Is the mosque a male-dedicated building?! A Critical View on Women Praying Space in Contemporary Mosque Design

Contemporary approaches to mosque design display a myriad of richness in expressing the sacred in the Islamic culture and religion. Still, some foundational questions about the process of mosque design, particularly those regarding its dynamic functionality and the complex needs of its multiple users, have not yet been convincingly tackled—a case in point is the design of the space dedicated to women in the mosque. Other than a general rule that men and women should not pray in the same rows, evidenced by the Prophet Mohamed’s mosque in Medina, there is no specific guidance on how to design the women praying space. In turn, different cultural conventions and interpretations of Islam in the diversified Muslim societies have produced some norms regarding the spatial organizations for women-space in the mosque. These norms may include separating the ladies’ prayer space with a barrier or allocating it to a top or bottom floor that is often accessed by a dedicated entrance away from those to the men’s prayer hall. While not directly derived from Islamic texts, these norms were absorbed in the expected and accepted approaches adopted by architects and building regulators regarding how to design women praying halls in contemporary mosques. The prevalence of those norms has sparked various jurisprudential and socio-political debates about the role of women in Islam. Besides, many architectural questions can also be posed about the inefficiency of those rarely challenged norms to fulfil the needs of the female users of the mosque and to engage them in its broader spatial and participatory experience. In turn, the commonness of those norms in mosque design may have emphasised a certain perception that the mosque is a male-dedicated building. Setting this out, this paper aspires to interrogate the architecture of women praying space in contemporary mosque design. With shades from the debates about equality, inclusion and fair opportunities, the paper will operate an architectural forensic analysis of examples of women praying spaces in conjunction with a review of some of the increasing – though still limited – literature tackling the issue of women space in mosques. The paper will end with speculations on new possibilities to incorporate the functional complexities associated with the women praying space to become an integrated part of the spatial and participatory experience of the mosque