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I’m all up in the hermeneutical weeds lately, pondering God’s purposes for women in ministry. This is largely fueled by concern for what some of us might be missing due to the limitations we put on certain roles.
This made me wonder about Muslims. As you may have noticed, some Muslims don’t have the best track record when it comes to how women are treated. Further, I had never heard of a woman imam.
An imam is not an exact parallel to the pastor role as we generally view it, but imams do give weekly sermons, lead prayers and impart knowledge. While I’m hesitant to say there are no female imams among Islam’s nearly 2 billion adherents, I suspect you could host them all at your house for Christmas. (How cool would that be?!?)
My initial look at this has surfaced a couple of things:
- The Quran does not explicitly forbid women from being imams.
- Precedent to date has been almost entirely that they are not. And the concept of bid’ah says, “We don’t innovate the religion, Dude!” Ergo, non-dudes need not apply.
- One of the key reasons women are “obviously” not imams is because imam basically means “in front.” Women shouldn’t be bowing in prayer in front of men because men wouldn’t be able to concentrate on their prayers. Before we condemn all Muslim men, I do remember having my own concentration issues during a sacred dance performance at church when I was a teenager!
Today Chinese women continue to serve as imams of women-only mosques and there’s one in France! (You know the French!)
Part of me suspects a limit on women in leadership actually thwarts the overall growth of Islam. So maybe we shouldn’t advocate for it.
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