I came to live in India after having already lived in other parts of Asia. Naively, I anticipated that the best of my Asian living experiences would be manifest in India and this centered on a dynamic encounter with diverse religious communities. I have thus been disappointed that the ideals of diversity have given way to exceptionalism and exclusivity.
For example, members of one religion are not encouraged to or interested in visiting the sacred spaces of other religions. In fact, in most cases, they are prohibited. To be sensitive to these constraints I do not visit any sacred place, no matter how much I have wanted, unless I am given permission as a Muslim. (Coincidentally, I am also prohibited as a woman from entering some of the sacred Muslim spaces!)
As a (retired) professor of religious studies I would like to think I can be a respectful observer. Nevertheless, I have little ability to internalize the notion of taboo. That is, I cannot understand that any space constructed by human beings would be defiled by the entry of another human being. My history of social and political advocacy against all forms of oppression just cannot find a space to accept this notion that one person is irredeemably taboo.
I do understand ritual acts that symbolize purification are performed to permit the passing of certain boundaries, again as established by human members of a particular religious community. For example, in Islamic ritual, the performance of the obligatory five times daily prayers requires a ritual washing with clean water or if none is available with sand. I have observed that some people within my community apply this ritual purification as a requirement for reading the sacred text or entering the mosque. For such persons, any one not a member of the community will not thus be ritually prepared, so categorically should be excluded from touching the sacred book or entering the mosque.
The question still remains if such persons are able to arrive at a level of purity by the act of ritual purification alone, or are they forever considered a defilement by their failure to acknowledge the religious conditions of Islam by becoming Muslims themselves? We are unconditionally prepared to accept conversion to Islam by any person irrespective of their point of origin, that is their prior religion or lack there of.
I have been traveling in Southeast Asia the past 3 weeks and a particular case has come to the attention of the media. A place for Muslim prayer, called a surau, was constructed at a resort in one of the states in Malaysia, specifically in Sedili Besar in the state of Johor. Apparently, the surau had not been used for Muslim prayer for some time. The manager of the resort allowed the space to be used by a group of Buddhists for the purpose of meditation. Just in case you are unaware, Buddhist meditation does not involve any animal sacrifice, blood or any liquid prohibited in Islam, like alcohol, in any form of sacrament, nor does it involve any chants spoken out loud or ritual movements as in forms of dance or other performances. Buddhist can and do meditate by sitting, silently and often with no idol or representation of the Buddha. Islamic communities are often very sensitive to representations of the sacred in the forms of multiple gods and their idols.
It seems the most non-offensive form of worship that could be performed by the any one. Still this came to the attention of the government and the resort manager was put into jail, where he stayed for four days before being brought before the courts, where it was upheld that his actions were a violation of respect for Muslims.
The sultan of Johor, who is coincidentally given the title “head of religion”, said “The most sacred places on Earth are mosques and surau. Accordingly, they are not allowed to be used to carry out religious activities other than for Islam and if a surau is found to have hosted other religious activities, it can be demolished…”
So this surau is now ready to be demolished. In other words, they would rather destroy the building than to have it used by someone from another religion, no matter the kind of usage that religion performs in its ritual.
I am uncomfortable with this stance. For one thing, as a traveler who has attempted to maintain her five daily prayers while in transit, I have observed a variety of “collective” sacred spaces, for example in airports. These are constructed in such a way as to both acknowledge religious particulars and yet not to have those particulars over come the space where they might be a problem for persons from other faiths. For example, specific icons can be added and removed. Sometimes the room is constructed in such a way that icons are not visible to those for whom such icons might be problematic.
I am not supposed to pray towards images, let alone idols. So in my home, I do not hang photos of people in the direction towards which I pray, or in the room where I pray. I was more concerned about this in my earlier days, because now I am able to get over the distraction by anything from the goal of my worship, which is transcendent, neither contained by nor represented in any particular form.
