Let us pray together

"There's a urine stain on the floor and when the room gets warm, it's absolutely intolerable."

Nakia Jackson is describing her impressions of the narrow, green-carpeted room where women pray at the Mosque for the Praising of Allah in Roxbury. In this 25-year-old's mind, the poor conditions for women at the mosque don't end there. She complains of religious study classes held only for men. She cites a lack of leadership opportunities for women.

To improve the situation, Jackson pressed for change for two years. Her efforts ended one day last November when she prayed in the main space, generally reserved for men in the presence of the mosque's imam, Abdullah Faaruuq. That's when, Jackson says, the imam banned her from the mosque.

Not true, says Faaruuq, 57, who expresses confusion about Jackson's accusations. Jackson was never banned, he says, and conditions for women at the mosque aren't as bad as she says.

Similar struggles over alleged gender discrimination are taking place privately and sometimes very publicly at some mosques across the country. One of the most notable examples occurred in Morgantown, W. Va., where in November 2003 a fed-up Asra Nomani decided to shun the women's balcony of the mosque her father helped found almost 24 years ago to pray in the main hall behind the men. Some mosque members vilified Nomani for being a single mother and attempted to ban her from the mosque. In response, Nomani organized a march on the mosque in June, the first activity of her still fledgling Muslim women's group, Daughters of Hajar. Using the media savvy developed as a former Wall Street Journal reporter, Nomani rode her cause to the front page of The New York Times in July.

"We were taught from our earliest days that we can do what we want to do, we can succeed," says Nomani, 39, whose memoir "Standing Alone in Mecca: An American Woman's Struggle for the Soul of Islam," out this month, includes a chapter on her tussle with the mosque. "For us not to live by those principles is real difficult. We succeed in the secular world, but can't in our spiritual world. There's a real problem with that."

Sitting in the mosque on Shawmut Avenue, Faaruuq justifies the separation of women and men by reiterating the Islamic ritual laws often used by those defending this practice. Women aren't required to do their Friday communal prayers in mosques. Men must pray shoulder to shoulder. Men and women must pray in separate lines. Add constraints created by a lack of space and a sweep of Islamic conservatism descending on some American mosques, and the result is separate and sometimes unequal conditions for women.

A national survey released by the Council on American-Islamic Relations suggests the problem is growing. Fifty-two percent of mosques put female congregants behind a partition or in a separate room in 1994. Sixty-six percent of mosques did so in 2000.

After years of whispered complaints, people are now beginning to discuss how to tackle the issue. Should it be done from within via quiet discussions with mosque leaders? Or should objectors take Nomani's cue and embark on attention-grabbing activism reminiscent of the civil rights era? Complicating the answer are fears by some that focusing on this issue reflects negatively on a community already embattled by bad press.

"They feel it's airing the dirty laundry," says Ingrid Mattson, a professor at the Hartford Seminary in Connecticut and the first female vice president of the Islamic Society of North America, "or that Muslims have enough problems, that Muslims are stereotyped and discriminated against so much, that this will only make it worse. I understand those concerns because it is a very difficult time for Muslims. . . . In the end, I think you just have to deal with the issue."

A handful of Muslim organizations are beginning to do that. The New York-based Women in Islam plans to release a brochure on the topic next month. The Council on American-Islamic Relations is working on a similar project. And the ISNA's Leadership Development Center is developing a guide that will discuss the woman's place in the mosque, among other issues.

"What you're seeing now," says Omid Safi, a professor of Islamic Studies at Colgate University and cofounder of the Progressive Muslim Union of North America, a newly formed organization working to reform Islam from within, "is a large number of American Muslims, some converts, some second generation, some African-American Muslims, who are saying, 'We don't care what you did back in Egypt or in Pakistan. We care about how we do it here. Our interpretation of Islam is just as valid as everybody else's.' "

Seeking parity
Jackson describes a startling array of ways that mosques she's visited in the Boston area handle women worshipers. The Boston Dialogue Foundation in Revere, housed in a former church, currently seats women in a mezzanine, but everyone will be in one area once construction at the mosque is complete. The Masjid Al Quran in Dorchester lets women pray behind men in the same room. So does the Cambridge mosque Jackson attends most frequently now, the Islamic Society of Boston -- unless the main space is completely filled with men. In that case, women go to what Jackson calls an "overflow room" and watch the proceedings on a monitor.

"You can see the person giving the sermon and leading the prayer," says Jackson, sitting in the Boston office of the Virginia-based Muslim American Society, where she works while taking a year off from her music education studies at Berklee College of Music. "You can see a few of the guys sitting closest to him. You won't see much else."

In Jackson's mind, the cause of these unequal conditions is sexism. "Basically," she says, "there's a deeply rooted misconception in Islam that women are somehow inferior, and this is patently untrue."

A comment by Faaruuq reveals just how strict the separation is in this religion. His family goes to a dental practice headed by a Muslim man and woman. "I prefer to have a man work on me," Faaruuq says. "I prefer that my wife go to the woman."

Jackson didn't question this stance when she converted to Islam around the age of 19. The daughter of a Jewish mother and a father raised as Muslim until he was orphaned around the age of 8, she grew up in an African-American neighborhood in Philadelphia where Muslims were well represented among classmates, relatives, and neighbors.

