The ongoing, drawn-out, oft-repeated, groaning-oh-not-this-again dialogue regarding child-free public spaces is well, ongoing, oft-repeated and leaves me groaning as much as I do for debates on banning the niqaab.
Specific to these debates is the notion that when we exclude children, we invariably exclude their primary caregiver: mommy. So what do you do when excluding children means excluding women from religious worship?
This article by Shehnaz Toorawa found its way into my in-box this morning. I was actually surprised to find it, because Muslim women are always talking about it, but I’ve rarely ever seen anything done or written about helping create child-friendly mosques.
Imagine a masjid (mosque) where the imam pauses during salah (prayer) and the entire congregation waits so a toddler can finish his game. Imagine a masjid where an imam leads salah while he holds a child in his arms. Imagine a masjid where the cry of a baby changes the imam’s intention and shortens the prayer for the entire congregation.
You’d think that a communal religion would help foster child-centric spaces in the main place of worship. There ARE child friendly spaces, such as the basketball courts, classrooms, kitchens, and community centers that are common fixtures at the mosque. But, not in the musallah — the actual place of worship.
Islamic history is rife with examples of the Prophet playing with children, allowing kids to ride his back and hit him during prayer, as well as lessons of patience and love when it comes to dealing with children.
But often in the North American mosques I’ve seen (I have RARELY seen babies or children in Kuwaiti mosques. They’re usually with the nanny outside):
Do we witness these scenarios in our masjids today? We see a child grabbed and told to “sit down and be quiet!” because he was running between the rows. Or we hear “sister, can you please go outside” because her baby is crying. Or we read signs that say “No children in masjid area”.
This description by Shehnaz is mild to say the least. I’m slightly dreading going to the mosque this Ramadan for evening prayers, simply because I know I’ll be shuffled into the “mother’s room” — in our mosque a walled off area just to the left of the main prayer space (some mosques don’t even have a section for women, let alone an extra room for mothers). The view of the imam is blocked off by a wall, and we’re cut off from the women’s section by (seemingly) noise-proof glass. It gets hot, stuffy, and NOISY, as every crying 2-year-old and hyper 4-year-old are contained with their mothers (boring!) and a vast, open, carpeted space for them to run around lays before them… tempting them. So we usually get 3 or 4 children pounding on the glass, begging, tantruming to be let out so they can go play with their friends, or with their daddy who gets to sit up at the front (fun!).
Yeah, like I want to be praying with that all around me. It’s pandemonium. And not a pandemonium which celebrates children as God’s creation and blessing. From what I hear, this happens in Christian Orthodox services, where a child running in-between the incense burners is all a beautiful part of the service (well, with some complaints I’m sure). But at a mosque, the prayer space becomes more like detention for mothers who dare to bring noisy kids. And the more busy the mosque, the quicker mothers are escorted to the back, basement or are just scowled at.
Any age of child really is fair game for the detention room. Essentially anyone from 0-14 who feels the urge to run around. You MIGHT be able to get away with your infant-6 month old in the main prayer space, as long as you’re quiet, and leave your car seat or stroller, diaper bag, lunch, water, etc, in the car. But the second that baby peeps or learns to crawl, watch out. You might get banned.
But this is just for a minority of infants. Because some people LOVE a smiling baby, and only then is it OK to have them laying in front of you as you pray in congregation. But if your toddler is crying because he can’t distinguish you from all of the other hijabi and abaya wearing women, goodbye! You are the weakest link.
This really highlights the… I don’t even know what to call it. Disparity? Complete unfairness? Prejudice? Garbage that women have to deal with in (some) mosques. That we’re shunned until our babies are old enough to pray and only then can we rejoin the community of women? Until then we’re punished in the baby room, unable to concentrate on our prayers and are effectively removed from the community? Some would say yes. Some would say, “That’s why you should stay at home.”
Quite often you will hear announcements addressing both fathers and mothers to keep control of their children. That the musallah area is not a playground (yeah,… Ok. Explain that to a 3 year old. “Here’s a huge, wide open, carpeted auditorium. Let’s add all your friends, and the excitement of a fun family outing. NOW. Sit still. Shut up.”). I once heard an imam in Kingston say that if kids cannot be controlled, they should be left outside or at home. And I’ve heard an imam in Oakville berate the congregation for 15 minutes because the kids were so rambunctious outside in the basketball court, that property was damaged and the police were on their way. Talk about a captive audience. But if you can’t be inside or outside, you must therefore just stay at home.
