A woman's battle for the soul of Islam

As we speak now, you are under trial at your local mosque -- a mosque your family helped found -- because you refused to accept the rule that women enter through a back door and pray in a secluded balcony.

Yes, my father helped found the mosque here in Morgantown, but I am still sitting on trial to be banned.

What about your experience on the hajj made you initiate that protest once you got back home?

It really hit me hard when the police investigators in Pakistan told me and Mariane [Pearl] that the kidnappers had used a mosque in Karachi as a drop-off point for the pictures that the world saw of Danny with a gun to his head and shackles around his wrists. That really affected me because I realized that the mosque has become a safe house for absurdity. I really and sincerely went up to the front doors of my mosque thinking that I could be a part of my community. I had just chosen, as I wrote in the book, to raise my son a Muslim, and it seemed like the perfect opportunity to really practice what I had promised I would do, by giving back to the community. A new mosque had opened. It was much bigger, and I just knew they had much more space to share with the women than the dinky little mosque they had been using for years. And I had enjoyed such rights on the hajj that I didn't have at home.

I was wondering about that. In the book, you really make it seem like such a contrast.

I didn't even know it was going to be a contrast. I just expected that all of the rights that I enjoyed on the hajj in Mecca were going to filter through to the rest of the Muslim world. I knew from traveling through India and Pakistan that women are not welcome in mosques, but I just really believed that it would be different in America. After all, all of the leaders of my mosque were professors, and physicians and Ph.D. candidates. So when I walked up to the front, I was really stunned when the board president yelled at me and told me to take the back door. I was so horrified, I felt so violated and angry, and it stirred up a lot of pain that I had just put aside, being a marginalized member of the Muslim community. Growing up, I never felt like I belonged because women were always in the kitchen or in a corner, and while my parents encouraged me to be successful and strong, there was no place for my kind of woman in my Muslim community.

Both your decision to make the trip to Mecca and your protest at your local mosque put not only yourself but also your young son and extended family squarely in harm's way. How are you able to justify the risks you have taken?

That's a really good question. I think I have been so confident in the righteousness of tolerance and equity that I've just believed that harm could not come our way. Even under threat, one night when one of the members of the mosque lunged at my father and called him an idiot, I was trembling inside, but still returned, because at the end of the day I believe they are so wrong. And I know that the dark side has slain many great people in world history, and I've tried not to be naive about any of the risks. Basically, Danny trusted the men who kidnapped him, and I came back from Karachi with serious trust issues.

But I guess I also know that intimidation is part of the cycle of social change. When I came back from the hajj and became a volunteer at the rape and domestic violence shelter, I studied what women go through when they confront their abuser, and I know that isolation and intimidation and emotional abuse are part of the consequences of challenging power and control. I've never taken it personally, though it has hurt a lot. I just pray that good will win and keep us all safe.

How has your family responded to the experience?

My parents are so resilient, and they are the ones who have always encouraged me. They never advised me to cave in to fear. Even when I was in Karachi, it was a risk and a danger to stay and keep searching for Danny. We were under virtual house arrest, even though it was supposedly the command center. We were surrounded by police and we couldn't even walk outside without armed guards. I walk into the mosque in Morgantown with my phone always charged, ready to call 911 if I need to. I don't know how far people will go to protect the status quo, but I know they have gone to great lengths to resist change.

Now we're doing this woman-led prayer, and I am shocked, but not surprised (if you can be both at one time) by the reaction from folks who oppose a woman leading prayer -- something that has not happened since the Prophet was alive in the seventh century. People are using every form of intimidation that they possibly can, from theological intimidation, to threats about what will happen to us in the hereafter. And I say to these folks, "Don't be a part of this change if you don't want to, if you don't believe in it. But allow people to coexist with you in a peaceful way with different points of view." I just have to read what the civil rights leaders and suffragists had to go through to know that change doesn't come easily, but it does eventually happen.

Next Page: Trying to reclaim the seventh century model of Islam

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