User:Lakinnawonu/sandbox

Ghazala Anwar led a mixed-gender prayer at the al-Fatiha conference in New York City, in 1999. Pamela Taylor who converted to Islam and is the co-founder of Muslims for Progressive Value held one of the first women-led mixed prayers around 2005. Taylor believed that men and women should be perceived and treated as equal under Islam which prompted the woman-led mixed prayer on International Women's Day. She also spoke against the exclusion of women in the mosque which is supposed to be considered a place of God. In interviews, she has focused on the inequality of locations regarding where women are permitted to conduct prayer activities; for instance, they are not permitted to pray in main prayer halls and other locations where they are allowed to pray are very crowded with low-quality sound systems. Furthermore, children are also forced into the women's sector of the mosque which make it highly difficult for the women to concentrate while praying. However, it is believed that the first woman in Canada to lead a mixed-prayer is Canadian journalist, Raheel Raza. Raza has also become the first Muslim woman to also lead a mixed-gender predominantly British group. Her prayers and work within the British congregation has allowed scholars to question the relationship between female leadership and the Islamic religion.

In 2005, African-American Islamic scholar Amina Wadud led a congregation in Friday prayer and gave a sermon in New York City. Another woman sounded the call to prayer, while not wearing a headscarf, and no curtain divided the men and women. This was not the first woman-led mixed-gender congregational prayer (see the above noted events), but it was the first to gain national and international attention.

See also: Amina Wadud: Friday prayer

The prayer was the "shot across the bow" that galvanized conversations and action concerning women's place in the mosque ultimately leading to the ISNA pamphlet "Women Friendly Mosque Initiative" and websites such as Side Entrance, increased presence of women in mosques in positions of authority, and most recently the woman-only mosque Women's Mosque of America.

The Progressive Muslim Union followed the Wadud prayer with a woman-led prayer initiative. The initiative sought to bring together the varied progressive opinions on the prayer as well as engage more conservative Muslims by encouraging further debate, highlighting legal opinions in support of the prayer (as well as giving space to the overwhelming negative opinions), facilitating Muslims who would like to organize future prayers, and documenting those events as they heard of them. Progressives and others sympathetic to bringing about a transformation of gender privilege in Islam continue to work for the establishment of woman-led prayer.

Many perceived the Wadud prayer to be an inevitable reaction to the deplorable situation of women in mosques in North America. The attention garnered by the event forced more conservative Muslim organizations to publicly acknowledge the situation and call for changes. ISNA responded with guidelines for women-friendly mosques. Scholars such as Imam Zaid Shakir and Dr. Louay M. Safi have been calling attention to and working to change mosque conditions for years. Progressives and others would argue, though, that mosque conditions are merely a symptom of a widespread sense of male entitlement following centuries of male privilege in the intellectual and political power centers of Islam.

Women continue to lead prayers in the United States in their communities with or without media coverage: Nakia Jackson led Eid prayers in 2006 and 2007, with Laury Silvers giving the khutba. When Nakia Jackson led Laury Silvers in prayer, Silvers was a Muslim and a professor at Skidmore College teaching Islam; it was her first time having a prayer led by a woman in which it was Nakia Jackson. Jackson's leadership as a female in Islam allowed women to challenge the norms of Islamic culture and sparked a movement to break traditional barriers. Ultimately, the end goal was to develop a community and global movement that would stimulate and encourage Islamic female leadership that is equal to those of men.

Since early 2006, Muslims for Progressive Values has had a continuous gender-equal prayer space in West Hollywood, California. Both men and women are allowed to lead prayers and deliver a khutba. Although congregants may choose to position themselves wherever they like, there is no gender segregation policy during prayer. The first dedicated gender-equal prayer space in the United States was founded by Fatima Thompson and Imam Daayiee Abdullah in Washington D.C., as a sister mosque to the El-Tawhid Juma Circle founded two years previously in Toronto (see above). Imam Pamela K. Taylor led the DC congregation prayers for Eid Ul Adha in 2010 at the All Souls Church. She also gave the inaugural sermon for the MPV mosque in Columbus, OH in 2012 with a sermon focused on God's Love.