Three Steps to Make Your Masjids Welcoming for Women This Ramadan
By: Essma Bengabsia
With Women’s History month ending and Ramadan around the corner, it’s the perfect time to explore how to make our masjids welcoming for women. Here are 3 steps to get started:
1. Allot adequate prayer space for women, splitting it evenly with men.
Masjids have limited spacing in their facilities due to social distance requirements. As a result, many masjids have repurposed women’s prayer areas for men and asked women to pray at home. Other masjids have dedicated half or more of women’s prayer areas for men, with only a small portion of the original women’s prayer area left for women.
While the latter arrangement may make some sense for Jummah given that Friday prayers are compulsory for men and not women, studies show that Muslim women and men in America attend masjids in equal numbers. Therefore, it is important to maintain equal spacing and accommodations for women and men for the regular five prayers, Taraweeh, and any other programming at masjids this Ramadan (and always).
2. Build gender-diverse speaker line-ups.
Islamic history is filled with female Muslim scholars and leaders, and this legacy of powerful, knowledgeable women in our ummah continues today. So why not spotlight these women’s expertise and voices at our community programs? Are you hosting a program on the origins of fiqh? Tazkiyah? Youth-related topics? There are innumerable female experts across fields who can speak on any of these subjects.
Ditch the all-male panels. Highlight our rich Islamic legacy of gender-diverse scholarship and leadership and build vibrant line-ups of female and male speakers. Don’t know where to find them? Check out Uproar, a national speaking agency that provides an array of diverse Muslim women speakers. Additional local speakers and scholars include Sheikha Iaesha Prime, Ustadha Youssra Kandil, Dr. Suzy Ismail, and Dr. Dalia Fahmy.
3. Engage women’s voices in decision-making, especially around decisions that affect them.
I once sat in a meeting with several masjid leaders across New Jersey. One male masjid leader said that the women in his community have been complaining about the poor conditions of their bathrooms for over a year. “I walked into the bathroom one day and saw the condition, and the next day we approved a budget to renovate it,” he said.
While he had good intentions, his statement was immensely telling of his community’s dismissiveness of women. Though the women in his community had complained about the condition of their bathroom for over a year, the masjid leadership did nothing to address their concerns. Why did it take a male leader’s validation of their complaints about the masjid to implement change? Why were the women’s recurring statements over an entire year not enough?
When making decisions that affect women, consult women. Ask them what they want and need. If our masjid boards were gender-diverse, then these concerns would come up naturally in the meeting rooms. However, until we reach a point of gender parity in our masjid leadership composition, take the extra step to consult the women in your community when making any and every decision that may affect them.
Use these steps to make your masjids more inclusive and equitable not just this Ramadan but for all 365 days of the year.
Check out these additional resources on how to make your masjid more welcoming for women:
1. Creating a More Welcoming Mosque for Women (ISPU)
2. Women's Inclusivity Khutba Sample (Yaqeen Institute)