Asra Nomani

Early life

Nomani was born in Bombay (now Mumbai), India. When she was four years old, she moved to the United States with her older brother to join their parents in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Her father, Zafar Nomani, was earning a Ph.D. at Rutgers University. When Nomani was ten, her family moved to Morgantown, West Virginia, where her father became an assistant professor of nutrition. Her father (cited as M.Z.A. Nomani) published studies on the health effects of fasting during Ramadan and also helped organize mosques in both New Jersey and West Virginia. In her books Tantrika and Standing Alone in Mecca, Nomani states that she is descended from the contemporary Muslim scholar Shibli Nomani, who is known for having written a biography of Muhammad. Nomani received her B.A. in Liberal Studies from West Virginia University in 1986 and M.A. from American University in International Communications in 1990.

Career

Nomani is a former Wall Street Journal correspondent and has written for The Washington Post, The New York Times, Slate, The American Prospect, and Time. She was a correspondent for Salon.com in Pakistan after 9/11, and her work appears in numerous other publications, including People, Sports Illustrated for Women, Cosmopolitan, and Women's Health. She has delivered commentary on National Public Radio.

She was a visiting scholar at the Center for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University. She was a Poynter Fellow at Yale University.

Nomani is the founder and creator of the Muslim Women's Freedom Tour. She has also defied literalist interpretations of Islam that segregate women from men in prayers at mosques, and was a lead organizer of the woman-led Muslim prayer in New York City on March 18, 2005, which has been described as "the first mixed-gender prayer on record led by a Muslim woman in 1,400 years." Various mixed-gender prayers have been led privately by a Muslim woman, including a 1997 funeral prayer led by a South African Muslim feminist Shamima Shaikh. Nomani has said the prayer was the first publicly led Friday prayer in modern-day history.

In 2015 a group of Muslim activists, politicians, and writers issued a Declaration of Reform which, among other things, supports women's rights and states in part, "We support equal rights for women, including equal rights to inheritance, witness, work, mobility, personal law, education, and employment. Men and women have equal rights in mosques, boards, leadership and all spheres of society. We reject sexism and misogyny." The Declaration also announced the founding of the Muslim Reform Movement organization to work against the beliefs of Middle Eastern terror groups. In 2015 Nomani and others placed the Declaration on the door of the Islamic Center of Washington.

Nomani has argued in favor of government surveillance programs in the fight against Islamic terrorism, saying that society's "sense of political correctness has kept us from sensible law-enforcement strategies that look at Muslims, mosques, and Islamic organizations." She argues the Muslim community does not do a good job of policing itself and that public areas were "natural meeting spot for criminals." The leader of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, Zuhdi Jasser, agreed with Nomani's argument that such spying tactics were warranted. Nomani has also argued in favor of "racial and religious profiling," explaining that the "common denominator" of many terrorist with anti-American views is they are Muslim. She reiterated that "the Muslim community [has] failed to police [them]selves" and that such profiling on the basis of "religion, race and ethnicity" is a necessary "part of keeping our skies safe."

On November 11, 2016 on CNN, Nomani revealed that she voted for the Republican candidate Donald Trump, and adding that "liberals and the left have really betrayed America." After Donald Trump passed controversial Executive Order 13769, Nomani supported the decision and stated that referring to the executive order as a "Muslim ban" was a "propaganda campaign" to incite fear in the public.

Influence

In November 2003, Nomani became the first woman in her mosque in West Virginia to insist on the right to pray in the male-only main hall. Her effort brought front-page attention in a New York Times article entitled Muslim Women Seeking a Place in the Mosque. The article chronicled Nomani's "Rosa Parks-style disobedience."

Inspired by Michael Muhammad Knight's punk novel The Taqwacores, she organized the first public woman-led prayer of a mixed-gender congregation in the United States, with Amina Wadud leading the prayer. On that day, March 18, 2005, she stated:

We are standing up for our rights as women in Islam. We will no longer accept the back door or the shadows, at the end of the day, we'll be leaders in the Muslim world. We are ushering Islam into the 21st century, reclaiming the voice that the Prophet gave us 1400 years ago.

In his book Blue-Eyed Devil (p. 209), Knight recalls the event as follows:

Inside the chapel there might have been as many reporters and camera crews as there were praying Muslims. The imam of the day, Amina Wadud, was so distracted by the long rows of popping flash-bulbs that in the middle of the prayer she forgot her ayats. At PMU's first board meeting, Ahmed Nassef would read to us an email from Dr. Wadud that completely washed her hands of the event. Though she still believed in woman-led prayer, she wanted nothing to do with PMU or Asra Nomani... Wadud had drawn a clear line between the Truth and the media whores, and we knew that PMU was on the wrong side. To avoid public criticism, PMU's website made no mention of Asra's role in organizing the prayer. Asra complained of PMU shutting her out.

In addition to her books, Nomani has expressed her experiences and ideas for reform in op-eds in the New York Times and in several other publications and broadcasts. She was a friend and colleague of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was staying with her in Karachi with his wife Mariane Pearl when he was abducted and later murdered by Islamic militants in January 2002.

Nomani is portrayed by British actress Archie Panjabi in the film adaptation of Mariane Pearl's book A Mighty Heart. The Washington Post published a review, by Nomani, of the film in which Nomani argued "...that Danny himself had been cut from his own story."

Nomani is interviewed in a 2005 National Film Board of Canada documentary by Zarqa Nawaz about the efforts of North American Muslim women to be accepted in mosques, entitled Me and the Mosque.

Impact and reception

Regarding the Morgantown mosque issue, Pakistani-American lawyer Asma Gull Hasan, author of Why I Am a Muslim: An American Odyssey, expressed admiration for Nomani, while West Virginia University professor Gamal Fahmy criticized her and questioned her motives. Others suggest Nomani's woman-led prayer in 2005 led to open discussion and debate about the role of women in Muslim society.

Representatives of some Islamic organizations have criticized Nomani on the Morgantown mosque issue, in part because she has openly criticized commonly accepted practices in the American-Muslim community, but also for not sufficiently interacting with longstanding Muslim communities. Asma Gull Hasan, a Pakistani American lawyer however shared similar sentiments as Asra and said "A lot of women our age, first-generation Americans, young Muslims who don't like the conservative attitudes of the mosque, either keep attending blindly and ignore the rhetoric or just stop attending altogether".

Nomani broke the news regarding Random House's decision not to publish The Jewel of Medina by Sherry Jones, a historical novel about Aisha, wife of the Prophet Muhammad. She expressed disappointment in Random House's decision.

Some American Muslims have criticized Nomani for reinforcing the stereotypes and prejudices they face. American researcher Nathan Lean, former Director of Research at the Bridge Initiative which is part of Georgetown University's Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, has criticized her for "[embracing] the soft Islamophobia of Western expectations".

Books

Articles

Anthologies