The call to prayer came onto the speaker system in the women’s prayer space. The Imam was on the microphone upstairs. “Allahu Akbar. Hayya As-salat,” called the Imam. “God is the Greatest. Come and pray.” (Fond memories of the dawn call to prayer in Tunisia rose inside me: “Come and pray. Prayer is better than sleep.”)
Photograph by Flickr user Za3tOoOr! and used under a Creative Commons license.
Eight women entered the mosque through the side entrance, took off their shoes, salaamed everyone, and gathered on the white lines to pray. Mina did not get up.
“Please go pray,” I said, worried that some kind of hostessing obligation was at work and was stopping her from getting up as she might wish. “I don’t want to keep you. I am happy to wait.”
“No, it’s fine. You know that certain times…” She smiled and put her hand on her lower belly.
I interrupted her, embarrassed, “Oh yes, of course!”
Mina was menstruating, and menstruating Muslim women do not perform physical prayer. The notion of being unclean during menstruation crosses cultures, so I was not surprised to learn about yet another practice in which women were “excluded” from “everyday” life.
I had come to the mosque to do research on Islamic paths to women’s empowerment. My earliest research unearthed a lively conversation by Muslimas about the rights they fight for because Islam gives them these rights, and their cultures were denying them their birthright. Mina was from Afghanistan, a mother of three boys, and taught Quran for children every Saturday and Sunday at the masjid.
My whole life, I had been encouraged to believe there is no difference between myself and boys or men. As a girl, I was taught to fight any narrative telling me I was different as inherently disempowering and sexist. Menstruation was the illustrative microcosm for this fight. My culture, through education and advertising, taught me to take pain killers and maintain my energy levels throughout my period. I should play tennis with pride in a white mini skirt and not let my period stop me from anything– “Don’t give in to patriarchal oppression!” my inner voices reminded me when I just wanted to spend the day watching movies and putting my feet up. I did not realize at the time that I felt constantly disempowered. When I felt exhausted or emotional, I resented my femaleness as a burden and bonded with my female friends by complaining about our bodies together.
About eight years ago, a shift occurred in how I related to my body and my womanhood. Perhaps like many American women before me, a mixture of Naturopathy and Yoga began unlocking ancient wisdoms of female health that were hidden from view in my modern American life. I was deeply moved the first time a yoga teacher altered a pose for those of us on our “moon cycles.” Being acknowledged for a time of the month that is lower energy, and not being told to change for it, was radically liberating for me. In her book Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom, Dr. Christiane Northrup famously defends our birthright of attuning with the dark, lower energies of the new moon and menstruation, as well as fully celebrating and embracing the full moon and ovulation energies that most of us are denied in a culture that tends to encourage hormonal birth control which razes cyclical fluctuations. Flipping this on its head, I realized that something that was perceived as central to my oppression was in fact central to my empowerment, happiness, and self knowledge.
It might seem to some as “new-agey,” but the narrative of reclamation of the divine feminine through Yoga and Naturopathy worked for me. But I was surprised that after seven years of studying Arabic and Islamic culture, I still had not come across celebratory women’s self-realization through an explicitly Islamic lens. I knew there must be a Muslima conversation that I was simply not privy to. I did not know where to look or what questions to ask. Finally, for the last term of my Master’s degree, I knew enough to dig deeper. I was amazed and moved at what I found. As I allowed the possibility for Islamic empowerment to permeate me, menstruation was again a potent example for how women relate to their bodies.
Islam tells menstruating women not to pray. The full Islamic prostration used when praying, sujood, is like an “inversion” pose: with your forehead touching the earth and your toes tucked, the upper back is wide with squared shoulders and the lower back stretched out and open. It is very grounding, stretches and strengthens your muscles and recharges the nervous system. Oddly enough (or, beautifully enough) we find these same rules in Yoga: inversion poses, such as “downward dog” or “child’s pose”, are strictly off-limits to menstruating women. A woman who is menstruating needs to rest her nervous system and encourage gentle relaxation, supporting the energetic movement of releasing her uterine lining downward and away from her body. Menstruating women are indeed allowed to enter a mosque, and are just to avoid performing the physical prayer; further, they are not to uphold the fast during Ramadan but rather should eat and drink as they require. I was humbled to realize that this was not about denying their rights; it was about tuning into what their bodies really needed. Their Creator had made them and knew what was best for them.
What other Islamic rules were not as restrictive as I initially perceived? I wondered what else was behind the lively conversation about what Islam offered Muslimas and why they were fighting for it.
When Mina told me she was not praying that day, I was happy that she could rest and relax. We returned to stories of her childhood in Afghanistan and her new life in America and how she turns to Islam in times of hardship. The other women prayed in the far corner of the masjid.
This post is part of a series “Islamic Paths to Women’s Empowerment,”a Capstone project by the author. -Ed.
Haley Dillan is a Master’s of Public Administration Candidate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. She has studied Arabic and Islamic culture since 2007, and hopes to work in development in the Middle East and North Africa in the future.
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