The women-run Berlin mosque changing the status-quo

BERLIN, Germany — A Berlin run mosque is changing norms around women’s role in worship.

In this mosque, women perform the call to prayer, and can pray alongside men. Women are also not required to cover their hair - all departures from worship in traditional mosques.

The Ibn Rushd-Goethe mosque was opened in 2017 by Seyran Ates, a renowned laywer born to a Kurdish father in Istanbul. It is open to LGBTQ individuals, where there are free to discuss their identity.

“This mosque supports enlightenment and reform in Islam. It supports a contemporary Islam,” says Ates.

Ates says she chose the name of the mosque for its significance in “bridging East and West.”

“[Johann] Goethe was a great Islam expert and he had built a bridge between East and West. This is exactly what Ibn Rushd did as well.”

Artes has faced backlash, including from al-Azhar, a prestigious Sunni school of Islamic learning, based in Cairo. She now lives under round-the-clock protection.

Ates says that criticism of her mosque welcoming female leadership is not based on religious texts.

“This has not been written anywhere. You cannot find anything like this in the Quran,” she told Rudaw.

“A fatwa is something invented by men to reach an agreement among themselves.  There is nothing to prove that the Prophet ordered the dos and don'ts of things,” she added, referring to Islamic legal rulings.

Translated by Karwan Faidhi Dri

Video editing by Abdulbasit Ibrahim