Amina Wadud

Amina Wadud at prayer service Professor Amina Wadud was the subject of much debate and Muslim juristic discourse after leading a Friday prayer congregation of over 100 men and women in the Episcopal cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York on March 18 , 2005 , breaking with the tradition of having only male imams. (Three mosques had refused to host the service, while an art gallery was persuaded through a bomb threat to refuse the service as well.) The event was not the first time in the history of Islam that a woman lead the Friday prayer . See Women as imams for a discussion of the issue. In August 1994 , Dr. Wadud delivered a Friday khutbah (sermon) on "Islam as Engaged Surrender" at the Claremont Main Road Mosque in Cape Town, South Africa. At the time, this too was largely unheard of in the Muslim world. As a result, there were attempts in Virginia by some members of the Muslim community to have her fired from her position at Virginia Commonwealth University . There has been much objection from Muslims around the world to Dr Wadud's imamate; Muslims all over the world even declared it to be blasphemous, while others outside the Islamic realm who adopt western norms may consider it Ijtihad , although, according to the Islamic Jurisprudence [Fiqh], the exercise of Ijtihad is strictly prohibited in the presence of scholarly consensus and clear-cut textual evidence. Wadud has, reportedly, been threatened by conservative Muslims, and conservative opinions may have contributed to the mosques' refusal of Dr. Practically all traditional Islamic religious scholars ( ulema ) and jurists ( fuqaha ) have reached a consensus that it is against Islam to have a woman Imam lead a prayer when there is a male in the congregation, on the grounds that the Prophet Muhammad has never practiced the Imamate of a woman in a Salat when there was a male attending it. However, liberal movements within Islam tend to ignore the traditional view and support modern feminist perspectives.¹