I do not presume that persons other than myself might be comfortable with the level of tolerance I have now come to accept. However, I do not agree with the editorial that gives permission for multi-faith spaces only as a limitation or compensation. Because in Malaysia, all religions have their own sacred spaces, he said, they must remain separate.
At this point, I share this story with no conclusion but with a question to you the readers: what are your thoughts on this matter? Please share.
amina wadud is Professor Emerita of Islamic Studies, now traveling the world over seeking answers to the questions that move many of us through our lives. Author of Qur’an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman’s Perspective and Inside the Gender Jihad, she will blog on her life journey and anything that moves her about Islam, gender and justice, especially as these intersect with the rest of the universe.
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Feminism and Religion 
I remember that years ago Drorah Setel, speaking of Jewish purity laws, argued that the deeper purpose of pure/impure regulations in the Priestly segments of the Hebrew Bible was to separate the Hebrew people from “the others” or other people and peoples. She argued that at the deepest level these regulations which became part of Jewish “law” were not about respect for self, God, or animals, but about separating peoples from each other. “Food” for thought (food being one of the focuses of pure/impure regulations.)
Thanks for raising these questions again, Amina.
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Thanks Carol. Yes it is the “othering” that troubles me. I don’t want to say there should be no rituals, or no marked off sacred spaces, but I cannot find the balance between respecting these and sliding over to that side of “othering”.
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Thought provoking post, Amina. I’ve been fortunate enough to worship (with friends) in Jewish and Buddhist temples, as well as many churches. Certainly, in many global companies, there are rooms set aside as common worship spaces. But in the main, religion is becoming less tolerant (let alone accepting) of other faiths. How sad, and I agree with Carol, it is about control and ‘purity’.
However, I wanted to share one positive story with you, from Scotland: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/scottish-church-allows-muslims-to-pray-in-premises/1090287/
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Thanks Annette
and for the link as well. In 2005 when I led the historic woman-led congregational prayer we had selected a religiously neutral zone: an art gallery, which was then given a bomb threat so forced to pull out. In the end, we prayed in a church meeting room, and you would not believe the number of Muslims in the world who put that location as further confirmation that it was wrong. So I am aware of those stories where sacred space is given for the performance of sacred ritual even if not the denomination who built the space. I am also grateful for when that can happen.
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Your post today, Amina, resonates deeply. Thank you, it has helped this morning thinking it through. My own focus has been Nature Mysticism, Buddhism and Taoism, all three combined with Zen, a path basically atheistic. In Zen, the whole cosmic creation is filled in essence with enlightened being, no matter what religion or path we walk in life, even if we choose no religion at all. And I imagine millions of other planets out there and their creatures too having different ways of rejoicing within the context of innumerable spiritual traditions.
I have been working for a number of years online putting together a database of traditional geometric quilt designs, passed down by quilters for generations, and I find every one of those patterns works for me as a mandala. Recently there was a moment of absolute transcendence as a result of meditating on one of the designs. It might be that lots of people have spiritual ways of practice, they never think of as religion!!
http://earlywomenmasters.net/quilts/
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Thanks Sarah for your comment and the link to the quilt designs. I am not so motivated to always separate spirituality and religion Even as I know some times the religious establishment can just about kill the spirit. I certainly agree though, “spiritual ways of practice” are un-limited and thus cannot be contained by religion. Good luck with the quilt making!
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it will be so nice when all of the humans on the planet that have been given a divine right to worship the force that gives the life inside them, can bow to whatever direction, in sacred posture and recognition of that extraordinary breath that animates their form. i am sickened by the exclusivity of all organizations of humans that want to be seen as special for their particular ways of bending or purifying or “demon-strating” their ways of superiority for doing so. i am always irate when i hear about the destruction of sacred space–so hard, in its way, to get sanctioned by commerce–for the actual USE of it. human beings…HUMAN beings…. still, rumi provides a way to remember, “there are so many ways to bend and kiss the ground.”
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Thanks Eli zabeth.
