I had to summarize and write a reflection on a documentary. The professor likes to keep things VERY simple. Very easy to understand the first time through.
Summary and Reflection on The Mosque in Morgantown Documentary
Muslim women entering from the back door. Muslim women being segregated while praying. Muslim women who do not have gender equality. Asra Nomani is fighting against these "man's laws" to gain support among Muslim women to stand up for themselves against this persistent segregation in mosques across the nation. The documentary The Mosque in Morgantown by Brittany Huckabee discusses Asra Nomani's beliefs and her two year long journey to create gender equality at her local mosque in West Virginia.
In October 2003, the Islamic Center of Morgantown opened in Morgantown, West Virginia. Nomani was appalled by the intolerance and lack of acceptance towards non-believers, suspicion that the West corrupt people, and most importantly the exclusion of women in the Mosque. She recalled that when on her pilgrimages to Mecca, her family would pray in a line, with women and men sitting next to each other, to god. However, in the Islamic Center of Morgantown, the women are separated from the men because of the "mans law" that believes due to the attractive nature of women that women's physical beauty would distract men from praying properly. Nomani makes a distinction in the documentary between 'God's Law,' which is the law that is accepted and understand in the Quran, and 'Mans Law,' which are laws shaped by man to appease themselves. Appalled, Nomani began to protest against this oppressive movement. She conducted numerous protests, and tactics to stop the "atrocities" of gender segregation in the mosque. She even wrote "99 Precepts for Opening Hearts, Minds and Doors in the Muslim World" and posted the list on the door of the mosque in a similar manner to that of Martian Luther and his 95 theses on the Catholic Church door. When the question was asked to men to why they feel that this separation practice is ok, many men responded that the women would feel uncomfortable sitting with men anyway - thus, separation is necessary for the women. Asra Nomani believes that in America, the Muslim community and the American Dream need to go hand-in-hand rather than the Muslim community restricting people from attaining this dream. Nomani believes that Islam is an extremely progressive religion that needs to be evident in the mosque. Throughout the documentary, there was a fine line between the culture and religion of people of the Islam religion.
In the documentary, both the conservative and moderate ideologies are shown. The documentary does a good job of showing opinions on both sides of the issue in regards to Asra Nomani's plight to end segregation in the Mosque. I do not agree with Asra Nomani's drastic tactics of how to change the separation of females and males. Being Indian, I have numerous Islamic friends who are generally conservative in nature. Nomani, being raised in an Islam family - should have recognized this generalization and tried to use less extreme tactics and approached the situation in a better manner that would have slowly, but progressively made an impact at the Mosque. This suspicious and flashy behavior that Nomani conducted in leads me to believe she had ulterior motives to publicize her book (Standing Alone in Mecca) more than get change at her Mosque. Also, if Nomani really wanted to stress change and eliminate the oppressive gender gap, then she should have run as a candidate for the Executive council (which has the authority to end the segregation of women) and made her voice heard.
Your first paragraph consists entirely of sentence fragments. I'm assuming that your professor asked you to write it that way, or that you are modeling your work after an example given in class. If so, great. If not, I'd go with grammatically correct complete sentences.
Apart from that, you seem to have summarized the documentary (I haven't seen it, so I have no idea if you summary is comprehensive, or even adequate), and reflected on it, which is what you say you were asked to do.
