The Making of a Mosque with Female Imams

Abstract

A female imam leading women in Friday prayer is a powerful image. Khankan appeared on the bbc list of 100 inspirational and influential women in 2016 and she made number 197 on the Global Influence Top list in 2018.1 She was also invited to have tea with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, in the Élysée Palace in March 2018, received a Global Hope Award in New York in September 2018, did two TEDx talks,2 was a guest on the bbc's renown HARDtalk in October 2018, and published a biography in three languages that sold quite well.3 This is not an exhaustive list, but the examples demonstrate that after the inauguration of the Mariam Mosque Khankan soon rose to international fame.However, in Denmark things looked different. As briefly mentioned in Chapter 7, on the same day (17 March 2015) that Khankan announced that the Friday prayer would be women-only, not mixed gender as originally announced, Søren Hviid Pedersen, a PhD in political science and avid political commentator, insinuated that Khankan might be an Islamist:And who is behind this new mosque? Well, it is no other than Sherin Khankan, a so-called moderate Muslim who, as everyone knows, at a Radikale [Venstre] party conference in [2002]4 refused to vote for a resolution that denounced sharia and [in 2006]5 participated in a demonstration arranged by Hizb ut-Tahrir, the organization that, as everyone

Observing the Sunni-Shiʿa Divide in Fieldwork

“…This article is based on a much broader selection of material, parts of which have previously been published in the form of a PhD dissertation (Petersen, 2020(Petersen, , 2022; an ethnographic study of the Mariam Mosque in 2016 and 2017; and an interview study of religious leaders in similar nonconformist independent mosques (most of which were women-led) in Germany and Switzerland in the summer of 2018 (Petersen, 2019a(Petersen, , 2019b. None of this work was focused on answering questions related to the Sunni-Shiʿa divide, which means that the interview situations were not structured in a way that encouraged individuals to adopt a Sunni or Shiʿa identity or highlight this part of their background.…”

Religious Authority in Women’s Mosque (Ummul Mukminin Mosque at Universitas Islam Bandung)

“…In between Friday prayers, the space is used for a variety of different reasons by the apartment's inhabitants and other users. [5] Women's voice in building the Ummul Mukminin Mosque shows a contradiction to the general perception that thrives in the community regarding the recommendation to pray for women at home, not in the mosque. Indeed, there is a female congregation that agrees with the hadith perception.…”

“…In addition to women-friendly mosques, there are women-only mosques, which are designed to provide female worshipers with comfort and independence when worshiping or participating in religious and social activities at mosques. For example, Petersen [5] and Jaschok's [24] article highlights the importance of women-only mosques. The mosques are the Marriam Mosque in Denmark and Qinzen Nusi in China.…”

“…In a magazine, Information, published in Denmark on March 3, 2015, Sherin Khankan stated her plans to build a women-only mosque and plans to invite Friday prayers led by women and attended by mixed genders in August 2015. [5] The involvement of women with mosques in the contemporary era has implications for women's role in religion and the shift in Islamic authority. But it also has social implications.…”

Religious Reactions

“…On the other hand, social media makes this claim increasingly problematic as behaviour that has manifested itself in discourse in one place may be read and reflected upon in places where similar behaviour has just been initiated. Typically, UK and North American discourses on Islam and gender include some very equal-minded theology that has not been internally produced in Scandinavia until very recently and then often partly inspired by UK and North American discussion and practices (Petersen, 2020). To discover what is truly going on when it comes to changes in religious practices and how theology changes due to this, researchers must actively immerse themselves in observation of religious practice and discussions taking place among religious peers, on social media and at religious gatherings.…”