Author: Soutik Biswas
Publication: BBC News
Date: January 27, 2004
URL: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/3429695.stm
Daud Sharifa is meeting a group
of distressed Muslim women - business as usual at her red-brick office
in sleepy Pudukkottai, in India's southern state of Tamil Nadu.
The shy women tell in low voices
stories of how they have been divorced, abandoned and mistreated by their
husbands.
Sharifa, a 39-year-old single woman
who runs a 3,000-strong network to help Muslim women, gives advice.
The audience listens to her impassioned
plea for women to build their own place of worship and be involved in community
rulings on marriage, divorce, domestic abuse and child custody.
"Would having a place of worship
of your own help? Would a jamat [community elders at mosques who adjudicate
on family matters] of women be more sympathetic to your cause?" asks Sharifa.
The women nod in unison.
Rising complaints
Sharifa, an unlikely feminist in
India's traditionally male- dominated southern heartland, has caused a
storm by leading the movement for the women's mosque.
"We want our space to meet, talk,
discuss our grievances and pray. We want to have a say in community rulings,"
Sharifa told BBC News Online.
In India, Muslim women mostly pray
in buildings adjoining mosques; in some big mosques there are separate
prayer enclosures.
"The majority of mosques do not
allow women to pray," says Badar Sayed, a Chennai-based lawyer and chairwoman
of Tamil Nadu's Waqf Board.
Waqf boards are elected bodies of
Muslim theologians.
Ms Sayed says it is extremely important
for women to be a part of a mosque congregation.
"Sometimes the sermons relate to
women. Women should be present, listening in and finding out what they
are all about," she says.
Sharifa says the idea of a women's
mosque was motivated by the rising number of complaints from local Muslim
women against what they see as partisan rulings by the jamat.
Last year, she received over 100
petitions from women against jamat rulings in matters of dowry, divorce
and domestic violence.
"The mosque will be a symbol of
our awakening. Men are welcome to come and pray, but women will manage
the affairs and be on its jamat," says Sharifa.
Badar Sayed agrees that the "male-dominated
jamats" are often biased in rulings that affect women.
"Women are oppressed. The jamat
does rule against them most of the time," she says.
"Men are sitting in judgment. Jamats
should accept women into their fold."
Compromise
But Mohammed Sikkandar, secretary
of Chennai's Purasawalkam mosque, says the jamats are "by and large fair".
"In matters of family dispute, we
take our decision after talking to the affected women. Nothing is hastily
decided," he says.
Mr Sikkandar says that of the 40
family dispute cases that came to his mosque in the past year, all but
five were settled with a compromise.
He says jamats have even given away
hefty compensation packages to women, citing the example of a 400,000-rupee
($8,800) award his jamat paid to a woman divorcing her abusive husband.
But this does not deter Sharifa,
who says that there "might be a few good men, and a few good jamats", but
the system is stacked against women.
She has toured villages and towns,
collecting 9,000 rupees ($200) towards building the mosque. She will need
$55,000.
Rashida Begum, a 21-year-old teacher
and divorcee, is one of the Pudukkottai women supporting her.
"We are confined to our homes. Our
thoughts are pent up. Our mosque will help us to get together and vent
our feelings," Ms Begum says.
Rajitha Begum, 37, whose husband
abandoned her, says a mosque would help women who have "nobody to go to".
"You don't realise how helpless
women are. We have no fallback, no opportunities to decide our fates. Our
mosque will show the way," she says.
