Women as imams
There is a difference of opinion among Muslims regarding the circumstances in which women may act as imams, i.e. to lead a mixed gendered congregation in salat.
A small number of schools of Islamic thought make exceptions for tarawih or for a congregation consisting only of close relatives. Women acting as leaders, teachers, and authorities in other capacities however is not deviating from the Islamic orthodoxy, as women have never been restricted from becoming scholars, ulema, jurists, muftis, preachers, missionaries, or spiritual guides. There is a long history of female masters of Islamic sciences teaching men.
Historically, certain sects have considered it acceptable for women to function as imams. This was true not only in the Arab heartland of early Islam, but in China over recent centuries, where women's mosques developed. The debate has been reactivated during the 21st century as the west and the world revisit sexism. Those critical of the ruling that women cannot lead congressional prayers have argued that the spirit of the Qur'an and the letter of a da'if hadith indicate that women should be able to lead mixed congregations, as opposed to sex-segregated congregations, and they suggest that the prohibition against the practice originated from sexism in the medieval environment and from inaccurate patriarchal interpretations of religious texts, rather than from a spirit of "true Islam".
Precedents
The Qur'an does not address this issue; relevant precedents are therefore sought for in the hadith, the traditions attributed to Muhammad; the sunnah, his actions, including but not limited to hadith; and the principle of ijma, consensus.An indirectly relevant hadith is widely considered to be crucial, since the imam stands at the front of the congregation. The hadith in question is #881 of Sahih Muslim: "Abu Huraira said: The best rows for men are the first rows, as opposed to the last ones, and the best rows for women are the last ones as opposed to the first ones."
The hadith of Umm Waraqa has given rise to debates among Islamic leaders on whether it is acceptable or not for women to lead prayers, including mixed-gender congregational prayer. Umm Waraqa bint Abdallah, an Ansari woman, who knew the entire Quran, was instructed by Muhammad to lead ahl dariha, which consisted of both men and women, in prayer. The Arabic phrase means "the people of her home", but the ambiguity hangs on the exact translation of dar, "home", which can refer to one's residence, neighborhood, or village. The "people of Umm Waraqa’s home" were so numerous that Muhammad appointed a muezzin to call them to prayer. Umm Waraqa was one of the few to hand down the Quran before it was recorded in writing. She could do so because she had memorized the entire corpus.
The use of the word dar in the hadith, when speaking of where the prayer was held, has resulted in different interpretations. A general translation is "area", constituting the community around where Umm Waraqa lived. This idea is not accepted by many scholars. Another translation of dar is "household", which would mean that Umm Waraqa led prayers in her home. Who was she leading? Imam Zaid presents three possibilities: the two servants of her household and the mu'ahdhin, or the women of her surrounding “area”, or only the women of her household. Each of these possibilities requires certain assumptions, but the most accepted is that Umm Waraqa was leading the women of her household, thus leading to the conclusion that women are allowed to lead prayers of all-female congregations. Zaid insists that if Muhammed established a mosque in the household of a man, which was not uncommon, Itban b. Malik, then he must also have set up women-only congregations.
With regard to women leading congregations of women, however, several hadith report that two of Muhammad's wives, Aisha and Umm Salamah, did so, and as a result most madhhabs support this. According to Qaradawi:
All of the hadiths state that the given woman leads the other women in prayers while standing among them in the same row, and not standing on the first row of the prayers as imams do. They further state that they were among only women, not male worshippers.
Aside from the hadith, there are other sources to consider. The sunnah is a more general source of precedent; it is usually considered to count against women leading mixed congregations, as there are no reports of it happening in Muhammad's time, unless, as Amina Wadud suggested, the aforementioned Umm Waraqa hadith is interpreted to apply to her town rather than to her household alone.
A third source of precedent is the principle of ijma—consensus—supported by the hadith "My community will never agree upon an error." This is also generally quoted against the idea of women leading mixed congregations, since the consensus of the traditional jurists is overwhelmingly against the concept; however, supporters of the idea argue that this consensus is not universal.
One of the most authoritative overviews of the viewpoints of the classical jurists on whether women may lead the prayer or not is "Whether to Keep Women out of the Mosque: A Survey of Medieval Islamic Law" written by Christopher Melchert.
Women-only congregations
Schools differ on whether a woman may be imam of a jama'ah prayer if the congregation consists of women alone. Three of the four Sunni madhhabs—Shafi'is, Hanafis, and Hanbalis—allow this, although Hanafis consider it to be makrooh, a disliked act. Where it is allowed, the woman stands among the congregation in the front row, instead of alone in front of the congregation. In 2000, six maraji among Iran's Shia leadership declared that they too allowed women to lead a woman-only congregation, reversing a previous ban in that country.An unusual feature of Islam in China is the existence of nüsi, mosques solely for women. The imams and all the congregants are women and men are not allowed into the buildings. A handful of women have been trained as imams in order to serve these mosques. However, in at least some communities where these mosques operated, women were not allowed in the men's mosques. In recent years, efforts have been made to establish similar mosques in India and Iran.
