Muslim Women Reclaiming Spaces in Mosques Across India

Mosques are public spaces for Muslims not only to worship, but also to strengthen their relationship with their religious faith and to find and build community. During the Prophet Muhammad’s lifetime, women took part in all aspects of the mosque, including praying in congregation, teaching and learning the tenets of Islam, and participating in civic and legislative matters of the community center. At the holy mosques in Mecca and Medina, even today, women engage in worship alongside men and partake in congregational prayers.

Women in mosques, a taboo across South Asia

As far back as the 16th century, women from the Delhi Sultanate — Razia Sultan, the first female Muslim ruler, and Maham Anga, the foster mother of Mughal emperor Akbar — were well known for building mosques.

In his book Women in Masjid: A Quest for Justice, author and journalist Ziya Us Salam writes, “It all began to change with the decline of the Mughals and the coming of the British. As conservatism was the order of the day, women began to be excluded from both mosques and cemeteries.”

Over the years, this conservatism and indoctrination have been perpetuated throughout South Asia. Women praying in mosques is now widely considered taboo, with some mosques going as far as barring entry to women. These cultural diktats stem from patriarchal notions that women must stay at home or be shielded from the public.

“Biases against Muslim women’s access to mosques are more pronounced today than at any time in the Islamic history of India,” Salam writes.

“In Lahore, Pakistan, I will never forget how my uncle locked my aunt and me inside our home before leaving for the fajr(predawn) prayer,” says Asra Nomani, a journalist who has reported extensively from South Asia and activist for women’s rights in mosques. “In Delhi, Lucknow, and my village in Jaigahan, Uttar Pradesh, I was stunned to see there wasn’t even a space for women in mosques.”

“Praying in mosques is considered a taboo today because regressive interpretations of Islam, and puritanical beliefs have prevailed over women’s rights that Islam granted us in the seventh century,” Nomani adds.

To Humaira Khan, a researcher from Mumbai, the exclusion of women sends a clear message that the mosque is no place for women and their leadership.

“Women are relegated to the home and no decision-making is done outside of this boundary. It feels like a big participation is taken away from us,” Khan says.

The basic lack of space and facilities for women is another impediment. It is common to find women’s praying areas confined to small rooms, basements, or attic spaces where it might be difficult to feel like a part of the wider religious community.

“Mosques are considered men’s spaces, just as the cultivation and production of religious knowledge has traditionally been considered a man’s area,” says Hafsa Lodi, an author and journalist who writes on the intersection of faith, fashion, and culture. “Few female religious scholars are given credibility, space, or praise by proponents of institutionalized Islam,” says Lodi, who also holds a master’s degree in Islamic law.

“For many women, the prospect of praying at the mosque — which should be welcoming and inclusive — is not that appealing.”

Normalizing women in mosques

Muslim Women’s Study Circle, a Muslim women’s collective based in Kolkata, West Bengal, has initiated a nationwide movement to normalize women in mosques. The “Muslim Women in Masjid (Mosque)” movement started in 2020 with heritage walks through the old city of Delhi.

“The idea was to go back to history,” says Sania Mariam, the founder of the collective and a Ph.D. scholar investigating electoral pledges by Indian political parties. Citing the example of Masjid an-Nabawi, the Prophet’s mosque in Medina, the group looked at how women prayed and how women contributed to its history.

As the collective visited different mosques across India, they noticed sectarian as well as rural-urban divides. The women describe three scenarios: mosques that have a small women’s area that may not be well-kept or is open only during the Friday congregational prayers; mosques that do not have a dedicated space for women but will accommodate them upon request; and mosques that have a staunch belief that women should not be praying there.

“Even if you tell them [clerics] that your prayers are being delayed, it is not convincing enough for them to let you pray there," explains Mariam.

Shortly, the team started documenting women-friendly mosques across the country, and they now have a database of 150 mosques that women can pull from and pray at when traveling to other cities. The collective is also reaching out to community leaders and working with them to create women’s spaces in hitherto men-only mosques.

To normalize women’s attendance in mosques, the collective has been sharing selfies and other photographs from their visits on Muslim Women’s Study Circle’s Instagram page. Late last year, the group organized and coordinated a nationwide day for women to visit a mosque in their respective cities and offer prayers in congregation at the same time.

“We were all so excited to go and pray together,” says Saira Manzoor, a social activist who is a member of the collective. “We were excited to learn the etiquette of entering the mosque, praying in congregation, and making dua (supplication) together. Some women had never been into a mosque. It was such a spiritual and emotional experience for them.”

In a continuingly shrinking space, Muslim women assert their rights

The Muslim Women’s Study Circle is a collective of Muslim women who come from various parts of India, and diverse social and educational backgrounds. The collective was formed in 2019 during protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act, which was widely viewed as part of the ruling party’s agenda to marginalize Muslims.

The collective is meant to provide support and create visibility for a diverse group of Muslim women from across India. It is a safe space for dialogue as well as for activism against Islamophobia, for women’s equality within Muslim spaces, and for Muslim women’s rights in the broader society.

The collective’s work comes at a crucial time, when the rights of the country’s 200 million Muslims are under threat. Since coming to power in 2014, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has pushed policies that marginalize Muslims, provide impunity for hate speech and violence against Muslims, and provoke anti-Muslim sentiment.

Over the past few months, Muslim women across India have been the target of constant online and offline harassment — right-wing extremists doxing prominent Muslim women’s identities on an open-source website and “auctioning” them, Hindu priests inciting crowds to kidnap and rape Muslim women, and government banning the hijab in classrooms under the pretext of implementing uniform dress codes.

In this continuingly shrinking space, the Women in Masjid movement is one way for Muslim women to assert their rights, take up space, and increase visibility. “It is commonly perceived that Muslim women don’t have any agency,” says Mariam.

“As Muslim women, we have the additional challenge of finding and negotiating our spaces in the public and private spheres,” says Mariam. In the current sociopolitical climate, Mariam hopes that the collective can serve as an independent voice and agency for Muslim women.