Is There Anything Uniquely American About Muslim American Art or Architecture
This essay past Jenine Kotob was originally published by Metropolis Magazine every bit "Why At present, More Than Always, Nosotros Need A New Islamic Architecture."
At a fourth dimension when Muslims find themselves at the center of the nation'southward political stage, the topic of Islamic compages in the Usa is more relevant than always. The American mosque has go a prominent symbol, within which identities, practices, and cultures converge. Generally, this convergence results in conflicting goals, further resulting in mosques that neglect to place and serve the needs of their diverse constituents.
In a 2011 written report entitled The American Mosque, Dr. Ihsan Bagby, professor in Islamic studies at University of Kentucky, conducted a survey that found that just 10% of Muslims nourish a total of 2,106 mosques in the The states. The report indicated that 75% of all mosques are dominated by one indigenous group, ie, by South Asians, Arabs, or African Americans. It also establish that women make up a mere xviii% of the attendance at Friday prayers and that 66% of the mosques sampled use dividers or partitions to divide the women's prayer area from the main mosque, segregating women from what could exist broader communal and spiritual activities. Converts, who are primarily African Americans from urban areas, are recognized as a top priority by only 3% of the mosques surveyed, and only 17% of mosques consider youth/teen programming to be of import.[i] In addition to these internal challenges, mosques face external threats that make them experience unsafe for attendees: namely, attacks by Islamophobe groups and the scrutiny of governmental surveillance programs.
Many Muslim Americans are seeking healthy customs spaces where they tin address these internal and external challenges safely and constructively; however, too many new mosques are being built in "traditional" styles that rely on outdated tropes and ignore the challenges Muslim Americans today are facing. Traditional designs can and should human activity as launch pads for architectural inspiration; all the same, it is the function of architects to prove alternatives that aren't just spiritual, inspirational, or uplifting—just that in fact enhance the social and environmental qualities of the 21st century American mosque itself.
New Architecture, an One-time Vision
On April two, 2016, the Diyanet Center of America officially opened its doors to the public with a big celebration. Thousands of guests, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, gathered in suburban Maryland to observe first-manus the $110 million campus, consisting of a 20,236-foursquare-foot mosque, cultural heart, single-family unit housing, dining hall, educational facility, Turkish baths, sports complex, and underground parking garage. The campus, the culmination of two decades of planning by the Turkish government, was built to award Turkish culture away and support Muslims living in the greater Washington, DC, surface area. When President Erdogan spoke at the opening, he described the Center as a place that would serve a greater purpose: "Bring together us against a common fight confronting hatred and prejudice," he said. "Islam is a religion that commands living and not dying. This cultural eye will serve all of these valuable purposes."
The architects of the facility, Hassa Architecture, based out of Istanbul, designed the central mosque in truthful classical Ottoman style. The architects' mission was to "reproduce under today'southward atmospheric condition the uncorrupted Turkish-Islamic tradition from the pre-westernization period." While Islamic architecture in Turkey continues to progress and explore new, more gimmicky aesthetics, projects like the Diyanet Middle idealize the past and attempt to project a more than authentic tradition that has not been "corrupted" by styles out of the West. In suburban Maryland, withal, the projection stands out as conflicting to the landscape—it's symbolic of another people and some other fourth dimension.
Despite the hype and grand visions, the facility is non, in fact, a symbol of the Muslim-American community today. There is a long legacy of Muslims living and edifice mosques and Islamic centers in America: from those immigrants who built the Mother Mosque of America in 1934 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa to the resilient and vibrant African-American Muslim population, who founded the Nation'southward Mosque in the 1930's in Washington, DC. While the beauty of Ottoman-style architecture of the Diyanet Center is undeniable, it does not tell the rich and diverse story of Muslim Americans. In the words of Imam Zia, founder of the Virginia-based Muslim organization MakeSpace: "Both every bit a 21st century imperative and as a way to revive the inclusive spirit of the Prophet's community, American Muslim communities need to turn their mosques and centers into attainable, diverse, relevant and prophylactic spaces. These are the hallmarks of a truly vibrant and benevolent gild."
A Brief History
Muslim-American customs leaders take typically relied on designs that are traditional in their aesthetics, with domes, minarets, arches, and geometric ornament. This nostalgic render to historic architecture is part of an immigrant narrative that is non unique to the Muslim population. The American landscape has get the sheet for a milieu of architectural styles that correspond cultures, religions and eras that span vast spaces and times.
