Sex segregation and Islam


 * ''This is a sub-article to Islamic jurisprudence and Sex segregation

Islam discourages social interaction between men and women when they are alone but not all interaction between men and women.

Namus
In the Muslim world, preventing women from being seen by men is closely linked to the concept of Namus.

Namus is an ethical category, a virtue, in Middle Eastern Muslim patriarchal character. It is a strongly gender-specific category of relations within a family described in terms of honor, attention, respect/respectability, and modesty. The term is often translated as "honor".

Afghanistan
Afghanistan, under Taliban religious leadership, was characterized by feminist groups and others as a "gender apartheid" system where women are segregated from men in public and do not enjoy legal equality or equal access to employment or education. In 1997 the Feminist Majority Foundation launched a "Campaign to Stop Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan", which urged the U.S. government and the United Nations to "do everything in their power to restore the human rights of Afghan women and girls." The campaign included a petition to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and U.N. Assistant Secretary General Angela King which stated, in part, that "We, the undersigned, deplore the Taliban’s brutal decrees and gender apartheid in Afghanistan."

In 1998 activists from the National Organization for Women picketed Unocal's Sugar Land, Texas office, arguing that its proposed pipeline through Afghanistan was collaborating with "gender apartheid". In a weekly presidential address in November 2001 Laura Bush also accused the Taliban of practising "gender apartheid". The Nation referred to the Taliban's 1997 order that medical services for women be partly or completely suspended in all hospitals in the capital city of Kabul as "Health apartheid".

According to the Women's Human Rights Resource Programme of the University of Toronto Bora Laskin Law Library "Throughout the duration of Taliban rule in Afghanistan, the term "Gender Apartheid" was used by a number of women's rights advocates to convey the message that the rights violations experience by Afghan women were in substance no different than those experienced by blacks in Apartheid South Africa."

Iran
When Ruhollah Khomeini called for women to attend public demonstration and ignore the night curfew, millions of women who would otherwise not have dreamt of leaving their homes without their husbands' and fathers' permission or presence, took to the streets. After the Islamic revolution, however, Khomeini publicly announced his disapproval of mixing between the sexes.

Saudi Arabia
Sex segregation is also prevalent in health centres. In Saudi Arabia, a male doctor is not allowed to treat a female patient, unless there are no female specialists available; and it is also not permissible for women to treat  men.

A woman is also not allowed to meet her spouse unveiled until after the wedding. Saudi daughters are encouraged to wear the niqab in public. Religious Saudis believe it is forbidden for a woman to eat in public, as part of her face would be exposed, therefore in most restaurants barriers are present to conceal women. Some have linked this conservative attitude to an increase in homosexuality in the Arab states of the Persian Gulf.

Sex segregation in mosques


It is claimed that Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, preferred women to pray at home rather than at a mosque, although this is disputed. According to one Hadith, a supposed recounting of an encounter with Muhammad, he said:
 * I know that you women love to pray with me, but praying in your inner rooms is better for you than praying in your house, and praying in your house is better for you that praying in your courtyard, and praying in your courtyard is better for you than praying in your local mosque, and praying in your local mosque is better for you than praying in my mosque.

The Prophet is also recorded to have said: "The best places of prayer for women are the innermost apartments of their houses"

Despite the recommendation that women should pray at home, Muhammad did not forbid women from entering his mosque in Medina. In fact, he also told Muslims "not to prevent their women from going to mosque when they ask for permission".

It is recorded that the Prophet of Islam ordered that Mosques have separate doors for women and men so that men and women would not be obliged to go and come through the same door. He also commanded that men should pray in the first rows and women should pray behind men. The Prophet also commanded that after the Isha evening prayer, women be allowed to leave the mosque first so that they would not have to mix with men.

After the Prophet's death, many of his followers began to forbid women under their control from going to the Mosque. Aisha bint Abubakr, the favourite wife of the Prophet, once said:
 * If the Prophet had lived now and if he saw what we see of women today, he would have forbidden women to go to the mosque even as the Children of Israel forbade their women.

The second caliph Umar also prohibited women from attending mosques especially at night because he feared they may be teased by males, so he required them to pray at home.

As Islam spread, it became unusual for women to worship in mosques because of male fear of immorality between sexes

Sometimes a special part of the mosque was railed off for women. For example, the governor of Mecca in 870 had ropes tied between the columns to make a separate place for women.

Many mosques today will put the women behind a barrier or partition or in another room against most Islamic beliefs. Mosques in South and Southeast Asia put men and women in separate rooms, as the divisions were built into them centuries ago. In nearly two-thirds of American mosques, women pray behind partitions or in separate areas, not in the main prayer hall; some mosques do not admit women at all due to the lack of space and the fact that some prayers, such as the Friday Jummah, are mandatory for men but optional for women. Although there are sections exclusively for women and children, the Grand Mosque in Mecca is desegregated.

There is a growing women's movement led by figures(such as Asra Nomani) who protest against their second-class status and facilities.

Justifications for segregation, despite clear Islamic rules against this, include the need to avoid distraction during prayer, although the primary reason cited is that this was the tradition (sunnah) of worshippers in the time of the Prophet.

Sex segregation online
Muslim website developers have created websites that practise sex segregation of men and women. Such social networks enable users to interact with people of the same gender and restrict interaction with the opposite gender to a certain extent.