Women Taking On Greater Role in Islam

[Frodo]

Morocco's New Guiding Force:
Muslim Women Being Trained as Spiritual Leaders and Family Counselors

By Robin Shulman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 30, 2009

Not long ago in the Moroccan city of Rabat, Nezha Nassi met an 18-year-old girl in prison on drug charges. The girl was afraid to leave prison because her parents said she was no longer welcome at home.

For months, Nassi counseled the girl, who seemed to bloom slowly and build an idea of the life she wanted. Nassi visited the girl's mother to persuade her to take her back, saying the girl would be worse off in the streets and that she had worked to give up her addiction. Nassi told the mother she had the girl's promise.

In Morocco, Nassi's word means something. That's because Nassi is a murshida, or guide, a female religious counselor recently trained by the country's Ministry of Religious Affairs to teach Islam and offer counseling in mosques, prisons, schools and hospitals -- even to make house calls to work through the most intimate family problems. Nassi is one of about 250 murshidas trained to occupy the same role as male imams, in every sense but leading prayer.

"This is spiritual, moral and physical counseling," said Nassi, whose soft face makes her look a decade younger than her 42 years, but who projects authority.

She recently visited Washington and New York with two other murshidas to meet with State Department officials and female religious leaders of various faiths in a trip sponsored by the Moroccan American Cultural Center. The State Department, in its annual report to Congress on counterterrorism issued in April, hailed the murshida program as a "pioneering" effort in Morocco's broad approach to spread tolerant practices of Islam.

The program began in 2006 in response to suicide bombers and other terrorist acts that wreaked havoc in the country. The thinking was that training murshidas would expand the number of government-trained emissaries to combat the appeal of violent interpretations of Islam.

At the same time, King Mohammed VI had pushed for reform in family law, giving women more rights in divorce and property, and the right to approve a husband's request to take additional wives. Seeking to be progressive on women's issues while avoiding alienating conservative Muslims, the government fostered the murshida program as a way to bring the new laws directly into homes and give them a religious imprimatur.

The program is part of a worldwide movement to elevate the status of Muslim women scholars and leaders, said Daisy Khan, the New York-based founder of Women's Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equity. "There's a rising consciousness that we need to organize and institutionalize ourselves as sisters of other faiths have done before us," she said.

[GMantis]

The article is wrong. It should be: "Women Taking On Greater Role in Islam in Morocco." I don't think it needs to be said what would happen if someone tries this in Saudi Arabia.

[dead0man]

The article is wrong. It should be: "Women Taking On Greater Role in Islam in Morocco." I don't it needs to be said what would happen if someone tries this in Saudi Arabia.

Excellent point.

[Countess Anya of the North Parish]

The article is wrong. It should be: "Women Taking On Greater Role in Islam in Morocco." I don't think it needs to be said what would happen if someone tries this in Saudi Arabia.

yeah. It would have been bigger news had it been in Saudi Arabia. It is still cool either way.

[anvi]

Saudi Arabia is home to a very small fraction of the world's Muslims, and many, many Muslims around the world are not at all comfortable with the way the House of Saud runs their state.  So, I think it's good that we look to other countries like Morocco for examples like this.

[anvi]

In fact, Morocco is home to more Muslims than Saudi Arabia.  Saudi Arabia is definitely not the culture that gives an accurate reflection of how most Muslims in the world live.

[GMantis]

It doesn't matter that Saudi Arabia has a smaller population than Morocco. Saudi Arabia contains Mecca and Medina, the holiest sites in Islam and is very rich, with a government spending it riches to propagate Wahhabism. These factors together make Saudi Arabia far more influential in the Islamic world than any other muslim country (at least for Sunnis) and which is why developments like this are unimportant if they occur in a peripheral country like Morocco.

[anvi]

Says you.  It's certaily an important development for the women in Morocco and serves as a good example to the rest of the world. 

The fact that Mecca and Medina are in Saudi Arabia and thus are the sites of pilgrimage does not in any way imply that Sunni Muslims the world over subscribe to Wahabi, and in fact, very few of them do.  There are far more pervasive mainstream schools of jurisprudence among Sunnis the world over than Wahabi.  The House of Saud does not speak for the Sunni Muslims of the world.

Calling this development "peripheral" is just a way to minimize the fact that Muslims in the rest of the world do good things often. 

[Bunwahaha [still dunno why, but well, so be it]]

Says you.  It's certaily an important development for the women in Morocco and serves as a good example to the rest of the world. 

The fact that Mecca and Medina are in Saudi Arabia and thus are the sites of pilgrimage does not in any way imply that Sunni Muslims the world over subscribe to Wahabi, and in fact, very few of them do.  There are far more pervasive mainstream schools of jurisprudence among Sunnis the world over than Wahabi.  The House of Saud does not speak for the Sunni Muslims of the world.

Calling this development "peripheral" is just a way to minimize the fact that Muslims in the rest of the world do good things often. 

I agree, this is important, and not to be minimized, and anyways to be supported. Actually, as far as I can tell, Muslims in general have a rather bad opinion of Saudi Arabia, they are happy to take the dollars from Saud oil for new mosques but most of them don't have a good opinion of this Salafist state. That said, it seems that Salafism continues to grow in Muslim world, and Saud dollars help it.

And concerning the holy places of Islam. Muslims are very aware that Saudis make a lot of money with that and have the feeling that they profit and abuse of the situation to make always more money with both pilgrimages, and Muslims don't like it very well...

Actually, I heard once that in a few decades, the money of holy tourism could become something as profitable, and maybe more, for Saudis than what is oil now for them...

[Coburn In 2012]

What? Do their strippers not wear burkas any more?

ROFLMAO

[GMantis]

What? Do their strippers not wear burkas any more?

ROFLMAO

Women in Morocco rarely wear burqas.
One would thing that someone who hated Islam would welcome such reforms.

[Frodo]

What? Do their strippers not wear burkas any more?

ROFLMAO

Women in Morocco rarely wear burqas.
One would thing that someone who hated Islam would welcome such reforms.

Just put that troll on ignore.