Trustees of Haji Ali Dargah [website], a mosque in Mumbai, India, told the country’s Supreme Court [official website] on Monday that they will begin to allow women to enter the inner sanctum of the mausoleum. The court permitted [Indian Express report] the mosque a period of four weeks to make the change, which the trust says is needed for structural changes to grant women entry. The trust banned women from entering the mosque in 2011, claiming that allowing women near the tombs was a sin. Advocacy group Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA) [advocacy website] challenged the ban in the lower court, arguing [AFP report] it violated the constitutional right to gender equality. The Mumbai High Court sided with BMMA in August and the Haji Ali Dargah trust appealed.

Both Muslim and Hindu women in India have challenged bans to religious temples in recent years. In January hundreds of women marched [BBC report] in the city of Pune, led by the rights group Bhumata Brigade, hoping to end the ban against women at the Shani Shingnapur shrine. In 2015, a petition was filed [Times of India report] to lift the ban on women between the ages of 10 and 50 from entering the Hindu Sabarimala Ayyappa Temple. Currently, other temples in Nashik, Pushkar, and Kolhapur also bar women from entering.