Eryn and Baba reading the Qur’an together at home.
It might be all fine and well for mosques to publicly address both parents. But at bottom, really, it’s the mother who has to deal with it and be excluded. Why is that?
Where is the family section at the mosque? Why is there no real onus put upon (or offered to) men? As Shehnaz puts it:
After a long day at home with noisy kids and dirty dishes, where should these mothers go to learn, socialize, give their kids a chance to run around, and get a desperate change of scenery? If not in the masjid, they may end up in malls where their children are exposed to vulgar music, scanty attire and tempting advertisements.
Our masjids should be the community centres that give mothers and their kids a chance to build wholesome friendships, absorb weekly reminders, and discuss their needs, whether it’s for a Muslim babysitter or a healthy recipe.
The mosque could very well be a woman’s only place to socialize, take a break, rejuvenate her mind with adult conversation, oh, I dunno, connect with God and maybe learn something about her religion? As an aside, I disagree with Shehnaz on the vulgar music and scanty attire front. Kids will learn that at the mosque too. How they deal with it is really up to the parents.
Also, she offers simply 5 suggestions for women to get out of detention:
- gently correct children
- offer to help parents
- hold reminder sessions of mosque rules
- create child-friendly facilities
- open a parent’s room (babysitting facilities)
Meh. Ok. I admire this woman. She holds an education degree, a degree in Islamic Law and homeschools. Brilliant. But I really feel like her suggestions fall short of the mark. I understand that she was writing for TorontoMuslims.com so maybe there was a space limit (the article also appears in their e-newsletter), and maybe just maybe she was trying to be apologetic for the mosques who ARE indeed doing something, and just didn’t want to criticize our imams too openly. Also, these are easily implemented — so mosques could make changes without reinventing the wheel. I get that.
But really, how much will her suggestions help women who already feel excluded? The women who no longer come to the mosque because they’ve been turned away, or they just don’t want to deal with the headache and the judgments. What about the women who are attending the mosque with their babies, and feel like crap because they’re stuck in the baby room. Or those who have just given up on the mosque as a place for spiritual connection and use the baby room as their private social hour (and oh, they do.. which can be just as annoying as a screaming toddler when you’re trying to hear a sermon).
It’s great to get the community involved. It takes a village to raise a child, right? So yes, if you see me struggling with Eryn, I’d love some help. Please help me. You want to remind parents of mosque rules? How about reminding EVERYONE? I love child-friendly facilities — it is a rare mosque that has nursing rooms or even change tables in the bathrooms. Many mosques have the sisters’ section on the second floor, with no elevator access — making it near impossible for people with disabilities, our aging population and women with strollers to attend services.
But opening a parent’s room will eventually just become another women-with-babies-in-detention section, or will greatly disadvantage the women who “volunteer” to do the babysitting. Also, doesn’t keeping the kids in babysitting when at the mosque exclude them from participating in spiritual life? They are valued and important parts of the Muslim community and our lives. There is no need to keep them locked in a room.
It’s therefore important that we get mothers (er… Women. Lots and lots of women, feminists, conservatives, widowers… Just women and supporters of women. Instead of the token “sisters’ representative” or the imam’s wife.) on administration boards, and that this issue is stressed to mosque congregations. Hell, women need to be involved in the planning and building design of new mosques.
Parents need to teach children that there is a time an place to run around. That when the sermon begins, and most certainly the prayer, they need to calm down and just take a 5 minute time out to relax. How they deal with this is up to the parents — but lets not keep women out of the prayer just because Khaled is having a meltdown. Couple this masjid adab (loosely, mosque behaviour) with fathers who step up and take care of their children while at the mosque and with well-informed and intentioned imams, who actually care that there is a crying baby, and who will speed up the prayer instead of ignoring the cries and then berating the parents.
