Women leading prayers

How sad was the headline, Many outraged by Muslim mixed-gender prayers (The Jakarta Post, March 21).

All right, I suppose if this was the year 1005, but the world has moved on despite all those that want to drag it backwards into a dark age of religious domination and stagnation.

These so-called puritanical Muslim men cannot accept that women are equal in all respects -- a battle they will eventually lose in time no matter their conservative thinking.

Religion, no matter which one it is, belongs to both genders and equally so -- as it was man (and man alone) who decided he would set himself up as being some superior human being to women. We must ask the question -- was it in fact many who were outraged and who are these people that consider themselves so self- righteous and beyond reproach? Do they not realize that they come from women and that their very life was dependent on the birth and the loving care they got from their mothers?

I would suggest to these outraged Muslim men that they sit back and evaluate their younger lives and where they came from in the first place. It is a great failing not to understand life itself, and a greater sin to forget the roots and the purpose of our very existence. It is also a great failing in a religion that builds brick walls around a women's existence and disregards their rights to be able to express their desire equally.

Women leading prayers is indeed a tribute to their feeling as genuine followers of their chosen religion, and who in the realm of man has the right to deny them this expression.

Some men bring forward the sexual argument -- but really that is a poor excuse for their own failure to control themselves. No matter your belief, the world moves on, and the sooner religious leaders understand that they must also move with the times, then the puritanical believers will become isolated and rejected by the vast majority.

DAVID WALLIS Medan, North Sumatra