The All India Muslim Personal Law Board on Thursday told the Supreme Court that there is no bar in Islam on Muslim women visiting mosques, The Indian Express reported.
However, they cannot demand entry through the main door of the mosque, or not to have a barrier inside separating them from the men, the board told a bench hearing a case involving constitutional questions related to the entry of women into Kerala’s Sabarimala temple and discrimination at other religious places.
The case before the Supreme Court stems from a September 2018 verdict of a five-judge Constitution bench which had, by a 4:1 majority, lifted a ban on women of menstruating age from entering the Ayyappa temple at Sabarimala.
Petitions seeking the entry of women into mosques and offering prayers have been tagged along with the Sabarimala reference due to constitutional questions related to the right to practice religion and the right of religious denominations to manage their internal affairs, Live Law reported. A nine-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant is hearing the matter.
On Thursday, advocate MR Shamshad, for the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, was replying to the petitions on the entry of women into mosques, Live Law reported. During the proceedings, the chief justice sought clarity on whether women are allowed to enter the religious sites.
“There is no quarrel among the religious denominations in Muslims that women can enter into mosques,” The Indian Express quoted Shamshad as saying. “And that too for prayer… But there is certain discipline that has to be followed.”
Shamshad said that it is mandatory for men to take part in congregational prayers, but it is not mandatory for women.
Justice Ahsanuddin Amanullah said that the reason for it not being mandatory for women to visit mosques is that they may be needed at home “to look after the children” when others go for prayers, The Indian Express reported.
Shamshad also said that the board has no problem with women entering mosques, petitions seeking directions “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 lawyer also said that there is no concept of a sanctum sanctorum in a mosque.
“If there is no sanctum sanctorum inside the mosque, then nobody can insist to stand at a particular place or, for that matter, to be the first to lead the namaz,” Live Law quoted him as saying.
At one point, Amanullah also asked the advocate to “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 [Mohammed] himself”, The Indian Express reported.
In response, the advocate said that the prophet himself had said that women should not be stopped from coming to the mosque, Live Law reported.
“There is clarity on this,” the legal news portal quoted Shamshad as saying. “And many of those who have recorded the hadith in many volumes have recorded this narration that the prophet instructed that don’t stop women coming to the mosque.”
A hadith is a recorded report of the sayings, actions, or silent approvals of the Prophet Muhammad.
The advocate also claimed that the doctrine of essential religious practice has been wrongly applied by the courts in the context of Islam.
Noting that Islam is a thoroughly written religion with some acts being categorised as forbidden and others as required or recommended, Shamshad added that the practices of the religion often failed the essential religious practice doctrine because they did not appear mandatory to the courts.
The hearings will continue next week.
The nine-judge bench has been asked to examine the interplay between freedom of religion granted under Articles 25 and 26 of Constitution and other provisions, especially in Article 14, that grant right to equality before the law and equal protection of the laws.
The bench has been asked to determine whether the rights of a denomination to manage its religious affairs under Article 26 are subject to any other provisions of Part III the Constitution apart from public order, morality and health. Part III of the Constitution deals with fundamental rights.
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