Excerpt:
In a brightly lit office in Bradford's Carlisle business centre, on a road lined with charity shops, grocery stores and a green-domed masjid, Bana Gora and her team at the Muslim Women's Council (MWC) are organising final preparations before a much-awaited consultation about the UK's first women-managed mosque.
At the event on Sunday, which they expect local residents, imams and national media to attend, the community group will discuss their proposals for a mosque that will be open to all – men, women, children and worshippers of all sects, including Sunni and Shia. Prayers will be led by a male imam, yet the governance of the mosque will be run by women, in the first of its kind in Britain.
Gora co-founder and chief executive of the MWC, said: "When I was growing up across the Bradford district, there was never a practice of sisters going to the mosque. We prayed at the house. But why couldn't we go to the mosque on a Friday with our brother and father?" Gora said. "We were told because it's not the done thing. Women don't go to the mosque. Well, actually, at the time of the prophet, women did, and they had the same access as men."