Women in Japan have been playing an increasingly important role in the Japanese Mosques.  They have been quite active in helping propagate Islam to not-yet-Muslims and guide new converts in the ways unique to them. How can we, the Muslim men, help make the Japanese mosques become more women-friendly?

Most of the Japanese Muslim women converted to Islam because they had to embrace the religion before getting married with their mostly foreign-born  Muslim migrant husbands.

With the passage of time, these women have become increasingly vocal in their roles in the Mosques in organizing many Islamic studies and other community and cultural activities.

Indeed, there are many aspects of the role of Muslim women in Japan. However, in this article, we will Inshallah, discuss their role with a special reference to the Mosques in the country.

• Women`s participation on the Mosque boards. Although, they are not directly a part of the board in their local mosques, they have taken on various important roles to handle many dawah and other cultural activities
• Female attendance at Friday prayers and other events related to Mosques is still limited in most of the Masajid in Japan.  In fact, most of the mosques do not have a separate place for Muslim women to pray or perform other activities independently according to their own free will
• Women-only programs at Mosques. Some mosques have started organizing women-only study programs specifically targeted to the Japanese Muslim women.  These events are mainly organized by relatively more knowledgable Japanese women who, in most cases, converted to Islam relatively long time ago, trained themselves via self-study programs or other similar means and, now, are ready to pass on the acquired knowledge to other aspirant women leaders in the Muslim community in the country.
• Many of the Muslim women are not trained to perform dawah and other related activities. However, they can easily organize other cultural activities quite effectively.
• A possible reason why more women are not very active in the Muslim community is that their husbands either do not encourage them to be a dynamic part of the Muslim community due to their own lack of Islamic knowledge
• Unfortunately, many women became Muslims because they had to get married to a Muslim. . So, they do not take their religion too seriously and keep on indulging in many of the activities which they had been doing before entering Islam

How can we make women better trained to serve the cause of the Muslim community in their respective locations?

1. One way could be to organize tarbiyat or training programs for women specifically,
2. Encourage their husbands to bring women to the masajid
3. Educate their husbands about the true and vibrant role of the Muslim women in a growing Islamic society
4. Make partitions or arrange separate rooms for the women to perform their activities. However, many of the mosques are too small to accommodate Muslim women separately on various occasions including Friday prayers, Saturday study programs etc.

Global halal food industry is said to be worth over  $600 billion.  Japanese food and tourism companies are slowly starting to tap into this huge market for halal food and other halal consumer products for the Muslims all over the world.  As the Japanese population is aging, both the public and private sectors have started thinking of ways to offer halal products to the Muslims living in Japan and elsewhere.

The recent surge in the demand for halal food products in japan is attribbuted to the following .

• Muslim population in the country is slowly but steadily increasing
• Muslim consumers are becoming vocal
• More and more Muslims are visiting japan for business, studies or other purposes
• Due to the sluggishness of the domestic Japanese economy, Japanese food companies are trying to grab

Recently, a member of parliament approached few Muslim organizations based in Tokyo to get basic information about the concept and find out ways Japanese companies could cater to the necessities of the Muslims living in the country. A non-profit organization recently planned to hold the first-ever halal food fair in Fukuoka.

Br. Aquil Siddiqui has been an active member of the Muslim community in Japan for more than four decades now. He has played a vital role on countless occasions to promote Dawah activities to the non-Muslims and helping the needy regardless of their religious affiliations.

Recently, Br. Aquil Siddiqui and Japan Islamic Trust organized a reach-out program to feed the homeless in the metropolitan Tokyo area.  Tokyo Shimbun, a famous daily in Japan highlighted his social-welfare activities on their pages as mentioned below.