"One of the things about living a religious life, and many Muslims do this quite well, is that every transaction is conducted with an awareness of God," says Jackson, dressed top to bottom in loose-fitting cloth that covers everything except her hands, face, and rugged, ankle-length boots. "I knew that that was something that I wanted for my adult life."

Jackson discovered the 31-year-old Mosque for the Praising of Allah in 1999. It didn't take long for dissatisfaction to set in. "Pretty quickly after I started attending," says Jackson, "I knew that there were problems. And the official line that they give for the problems -- a lack of services, especially for women; the poor quality of the space, especially for women; and the lack of leadership opportunities for everyone, but especially for women -- was attributed to a lack of resources, a lack of funding, and an unwillingness among certain parties, depending on who you were talking to, to make change."

Jackson attempted to create change from within. She began working at the mosque in 2002. (She says she managed the office part time five days a week; Faaruuq says she was one of many women who answered phones and filed papers.) From 2002 to 2004, Jackson freely gave advice to Faaruuq and another leader on how to better the mosque. She suggested ways to raise funds and create a better women's space. She told them how they could improve the mosque's governance.

Ask Faaruuq about Jackson's suggestions now, and his answer reveals simultaneous amusement and annoyance. "Quite often," he says, "young people don't see the larger picture of economic constraints. They come with beautiful ideas, like I did when I first came here, and you can't always implement the ideas because you don't have people to do it." He adds, "We didn't take all of her suggestions. That's not my job to hear her suggestions and obey them. I'm the imam." Faaruuq prefers to blame the mosque's difficulties on a lack of money and an old building. The congregation wants to raise $350,000 for renovations, which would include the creation of separate entrances for men and women.

A flyer on the door of the Roxbury mosque's women's space publicizes an Islamic studies class for women that began on Jan. 29. The mosque offers classes to women on occasion, Faaruuq says. "If a sister asks for a class, we give it. Then we have recurring classes on the topics that need to be taught."

The mosque does have a problem getting women involved, says Nataka Clayton, 34, who began attending the mosque 10 years ago. "There's no structure that prevents them from participating. They just don't come to meetings." Clayton considers herself an example of a female leader at the mosque. She's organized flea markets and barbecues and now volunteers in the mosque's office.

As for the urine in the women's prayer room, Clayton says, "I personally have never smelled it." She disapproved of Jackson's appearance on PBS's "Religion & Ethics Newsweekly" program last November, in which Jackson publicly complained about the alleged stench. "Sometimes," says Clayton, "revolutionary things need to happen to really inspire people's desire to move. But there are always better ways to do things."

Taking a stand
Jackson's push for better conditions coincides with what she describes as her own religious awakening. She first heard about Nomani last spring, and the pair met for the first time in September at an ISNA conference, where Nomani introduced a Bill of Rights for women in mosques. Nomani's story inspired Jackson to "arm myself with information," she says. Jackson began reading the Koran more and spending more time "in worship and reflection." What she discovered is a point raised among many people engaged in this battle over gender discrimination. "In the mosque of the Prophet Mohammed," Jackson says, "women were not only . . . welcome, but there was a specific prohibition against banning women, and men and women prayed in the same room."

Last summer, Jackson started praying in the mosque's main prayer hall, usually outside of congregation prayer times. Often, the room was empty. Then came that November day when she answered the call for sunset prayer. "I look into the women's space," she says, "It's smelly, it's dirty, there are a bunch of loud, wild kids running around. . . . So I said, 'There's no way I'm going to be able to concentrate for my prayer.' "

She went to the main space, standing in the back of the room, with "my shoulder blades touching the back wall," she says. It was the first time that she had prayed in this room with the imam present. She wore a knee-length sweater, she says, and a pair of loose pants, "two sizes bigger than my normal size." When prayers concluded, Jackson says, Faaruuq pulled her aside and told her the clothes were immodest. "Then," she adds, "he said, 'Never pray in that' -- meaning my outfit 'and never pray here again.' "

Faaruuq remembers disapproving of Jackson's belt, which, he says, "cinched her waist and showed her figure." He adds, "If she's down in the office or in the women's area with her belt cinched, that's her business. But if she's going to join the men in prayer, then she has to meet the standards of conduct as a Muslim woman." As for her banning, he says, "I have no power to prevent her from coming here unless she did something unseemly or violent or disruptive."

Muslim women remain divided over the separation of the sexes in prayer. Clayton finds comfort in the division.

"I'm aware," she says, "of the nature of men and women. . . . If I'm bending down or sitting down, I don't have to worry about eyes concentrating on me. I can concentrate on my worship."

Her feelings are not unique. "The reality is," says Mattson, "that in American society we're in mixed-gender situations all the time, and there's all sorts of sexual innuendo, tension -- all sorts of dynamics that happen in the workplace and at school. There are a lot of people who, when they get to the mosque, want to leave all that behind."

Jackson, however, finds protection from ogling male eyes in phrases she's found in the Koran that tell men to lower their gaze and not look at women in a sexual way. She now wants to generate more support for her cause in the Boston area.

Next up? A possible pray-in at the Mosque for the Praising of Allah. It would, she says, "involve men and women refusing to be segregated in ways that would be an unequal experience."