A perceptive columnist in Sahafat (May 8) writes that common Muslims have welcomed the proposal, “It is the ulema who are keeping the controversy alive”, says the paper. He writes that in 1978, Ayatollah Khomeini urged Shias and Sunnis in Iran to offer prayers in each other’s mosques “in their own ways.”

The proposal of the All-India Muslim Women’s Personal Board for separate mosques for women — with women Imams — has also generated debate. A front page report from Deoband in Hyderabad’s daily Munsif (May 9) said that a fatwa from Daar-ul-Uloom has rejected the proposal, and described it as a ‘stunt of the West’ (maghrib ka shosha). According to the fatwa, “Women in Islam have not been given the permission to act as Imams.” A front-page report from Hyderabad in Akhbar-e-Mashriq (May 13) quoted two noted Muslim women members of AIMPLB as saying that Ms Amber’s proposal is “mischievous (fitna angez), ineffective and worthless.” They said that according to Islamic tenets, women can join a prayer congregation in a mosque but “the Imam has to be a man, the front rows are to be of men, the middle rows of children and the last rows of women.”