No bar on women in mosques but they cannot demand entry through main door: AIMPLB to top court on hearings in Sabarimala reference

The bench also comprises Justices B V Nagarathna, M M Sundresh, Ahsanuddin Amanullah, Aravind Kumar, Augustine George Masih, Prasanna B Varale, R Mahadevan and Joymalya Bagchi.

The decision given by the court will also have a bearing on a petition filed by a Pune-based couple, Yasmeen Zuber Ahmad Peerzade and her husband Zuber, seeking permission for Muslim women to enter mosques and offer prayers.

During the hearing, Justice Amanullah said the reason there is no mandatory requirement for women, as against men, to visit mosques to pray is that they may be needed at home “to look after the children” when others go for prayers.
Earlier, responding to the plea by the Pune couple, Shamshad said while the Board had no issues with the prayer, the pleas urging the court to issue direction “to permit Islamic women to enter through main door, have an Islamic right to visual and auditory access to Musallah (main sanctuary)” and “to pray in the Musallah without being separated by barrier” deserve to be rejected.

The counsel said that the petitioners “have tried to give inference that inside the mosque, there is some place which is equivalent to sanctum sanctorum.” He said, “Sanctum sanctorum has no place in a mosque.” He added, “If the religion believes that there is no sanctum sanctorum inside the mosque, then nobody can insist that ‘I have to stand at a particular place’ or ‘I have to be first to lead the namaz’.”

Justice Amanullah then told Shamshad, “You should elaborate for everybody’s consumption that right from the beginning, there is also no dispute (that women can enter), that it started from the holy Prophet himself.”

Agreeing, the counsel said, “Prophet Mohammed himself said, ‘don’t stop women coming to the mosque’… And many of those who have recorded the hadith (sayings of the Prophet)… have recorded this narration that the Prophet instructed that ‘don’t stop women coming to mosque’.”

He said, “There is consensus among all the religious denominations among Muslims that it is not essential for women to be part of congregation to offer namaz…There is Hadith on this, that a woman is free, preferably at home, to offer namaz, because if some believer of Islam has to offer namaz, it is obligatory of him to be part of the congregation. There are certain exceptions.”

He added, “As far as men’s position is concerned, it is obligatory for him to be part of the congregation. For that you need a mosque. For women, it is preferable that she stays at home and she gets the same religious reward which the man gets in the mosque. But at the same time, if a woman wants to come, (according to the Hadith) ‘come to the mosque. Don’t stop her’”.

Justice Amanullah asked Shamshad to also give reasons why it is not mandatory for women to attend mosques for prayers. “Give the reason also. The reason was if everybody goes from the house, who will look after the children… If she has the time, the capacity, she can also go, but then the crux comes,” where she will stand, he said.
“These are all managed by tradition right from the Prophet’s time itself,” Justice Amanullah added.

The hearings will continue next week.