I resonate with the wish to open up spiritual practices to all. The Qur’an says the “whole world is a masjid (mosque i.e. place of prostration). Shi’ah Muslims interpret this verse to mean when ever we prostrate we should have our forehead touch a peace of the natural earth, which they now manufacture into flat prayer stones. I have one of these as I n eed the energy of touching the earth to ground me although I make no denominational claim just because of it.
I guess the thing I grapple with is how those aspects of one form of worship, which are offensive to or in violation to another form of worship or its worshipers can co-exist. I cannot bow before an image of the Christ on the Cross or pray with blood or wine. Should I then force all others to remove these because of my particular worship? How do we reach a place of no contest except by asserting our own? I aspire to this, even is I confess I have not one solution fitting for myself and all equally..
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I haven’t really encountered many major taboos of taboos. Men set up all sorts of spacial regulations, food regulations, regulations of women. It is not “people” who do this, but males who do this. What women need to do is to set boundaries of spiritual safety, which is a completely different issue. When women set boundaries on our religious/sacred spaces, well there is holy hell to pay. I find male outrage at sacred female spaces (I hate that patriarchal word feminine). And most of the world is not about diversity at all. We have to ask ourselves, diversity at whose expense? One of the interesting things I found in my world travels was the incredible amount of space women had claimed as ours, and that there was greater diversity of all female spaces than in the west at times.
All the laws, regulations etc. were male written, male enforced, and pretty much have nothing to do with the needs of free women. It is all about social control and servitude, that is all men understand, the ownership of property the regulation of women and animals.
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Thanks Turtle Woman
This is certainly true of the major places of worship in Muslim contexts, which can be constructed exclusively for male usage, with women prohibited (or limited to a certain place within them.) We have been working on this but the process is slow.
One reason I think it is slow is that Muslim women have rarely attempted to construct their own sacred places, except perhaps for a quiet corner of their own homes. I realized early in my practices that I needed a dedicated place. for while I can pray anywhere, can throw out my rug or just kneel upon the ground, I am moved by the care invoked in the spirit when I tend to the soul by constructing a specific place away from every place.
This celebration of the feminine/female is something I have been contemplating a lot since I came to India where both public space and sacred space is so constricting to women.
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I think that religion should take it beyond a usual this should transcend to something more intimate and spiritual
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Muslims have forgotten tawheed(Unity) and have fallen into shirk(Division). If there is ONLY one God in existence—then it does not matter what religious label we use—all humanity prays to the SAME ONE GOD. Therefore all places of worship are for the worship of your God which is the same as my God—even though the name of God (or concept/definition) may seem different. When we divide God into your God id different than my God, or my God is better than your God…etc we fall into Shirk because we have divided the ONE God….
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I could not agree more. Either that or Muslims do not know how to operate out of tawhid in the context of politics and culture..
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Thanks William.. It was once the goal.. beyond and transcendent at the intimate level.
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Amina your comment that “I cannot bow before an image of Christ” reminded me of a “solution” F Kasgegian came up with in student led inclusive women’s ritual space. In this space each woman who led the ritual in rotation could focus on imagery that was meaningful to her with the others being willing to participate in the spirit of learning and desire to create women’s rituals. I too could never bow before Christ and might even cringe if his name were evoked, but I would cringe a whole lot less if I knew that Mother Earth and Goddess had not been excluded in a Christian hegemony. In that spirit, I also invite women on the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete to refrain from repeating or singing words that they don’t want to say. Not an answer, just a few beginnings of ways to an answer.
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you and I may be suffering from some post-Christian stress disorder because I have a much harder time with images or icons of Christ (and other white male saints) than I do with Shiva Ganesha or Buddha. All Christian establishments here have HUGE looming statues and I almost find them scary. Meanwhile I am fascinated with the decorations and personifications from Hinduism.
Who knows, perhaps we are being visited by the Ghost of Christ(mas) Past…
For while it is humbling to allow for others NOT to perform some of the specifics of this or that ritual, I am still confounded how to be inclusive of all without excluding those who are located with a specific negative response to other specific symbols.
