Ahlul Bayt News Agency (ABNA.ir), Five key criteria for assessing “women-friendly” mosques were distilled by holding over 100 interviews with Muslim women and listening to what they themselves wanted.
These were: a separate prayer space for women, services and activities geared towards women, such as childcare, women’s training or mentoring sessions, an imam accessible to women or a female scholar, the inclusion of women in decision making and women holding office on the mosque committees.
Out of 486 mosques that were invited to participate in the benchmarking exercise, the “top 100″ are listed in the report as “five star” and “four star” mosques.
The list is prefaced by pertinent verses from the Qur’an to set the context for the report’s impact in the Muslim community. They make for interesting reading, and I’d encourage anyone interested in what the Qur’an has to say about the equality of participation to take a look.
I have a few quibbles with the methodology. Of around 1600 mosques in the UK, only 486 were asked to participate, and this was not a representative sample.
And the authors admit that it’s just a start. The 100 women interviewed to identify the five criteria may or may not have been representative of the schools of thought, age and ethnicity the UK Muslim population.
But, you know … so what? From reading the report I sense that this was never meant to be a piece of quantitative analysis. What is important about this report is that it should ignite a public discussion about women’s participation in mosques, why it’s important and how to achieve it. The report highlights some of the key criteria that women feel are important to them, and we get a qualitative sense of the challenges. It’s a great first step.
And here’s my advice on where the report needs to go next: it needs to be rolled out across all mosques – and ideally all faith centres (Muslims are not the only ones with issues around gender participation).
We need to identify the factors that led to high women’s participation in mosques, and we need to share that best practice across faith centres.
Mosques are already a vital part of British civic society. And, as society gets “bigger”, community run organisations that cater for local needs will become increasingly important – even more than they are now. So our job is to make them the best that they can possibly be.
Encouraging and then institutionalizing transparency, standards and best practice is part of that work. In this regard, the support the report’s launch is receiving from the Mosques and Imam’s National Advisory Board(Minab) which was set up to encourage standards and best practice across mosques, is an excellent partnership.
Mosques have been set up through the voluntary efforts of ordinary working Muslims up and down the country in order to build a sense of community, and to offer moral and emotional sustenance. In addition to this, they provide a range of services from English and computer classes, to yoga and crèche facilities, to gyms and function halls.
At a time when funding will no doubt become scarce, such services are important. In particular, where they offer support to women and young people they need to be encouraged. When stories of violence come to the fore it is usually where mosques have not been able to deliver a high level of support and services tailored to its community’s needs.
This report echoes wider societal concerns about women’s participation in the public square. If we look at the criteria where four-star mosques fell down, the lack of women’s inclusion at a strategic and operational decision-making level was one of the key failings. But this is an area where women’s participation is generally problematic.
In the political arena, much has been rightly made of the fact the Cabinet is only 14% female – a measly four women. But it’s a wider issue than that – only 21.8% of MPs are women. And the corporate sphere is little better. Only 12.2% of FTSE 100 directors are female, and only four companies have female chief executives.
So let’s see this report as a small step towards that wider social goal of women’s inclusion and participation in the civic arena. Looking through this wider lens will almost certainly effect much faster and more effective change.
source : http://abna.ir
