New Straits Times, Friday, 22 Sept 2006

Zainah Anwar
Women will not be deprived of praying in the vicinity of the Ka'abah, the holiest sanctum in Islam.

ON Aug 25, Saudi newspapers reported that the haj authorities were considering plans to ban women from praying in the vicinity of the Ka'abah, the cubic stone structure that serves as the unifying focal point for Muslim prayers.

An outburst of protest broke out among Saudi women.
They wrote to newspapers, spoke on television and posted on the Internet.

The Muslimah Writers' Alliance, an international network of Muslim women writers, launched an online petition to collect signatures to send to King Abdullah.

Thousands of women from all over the world, including Saudi Arabia and Malaysia, signed.
Within two weeks, the Saudi haj authorities abandoned the idea.
This is a significant victory for the nascent public voice of women in Saudi Arabia.

It is very rare that Muslims, let alone Muslim women, write critically about their experience in Mecca and Medina during their haj or umrah. Many feel to complain is to invite God's wrath on us.

That Saudi women themselves are now willing to be openly critical of the way women are treated in the two most holy mosques of Islam - the Grand Mosque in Mecca and the Prophet's Mosque in Medina - has provided impetus for other women and men to speak out as well.

For long, Muslim women have griped about this discrimination and the abuse they suffer at the hands of the mutawwa (the brown robed mosque guards) and their ever shifting and seemingly arbitrarily imposed limitations on women's spaces in the Grand Mosque.

For Saudi women, this attempt at permanently depriving them of that small allocated space they still have on the Ka'abah floor was a step too far.

They scoffed at the rationale that women will be moved to new sections further away from the Ka'abah for their own safety, comfort and privacy.

Haj officials said this was to protect women from the over-crowding at the mataf (the white marbled circumambulation area around the Ka'abah), the mass movement of people and the focus of prying television cameras.

Then, why not keep the men away from the mataf and let women have that space in comfort and safety, they retorted. Why deprive women of the right to pray to God in front of the Ka'abah, the holiest sanctum in Islam. Why should men have that sole privilege, they questioned.

Hatoon al-Fassi, a history professor writing in the Arab News, said: "Throughout Islamic history, from the earliest days of Islam, women have never been banned from praying inside the mataf or any other parts of the two holy mosques.
"There have, however, been many recent restrictions on women praying and this new proposal is simply further evidence of this."

Another Saudi woman, Suhaila Hammad, research director at the National Society for Human Rights, said 46 per cent of the pilgrims at the mosque last year were women.

"This means if they follow the holy book and aim at a sense of equality, 46 per cent of the circumambulation area would be exclusively for women," she said.

"But instead, from the 18,000 square metre space, for every man there is 53.06 square cm and for each woman there is 17 square cm."
Even then, that little space for women on the mataf is shielded behind screens.

Hatoon complains that women can't even see the Ka'abah when they are sitting down, even though the Ka'abah is just before them.

In my two journeys to Mecca, the first for umrah and the second for the haj, I met many women from different parts of the world who complained about the lack of space for women to pray in full view of the Ka'abah.

All your life you pray towards the Ka'abah from thousands of miles away. Now that the Ka'abah is really before you, you naturally want to pray right there before the House of God. You cannot get any closer physically to God.

But it is a constant struggle for women to find this space.

It is thus that women devise strategies daily to pray before the Ka'abah. Umrah is easier because the mosque is not so crowded. You hang back eyeing the empty corridors that give you a grand view of the Ka'abah.

The minute the azan (call to prayer) is heard, you pick up your prayer mat and rush to the front.
It takes just one woman to move forward and hundreds follow within seconds. By then it is too late for the mutawwa to chase us away.

Often they do try to get us to move to the back of the mosque. But you just ignore them, reading your doa (prayer) book furiously, praying that the imam would start the prayers immediately. Once the prayers begin, they would leave us alone.

Sometimes, you don't want to do battle. So you go upstairs to find your own quiet spot.
It is nice to see families able to sit together, men, women, and children all praying together. But you can only do this during the umrah.

With millions of pilgrims at haj time, every single space in the mosque is taken up.
No empty corridors to set your eyes on. So you go an hour before prayers to find a space nearest the Ka'abah. Often, you are chased away because you are a woman.

But on some occasion, you might be lucky enough to escape the eye of the mutawwa or you meet a kind one who lets you remain put.

It is an incredibly moving experience to pray before the Ka'abah, with tens of thousands of men and women side by side, in total unison and submission to the will of God.

In that moment, you live that reality of God's message that all men and women are equal before God, that God does not discriminate.

Alas, somehow that egalitarian message too often flies over the heads of so many Muslims.
Some of the worst discriminatory behaviour you see during Haj comes from other fellow pilgrims as well.

Many women go to the first or second floor, sometimes an hour before prayer time, so that they can occupy the front rows overlooking the Ka'abah.

What is shameful is the sight of some male pilgrims sauntering to the front just five or ten minutes before prayer time and shouting at the women to move to the back so that they can take the coveted spot.

Sometimes quarrels break out, especially when the mutawwa breaks the boundaries of propriety by shoving a woman who stays her ground.

I saw one mutawwa slinking away in shame as a group of women wearing the niqab (face covering) rained abuse on him for pushing one of their own.

The only time when women have kept their right to occupy their self-claimed space has been when we are in a big group and no one would budge an inch.

I pray that the current public discussion on the discrimination women face in the Grand Mosque would lead the authorities to allocate equitable spaces in the coveted areas, proportionate to the numbers of male and female pilgrims to truly reflect that all are indeed equal before Allah.