' Updating the Mosque for the 21st Century' By Carla Power (Time)

A new generation of Muslim builders and designers, as well as non-Muslims designing for Muslim groups, often in Europe or North America, are updating the mosque for the 21st century, sparking not just a hugely creative period in Islamic design, but one riven by controversy. The disputes over modern mosques echo larger debates taking place in the Islamic world today about gender, power and, particularly in immigrant communities, Islam's place in Western societies.

Interesting. Wish there was a slideshow with it, though.

Highlights:

The most daring buildings are dreamt up by second- and third-generation Muslim immigrants, who have the confidence and cash to build stone-and-glass symbols of Islam's growing strength in places like Europe. Simply importing traditional mosque architecture "doesn't express loyalty to your current surroundings," says Zulfiqar Husain, honorary secretary of an innovative new eco-mosque in Manchester, England. "It almost expresses that you want to be separate from the society you live in."

Particularly in Europe, mosques have become the architectural equivalent of the veil: visible signs of Islam's presence and thus sites for tension between Muslims and non-Muslim traditionalists.

Hm. The minaret (or not) debate (page 2) is pretty interesting...

Unsurprisingly, it's immigrant Muslim communities that are pushing the biggest changes. "The Western mosque is fast becoming the site of contestation between the kind of Muslims who espouse the traditional mosque, and those who want to win proportionate space for women," says MIT's Khalidi. "The second generation are the ones demanding, and often getting, that kind of space." Architectural historian Khan estimates that until recently, North American mosques gave only about 15% of their space to women. Over the past five years or so, the space women have access to has increased to at least 50%.

In the main hall hangs a bronze chandelier, dangling with hand-blown glass raindrops — a visual allusion to the Koranic verse that says Allah's light should fall on believers like drops of rain.

:)