RIYADH: Saudi clerics appear to have backtracked on controversial plans to ban women from praying at the centre of Islam's holiest shrine in Mecca. At present, women can pray in the immediate vicinity of the Kaaba, a cube-shaped structure inside the Grand Mosque. But plans by the all-male committee overseeing the holy sites would have placed women in two distant sections of the mosque - overlooking the Kaaba, though at a distance - while men would still be able to pray in the key space. "The presidency (committee) decided to adopt a second proposal, which is to expand two special places for women's prayer, in addition to the one that already exists," Mohammed bin Nasser al-Khozayem, deputy head of Grand Mosque affairs, was quoted a saying in Okaz newspaper on Monday. "Women have the same right as me (to pray) in the 'sahn' (Kaaba area)," he said. "In fact 53 percent of the mosque's space will now be for women to pray, which is more than men."
Women activists in Saudi Arabia said the original plan was discriminatory and had vowed to oppose it. A US-based group called the Muslimah Writers Alliance began a Web petition to lobby the authorities against the plans, called "Project Grand Mosque Equal Access for Women". "We have a right to pray in this space," its Web site says.