Women Claiming Space in Mosques

Abstract

A subject that has largely been overlooked until recently and whose implications for the various fields of Islamic studies are wide-ranging, is female mosque attendance and the corresponding spatial organization that it entails. In Senegal the rise and influence of the Mouvement Islamique has granted women a place in the mosque formerly denied them by the turuq, the Sufi brotherhoods. Degrees of spatial marginalization, on the one hand, and appropriation, on the other, vary. Much of the current literature on Senegal maintains that the impact of Islamism is still relatively small. Although religious observance in Senegal is relatively strong and predominantly Sufi in its orientation, the recent infiltration of 'Wahhabi' ideas has given women greater access to public places of worship.