Mecca is for men

Not many years ago, I was talking with a former Muslim convert to Christianity who was telling me that one of the distinctive things he had liked about the Ismaili Muslims for whom he had worked once was that they regarded every meeting as if it was taking place in the Kaaba which meant that women mingled freely with men in worship. It made me think then of a kind of eschatalogical dimension to that form of Muslim worship ... and I was reminded of it when I read this.

For more than 1,400 years women have been allowed to mingle with men in the immediate vicinity of the Kaaba, a cube-shaped structure in the Grand Mosque which Muslims circle seven times during the pilgrimage. But now a committee set up by the governor of Mecca - which, as might be expected, consists entirely of men - is planning to confine women to a distant section of the mosque while allowing men to continue their prayers in the central area.

And I was doubly interested to read one of the comments, from someone with a name that looks somewhat Islamic, on this article:

the Kaaba used to be dedicated mainly to female deities before Islam. This is probably one reason why so many Muslims find it important to try to wipe out references/links to pre-Islamic religion in Arabia. Then of course, when people see on TV that men and women share a prayer space in the Kaaba, while they're vigorously segregated in other mosques (try Regent's Park), it makes them think. Thinking is a bad thing for religious belief.

That's kind of what I thought when I heard about Ismaili worship.
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Filed in: Islam, Mecca, women, Kaaba