Jalsa Salana, a huge men only festival in the UK.

[Imdunfer]

This huge Muslim Festival, 50,000 attendees from 100 countries, happened over the weekend in Hampshire. If previous years are anything to go by you will be hard put to find a single woman in any of the photographs. That's because the men and the women meet separately. The women and men are segregated. The women are excluded from taking part with the men, they have a separate conference, they aren't even sat at the back of the men's one.

I honestly never thought I'd be living in a country where women were so excluded from a public gathering of 50,000 people.

I never thought I'd be living in a country where this event will go without criticism and probably actually be praised and celebrated. "MPs, bishops and other public figures are expected to attend." and not one of them, and probably no other prominent public figure either, will comment on this segregation.

It's 2026, how on earth is this country going backwards so far in the treatment of women that this is now perceived to be mainstream and acceptable?

www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/25/uk-largest-muslim-event-jalsa-salana-security-anti-muslim-hate-crime#:~:text=Now%20in%20its%2060th%20year,site%20in%20Hampshire%20this%20weekend.

Meant to add, I don't hate the congregation. I don't hate anyone because of their religion.

I think it’s racist to assume that Islam can’t possibly have equal rights for women one day.

You are on a feminist board - surely it’s not unusual to push for female equality in the UK if you are a feminist?

I also think women should be able to choose to be the “flower never beheld by the gardener” if that’s what they want, but it has to be a choice.

Just as well I didnt assume any such thing then.

I am a feminist woman with a religion, so I am aware of the changes religious women have achieved and are still striving for, within their own faiths. This White Saviour bullshit is, at best, vacuous virtue signalling.

Why do we have single sex schools? Should they be banned. Is there a feminist argument for them?

Because I personally feel that in most religions segregation has its roots in patriarchal power and control. Convents were about controlling women - in the medieval eras it was wear they sent women who were promiscuous, who refused to obey parents, etc. Male orders - monasteries etc - conveyed power and social standing and afforded privilege from their very inception. The RC church retains this male privilege and patriarchal power structure in its continued refusal to admit women and to exert it’s influence over the abortion/bodily autonomy debate throughout the world.

In an era when women can be clerics in the Anglican church and are deemed to have equal standing with men in society and law in the UK and USA at least [I appreciate not elsewhere in the world necessarily], there is no reason to retain single sexed religious orders. The practicing of faiths should be open to persons of both sexes and recognise its adherents as equals regardless of sex.

I have issues with the subordination and exclusion of women from all and any religion because I feel that pretty much every religion is a vestige of the patriarchal societal structures in which those religions were formulated.

Yeah, this was on my local news. It made me chuckle how they were going on about inclusivity with not one woman to be seen. How very modern 🙄

Yes there is a feminist argument for them.

I don't agree with it, necessarily, but there is evidence that girls do very much better in terms of academic achievement, and of course are safer, when in a single sex envronment.

I've had friends who felt that a single sex school really caused them great difficult in learning how to interact with the opposite sex, though. (friends of both sexes, fwiw).

Hm. The context may have changed, though?

I'm an agnostic, so it won't happen, but part of me loves the thought of living in a cloistered sisterhood. Certainly I can see the advantages for religious people, or at least the removal of a lot of problematic issues.

I am not sure the context has changed at all which may be one of the reasons the number of women choosing the life is declining - 82% drop in numbers in the US alone since 1965. This seems to be largely replicated across the world, because women are no longer bound in most developed countries by that patriarchy? They are free to live their lives now - have mortgages, jobs, got to university, when those options were simply not available.

There are plenty of voluntary women’s communes for those that seek the exclusive same-sex companionship and retreat from modern life - without the historical patriarchal roots or the interference of men in the practice of doing so? After all, most convents are ultimately answerable to the bishop of the diocese within which they reside, and are bound by his edicts… and those of the bloke in the Vatican.

Can’t be racist about a religion - religionist or discriminating against a religion I suppose.

I went to a single sex school too. To be honest I don't think I'd have thrived in a mixed sex one.
One of the arguments for is the lack of distraction. I think this can apply in the religious context of prayer and worship as well. The ability to focus on the spiritual without distractions.