A big problem with the Progressive Islam discourse is that many of you North Americans seem to think you are the world. You arent! The term "Progressive Islam" didnt start in North America, the term "Progressive Muslim" did not start in North America. "Progressive Islam" was a movement long before the founders of PMU discovered the term (and I use the word "discovered" in the same way that colonialists used it to talk of parts of the world they'd never seen and suddenly landed on).

And since the term didnt start in North America, i doubt it will be killed in North America. Eteraz, while the PMU started, formed its board and stuctures, then died a death that was sometimes slow and somtimes fast, the term "Progressive Muslim" was still being used and continually debated in other parts of the world. In South Africa, for example. With the debaters mostly being blissfully unaware of the shenanigans of the PMU. And why should they care? After all, they were using the term before the PMU was conceived, before Omid Safi even conceived his book. And it always meant to them something different to what it meant to the "big-tenters" of the PMU.

It always included, for them, a theology, a juridical basis. When they – in places like Indonesia and South Africa and other places – have been having women-led salahs for years (and not in once-off spectacular media events but in sustained congregations that were nurtured over time), they didnt do it because it seemed like a good fad; they did it because they had worked through the debates and the scholars among them were convinced, together with them, that it was not inconsistent with our scholarly tradition.

IF "Progressive Islam" dies in North America (and Im in no position to give it a prognosis, declare it dead or to perform its janazah salah), it wont be because "Progressive Islam" has no juridical basis, but because those who arrogantly regard themselves as the vanguard of a movement they do not understand think they dont need such a basis. The rest of the world, in the meanwhile, will continue with various different priorities and develop all kinds of other "progressive islams" and, hopefully, wont give a damn about the North Americans who believe they are Allah's gift to the Muslim ummah. And I make this last statement because some US "Progressive Muslims" have actually commented that they will lead the muslim world into a new, reformed islam. Sounds to me like the American president who wants to bring democracy to the Muslim World. I question whether he knows what democracy is, and whether he knows what the Muslim World is.

I dont like thinking that "everything will be for 3 generations from now" or for this generation or for 10 generations from now. Frankly, I dont care. I dont do what I do for the results. I do it because its the right thing to do; because my faith allows me to be comfortable with it. A most important lesson which I learnt after I returned from hajj (taught to me, btw, by Amina Wadud), was that my task is only to strive; the results do not belong to me, they are Allah's. I dont care what happens in 3 generations and whether my struggles will ever has positive results.

The mosque that I go to in Johannesburg for Eid organises the salah in open field, with men and women side-by-side (in gendered blocks :) and the imam standing on the left side of the block of men so that he is almost in the middle between the men and women. Oh, and theres no lace or any other kind of partition separating the sexes.

Naeem Jeenah is a South African progressive Muslim, an author, journalist, community leader and post-graduate student. He is currently a PhD candidate and Director: Operations of the Freedom of Expression Institute. He is former President of the Muslim Youth Movement of South Africa and a founder of its Gender Desk; Coordinator of Masjidul Islam in Johannesburg; spokesperson for South Africa's Palestine Solidarity Committee.