Women leading prayers

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