Your faithful scribe ran across this article today and thought you might be interested! Back about fifty years ago in Canada we were required to have seperate "Gents" and "Ladies and Gentlemen" entrances to a tavern.
That's about how far it went to keep the sexes seperate, and this was done for the protection of the ladies.
It's not quite that liberal in the Middle East.
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Muslims in the Middle East on Saturday angrily denounced prayers led by a woman in New York City the day before as a violation of Islam. One Egyptian newspaper, Al-Messa, reported the news of Amina Wadud leading Friday prayer services on its front page, with the emphatic headline: They are tarnishing Islam in America!
It referred to Wadud as "the deranged woman."
A female Islamic law professor condemned the act as apostasy, explaining that a woman's body "stirs desire" in men. Some suggested the event was a U.S. conspiracy to mould traditional Islam into a secular American religion.
Wadud, a professor of Islamic studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, led the Islamic prayer service before a mixed congregation of 80 to 100 men and women at an Anglican church.
Three mosques had refused to hold the service, and an art gallery backed out after receiving a bomb threat. Organizers of the prayer said it was intended to draw attention to the inequality faced by Muslim women.
"Women were not allowed to (have) input in the basic paradigms of what it means to be a Muslim," Wadud said after the service, adding that while the Qur'an puts men and women on equal footing, men have distorted its teachings to leave women with no role other than "as sexual partners."
But in the conservative Middle East, Wadud's prayer service was severely frowned on.
In Saudi Arabia, Grand Mufti Abdul-Aziz al-Sheik spoke out against the New York event in Friday prayers at a Riyadh mosque. "Those who defended this issue are violating God's law," he said. "Enemies of Islam are using women's issues to corrupt the community."
Sheik Sayed Tantawi, head of Egypt's Al-Azhar mosque, the leading Sunni Muslim institution, said Islam permits women to lead other women in prayer but not a congregation that includes men.
Muslims are required to pray five times a day. On Friday, the Muslim holy day, many try to perform their midday prayers at a mosque. A male imam leads the prayer, followed by lines of men and, behind them, women. Most mosques have different halls, or different floors for the women, as well as separate entrances.
Soad Saleh, who heads the Islamic department of the woman's college at Al-Azhar University, considered the act an "apostasy," which is punishable by death in Islam.
"It is categorically forbidden for women to lead prayers (if they include men worshippers) and intentionally violates the basics of Islam," she said.
Explaining why only men lead prayers, she said: "The origin is that the woman's body, even if veiled, stirs desire." The most conservative Muslims also warn that women should not raise their voices as the sound can be seductive.
Abdul-Moti Bayoumi, of the Islamic Research Center at Al-Azhar, said Wadud had carried out "a bad and deviant innovation" that contradicted the Prophet Mohammed's sayings and deeds.
This brings to mind a few quotations your humble servant has run across!**Women have three roles - obey the father, obey the husband, obey the son.
--Mid-East Proverb.
**It goes without saying that society in the Islamic, Christian, and Judaic areas of the Middle East have always been, and will try to stay, patriarcol societies. --Anonymous
**"The true republic; men, their rights and nothing more.””Women; their rights and nothing less."-Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906)
