Disclosure of Secrets, page-384

Islam has been around for at least 1200 years, more than enough time to put its house in order but has failed to do so. Therefore, one must say that in the very least it has been very accommodative to the idea of female inferiority.

'Second class

While many families pray together at home, worship in mosques tends to be gender segregated, with many people believing that allows people time to focus on prayer. Sometimes women will pray behind men in the same space. More often, mosques will have two separate rooms for each gender to pray in, with the men in the main prayer hall and the women in an alternative space. But not all mosques make room for women. More than a quarter of British mosques don't have a space for women at all. In the mosques that do cater for both men and women, the spaces aren't always the same size.

Anita Nayyar, who co-runs Open My Mosque, to campaign for more inclusive mosques, says women often get "second class" areas. She says they can be smaller than the men's section, in basements, behind locked doors and up flights of stairs, or sometimes only open sporadically. And the pandemic has exacerbated the problems. "We have received reports that during the pandemic, mosques who used to accommodate women pushed women out either to create socially distanced space for men or because they felt they could not organize stewardship to ensure the women's facilities adhered to guidelines," she says."