Flowers for the Women Wearing Veils - Volume II — Page 60
60 Now just look for yourself. H ow many people offer their prayers in mosques ? I t is not even one percent. For women it is not obligatory to offer prayers in the m osque although some say that i f it is possible for women to come to the mosque to say their prayers, it would be desirable. S ome say that it is not an obligation for women to say their prayers in the mosque, but if they chose to , it is not prohibited. In any case, it is not an obligation for women to say their prayers in the mosque. According to some , it is allowed and according to others, if it is possible to do so and they do offer their p rayer s in the m osque , then they will be rewarded more than if they did not. B ut for men, it is a verdict that if they fail to say their Sal ā t in the m osque , they will be punished. If they go to the mosque to observe Sal ā t , then that will be considered a valid Sal ā t. In this time and age , forget the notion of women praying at the m osque , nowadays men only go to the mosque as a coincidental occurrence. Nowadays, p eople assume that only a paid Imam or Mu e zzin [ person who calls the Adhan ] , those travelers who are poor and stay as a guest there, need to pray their Sal ā t there. O r a person who needs to win the [ public’s ] votes can say his p rayers in the m osque, otherwise they do not think it is necessary. When I went to Egypt and visited the Jami ‘ a Mosque of Cairo, I saw that it was a huge m osqu e, which could hold fifty thousand people. Inside of this enormous mosque, I saw one Imam leading five or six people in Sal ā t in one corner. He was not standing in the mihrab [a niche made in the center of a mosque where the Imam stands to lead prayer]. I found this odd and I asked this maulvi [Muslim cleric] , “Why are you observing your prayer in this corner when you have a mihrab ?” He replied that Cairo has a population of one million people (now twenty - five to thirty million); if I exclude the handicapped, still two to three hundred thousand are able to come to the m osque. If I exclude those who live far away, forty to forty - five thousand could still come to offer prayers in this m osque. The reason I stand in the corner is so that if a non - Muslim visitor comes to the mosque, and he sees me leading prayers in the mihrab , he should not receive the impression that this is th e city’s congregation and in the entire cit y, there are only four to five people who feel it is necessary to say their p rayers in the m osque. Therefore, I stand in a corner to lead the prayers so that they believe that the ac tual Sal ā t has already been offered and they may think that t hese people offering the prayers now are those who came late. ” Government offices do not make any arrangements for men to offer p rayers in congregation and yet they sometimes publish in the news that