Women’s Mosques: Spaces to Rethink Gender and Religious Authority Page 1 of 15 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 30 June 2022 Print Publication Date: Sep 2022 Subject: Religion, Sociology of Religion Online Publication Date: Jun 2022 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190874988.013.37 Women’s Mosques: Spaces to Rethink Gender and Reli gious Authority The Oxford Handbook of Religious Space Edited by Jeanne Halgren Kilde Abstract and Keywords This chapter combines historical research and ethnographic fieldwork to examine the rit uals of Friday prayer at the Women’s Mosque of America, based in Los Angeles, Califor nia. The research reveals that the mosque has provided women with opportunities to be fully involved in all aspects of prayer without placing any limitations on their bodies. This full participation has led to the emergence of new areas of inquiry within theological spaces that had gone unnoticed because of the absence of women in leadership and deci sion-making spaces. Through engaged discussions and practices, mosque-going women are widening the circles of female scholars in local communities, making the mosque in strumental in the development and dissemination of Islamic knowledge that deconstructs patriarchal interpretations of the Qur’an and empowers women. Keywords: women’s religious authority, Friday khutba, khateebas, Adhan, Halaqa, women’s mosques, Islam, hijab, Qur’an, California Introduction SINCE the beginning of the twenty-first century, an increasing number of Muslim women have been establishing mosques around the globe. Examples can be found in Los Angeles, Copenhagen, and Berlin. These women-created mosques use egalitarian teachings of the Qur’an to assert women’s authority in public prayers and are working to reshape histori cal and contemporary discourses on gender relations. In structures and operations, these mosques differ from one to another—some allow mixed-gender congregations; some are exclusively for women. However, as more women are claiming roles of imamas (females leading prayers), khateebas (females delivering sermons), muezzina (females making calls for prayers), board members, and financial managers, these mosques are making waves across the global Muslim communities. Irum Shiekh