Women’s only

Before I breathe my last, I want to see a mosque built exclusively for women. We need a place to not just offer prayers, but share our feeli...

Before I breathe my last, I want to see a mosque built exclusively for women. We need a place to not just offer prayers, but share our feelings and rest,’’ declares 40-year-old Balkees Beevi at a jamaat in Pudukottai.

Her ‘‘blasphemous’’ statement is not greeted with angry shouts, instead there is applause. The reason: it’s the country’s first all-women gathering of its kind, the Tamizhaga Muslim Women’s Jamaat. For distressed Muslim women, tortured by in-laws or abandoned by NRI husbands, the all-women jamaat organised by STEPS, an NGO, has become a ‘‘platform for protest and relief’’.

Their next step: an all-women mosque, a demand that has been criticised by orthodox sections. But that has not deterred women like Balkees, who approached the jamaat last year after her son-in-law was found to have undergone a ‘‘family planning operation’’ before his marriage.

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After the village jamaat ‘‘supported the boy’s family’’, she approached the women’s jamaat. ‘‘Now, my daughter is separated from him,’’ says Balkees.

There’s 29-year-old Rasheeda Begum who divorced her husband, who abandoned her and left for Malaysia, after giving her a son. ‘‘He returned two years later, but started torturing me. I decided it was not worth living with him anymore,’’ she says.

When she walked out, her in-laws approached the local jamaat and sought custody of the child. But Rasheeda, an M.Phil in Tamil Literature, declared ‘‘triple talaq’’ through the all-women jamaat. Now, she is a part-time college lecturer and is among the 25-member jamaat, supervising a home for children of ‘‘victims of triple talaq’’.

For STEPS founder Sharifa Khanam, the ‘‘shocking’’ findings of a survey in 1995 prompted her to create the all-women jamaat a couple of years ago.

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The NGO’s survey found that every fifth woman in Pudukottai, with a Muslim population of five lakh, had been dumped through triple talaq. The more alarming fact was that teenaged girls were being married off as second or third wives to elderly men.

The all-male jamaats, which assemble in mosques, would ‘‘sanction’’ triple talaq without hearing the women, who are not allowed inside. ‘‘They do not get back the huge dowry money’’ leave alone maintenance, says Khanam.

While Shariat insists that men have to pay mehar to the bride, most Muslim families in TN offer just about Rs 500 and demand a huge dowry, she adds. ‘‘We write to the boy’s family to return the dowry. If they do not, we approach the local jamaat. If there is no response still, we go to the all-women police station for intervention,’’ she says.

However, Khanam and her brigade still face resistance from clerics and jamaats. ‘‘I receive threatening calls asking me to stop this jamaat. But I tell them, if you adjudicate as per Shariat I will wind up my jamaat.’’

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A possible solution, Khanam says, is a mosque run by women for women. But then, that’s not as easy as it sounds. Sherfuddin, a local cleric, did offer land at Parambur village, 20 km away. But he withdrew the offer within a month. Reason: pressure from ulemas in Delhi.

Argues Hyder Ali, general secretary, Tamil Nadu Muslim Munnetra Kazhagam: ‘‘Why do women need a separate mosque? Islam permits women to offer prayers at mosque and several mosques do often permit women. Some mosques don’t allow women, but that is a local problem.’’ Khanam counters: ‘‘Our concept is not just a house of prayer, it will create new social space for them within the community.’’