Mosques: rebuilding the faith

A feature article in this week’s Time Magazine highlights the changing conception of the mosque for Muslim communities, along generational differences and making room for a thriving Islam for Muslim practitioners in the West.

New generations of Muslim builders and designers are sparking debate on just the creative design of such sacred spaces, but over “larger debates taking place in the Islamic world today about gender, power, and particularly in immigrant communities, Islam’s place in Western societies.” How does the mosque locate gender in its spaces? Are minarets necessary? What about the questions of noise in public spaces? How are community needs constructed by the mosque? As the social and economic mobility of Muslims evolves, these changes tend to become reflected upon the differing needs for mosques – symbolizing the marrying of tradition with modernity, and setting down new roots.

Mosques in Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and the United States are all addressed in this interesting article about space, faith, and place.

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