Washington: Asra Q Nomani, a Mumbai-born Indian American who had been a 'The Wall Street Journal' reporter, believes that marginalisation of women within the US' Islamic society is worsening because of the spread of strict Wahhabi and Salafi schools of Islam.

Writing in 'The Washington Post', Nomani cites a study conducted recently by Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to contend that Muslim women are increasingly being denied the rights that their religion gives them.

"The practice of having women pray behind a curtain or in another room is becoming more widespread" in the US. In 2000, women at 66 per cent of the US mosques surveyed prayed behind a curtain or partition or in another room, compared with 52 per cent in 1994, according to the survey of leaders of 416 mosques nationwide, she writes.

Nomani, the writer of a forthcoming book 'Daughters of Hajira', writes that orthodoxy was brought in the US by the strict Wahhabi and Salafi schools of Islam, which largely exclude women from public spaces and stack mosque libraries with books printed by the Government of Saudi Arabia where Wahhabi teachings reign.

She also describes her own struggles against orthodoxy in America, which she says has no roots in the teachings of the Prophet of Islam.

The orthodoxy is manifest in segregation of women in mosques, not allowing women to address the faithful by using the loudspeaker in mosques, and punishment of stoning to death for unmarried mothers, she writes.