I carry a photo of the Hugging Amma in my wallet, since I met her at her Ashram here in Kerala. When I open my wallet to get cash, I like to watch the responses of others. But it is especially the Muslims that interest me. One student actually told me.. that having this picture (he thought) meant I worshiped her.
My response is that while she is Hindu and some people come to her in search of a religion and thus take up hers, I came to her with my religion already chosen and clear. So I could enjoy her Hindu worship and rituals with none of mine being threatened or tossed aside. And while I performed my Islamic specific worship in my tiny cell (removing her photos if they were in the direction of prayer, and returning them when I was done) I entered the temple for meditation and participated in other rituals performed there.
It is the intersectionality that I actually came to India to experience and yet, as I said the spaces are few. I have still to join you in Crete as I had hoped since we first cyber-met while I was living in Indonesia.
anyway, I still seek the God/dess beyond names and beyond forms..
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I’m not certain I’ll ever get over my post christian stress disorder! I feel the exact same way.
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Being a doctoral student investigating religious and culture discourses I always searching for answers how to take out the Muslim from this narrow and cultural interpretation of Islam? how to open doors for Ijtihad? Because Islam is such a pluralistic religion people culturalized Islam rather than Islamizing their culture.
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yes Miss Khattak it is a problem. However in some ways I see the chicken-egg scenario. which came first? islamized culture or culturalized Islam? and then where do we draw the line, or do we even? Perhaps the flow of living Islam engages culture and then people ossify that has been engaged. Just a thought on the dilemma.. thanks
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Very interesting points-the intersection of religious and culture discourses. I too am mesmerized by this topic of how and when ijtihad is perceived as legitimate. Again, the line is blurred and depends on where each of us wants to draw it. More food for thought. Where/what are you studying Miss Khattak?
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Fascinating comments, real food for thought. I’m quite interested in this particular issue myself.
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A friend who follows this blog sent a link to this post to an email list we’re on; I just wanted to share with you another instance of peacefully and successfully sharing worship spaces: http://www.smdailyjournal.com/articles/lnews/2013-06-26/peninsula-sikhs-find-place-of-worship/1770815.html
I also wrote to my friend that it seems to me this is being overlooked: “… the fact that unfortunately for many in those cultures and religions, women aren’t even human! Even other women have been indoctrinated to feel that way on some, perhaps subliminal, level, and thus accept that of course they’re not allowed in this or that “religious” space.”
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it is strange for me, as an art maker, to think of anyone or thing bowing before any image of any kind. i think this kind of “domination” or “idolatry” is and was meant to be intimidating–requiring something of people who could not feel it in other ways–having this thing superimposed in architecture, as to dominate the naked ground below it–and to, in some ways, defile that which was natural and available to all–as earth. as earth and sky and sea and “heaven” if heaven meant clouds or stars or things in the universal realm that can be seen from the earthly one with human eyes. i appreciate the conceptual reality that if a physical presence is presenced, one can not bow before it or be seen to bow before it if it is not the thing one bows before. i wonder, the price of the manufactured piece of ground that exists as prayerstone, now–as “acceptable” prayer stone or “representation” of reality–real earth is dirt. it is dirty. it requires a kind of purification to remove by real water, which, in its way, is also dirty now–dirtied by all the things we empty back into it. i think prayer is a miracle when anyone of any religious or spiritual influence remembers to bow and make it “real” in the visible universe–the act of prayer and worship. the witnessed act of prayer and worship. i am not certain, nor, i suppose, will i ever be, that any one individuated way of doing that is invalid or in violate of the things that people can write about such an act of making love. that we do these things in witnessed groups, after things have been written down as thou shalts and thou shalt nots…this is in some way, maybe even all ways, a human act of social domination/influence/exclusion. when one can be seen to be doing it wrong, i suppose it matters what hangs in the air that some artist has made to represent some set of symbols supposed to be relevant as religious. for me, i make what i need out of what can be found in the natural world and lay myself prostrate to that. any space where that can be seen, witnessed, shared…this space becomes in its way sacred as memory and lived experience. i think it is the act of making this love offering to the divinity we empower with belief in it that makes it what it is for those of us who remember to do it. as to spaces and icons and laying prostrate to anything human beings have made…well, it seems human. and i suppose, it continues to be human to fight about whose stuff belongs and whose denigrates another’s, and who’s clubhouse this space gets to be….but that seems…fraught with difficulties of possession and exclusion–somehow, not holy. not to me….