Beyond Islamic architecture that is used for Muslim worship, there are hundreds of examples of Islamic-inspired folly style buildings that exist in the Westward and began to pop up in the state as early as the 1490s. Some of the earliest settlers who arrived to this continent were Christian converts, originally Muslims from Kingdom of spain, who synthetic buildings in the style they knew best: Moorish architecture. These buildings included such features as eight-pointed stars, quatrefoil elements, ironwork, courtyard fountains, and colorful tiles. One of the primeval documented buildings is the Misiòn San Antonio de Valero, or the Alamo, built in 1744 in present-twenty-four hours Texas, with an embellished entryway that is Moorish-inspired. In 1829, a edifice called the Bazaar was congenital in Cincinnati, Ohio, past Englishwoman Frances Trollop, as a commercial building in an over-the-summit, fancifully Islamic style. Architect Seneca Palmer designed the Bazaar with a Turkish onion-domed rotunda, arabesque-framed windows, crenellated roofline, and Egyptian details. In 1848, a lavish mansion was constructed in Bridgeport, Connecticut in a blend of Moorish, Turkish and Byzantine styles. Designed past builder Leopold Eidlitz for owner P.T. Barnum, it cost $150,000 to construct, which, in today's dollars, amounts to more than $iv 1000000. Many more than buildings with Islamic elements can still be found effectually Florida, California, and other states today.
Writer Phil Pasquini describes the phenomena equally a collective "architectural Orientalism":
The overall effect became an interpretation that pandered to American tastes for the exotic more it attempted to educate and inform by visually representing an academically correct building. Even the about authentic-looking structures ofttimes include elements that are unrelated or out of context thematically or stylistically, resulting in an indiscriminately combined collage of hybridized elements and styles.[2]
What is ofttimes lost in this drive for the "exotic," whether nostalgic or Orientalist in nature, is an architectural linguistic communication that is productive, relevant and relatable to second and third-generation children, converts, and other minority groups within the Muslim-American population. Traditional designs are being misinterpreted and transplanted in such a manner that their underlying spatial qualities are lost. Furthermore, these spaces equate spirituality with a sense of escape and separation from the realities of this earth—inwards facing courtyards, captivating ornate design, repetitive colonnades and arches. However, what is being created are only partially successful facilities that practice not explore new forms spirituality and often lack the stylistic and programmatic diversity that is necessary to create thriving and sustainable communities for future generations.
Towards a New Process
And so how can architects go nearly designing mosques that are relevant, responsive, inclusive and more chiefly, actively effective for an American audience? Start, they must consider what makes a mosque a mosque at its core. Of form, defining one mode as Islamic is nearly impossible. From the Kaaba in Mecca to the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul and even to the Swell Mosque of Xi'an in China, Islamic compages is every bit localized as it is expansive. Only and then, what makes a building or mosque Islamic at all?
Writer Ahel Kahera describes a mosque in its virtually deconstructed and universal form, a definition that comes from the Hadith [proverb of the Prophet Muhammed]:
'The [whole] world is a masjid [mosque] for you, so wherever y'all are at the time of prayer, make your prostration there.'... 'The [whole] earth is a masjid' negates the need for a stock-still or singularly prescriptive type of enclosure. Rather, information technology places accent solely on the act, time, and place of prostration. Therefore, we may say that any spatial class that is erected is merely the result of a secondary effort by a single architect.[3]
Kahera notes several important points: Offset, innate within the organized religion, in that location is a strong connexion betwixt the human body and nature—no other act more clearly depicts this than prayer. This hadith even identifies the earth equally a mosque, with the sunday charting the times of prayer above, and the worshipper prostrating along its surface. This ecology context of Muslim worship is, I believe, essential to Islamic compages. 2nd, in that location is no prescribed architectural grade; instead, there is complete flexibility, openness and pragmatism in mosque structure. This framework allows for, and in fact encourages, creative expression, innovation, and cultural multifariousness in Islamic architecture.
In Seyyed Hossein Nasr'south introduction to, Islamic Art and Spirituality, he states that, "Islamic art is based upon a knowledge which is itself of a spiritual nature, a cognition referred to by traditional masters of Islamic art as hikmah or wisdom… This art is based upon a science of an inner nature which is concerned not with the outward appearance of things, but with their inner reality."[4] Nasr's point on the relationship between spirituality, wisdom, and fine art can also inform an architectural process, where design is participatory and responds to the disquisitional questions that are facing a particular customs—including the role of women, the next generation, and what to practice in the face of Islamophobia. Participatory blueprint allows an invested customs to piece of work together at the design table with architects and specialists, to collaborate and problem-solve together. Through equitable participation, the varied and various voices of the Muslim customs are granted the opportunity to express their private desires and needs, providing a much-needed stage for the underrepresented.
What would an artful of Islamic compages in the United States look similar today if Muslim users were made a part of this process? In Washington, DC, a group called Columbia Heights Halaqas hosts "organic conversations reflecting personal organized religion journeys" that rotate from apartment to apartment. Without a physical, attainable venue in DC-proper that could support their conversations, these young professionals have found an alternative way to practice their faith collectively. These third-spaces, typically in a host's domicile, are intimate settings for Muslims to gather to reverberate on their faith. By mapping out the network across the Commune, an urban practise emerges that places the sacred within the quotidian.
Within these safe, welcoming environments, participants reflect on Islam in means that are relevant to their own lives. Architects must begin to explore these micro-moments of practice, in which spirit is understood on an extremely localized level. Artwork, reading fabric, color, lighting, and furniture can make mosques and Islamic centers more than responsive and in-tune with the constituents who will occupy them.
