Well, yes, she did.\u00a0 The beginning of the article clarifies that Raza is the first Muslim-born<\/em> woman to do so:<\/p>\n A Canadian author will become the first Muslim-born woman to lead a mixed-gender British congregation through Friday prayers tomorrow in a highly controversial move that will attempt to spark a debate about the role of female leadership within Islam.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Wadud\u2019s role as the first woman to do this is only mentioned towards the end of the piece.\u00a0 Other articles from the BBC<\/a>, Sify<\/a>, and the Oxford Times<\/a>, echo this language about Raza being the first \u201cMuslim-born\u201d woman to lead Friday prayers in the U.K.\u00a0 (The BBC link also includes a radio interview with Raza. At one point, the interviewer says about Wadud, \u201cShe wasn\u2019t actually Muslim-born; she was a convert.\u201d\u00a0 Raza\u2019s response is \u201cYes,\u201d without correcting the interviewer or questioning what it means to make\u00a0that point.)\u00a0\u00a0 A Comment is Free piece in the Guardian<\/a> acknowledged Wadud as the first\u00a0woman to lead mixed prayers in the U.K., but only after identifying her first as\u00a0an \u201cAfrican-American convert.\u201d<\/p>\n I cannot think of any other examples of such a strong emphasis being placed on someone\u2019s status as \u201cMuslim-born.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 If people want to highlight what Raza is doing, why not just talk about her as the second woman to lead prayers in the U.K., or\u00a0the first to do it since Wadud did in 2008?<\/p>\n Aside from the personal angst that the repetition of this \u201cMuslim-born\u201d label is causing me (are those of us who are not Muslim-born destined to forever be seen as less legitimate Muslims?), what really aggravates me is the way that this portrays Wadud.\u00a0 The implication\u00a0seems to be\u00a0that Wadud isn\u2019t quite <\/em>as Muslim as Raza, particularly when the headline simplifies the issue (to the point of inaccuracy) by saying that she\u2019s the \u201cfirst woman\u201d to do this.\u00a0 Think what you want about Wadud\u2019s politics, but the suggestion that she is a lesser Muslim by not being Muslim-born\u00a0is offensive.\u00a0 Raza\u2019s failure to respond more strongly to the BBC interviewer\u2019s mention of this point is also deeply disturbing.<\/p>\n Writing for Pulse Media, Huma Dar makes a similar point<\/a>:<\/p>\n Taylor\u2019s differentiation between \u201cAmerican-born convert\u201d and \u201cMuslim-born woman\u201d and labeling of the latter as the \u201cfirst woman\u201d in the headline creates a false hierarchy and subtly delegitimizes Dr. Wadud, a leading Muslim scholar and author of Qur\u2019an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman\u2019s Perspective<\/a><\/em>, a path-breaking text in the study of gender and Islam.\u00a0 Taylor\u2019s late admission of \u201crepeat\u201d after the (mis)leading announcement of \u201cFirst\u201d <\/strong>in the bold headline <\/strong>does not quite cover up for the critical sins of omission and commission, especially as Raheel Raza, the Pakistani-Canadian woman leading the prayer at Oxford, is neither an \u2018Alima or a scholar of Islam nor is she known for her advocacy of Muslims at large.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I can\u2019t figure out why the \u201cMuslim-born\u201d thing matters in this situation, and who is giving it value.\u00a0 Is it Muslims who see this as\u00a0significant, in contrast to the predominance of so many people who have become Muslim within the leadership or scholarship of a lot of Western institutions?* Is it non-Muslims, who see this as a more authentic illustration of changes within Muslim communities than Wadud was seen to represent?\u00a0 (Never mind that Raza has very little credibility among any mainstream Muslim communities; we\u2019ve written about her<\/a> before on MMW<\/em><\/a>.)\u00a0 Is it everybody, having trouble seeing an African-American woman as fully Muslim?\u00a0 (I\u2019m not sure how this would play out if Wadud was a different race, but it\u2019s hard to imagine that race is entirely irrelevant here.)<\/p>\n Can anyone else help me understand why this point was so emphasized?<\/p>\n (Note that the comment section here is not<\/em> a place to debate whether women should or should not be leading prayer.\u00a0 Please stick to the media representation and the particular issues that I raised in this post.)<\/strong><\/p>\n *It\u2019s true that many scholars who have become Muslim get put on a pedestal and can have certain kinds of privilege and authority that people who were raised Muslim don\u2019t always have access to \u2013 there might even be some situations where it would be significant to note that someone raised Muslim was occupying a certain role that had previously been done only by people who had become Muslim later in life. But first of all, I don\u2019t think that Wadud is really in the same position of privilege that a lot of the white and\/or male scholars are, and secondly, I don\u2019t think that this counts as one of those cases.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Independent recently published an article by Jerome Taylor, titled \u201cFirst woman to lead Friday prayers in the UK,\u201d talking about the mixed-congregation Friday prayers that Canadian Raheel Raza was to lead the following day.\u00a0 I read it, feeling confused: didn\u2019t Amina Wadud do this already? Well, yes, she did.\u00a0 The beginning of the article […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":155,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9,13],"tags":[105,852,1105],"class_list":["post-6389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culturesociety","category-events","category-news","tag-amina-wadud","tag-mixed-gender-prayers","tag-raheel-raza"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/92\/2010\/06\/Raheel-Prayer-300x205.jpg\")
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