The first Muslim woman to sit in the Cabinet is urging architects and designers to come up with a new model for Islamic places of prayer
Mosques in the UK could be designed without minarets to look like “quintessentially English” places of worship, the former Conservative Party chairman Baroness Warsi has suggested.
Lady Warsi, the first Muslim woman to sit in the Cabinet, is urging architects and designers to come up with a new model for Islamic places of prayer as part of a drive to develop an authentically “British” brand of Islam.
That could involve abandoning the distinctive towers from which the call to prayer is traditionally issued in an effort to blend in more closely with their surroundings, she said.
And in some places that might even involve mosques which resemble village churches, she added.
She likened the debate over the place of mosques in towns to arguments in previous centuries about baroque churches such as St Paul’s Cathedral in London, which were seen by some as “foreign” and Roman Catholic.
The peer, who served as faith minister in the Coalition government, is setting up a new foundation in her name to promote religious tolerance, said she wanted to start a national debate about places of worship in the 21st century and is planning a design completion to come up with new plans for mosques.
The call for a new generation of mosque first emerged emerged in the Tablet, the Catholic magazine, following questions at the peer’s inaugural lecture as Visiting Professor St Mary’s University, Twickenham. Full details of the design competition are expected to be issued in the New Year.
Speaking to The Telegraph, she explained: “The phrase that I keep coming back to, which is rooted in Islamic thinking, is that Islam is like a river that takes the colour from the bed over which is flows, the bed being the country in which it is found.
“There has to be a debate about cultural reference points in religious buildings, how does it find its identity in the place in which it is built?
“If you look at mosques around the world they are very differently shaped and sized; they have different features, some have minarets and some don’t have minarets.
“The minaret is traditionally used somewhere where the call to prayer would be issued from the top of the minaret.
“If the principal reason no longer exists, with someone having to physically go up to the minaret, should we take more local cultural reference points from this country instead?
“That’s what we want to have a debate around and a potential design competition.
“What I would like to see is the quintessential English mosque.
“It is not for me to say what that would look like.”
“The only requirement is for it is to have a place for the imam to stand, to be facing Mecca when you pray and to have places for people to wash before prayer,” she said.
“I think a nod to the heritage and the culture that you find yourself in can be very helpful.
“I want to see an Islam which sits comfortably within Britain and a Britain that sits more at ease with Islam.
The apparent similarities between the Muslim minaret and traditional church towers may be more than coincidental.
The practice of including a tower from the call to prayer was issued is likely to have originated in Syria date in the mid 7th or early 8th century when Damascus, a former Christian metropolis, became the capital of the Islamic caliphate under the Umayyad dynasty.
Some churches in the region already included towers at the time – but often used as a form of outdoor pulpit rather than a place for bells.