{"id":8686,"date":"2011-08-24T00:00:06","date_gmt":"2011-08-24T07:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/muslimahmediawatch.org\/?p=8686"},"modified":"2011-08-24T00:00:06","modified_gmt":"2011-08-24T07:00:06","slug":"30mosques-crashes-a-female-prayer-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mmw\/2011\/08\/30mosques-crashes-a-female-prayer-space\/","title":{"rendered":"30Mosques Crashes A Female Prayer Space"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

This was written by Peter Gray and originally appeared at his blog<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n

Wouldn\u2019t it be amazing to zigzag across the country, visiting mosques and writing about the people that use them?\u00a0Aman Ali and Bassam Tariq thought so. Now they are on the second leg of a Ramadan road trip<\/a> fueled by faith, food, and good old-fashioned male privilege. Recently, in an attempt to explore the gender divide in Muslim places of worship, the duo documented the women\u2019s area of a mosque that hosted them in Little Rock, Arkansas.\u00a0This could have been a great opportunity for Ali and Tariq to reflect on their privilege. Instead, they chose to exert it over the women they visited, leaving a number of them upset \u2013 and rightfully so.<\/p>\n

Bassam Tariq wrote a\u00a0blog entry<\/a> about the experience, which had good intentions but went horribly wrong. In the opening paragraph, he descibes what motivated him to focus on the women\u2019s area:<\/p>\n

[\u2026]\u00a0I realize how tired I am of photographing men, hairy men, brown men, Arab men, black men, men wearing kufis, men laughing, hobbit looking men, bald men, Aman and the occasional ambigious man boy. And that\u2019s how I decided it\u2019s time to spend a day in the women\u2019s area.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The women of that mosque must be thrilled to know that Tariq visited them out of boredom. After all, everyone appreciates being told, \u201cHey \u2013 I\u2019m getting tired of my regular friends; let\u2019s hang out!\u201d\u00a0Surely he understands that women deserve attention because of their intrinsic value \u2013 not because they make useful substitute-men.<\/p>\n

But it only gets worse from there. In his next sentence, Tariq explains, \u201cIn my headspace, Muslim women exist only as my wife and my mother\u201d [sic<\/em>]. He suspects that \u201cperhaps that is one of the reasons why it has taken a while to finally jump into the women\u2019s side.\u201d Perhaps. His aloofness toward Muslim women would certainly account for the social incompetence he displays around them in his visit.<\/p>\n

Unfazed by his narrow perspective, Tariq enters the ladies\u2019 section. There he strikes up a conversation with one of the younger women and begins taking pictures.\u00a0He is startled to learn, however, that not everyone appreciates his non-consensual photography. Shocking!<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are not allowed to be here,\u201d one woman tells him. He protests that he \u201cgot permission earlier\u201d and that \u201ca lot of the women are okay\u201d with his photos. But who gave him permission to enter? And why is he ignorant of the most basic ethics of photography?<\/p>\n

Rationalizing his intrusion, Tariq remarks that \u201cit didn\u2019t seem like the women were that distraught with me being there.\u201d (They were clearly distraught enough to ask him to leave.)\u00a0Adding insult to injury, he accuses them of being \u201chyper-sensitive\u201d:<\/p>\n

We all live in America, we walk through malls, classrooms, hallways and parks with people from the opposite gender. But at the mosque, we become hyper-sensitive.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Tariq fails to understand that in mosques, women\u2019s prayer rooms come with an expectation of privacy. Perhaps these spaces would not exist in an ideal world. Perhaps they are contrary to Islamic tradition. But they are here now, and real people use them. Despite their many problems, the one benefit that these areas offer women is the ability to do things like breastfeed and loosen clothing away from the prying eyes of men.<\/p>\n

But women\u2019s privacy appears to be an afterthought for Tariq. He scribbles notes about how \u201chalf-covered\u201d ladies \u201cseem very comfortable\u201d in the space he is invading, and then acts surprised when those same women ask him to leave.\u00a0Later, he reflects:<\/p>\n

Granted, the women\u2019s area could be a safe space. There are a couple of women that wear the face veil and there privacy needs to be respected. This is there space to be comfortable, why would they be okay with someone like me ruining it? [sic<\/em>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Should it have taken a bumbling foray into the female prayer room for him to arrive at this obvious conclusion?<\/p>\n

The only positive thing about the entire blog entry is the attention it gives to two common problems in women\u2019s prayer spaces: overcrowding and noisy children. Yet even this manages to elicit an ill-advised comment from Tariq: \u201cWell the kids have to go somewhere right?\u201d<\/p>\n

For all his navel-gazing and contemplation of ridiculous questions (\u201cIs a man\u2019s concentration in prayer more important than a woman\u2019s?\u201d), Tariq appears to have learned nothing from his experience. With stunning disregard for the ladies of the Little Rock mosque, he has published photos of them on his popular website \u2013 photos taken without their permission, and which depict some of them without headscarves on.<\/p>\n

If Bassam Tariq wanted to learn about the women\u2019s side of the mosque, he could have asked a Muslim woman to document it for him. He could even have gone in himself, after getting the ladies\u2019 permission and formally introducing himself to them.\u00a0Instead, he inserted himself into a place where he was not welcome, and engaged in the most irresponsible, selfish kind of voyeurism. Tariq owes an apology to the readers of his blog\u00a0and the Muslim women of Little Rock.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This was written by Peter Gray and originally appeared at his blog. Wouldn\u2019t it be amazing to zigzag across the country, visiting mosques and writing about the people that use them?\u00a0Aman Ali and Bassam Tariq thought so. Now they are on the second leg of a Ramadan road trip fueled by faith, food, and good […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,18],"tags":[20,89,182,931,1076,1505],"class_list":["post-8686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culturesociety","category-web","tag-30-mosques-in-30-days","tag-aman-ali","tag-bassam-tariq","tag-muslim-women-in-the-mosque","tag-prayer","tag-womens-prayer-space"],"yoast_head":"\n30Mosques Crashes A Female Prayer Space<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This was written by Peter Gray and originally appeared at his blog. 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