Three and a half years after 9/11, a Black American feminist scholar of Islam called Dr. Amina Wadud became the first woman imam to lead a mixed-gender Friday congregational prayer--100 of us--50 women and 50 men. #20thanniversary911
https://twitter.com/monaeltahawy/status/1437074782433030144
It was one of the most moving moments of my life. The prayer was co-sponsored by the (now defunct) Progressive Muslim Union of North America (PMUNA), of which I was a board member. #20thanniversary911 
The PMUNA had come to be in the aftermath of 9/11, as part of the vigorous internal Muslim arguments and debates those awful attacks had shaken into being. Remember: al-Qaeda has killed more Muslims than non-Muslims. #20thanniversary911 feministgiant.com/p/the-day-afte…
No mosque would host our female-led mixed-gender prayer. An art gallery that had agreed backed out after a threat. The Cathedral of St. John the Divine kindly offered us a lay building on its premises for our prayer.
A jihadist Website urged Osama bin Laden to issue a fatwa calling for our deaths, while the now late Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi complained at the time to an Arab League summit meeting that our prayer would create a million bin Ladens.
A woman leading one hundred people in prayer would inspire people to extremist violence, rather than than oppression, torture and corruption of regimes such as those led by Qaddafi and his fellow dictators at that Arab League summit.
A BBC documentary filmmaker told me that during his interview soon after our prayer with Iraqi cleric Muqtader al-Sadr - usually described as “hardline” and “fiery” in western media - he asked Sadr what was the worst thing the US had done.
Remember our prayer in NYC in 2005 was 2yrs after the US invaded al-Sadr’s country Iraq, in its war of revenge--along with the war on Afghanistan-- for 9/11, leading directly or indirectly to the deaths of almost half a million Iraqis. Sadr replied “Allow a woman to lead prayer.”
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
