Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - 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 which forms the centrepiece of the haj pilgrimage in Islam.
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, the birthplace of the religion where a strict version of Islam is state orthodoxy, said the original plan was discriminatory and had vowed to oppose it.
A U.S.-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.
The Grand Mosque is one of the few places where men and women can pray together in Islam, although technically there are separate spaces for each gender throughout the vast complex.
Religious police charged with imposing order according to Saudi Arabia's austere Wahhabi brand of Islam often harass women who decide to pray outside the prescribed areas.
Pushing and shoving is common in the tight space around the Kaaba where thousands of pilgrims crowd during the haj season. The clerics said they wanted to reduce crowding for women.