Asra Nomani and Ify Okoye start with setting the scene:

This past weekend, dozens of girls and boys as young as about 8 years old ran up the stairwell to the main entrance of the musallah, or main prayer hall, of the Islamic Society of Baltimore, where President Obama visits Wednesday in his first presidential visit to a U.S. mosque. As the children rounded the corner, a stern mosque Sunday school teacher stood before them, shouting, “Girls, inside the gym! Boys in the musallah.”

The girls, shrouded in headscarves that, in some cases, draped half their bodies, slipped into a stark gymnasium and found seats on bare red carpet pieces laid out in a corner. They faced a tall industrial cement block wall, in the direction of the qibla, facing Mecca, a basketball hoop above them. Before them a long narrow window poured a small dash of sunlight into the dark gym.

On the other side of the wall, the boys clamored excitedly into the majestic musallah, their feet padded by thick, decorated carpet, the sunlight flooding into the room through spectacular windows engraved with the 99 names of Allah, or God, in Islam. Ornate Korans and Islamic books filled shelves that lined the front walls.

Can you read that without fury? I certainly can’t. It reminds me of Goldenbridge and the other Irish industrial schools, that went out of their way to insult and degrade the children they imprisoned in every possible manner. It reminds me of the segregated school system in the southern US.

To Muslim women’s rights activists fighting for equal access to mosques as part of a broader campaign for reform — from equal education for women and girls to freedom from so-called “honor killings” — the president’s visit to a mosque that practices such blatant inequity represents a step backwards. While it may be meant to convey a message of religious inclusiveness to American Muslims,  the visit demonstrates tacit acceptance of a form of discrimination that amounts to gender apartheid.

It does that. They have daughters. Would they let their daughters be treated that way – be blatantly treated as lesser and inferior and deserving of bare floors and hard benches and no books or spectacular engraved windows? I sure as hell hope not.

“While the free world awaits a Muslim reformation, the leader of the free world shows blatant disregard for gender equality by visiting a mosque that treats females like second-class citizens,” says Raheel Raza, a Pakistani-Canadian activist, author and cofounder of the Muslim Reform Movement, a new initiative that we support, advocating for peace, women’s rights and secular governance.  “This makes our work as activists extremely difficult because equality is one of the main tenets of our reform movement.”

Religions in the US have big exemptions to treat women as inferior though. I blame the free exercise clause.