Mixed-gender service in N.Y. condemned by Mideast Muslims

[question everything]

Mixed-gender service in N.Y. condemned by Mideast Muslims

By Nadia Abou El-Magd
ASSOCIATED PRESS

March 20, 2005

CAIRO, Egypt – Muslims in the Middle East yesterday angrily denounced a mixed-gender Islamic prayer service led by a woman in New York as a violation of their religion.

Amina Wadud, a professor of Islamic studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, led the service Friday before a congregation of 80 to 100 men and women at Synod House at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan, an Episcopal church.

Three mosques had refused to hold the service, and an art gallery backed out after receiving a bomb threat. Organizers said the service was intended to draw attention to the inequality Muslim women face.

Egyptian newspaper Al-Messa reported the service 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, saying that a woman's body "stirs desire" in men. Some suggested the event was a U.S. conspiracy to mold traditional Islam into a secular American religion.

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Find this article at:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050320/news_1n20muslims.html

[Gyre]

1. Oh for christ's sake!

Let's just outlaw all open expressions of religion in murikkka. It's all superstitious BS anyways, being used in extremely dark ways here to achieve political goals, and couldn't be any more divisive.

Gyre

[Coastie for Truth]

2. Roman Catholics object to female priests, Orthodox Jews

object to female rabbis and cantors (and mixed seating). Many Protestant communities object to female clergy. - so what else is new.

[question everything]

3. But there are currents in both Christianity and Judaism

that allow for mixed gender during services.

Are there similar Muslim currents?

[Coastie for Truth]

6. Yes - That's what started the bruha.

[ima_sinnic]

4. why do intelligent people subject themselves to this crap?

legends and myths about god(s) (and goddess(es)) and their "rules" for humanity were fine for cave-dwellers and hunter-gatherers sittin around the ole campfire but we are supposed to be enlightened now. If 21st-century people really want to associate with an organization that says only men have "a pipeline" to "God," (whose "will" and "teachings" can somehow be "known") it's weird as hell but I guess it's their right.

[mutus_frutex]

5. Pushing for gender equality by appealing to myths..

Wrong, wrong, wrong..

Women would be much better embracing secular principles.