Update: In LA, a Muslim Town Hall Meeting Discusses Woman-Led Prayer

June 19, 2005

Source: Muslim Wake Up!

http://www.muslimwakeup.com/main/archives/2005/06/as_you_are_you.php

On June 19, 2005 Muslim Wake Up! reported, "Since the March 18th prayer led by Amina Wadud in New York and co-sponsored by muslimwakeup.com and the Muslim Women’s Freedom Tour, the Muslim community’s excitement, confusion, and even outrage led the Progressive Muslim Union of North America (PMU), which endorsed the prayer, to take two concrete actions in an attempt to alleviate our community's confusion. First, we started a Prayer Initiative which houses information about female-led prayer, including arguments for and against it and first hand accounts of the New York prayer. Secondly, we committed ourselves to organizing as many town hall meetings around the country as we could on the subject of female led prayer. PMU put on its first such town hall meeting in Los Angeles on June 5, and invited UCLA Law Professor Khaled Abou El Fadl to give the keynote speech. Our goal was to act as a conduit of information to the Muslim community in order to encourage Muslims to make informed decisions about this issue. The goal of the New York City woman-led mixed gender prayer was not to impose this particular style of prayer on others, but to be part of a challenge of the current status quo, which attempts to dictate one style of prayer on everyone, namely where men lead, and women stay behind."