Heresy of Female Imamate

 بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

والصلاة والسلام على رسوله الكريم

In the Name of Allah, the Rahman, the Merciful

In 2005, the heretic Amina Wadud pulled a publicity stunt by leading a congregation in Salah at Manhattan, New York. Another woman, Jamitha Beevi of Malappuram, Kerala, made headlines by similarly leading a mixed gender congregation in Salah. She later openly renounced Islam and describes herself as “an ex-Muslim rationalist, atheist, public speaker, feminist, social worker”. Today there are several satanic places of worship in North America which claim to be “mosques” that associate themselves with the LGBTQ movement and organize Friday prayers with mixed gender rows behind a female “imam”. It would be more apt to describe these buildings as Masajid ad-Dirar, for they are places of dissension and sedition against God.

The doctrine of mainstream, normative Islam on this matter is that the Imamate is reserved for male Believers. There is Ijma (consensus) on this point. A mixed gender congregation led by a woman in Salah is invalid, and it is a corruption, an evil innovation. Those who demand an explicit text from either the Quran or Hadith to substantiate our view fail to realize that this is established through Amal at-Tawatur; the continuous, unbroken mass practice of the Muslims, generation after generation going back to the time of the Holy Prophet, peace be upon him. And that which is established through Amal at-Tawatur is weightier on the scales for evidence than solitary reports or narrations. So those who cite the Hadith of Umm Waraqah, which they in fact misinterpret, have no leg to stand on. Not only is the Hadith misinterpreted by them to mean that the adult males of her household offered the Salah behind her, but in fact the authenticity of the Hadith itself is not strongly established. Nevertheless, another narration reported by ad-Daraqutuni clarifies that only women of her household offered Salah in congregation with her leading:

عَنْ ‌أُمِّ ‌وَرَقَةَ أَنَّ رَسُولَ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ أَذِنَ لَهَا أَنْ يُؤَذَّنَ لَهَا وَيُقَامَ وَتَؤُمَّ نِسَاءَهَا

Umm Waraqah narrates that the Messenger of Allah, sall Allahu alaihi wasallam, permitted for her that the Adhan and Iqamah be made for her to lead her women (Sunan ad-Daraqutuni; v.2, p.21, #1084)

*In our Hanafi school, it is considered makruh tahrimi or prohibitively disliked for women to form an all-female congregation for Salah even though the Salah will be valid. In such an instance, even then the woman leading the Salah does not stand alone in front of the entire congregation, as in the case of a congregational Salah led by a man. Rather, she stands in the middle of the first row.

The first reported instance in the history of this Ummah when a woman led men in Salah, to my knowledge, was when the heretical Shabibiyyah of the Khawarij had a woman named Ghazalah appointed as their “imam”:

فجاء حتى دخل الكوفة ومعه ‌غزالة وقد كانت نذرت أن تصلي في مسجد الكوفة ركعتين تقرأ فيهما البقرة وآل عمران قال ففعلت

So he [Shabib bin Yazid ash-Shaybani] came and entered Kufah with Ghazalah, who had vowed to pray two rak’ah in the Kufah mosque, in which she would recite Al-Baqarah and Al Imran. So she did (Tarikh at-Tabari; v.6, p.273)

أَنه مَعَ أَتْبَاعه أَجَازُوا إِمَامَة الْمَرْأَة مِنْهُم اذا قَامَت بأمورهم وَخرجت على مخالفيهم وَزَعَمُوا أَن غزالة أم شبيب كَانَت الإِمَام بعد قتل شبيب الى أَن قتلت وَاسْتَدَلُّوا على ذَلِك بِأَن شبيبا لما دخل الْكُوفَة أَقَامَ أمه على مِنْبَر الْكُوفَة حَتَّى خطبت

He [Shabib bin Yazid ash-Shaybani] and his followers permitted the imamate of a woman among them if she took care of their affairs and rebelled against their opponents, and they claimed that Ghazalah, mother of Shabib, was the imam after the killing of Shabib until she herself was killed. They inferred this from when Shabib entered Kufah he had his mother preach upon the pulpit. (Al-Farq bain al-Firaq; p.101)

So we see that this belief that a woman can be made an imam is a heresy that originates with the radical Kharijites and it has been inherited by the radical reformist groups of our time that are inclined toward feminism and validation of the LGBTQ degeneracy.