اینو پارس کن // Parse This

mehreenkasana:

Istanbul Islamic leaders are requiring houses of worship to treat men and women equally, challenging some traditional norms and raising a few tempers

“This is about mosques being a space for women,” declared Kadriye Avci Erdemli, Istanbul’s deputy mufti, the city’s second most powerful administrator of the Islamic faith. “When a woman enters a mosque, she is entering the house of God and she should experience the same sacred treatment. In front of God, men and women are equal; they have the same rights to practice their religion.”

As part of the “Beautification of Mosques for Women” project, Erdemli sent 30 teams to visit all of Istanbul’s mosques and report back on the facilities for women. What the teams found was shocking, she claimed. “Many of the mosques have no toilets for women, no place for women to wash before praying,” Erdemli recounted. “Most of the places allocated for women were used as storage places, and those that weren’t were usually filthy and freezing cold in winter.”

Istanbul’s mosques are now under strict instructions to clean up and provide equal facilities for both men and women by February 2012. But it’s not only a push for cleanliness and improved sanitation that is underway. The way mosques are arranged is also being changed, according to Erdemli. “In most mosques, the women’s area was divided by a curtain or a wall, and this is not fair,” she elaborated. “They are sacred places and women have the right to take advantage of their spiritual feeling as well.”

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As a believer, this means a lot  to me. The mosque issue had left many jittery. Discriminating against women in these sacred places is often obvious but it is brilliant that now scholars and followers have started questioning the legitimacy of such bias. More power to them.

(via the brilliant Kawlture)

Wow, this is incredible. I can’t say I fully accept state-enforced changes in the way things are, but the end for which it is a means is incredible. As I read the descriptions of the state of women’s facilities in mosques, awful memories from when I used to attend came washing over me. Memories of sitting in a hidden corner of the prayer room with tens of other women, a single tiny, static-y TV showing the events from just on the other side of the curtain; memories of neglect and utter boredom; of going off a hunch, peeking into the men’s bathroom, and seeing none of the broken porcelain, crumbling infrastructure, or tarnished, ice-cold faucets we women were used to.

So as I say, Turkey has a bad history of intervening in its people’s private business, but I very much relish the idea of fair and equal treatment in mosque settings.