Women's Access to Mosque: Subverting Dialogue

On my last evening in Norway, I attended a reception at the DCM's residence. Most of the people we had met throughout the Norway tour were present at this official reception, the purpose of which was to network and solidify connections. I was surprised to be approached by some of the Pakistani law students I had met at the Pakistani mosque. 

During the mosque visit, I had asked what the status of women's access to mosques was in Norway. I recounted the story of the woman-led prayer in the U.S. some years back, stating that it had been motivated by a deep frustration with Muslim women's physical and social space in the mosque. When I posed the question to the Norwegian group, the imam of the mosque was quick to step in and answer my question, assuring me that Muslim women in Norway are happy with their degree of access. When the imam was further prodded about whether women were given a seat on the mosque board, he said that women had their own organizations which they formed and led. In other words, no, they don't have a seat on the board.  

The question had actually come to me when I had first stepped inside the Norwegian mosque and saw that the second floor gallery had a glass railing and there was a woman sitting behind the railing reading the Qur'an. I was pleased that the women's section was integrated into the larger mosque setting and that they weren't forced to sit in a separate room or behind a concrete or frosted glass railing that blocked their view of the imam on the lower level. What I didn't notice, but my colleagues did, is that the moment we stepped in, the imam signaled impatiently to the woman to leave the room. As the imam later confirmed, women were generally not permitted to use the upstairs balcony and had instead been allotted a separate room at the back of the mosque.  

When I asked my question about women's space, the only response I received other than the imam's - which I now realized was intended to set the tone of the discussion - was from a woman who had recently moved to Norway from Denmark, and who said that she preferred to pray in the separate room as it gave her privacy. For classes, however, she preferred that she be given space in the main room. She went on to cite the structure of classes at programs held by the Zaytuna Institute in the U.S., which she had attended. She failed to note whether she was given equal space in classes held by the Norwegian mosque.  

Several days later, at the DCM's reception, I was approached by some of the Muslim law students who had been present during this awkward discussion of women's space. They informed me that what had been discussed was not true - that women were rarely given permission to enter the mosque and use its main space. In a society where immigrant Muslim women don't know the Norwegian language and are generally excluded from most activities outside the home, the mosque is one of the few spaces they can go to for social interaction. And according to these students, even that space has been denied to these immigrant women, such that when the rare occasion arises where the mosque doors are open to them, these women flock to the mosque in almost a state of desperation.  

What I took from this revelation by the Muslim law students was not only that women are going through perhaps a more difficult struggle than American Muslim women are vis-a-vis mosque access, but that the purpose of the Citizen's Dialogue Tour was in some instances being subverted. Instead of an open discussion of different or similar problems in Norway and the U.S., when it came to controversial topics, a front was being put up. The discussion on integration and secular extremism was open and meaningful, but discourse of women's issues was kept under wraps.

Muslims and Minorities in Norway

Tonight's my last night in Norway. As I pause to reflect on the past 4 days and the many conversations I have had with activists, politicians, religious leaders, journalists, and students, I am amazed by how much I have learned. Common themes include integration, secular extremism, social welfare, racism, employment discrimination, and the vast proportion of Muslim immigrants who are uneducated and/or of refugee status. Despite instances of blatant racism, Norwegians recoil at the very word "racism" for "to be Norwegian is to be good". In many if not most ways, Norwegians are very good. I have received nothing but kindness and hospitality while here. And the Norwegian government uses its oil wealth to take care of each and every one of its citizens, guaranteeing each an upper middle class lifestyle. The 121 homeless people in all of Oslo are homeless because they refuse to take help from the system; the moment they accept conformity (i.e. fill out the necessary aid forms), they will be living comfortably - without ever having to work.

And yet, these same luxuries are what hinder progress in certain areas. For instance, new immigrants who can stay at home and receive money from the government instead of having to work for it have little or no incentive to do so. In refusing to work, they are also refusing to learn the language and customs and interact with native Norwegians on a daily basis. Integration as a whole is therefore severely hampered.

Similarly, when the Muslim community is handed money from the government, the community has little or no need to work together to fundraise.  Each mosque with its ethnically-segregated congregation can take government money and continue to isolate itself from the rest of the Norwegian Muslim community. In contrast, in the US, the plethora of fundraising dinners and other fundraising initiatives force the community to work together, looking past their ethnic differences in their quest toward a common goal.

Aside from these counterintuitive downfalls of a seemingly fabulous social welfare system, while in Norway, I came to a better understanding of Europe's secular culture. This secular culture is exemplified in Norway's secular extremism, where the very discussion of religion or anything religious causes great discomfort.  This is true despite the fact that the Norwegian constitution requires that the head of government and almost half of its Parliament members belong to the Lutheran sect of Protestant Christianity.

In the case of immigrants, especially those from Muslim countries, this requirement to keep their religious identity out of the public sphere and to air their grievances - if they must - in non-religious terms comes as a great affront to their sense of self.  It's hard to discuss the issues when they are intrinsically linked to religion, and religion is a taboo subject for public discourse.

On the flip side, when it comes to battling serious human rights violations among the Muslim community - whether it be honor killings, FGM, or forced marriages -- instances of such violations among Muslims are generalized as representative of Muslims/Islam generally. So the selective discussion of religion, where it is used to conflate the actions of specific individuals with the actions of an entire community, but where religion is generally not an acceptable topic of discussion, leads to gross media distortions and huge gaps in public knowledge of Islam.