Mixed-gender congregations
On the basis of the following interpretation of the Qur'an, Ibn al-Arabi, a Sufi scholar, said female prayer leadership is absolutely permissible.Within the household, if no qualified man is present, is the one exception for women to lead men in prayers. Modern Islamic scholars such as Dr. Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, based on the Umm Waraqah hadith mentioned above, consider it permissible for a knowledgeable woman to lead mixed prayers within her own household, as he considers this to largely obviate the danger of the men being aroused by her presence.
In the early years of Islam, the Haruriyyah sect, a branch of the Kharijites movement, founded by Habib ibn-Yazīd al-Harūrī, held that it was permissible to entrust the imamate to a woman if she were able to carry out the required duties. Not only did she lead Muslim men in prayer, she recited the two longest chapters in the Quran during that prayer.
Well-known early jurists—including Al-Tabari, historian, exegete and founder of a now defunct juristic school; Abu Thawr, mufti of Iraq; Al-Muzani ; and Ibn Arabi —considered the practice permissible at least for optional prayers.
A few fatwas exist permitting women to lead a mixed gender congregation regardless of familial relationship. For instance, Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl recommends that the placement of the imam be made with greater modesty in mind for a female imam. Some traditional scholars caution against Yusuf Qaradawi's methodology and regard him as excessively lenient as he does not limit himself to the positions of the four Sunni schools of fiqh.
Adding to the arguments in favor of woman-led prayer of mixed congregations, Laury Silvers and Ahmed Elewa recently published a detailed article in the Journal of Law and Religion arguing that female imams are permissible in all circumstances. Their abstract reads:
In individual countries
Algeria
The first female imam was recruited in 1993 during the Algerian Civil War. Appointed by the Ministry of Religious Affairs, they all have at least a bachelor's degree in Islamic sciences and a thorough knowledge of the Quran. There were around 500 of them in 2015.Bahrain
A woman disguised as a man attempted to deliver a Jum'ah khutbah but was detected by members of the congregation and arrested by the Bahraini police. The incident occurred at one of the biggest mosques in the island state, in front of 7,000 worshippers, on the last Friday of Ramadan in 2004. The would-be khatib, wearing full male dress with a false beard and moustache, sat on the mimbar just before speaking, at which point some worshippers realised that the new imam was a woman in disguise. They and the mosque's imam, Sheikh Adnan Al-Qattan, handed the 40-year-old woman over to the police.Canada
have been active in the woman-led prayer movement since 2003 when El-Farouk Khaki organized a woman-led prayer with Ghazala Anwar leading for the Salaam/al-Fatiha International Conference. In 2004, United Muslim Association UMA demonstrated its commitment to having women deliver the sermon and lead the prayer.In that year, 20-year-old Maryam Mirza delivered the second half of the Eid al-Fitr ''khutbah at the Etobicoke mosque in Toronto, run by the UMA.
Later the same year, Yasmin Shadeer led the night isha prayer with her male and female congregants.
In April 2005, Raheel Raza led Toronto's first woman-led mixed-gender Friday service, delivering the khutbah and leading the prayers of the congregation. The event was organized by the Muslim Canadian Congress to celebrate Earth Day, and was held in the backyard of the downtown Toronto home of activist Tarek Fatah. In July 2005, Pamela K. Taylor, a Muslim convert since 1986, gave the Friday khutbah and led the mixed-gender prayers at the UMA Toronto mosque at the invitation of the Muslim Canadian Congress on Canada Day. In addition to leading the prayers, Taylor also gave a sermon on the importance of equality among people regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, and/or disability, marking the first occasion where a Muslim woman led prayers in an official mosque. In 2006, the former Mufti of Marseille, Soheib Bencheikh, requested that either Raza or Taylor lead him in prayer, which Imam Taylor did during a visit to Canada in February 2006. The prayers were sponsored by the Muslim Canadian Congress and held in a private venue with a mixed gender congregation. In 2007, Imam Taylor led prayers for International Woman's Day hosted by the Canadian Muslim Union
From 2008, the Noor Cultural Centre in Toronto has included women on their Board of Khatibs, and women and men alternate giving the call to prayer each week. Women regularly give full length sermons prior to the second adhan, with a male khatib'' delivering the Arabic portion in brief after the second call until 2012. In 2012, the Noor began having women give the full sermon including the Arabic portions.
In 2009, academic Laury Silvers, activist/lawyer El-Farouk Khaki and artist Troy Jackson founded the Toronto Unity Mosque, the foundation mosque of El-Tawhid Juma Circle, in downtown Toronto. The circle is gender-equal, LGBTQ-affirming, and religiously non-discriminatory. All Muslims are welcome to lead the prayer and give the sermon. It helps set up similar circles when asked: The first two sister circles were founded in Washington, D.C., and Atlanta, Georgia in early 2011. These two communities are now associated with Muslims for Progressive Values. Since then, Montréal, Quebec, London, Ontario, and Vancouver, British Columbia have also established gender-equal/LGBTQ-affirming prayer communities with the El-Tawhid Juma Circle.
Muslims for Progressive Values Canada, an affiliate of Muslims for Progressive Values USA, founded in 2010 by Shahla Khan Salter leads mixed congregational prayers in Ottawa, Canada. Prayers for MPV Canada have been led by women, including Farhat Rehman and by Zeinab A.