Until mosque administrations stop solely associating childcare with women’s work, there will never be a family section and we will continue to be in detention.
wood turtle 
July 30, 2010 at 5:41 pm
Oh I really love this post. One of the things I truely love about the Orthodox church is not just that kids wander, but that people wander too. The idea is that the worship of God goes on with or without you and that it happens through many different ways (people lighting candles, old women putting out candles before they burn down the building, people praying silently, people singing with the choir or repeating the prayers in their own language on top of the public prayers in another language). When I’ve seen people really embrace children being children during Liturgy is when I feel the most joy. My former English-speaking priest and his wife were AMAZING about this. Whenever my friend’s baby would toddle over to her father singing in our tiny choir, I would hear little whispers of ‘she wants to praise God too!,’ or when a child would sing along with the medlody but in their own words (“spiderman spiderman!” – seriously – that really happened one day), they would just be overjoyed that the child felt led to join in in their own little way. Of course…if a girl went toward the altar, this all changed…and this annoys me to no end (women aren’t allowed in the altar) – but of course if a boy did it, he was pulled back with smiles that one day he would serve there. That makes me mad. But overall, I do think that, at least in the 5 churches I’ve ever attended, that they have all been at the very least, child affirming places. I’ve also only ever heard people say that children should be in the church for the services. I’ve never met anyone who wanted children to go to Sunday school during the Liturgy because they felt very strongly that children need to learn how to participate in the Liturgy (and when you have such a kinestetic type worship like in Orthodoxy or Islam, how else are children going to learn unless they go and do?) Of course there are children who are badly badly behaved, and parents who seem to relinquish all responsibility during worship (one 6 year old had to be told off by some other people because her dad didn’t see anything wrong with her giving scissors to 1 year olds…oh, and the father just expected the women of the church to look after his kids when his wife couldn’t make it!), but if we want our children to be part of the community, we need to let them be part of the community.
On a second point, I did one of my field research stints for 451 at a Quaker meeting which of course was 90% in silence. I went to two very long services, which were almost entirely in silence, and people had their under 1s to toddlers there spread out on blankets playing in almost total silence. It was amazing. And even when the children made a few sounds, nobody got upset – it was just part of being a kid. By being in the meeting week after week, and by experiencing long periods of silence from birth, the kids just ‘got’ what they were supposed to do after a short time. But if they had be banned/shoved in a small room and then dropped into the meeting at 5 or 6, there’s no way they would have learned Quaker-appropriate worship behaviour.
July 31, 2010 at 8:34 pm
was hoping you’d comment! I love your descriptions of Orthodox services and the concept that the worship of God goes on with or without you.
And your second point is spot on. There are many reasons why a woman won’t go to the mosque: it’s not in her culture, there’s no woman friendly space, it’s “not allowed”, she’s too busy with work or house or the kids’ activities — you can almost see why women have been forgotten in the mosque. So who’s taking the kids? Anyone? Is dad leaving them in the sisters’ section? Is he the one letting them run around like maniacs? Im sure in some cases the responsibility is shared — i know my hubby cant wait for Eryn to be old enough to “go with him” as a bonding outing. But what do you do when you take an event like Ramadan when everyone comes out to the mosque, and kids continue to act like maniacs?
Why you punish the mothers of course or blame the parents for unruly kids. You’re right — if children are exposed to a certain place-specific behaviour from small on, theoretically they’d continue that behaviour as they got older.
July 17, 2014 at 3:51 pm
Sadly, we have very misbehaved kids in our Masjid. The space is small, there is no-way to make it bigger, my daughter grew up in this masjid however the subsequent generation of kids are intolerable to the point I don’t go there anymore. The kids run around screaming while the mother’s are texting on the phone, other kdis are given ipads and are playing ‘Grand Auto theft’ during Zikr and we can hear it, with the screen flickering in the semi darkness. The fathers bring their kids to the Zikr to give their wives a break and then relinquish responsibility but heaven forbid if you should ever reprimand these kids because it is not your place. But we pray with these girls who are laughing and talking during the prayer! Not to mention running up and down the prayer lines stepping on people’s belongings. I like kids to come the masjid but good manners starts at home, I like intergenerational communities but I don’t like some-one’s kid’s bad behavior imposed on other people and to impact the essence of prayer and Zikr. The problem is the guidelines are not clear and some people believe we should just tolerate bad manners in the name of community regardless of the impact. In the case of the Masjid I mentioned above, many became tired of the ill mannered kids and their parents and left.
