Female imam officiates interfaith marriages despite criticism from the Muslim community

This is an excerpt from the documentary "The Reformist - A female Imam" (First Hand Films)
Click here to watch the full documentary:    • First Scandinavian female imam to hea...  

Sherin is opening one of Europe’s first mosques run by female imams. The members of the Mosque aim to confront and challenge the fear surrounding Islam and call for a new kind of it including a feminist agenda. Sherin is impatient. She wants change and equality now. But her haste divides her organisation to the brink of collapse. After her own divorce, Sherin openly begins granting Islamic divorces to women unhappily married and performs inter-faith marriages of Muslim women and non Muslim men. She wants to grant Muslim women the freedom to divorce and marry. But how do you break centuries of tradition from within a religion?

Subscribe to the channel: https://goo.gl/5Sp36B
Follow us on Facebook:   / wocomo  

The question of inter-religious marriage remains an issue and a taboo in the Islamic religion. According to the Koran, Muslim women cannot marry a person of another religion. There are more Muslims in interfaith relationships but few imams willing to marry them because against Islamic teaching. Yet the first female imam of scandinavia, Sherin Khankan, sees no trace of this interdiction imposed on women in the Quran. And in fact, her women-only mosque in Copenhagen is the only one to officiate interfaith marriage. For her, Islam must be reformed in a more feminist way, where Muslim women will have the same rights as men, especially regarding marriage. And this reformation is necessary according to her because Islam must follow the evolutions of its time. In seeking to reform Islam, she raises many questions such as: Is Islam compatible with Western society? Is Islam compatible with democracy? What about the role of women in Muslim society?Sherin Khankan wants thus to establish gender equality in islamic marriage. But this is not without consequences, Muslim women marrying outside their religion face criticism and rejection from their families.

Original title - The Reformist - A female Imam
A film by Marie Skovgaard
Denmark, 2019

© 2019, Licensed by First Hand Films

#islam #muslim #women #documentary #marriage