The largest Downtown mosque in San Francisco generated lot of controversy few months back because of the eight-foot tall wall, which separated both the men and women devotees.



As the matter reached a boiling point, the mosque authority took a revolutionary decision of bringing down the wall as many Muslim women complained that they could hardly hear what the Imam was preaching and because most of them felt that, it was insulting and discriminating.



Across Canada and United States, majority of the mosques are building a wall to separate both the sexes because they believe that it is a part of their belief to maintain a safe distance between men and women. This new fad of erecting a ‘mosque wall’ is slowly becoming a symbol of the orthodox nature in the North American Mosques.







Now coming to the movie ‘Me and the Mosque’ by women filmmaker Zarqa Nawaz, what is the reason behind her picking up such a debatable matter.



Being a Muslim women, Zarqa was quite aware of the way women were treated outside her home; this prompted her to direct the controversial flick in which she explores all about the ‘mosque wall’ the dividing line between men and women.



She says:

There is an increasing conservatism that leaves women without a voice in their community, and the wall is just a part of that.



When our mosque put up a barrier it became difficult to feel a part of the community. Women couldn’t see or hear properly. I felt it was a symbolic representation of our non-involvement in the mosque

The constant gender segregation forced Zarqa to vent out her pent-up emotions and frustrations through her movie. In this one hour film she has beautifully weaved together various interview clips with religious intellectuals and has given a clear picture of what both men and the women has to say on the subject.



Just like the real life incident of the Darussalam mosque of San Francisco, in the reel life too Zarqa has managed to capture the conflicting perspective of different people. While some say that mingling up with women is distracting during the preaching sessions, the other say that it is important to maintain privacy. Some women who are staunch believer in equality feel that the wall makes them helpless, and leaves them out of place in their own community.



According to Nawaz, separating men and women ‘became ritualized in mosques, but it has nothing to do with Islam. This is about patriarchy being confused with faith, something that has happened in every major religion’.



Nawaz wants to convey the message that she is dealing more with the patriarchal order of the society and not going against her religion.



The movie is all set to be screened in the upcoming Muslim Film Festival in Fremont, Calif, this weekend.



Via: NCMONLINE