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August 28, 2006
Saudi Arabia: Restrictions On Women Praying At Mecca
News from Reuters via the Pakistan and the Khaleej Times relates that clerics in Saudi Arabia are intending to restrict women's access to the Ka'aba, the meteoric stone at Mecca, in the Grand Mosque. The area around the Ka'aba has become crowded of late, and according to Osama Al Bar, who heads the all-male Institute for Haj Research: "So we decided to get women out of the 'sahn' (Kaaba area) to a better place where they can see the Kaaba and have more space. Some women thought it wasn't good, but from our point of view it will be better for them.... We can sit with them and explain to them what the decision is (about)."
The decision is not final and may be negotiated, but already women's groups are complaining. Suhaila Hammad, who is Saudi herself and a member of an international organisation of Muslim scholars said: "Both men and women have the right to pray in Kaaba. Men have no right to take it away. Men and women mix when they circumambulate the Kaaba, so do they want to make us do that somewhere else too? This is discrimination against women."
The 'sahn' is one of the few places in Saudi Arabia where men and women can pray together, even though there are rules about where or where not women can be situated in this area. The muttawa, or religious policemen of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, already harass women who stray from their designated "areas" around the Ka'aba stone.
Hatoun al-Fassi, a woman historian, said: "Perhaps they want women to disappear from any public prayer area and when it comes to the holy mosques that's their ultimate aim."
She also noted that recently the religious authorities restricted the access of women to the tomb of Mohammed, founder of Islam, at Medina.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at August 28, 2006 10:14 PM
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