Shaista Amber, President of the All-India Muslim Women’s Personal Law Board has organised an initiative to turn a mosque into one meant only for women.

Her demand for a separate mosque for women had earlier been met with criticism from Muslim clerics and the Darul Uloom seminary at Deoband who said that Muslim women cannot be Imams and should offer prayers at home.

What the twenty or so women in the group did is simple enough: they offered Jumma-ki-namaz along with men at a mosque about 20 km from Lucknow and plan to keep doing so every Friday till the mosque is turned into one exclusively for women.