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I have observed that people celebrate their ideas of the sacred by CONSTRUCTING something to honor what they celebrate. The problem is when the constructions take the place of the sacred. It continues to occur, so perhaps there is a more generous way to think about it: a way to preserve the honor and celebration without letting them become perverse.. but I do not know what that way is.. alas
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There is no conclusion needed when it comes to sacred spaces.
Personally, I find those non-denominational spaces in the airports, hospitals and universities to be amongst the most peaceful of all. When all the “rituals” are stripped, dogma quickly dissipates, and what remains is the common ground.
Over the past month, I have crossed paths with Jains, a Buddhist, and a Mennonite; the conversations held with them have been nothing but enriching.
It is faith and values that unite humanity.
I find it interesting that you mentioned “alcohol” as a friend recently asked me if it was considered “najis”. The more I thought about it, the more I delved into chemistry and the ethanol, methanol, isopropyl alcohol dilemma…
Too much emphasis is put into physical purity at the expense of what truly counts: what’s in the heart! Similarly with sacred spaces.
Keep writing Amina!
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Assalaam alaykum, Dr. Amina . . . A very thought-provoking article. I, too become perplexed sometimes when some Muslims almost demand the right to pray, turn music down, have women / men separated, etc., etc., etc., but are completely disinterested, and even belligerent, in according the most basic consideration to members of other faiths or cultures.
Islam has been a beacon for humankind, however Muslims have darkened that light with our collective non-integrative behaviors and manners at times.
I wish you continued success and safety throughout your travels.
Ibrahim
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In some of the Hindu temples I have been allowed to enter, I notice people who never turn their backs to the alters, (so exit backwards) over the threshold (and there always is one, in Bali it is preceded and followed by steps) but as they go out they often prostrate to the ground. I find this reverence touching and while I endeavor to do likewise, I would hate to think a Muslim passing by might see of it, since of course the images are flanking that alter. I know in my heart that I only believe in a Unified Sacred reality, but I am confounded between wanting to acknowledge the sacred reverence of all persons and being true to the One.
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Thank you all for your continued comments and considerations. I am happy to share my thoughts with your thoughts and see at least if we cannot form the sacred community of humankind, while some of us are inside a particular faith we are also aware that we share the sense of awe and wonder, as well as the proximity and love of the sacred in the ways it is manifest in our hearts and bodies. I did enjoy sharing this problem and in the future look forward to your warm advice, as a way to continue to struggle towards the greater unity!
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A sacred space of common ground, yes yes truly needed, and shared sense of awe, yes again. So many good thoughts here, thank you for sharing your experiences Amina, and making space for the other perceptive comments. There’s the problem of an idolatry of dogmas, so much more dangerous than someone’s carvings, as they insist on imposing themselves over the reverence of an Other. I too find the need for women’s sacred spaces, where we can open out without looking over our shoulders, and women control so little land, buildings, spaces in the world overall. Female sovereignty makes such a tremendous difference, even with all the cultural and political divisions between us yet to be overcome. I also agree that it makes a great difference to have a space dedicated to meditation, prayer, ceremony, that becomes, as Amma says, saturated with devotion and fosters our attunement. Though nothing beats the sanctuaries of Nature…
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Thank you for such a lively article on my birthday. Are you BTW the widow of Kamil Wadud?
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No, I’m not…
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