Conceptualising Mosque Diversity

Abstract

Abstract There are nearly 2000 mosques in Britain by some estimates, however there is yet to develop a vocabulary to describe their diversity, akin to the common terms used to describe Christian places of worship (chapel, church, cathedral). I outline here the typology of the interspatial mosque to provide a coherent theorisation of how mosques operate, their priorities, and the ways in which they situate themselves as what are sometimes called “multipurpose” or “multifunctional mosques”. In order to pin the abstract typology to the empirical, I use several case studies, but contend that the findings can be generalised across Britain, with implications for research on mosques in other locations. The article argues mosques can be divided into three tiers, the fard, which focuses on the daily prayers, the fard kifaya, which hosts communal activities, and the sunna, which aims to recreate the prophetic example in the modern period in various ways.