I write this as a single parent, who has no family here, no even the father of my child. I did it all on my own, many times without a break, my child did on occasion misbehave in the Masjid, if she didn’t listen we left immediately so it would not become someone else’s problem. Perhaps those of you who have fathers and family close by can find some way to trade off of the care of your child or as a part of community with other members of your Masjid, create a child care group where parents trade off caring for each other’s children to give other’s a chance to pray or participate in Zikr. Don’t make your problem someone else’s, be a part of the solution.
July 31, 2010 at 6:50 pm
love the post. lots to think about. What about the kids who have just started to attend though..lets say they are three now and just dont know how to be quiet? We need creative solutions. Do we have to wait for like-minded new mothers to start conditioning kids to mosque ettiquete before it can be a reality…probably in a new mosque too since it would take a community reorientation to make mosque prayer areas more child friendly? thanks for reminding us about this. Would love to read about ur take on the ‘best place for women to pray is at home’ discussion.
August 5, 2010 at 7:11 pm
This is a tough one – I think that the vast majority of mosques fail miserably on the front of having family-friendly spaces. Most mosques are built for men, around men.
When I used to go to mosque, I LOATHED going to the “women’s space” because it was inevitably a miserably stuffy room hidden upstairs, accessible only from the back (outdoor) stairwell that runs past the garbage bins.
I’ve only ever been to one mosque, ever, in which all people were allowed on the main floor, women, children, everyone, and that was because the mosque had once been a part of the Nation of Islam, which mixes Christian and Islamic theology and has both male and female sections in the same room, but on opposite sides of the room (like a church wedding, but instead of the bride’s side and the groom’s side, a women’s side and a men’s side). When the mosque changed to mainstream Sunni Islam, they just made it one big open room. Women tended toward the back, but children ran everywhere and there was no separate entrance.
This was in Oakland. I miss it.
This review reminds me of it, even though I don’t think it’s the same mosque:
http://www.yelp.com/biz/masjid-al-iman-oakland#hrid:Klp2ZjwLZqpw_KFYcpBCVA
August 5, 2010 at 7:12 pm
The link above – read the second review. 😉
August 6, 2010 at 12:43 am
LOL.. why (dear Lord, why) do they always place the women’s entrance in the back next to garbage collection? One is supposed to walk into the masjid with purpose and a sense of peace. What purpose would you feel about yourself when you walk in next to garbage. It sends a powerful message of how some view women or try to deter them.
In Toronto we have the Noor Cultural Centre and they hold prayer with men and women “side by side”. It’s a very nice and open mosque, but I rarely get out there.
The mosque in Oakland sounds amazing! Funny about those Naqshbandi Muslims… I also went to a Naqshbandi masjid in Montreal, and have never felt so welcomed. Men served the women tea and food on a regular basis. We weren’t expected to lift a finger — and children just being children was encouraged. Thanks for sharing your experience.
It’s been a while! Hope you’re well.
August 6, 2010 at 5:44 pm
Great post! It was very interesting indeed and not just as a post on mosques but as a reminder of the way kids are looked at in society today. We’re moving towards a society that ban kids (and their mothers!) from lots of social events. There’s no mixing of generations anymore. 😦
There’s so much I’d like to talk about after reading your post but since I’m really tired today I think I’d better leave that to another day.
Just a quick note – In Morocco women rarely go to the mosque, not even during Ramadan. And women with young kids, forget about it!
Take care! Bye bye!
August 6, 2010 at 6:16 pm
I’ve found that in Kuwait as well. That women are just encouraged to pray at home, and because of this, there is no real effort to welcome them to the mosque or make a space for women. I hear this is common throughout the middle east.
This must also have an impact on the North American Muslim population as well when immigrants import this mindset and cultural acceptance.
November 27, 2010 at 1:02 am
[…] in the summer, I wrote a post on the exclusion of children in our mosques. Particularly, how many mosque prayer spaces are not child-friendly, and when they are, the onus is […]
February 20, 2013 at 11:09 pm
[…] of gender segregation, hostile prayer spaces, higher-than-thou attitudes, discrimination against mothers and their children, horrible sermons, and barriers, basements and balconies. Mosques are supposed to be the spiritual […]
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