Women In Mosques

[Mags22]

On news pictures showing Muslims at prayer in mosques I notice that it is all men doing so, are ladies not allowed there?

[vetuste_ennemi]

I’m glad I don’t see women in mosques, Mags, if, that is, they do the same obeisance as the men. The sight of grown men on their hands and knees “worshipping” their god disgusts me and seeing women do the same would disgust me even more. (Muse to self, could last remark be interpreted as sexist?). What an extraordinarily reduced concept they have of their creator that he would demand and take pleasure in his creatures’ grovelling. And where is the self-respect of those who do it?

[Octavius]

"What an extraordinarily reduced concept they have of their creator that he would demand and take pleasure in his creatures’ grovelling. And where is the self-respect of those who do it?"

Royalty also expect it, still today I think.

[naomi24]

Nonsense! A nod of the head or a little curtsey perhaps, but Royalty don't expect people to prostrate themselves!

[vetuste_ennemi]

Quite so, Octavius. The Greeks of two and a half thousand years ago (who have left us a far more precious legacy than any desert tribesman) saw the prostration before oriental despots of their subjects as marks of servility. It is the cruel and capricious oriental despot who is the model of the deity used by the morally limited and imaginatively illiterate inventors of Yahweh and Allah.

[sandyRoe]

Kowtowing to foreign despots was unacceptable, even for enlisted soldiers, as this patriotic verse shows. But as an act it seems to be the perfect expression of mans relationship with his God.

LAST night, among his fellow roughs,
He jested, quaff’d, and swore:
A drunken private of the Buffs,
Who never look’d before.
To-day, beneath the foeman’s frown, 5
He stands in Elgin’s place,
Ambassador from Britain’s crown,
And type of all her race.

Poor, reckless, rude, lowborn, untaught,
Bewilder’d, and alone, 10
A heart, with English instinct fraught,
He yet can call his own.
Ay, tear his body limb from limb,
Bring cord, or axe, or flame:
He only knows, that not through him 15
Shall England come to shame.

Far Kentish hop-fields round him seem’d,
Like dreams, to come and go;
Bright leagues of cherry-blossom gleam’d,
One sheet of living snow; 20
The smoke, above his father’s door,
In gray soft eddyings hung:
Must he then watch it rise no more,
Doom’d by himself, so young?

Yes, honor calls!—with strength like steel 25
He put the vision by.
Let dusky Indians whine and kneel;
An English lad must die.
And thus, with eyes that would not shrink,
With knee to man unbent, 30
Unfaltering on its dreadful brink,
To his red grave he went.

Vain, mightiest fleets, of iron fram’d;
Vain, those all-shattering guns;
Unless proud England keep, untam’d, 35
The strong heart of her sons.
So, let his name through Europe ring—
A man of mean estate,
Who died, as firm as Sparta’s king,
Because his soul was great. 40

[lightbulb247]

ladies have their own seperate rooms.

(here comes the criticism)

[naomi24]

Lightbulb, yet again you have failed to read the posts before jumping in. Several people here have noted that women are separated - in fact the very first post says 'Women pray separately' - and criticism has already been levelled.

[Peter Pedant]

I thought the separate praying area in a mosque was called a zenana
but wiki says the meaning is slightly different - altho with separation.

zenana has also been adopted in Gaza onomatopoeically for a drone .
I dunno what they call a drone-strike: zenana-pow !

[naomi24]

See ‘Unmanned Aerial Vehicles’.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenana