Technology as the new form of Burqa

Growing up, family gatherings were the best part of Ramadan for most, food was for some, but for me it was Taraweeh prayer. I used to love going to the mosque down the street with Mom or with neighbors. The united voices of so many people, mostly men, chanting "Amen" in every Rak'ah never ceased to send shivers down my spine.

With the constant competition of daily obligations and endless to-dos, Taraweeh prayer has not been getting a worthy share of my time for the last few Ramadans. Not with a toddler anyway! I did manage to go once so far this month. I tried not to let the ignorant old man who hushed my son and husband (along with other men and their children) out of the mosque ruin it for me. "No children here" he bellowed. "Children go outside or to the room downstairs."

The room downstairs makes me claustrophobic. It's a small room with no windows or healthy ventilation where women with children pray to keep the noise away. Women without children pray upstairs in the section separated from men's by movable board walls. The one thing in common between the two women's spaces: monitors showing live webcast of the men's section.

Through those monitors, we can see the men, or at least the imam or speaker. They remind me of Mariam, the main character in Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns, and her burqa.

And the burqa, she learned to her surprise, was also comforting. It was like a one-way window. Inside it, she was an observer, buffered from the scrutinizing eyes of strangers.

Technology has facilitated and reinforced the gender-based separation at many a mosque these days. If the justification for those monitors is to make women have a sense of inclusion and presence in prayers or events, then how are we supposed to raise questions, participate in discussions, or object to rules or roaring old men? How did the woman who objected to Omar bin Al-Khattab's direction to lower dowries do it if she was cast behind a wall or caring for a baby in the basement? All I know is that monitors did not exist when we were growing up, just like fake walls did not exist in the Golden years of Islam.