re. From the ritual to the spiritual

I wish to commend Raheel Raza for the excellent article "From the ritual to the spritual" and also for her courageous decision to lead the Juma prayer of a mixed-gender congregation.

I was not surprised to read that she received poison darts and fatwas. The fatwas in Islam are issued by its all-male religious establishment which believes that the religion is immune to societal change.

They do not recognize that the whole human civilization is in a state of flux, and that no area of human society, including culture and religion, is immune to change.

The world has witnessed that professions which were once the exclusive domain of men are now open to women. Young Muslim women across the world are joining the ranks of engineers, doctors, lawyers, accountants, astronuats, politicians, public administrators and business managers. Having demonstrated their competence in these fields, why should they be denied the opportunity to become Imams?

Once again, Muslim clergymen will use their pulpits to decry any attempt by women to encroach upon the exclusively-male domain of religious leadership.

Yours etc.,

Abbas Syed