Moreover, mosques must go the extra mile if they desire to cater to all members of their population, especially the underserved. Mosques are in a unique position, as many Muslims believe that they have been divinely summoned to be stewards of the Globe every bit well every bit upholders of social justice. Architects have an opportunity to place greater emphasis on outdoor spaces, such as edible community gardens, outdoor water cisterns, and recreational facilities that contribute to the full general American population and, more specifically, the disenfranchised and underrepresented. Furthermore, the very intrinsic connection between Muslim practice and nature should exist exemplified in its architecture. Every bit the edifice industry continues to move towards the potential of codifying greenish building practices, mosques should have greater strides toward pursuing green certification. The Living Edifice Challenge certification could be quite suitable for mosques and sacred architecture. Living Buildings focus on seven operation categories: Identify, Water, Free energy, Health & Happiness, Materials, Disinterestedness and Beauty. The challenge views buildings as components of the natural surroundings that enhance the man connection in listen, body and soul with all that is living.
I community that has found a connectedness between Islam and nature is the Subcontract of Peace, a small Sufi community located in Pennsylvania approximately three hours west of Washington, DC. The subcontract sits on over 150 acres of land and operates a community-supported agricultural program and raises its ain sheep for meat and wool distribution. The customs's main building is the International Peace Center, constructed as a straw bale building, built with the assistance of the entire community. The edifice sits facing a seemingly endless landscape, with its principal meeting and prayer infinite at the center looking outwards. In the middle of the prayer infinite is a fireplace, the hearth of this community'south home. The wing to the east of the main hall contains healing and meditative spaces where the Center serves Muslims and non-Muslims alike. To the west of the main hall are guest bedrooms for visitors from around the world, each with its ain private bathroom. Every component of the building was built by some member of the customs, from the walls, to the millwork to all of the artwork. The founder describes the facility as a edifice that is meant to hug its visitors, with curved, natural walls that engulf and warm the interior with the heat of the sun.
The International Peace Center and the homes of the Columbia Heights Halaqas reply to the very local social, environmental, and cultural climates of their communities and exemplify the need to focus on the user feel. Today'due south mosque users in the United states of america are in demand of prophylactic, inclusive, and relevant spiritual spaces—not inefficient and underused large structures, political symbols and relics of a past that is frozen in fourth dimension. Without more active and engaged utilize past worshippers, these institutions shall remain as monolithic artifacts, gesturing towards faraway lands and times that are simply memories on a dusty shelf. The role of the builder is diminished when the benefactors of mosques argue that the most awe-inspiring and beautiful forms of Islamic architecture are those of the Ottomans, the Mamluks, the Persians and the Mughals, leaving no room for innovation and creativity.
Across the country, vibrant, intellectual, passionate and inspiring Muslim Americans are seeking out new venues in which they tin can cultivate their own identities that are both proudly American, despite Islamophobic challenges, and proudly Muslim, despite being marginalized past traditionalists. Architects must design new buildings that speak to this sense of re-invigoration and sensitively identify what each user group needs. Engaging in a participatory process will let all members of the Muslim-American community to take ownership of a space that was curated collectively, making mosques homes to many and not simply a small few.
Furthermore, architects should, rather than pursue a specific manner, explore the underlying universality that unites mosques as places that connect souls to i some other and to nature itself. This connectivity is at the middle of a spiritual experience that is more outward looking, transparent and embracing. Morphologist Theodore Cook once said: "Beauty connotes humanity. We call a natural object beautiful because we see it at its class expresses fitness, the perfect fulfillment of part." Sacred architecture at its best is the perfect alignment of many parts that make a whole: a whole building and a whole community. It is the culminating expression of part, aesthetic, course, context and, most importantly, the needs of its users. Its beauty is in the successful cohesion of each of these parts.
References
- Bagby, Ihsan. The American Mosque. Rep. nos. 1, 2, 3. Council on American Islamic Relations. N.p.: CAIR, 2011.
- Pasquini, Philip Fifty. Domes, Arches and Minarets: A History of Islamic-inspired Buildings in America. Novato, CA: Flypaper, 2012. p. 10.
- Kahera, Akel. Deconstructing the American Mosque: Space, Gender, and Aesthetics. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002. 35-37.
- Nasr, Seyyed H. Islamic Fine art and Spirituality. Country U of New York, 1987.
Jenine Kotob is an architectural designer with Quinn Evans Architects (QEA) in Washington, DC. Jenine'southward inquiry focuses on Islamic architecture in the United states, environmental literacy through instruction, participatory development, and schools in crisis areas and refugee camps in the Center Eastward. She holds a Primary of Science in Architecture with the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture from the Massachusetts Constitute of Technology (MIT).
Cite: Jenine Kotob. "Why Islamic Architecture in the United States is Declining American Muslims" 21 Jul 2016. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://world wide web.archdaily.com/791724/why-islamic-architecture-in-the-united-states-is-failing-american-muslims> ISSN 0719-8884
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