With two domes and equal men and women prayer section, the leaders of the Muslim community are proud of their new “women-friendly” Utah Islamic Center, Salt Lake Tribune reported.
This mosque is “female-friendly,” Imam Shuaib Din said. “It is designed so sisters can use the main entrance and do not have to use a side entrance. Plus, there will be a women’s lounge.”
The soft-spoken imam is similarly proud of the design innovations.
“We wanted the exterior to blend in with local architecture while maintaining the unique features of a mosque,” Shuaib Din said.
“This is an American mosque, not a Middle Eastern mosque or a South Asian mosque.”
The under-construction mosque will be the new home of the Utah Islamic Center. The congregation has been meeting in a rented Sandy warehouse tucked behind a strip mall since 2007.
At 350 members (250 men and 100 women), the congregation has dramatically outgrown those quarters.
“We ran out of capacity,” said Mehwish Javeed, a member of the mosque. “The women were cramped in their space and sometimes had to meet outside by the dumpsters.”
The mosque domes will be pyramid-like triangles, rather than the spheres most common to mosques.
“It is a two-domed mosque, which is unheard of. Most only have one — for the men,” Javeed said.
Women in Mosques
Muslim scholars have treated the issue of women’s places at the mosque with more and proper attention and have maintained that Muslim women should be allowed to frequent mosques, and it is impermissible to prevent them from doing so, either individually or collectively.
Rather, there should be a suitable places for women in the mosque, and they should be encouraged to go out to it so that they, like men, can bring about desired interests and objectives behind frequenting Allah’s places of worship, especially in the present age.
In this age, and especially in countries with Muslim minorities, it is more proper that the mosques’ main entrances be open for both men and women, even if circumstances necessitated reserving an additional door for women only.