Ladies prayer hall in the Khadija Mosque.

Islamic law doesn't require men and women to be separated in the prayer hall; there is nothing written in the Qur'an about the issue of space in mosques and gender separation. However, traditional rules have segregated women and men. By traditional rules, women are most often told to occupy the rows behind the men. Traditionalists try to argue that Muhammad preferred women to pray at home rather than at a mosque, and they cite a hadith in which Muhammad supposedly said: "The best mosques for women are the inner parts of their houses," although, interestingly, women were active participants in the mosque started by Muhammad. Muhammad told Muslims not to forbid women from entering mosques. They are allowed to go in. The second caliph Umar at one time prohibited women from attending mosques especially at night because he feared they may be teased by males, so he required them to pray at home.^[47] Sometimes a special part of the mosque was railed off for women; for example, the governor of Mecca in 870 had ropes tied between the columns to make a separate place for women.^[13]

Male section of a mosque in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, India.

Many mosques today will put the women behind a barrier or partition or in another room against most Islamic beliefs. Mosques in South and Southeast Asia put men and women in separate rooms, as the divisions were built into them centuries ago. In nearly two-thirds of American mosques, women pray behind partitions or in separate areas, not in the main prayer hall; some mosques do not admit women at all due to the lack of space and the fact that some prayers, such as the Friday Jummah, are mandatory for men but optional for women. Although there are sections exclusively for women and children, the Grand Mosque in Mecca is desegregated.^[48] There is an important movement in the United States, called the "Pray In" movement, in which women are claiming their right to pray in the main halls of mosques, rather than in separate rooms.