“The Religious Experience of Architecture in Islam”

Abstract

This study begins with the view of ritual as a process, incorporating the emotions and experience of the actors, based on non-discursive perception. Congregational prayer, one of the foremost rituals in Islam, has been given infrequent attention within the spatial dimensions of the mosque.

In a comparative investigation of the processes and spaces of prayer, for historic and contemporary Muslims, it illustrates that the effects of ritual actions are in part informed by interactions within the architectural environment. It is the internalisation of this complex spatial and temporal universe which further informs the actions of the actors, in the domain of the ritual and the non-ritual. The focus is therefore on the development of an architectural space for Muslims which serves as both a medium and an outcome for action, containing and enabling the actor's view of the world.