July 2, 2005
Making History:
First Mosque Prayers led by a woman
by Rachel Sa

TORONTO - It was a thin gold ribbon stretching the length of the room, dividing the men and women who gathered for Friday prayers at the United Muslim Association Centre in Etobicoke, but the ribbon fascinated a little girl in a white headscarf who played with it, walking back and forth across the line.

That was not the only divide broken at the mosque yesterday as Pamela Taylor led the congregation in prayer and conducted a sermon marking the first time in history a woman has led prayer within a mosque, according to the Muslim Canadian Congress.

Ms Taylor, who converted to Islam in 1986, said in an interview she was honoured as she prepared to lead prayers.

"I am hoping that in the future other mosques will say: 'They did it, now we can do it, too,'" said Ms Taylor, Co-Chair woman of the New York-based Progressive Muslim Union. "We really have the opportunity to act as the conscience of the Muslim world here and we really need to."

Raheel Raza of Toronto led a Friday prayer service in April in the city's Cabbagetown neighbourhood. But that service was held in a backyard.

"This is a defining issue of women's equality and we are doing it on Canada Day in recognition of the Canadian Charter," said Tarek Fatah of the Muslim Canadian Congress, adding that the mosque service was symbolic of reclaiming a religion that explicitly gives men and women equal rights.

"But, over a thousand years we have been fossilised in a very misogynistic interpretation which keeps women out of mosques," he said. The message of equality was well-received in the Sunni mosque, where an ethnically diverse group, including Shiites, gathered to worship.

El-Farouk Khaki called the diversity `"a tangible manifestation of the equality we espouse to be Islam."

"Look at the ethno-racial diversity," said Khaki, the secretary general of the Muslim Canadian Congress. "There are Indians, Pakistanis, Guyanese, Arabs, Bosnians, Turks, Latin Americans and even non-Muslims."

Mr. Fatah said it was rare enough to have mixed-gender group praying together in the same room. "There are many sceptics in the Muslim community who oppose what we are doing," he added.

Some of those skeptics threatened to picket the mosque and prevent Taylor from entering to lead prayers. Police had been alerted to potential problems but, as the congregation filed in, no protesters appeared.

In an e-mail to the National Post, protestor Mubin Sheikh said that allowing woman to lead prayers was "pathetic" and would "lead to the fire of hell."