Women as imams
There is a difference of opinion among Muslims regarding the circumstances in which women may act as imams, i.e. to lead a mixed gendered congregation in salat (prayer).
A small number of schools of Islamic thought make exceptions for tarawih (optional Ramadan prayers) or for a congregation consisting only of close relatives.
Those critical of the ruling that women cannot lead congressional prayers have argued that the spirit of the Qur'an and the letter of a da'if (weak) hadith (saying of Mohammed) indicate that women should be able to lead mixed (albeit children) congregations, as opposed to sex-segregated congregations, and they suggest that the prohibition against the practice originated from sexism in the medieval environment and from inaccurate patriarchal interpretations of religious texts, rather than from a spirit of "true Islam".
Umm Waraqa bint Abdallah, an Ansari woman, who knew the entire Quran, was instructed by Muhammad to lead ahl dariha, which consisted of both men and women, in prayer.
Zaid insists that if Muhammed established a mosque in the household of a man, which was not uncommon, Itban b. Malik, then he must also have set up women-only congregations.
The sunnah is a more general source of precedent; it is usually considered to count against women leading mixed congregations, as there are no reports of it happening in Muhammad's time, unless, as Amina Wadud suggested, the aforementioned Umm Waraqah hadith is interpreted to apply to her town rather than to her household alone.
In 2000, six maraji among Iran's Shia leadership declared that they too allowed women to lead a woman-only congregation, reversing a previous ban in that country.
In the early years of Islam, the Haruriyyah sect, a branch of the Kharijites movement, founded by Habib ibn-Yazīd al-Harūrī, held that it was permissible to entrust the imamate to a woman if she were able to carry out the required duties.
[12] Well-known early jurists—including Al-Tabari (838–932), historian, exegete and founder of a now defunct juristic school; Abu Thawr (764–854), mufti of Iraq; Al-Muzani (791–878); and Ibn Arabi (1165–1240)—considered the practice permissible at least for optional (nafl salat) prayers.
Some traditional scholars caution against Yusuf Qaradawi's methodology and regard him as excessively lenient as he does not limit himself to the positions of the four Sunni schools of fiqh'.
Adding to the arguments in favor of woman-led prayer of mixed congregations, Laury Silvers and Ahmed Elewa recently published a detailed article in the Journal of Law and Religion arguing that female imams are permissible in all circumstances.
[1] A woman disguised as a man attempted to deliver a Jum'ah khutbah but was detected by members of the congregation and arrested by the Bahraini police.
The would-be khatib, wearing full male dress with a false beard and moustache, sat on the mimbar just before speaking, at which point some worshippers realised that the new imam was a woman in disguise.
[15][16][17] In that year, 20-year-old Maryam Mirza delivered the second half of the Eid al-Fitr khutbah at the Etobicoke mosque in Toronto, run by the UMA.
[19] In April 2005, Raheel Raza led Toronto's first woman-led mixed-gender Friday service, delivering the khutbah and leading the prayers of the congregation.
The event was organized by the Muslim Canadian Congress to celebrate Earth Day, and was held in the backyard of the downtown Toronto home of activist Tarek Fatah.
Women regularly give full length sermons prior to the second adhan, with a male khatib delivering the Arabic portion in brief after the second call until 2012.
Since then, Montréal, Quebec, London, Ontario, and Vancouver, British Columbia have also established gender-equal/LGBTQ-affirming prayer communities with the El-Tawhid Juma Circle.
Among the Hui people, but not other Muslim ethnic minorities such as the Uyghurs, Quranic schools for girls evolved into woman-only mosques and women acted as imams as early as 1820.
According to Dr Khaled Abou el Fadl from the University of California in Los Angeles, this explains the situation whereby female imams can exist in China, as they often tend to develop their own institutions in isolation due to increased control over their practices from the central Chinese government.
[42] A year earlier, Amina Wadud (see below) became the first woman in South Africa to deliver the jum'ah khutbah, at the Claremont Main Road Mosque in Cape Town.
[42] South African Muslims heard their first female-led Jum'ah khutbah in 1994 when African-American Islamic studies professor Amina Wadud spoke at the Claremont Main Road Mosque in Cape Town,[43] an experience she discusses in Inside the Gender Jihad.
Spanish imam Abdennur Prado responded immediately to the controversial prayer by American Amina Wadud (see USA section) with a supportive legal opinion.
He was one of the organisers of the October 2005 Islamic feminism conference in Barcelona, the first attended by men and women from around the world, at which Wadud led a mixed gender congregational prayer.
[45][46][47] In 2010, another visiting academic, South African Dr. Sa'diyya Shaikh, gave the khutbah and led the Friday prayer for a mixed congregation.
The state-run mosques have trained hundreds of women as vaizes, a term translated by the BBC as "senior imams"[48] and by the Washington Times as "female preachers".
"[50] British Muslims had their first chance to hear a female-led mixed-gender salat in 2008, when the American scholar Amina Wadud performed the Friday prayer at Oxford's Wolfson College.
In 2005, African-American Islamic scholar amina wadud led a congregation in Friday prayer and gave a sermon in New York City.
[64] Scholars such as Imam Zaid Shakir and Dr. Louay M. Safi have been calling attention to and working to change mosque conditions for years.
[59] Ultimately, the end goal was to develop a community and global movement that would stimulate and encourage Islamic female leadership that is equal to those of men.
