in some instances, this does not excuse the wealthier communities which could. But don’t. Others might point out that there’s not enough women to serve in such roles. There is some truth in that, but that’s only because we often discourage women from pursuing scholarship, and exclude those women who do from community engagement.