Exploratory Essay

Mosque is a place where Muslims attend everyday, seven days a week, for there five daily prayers. It can be a little hard for Muslims who work full time or attend school, to perform all daily prayers at the Mosque. Nonetheless they are permitted to pray anywhere if were they pray is clean. Friday is the one day of the week were all the Muslims (men or female, old or young) come together to perform their prayers in congregation. During the congregational prayer, there are all kinds of people from all around the world, parents, grandparents, children as young as 1 or 2, religious and non-religious people; it is a great way to meet people who share your faith. The Mosque I attend is not just a place of worship, it is a place where we come together

During the congregation there is a clear separation amongst the genders, who are prescribed separate spaces using architectural device, such as separate worship halls. The reason this really bothered me was because, I was brought up into a Muslim majority country (United Arab Emirates), and at the mosque I attended Muslim men and women participated fully in mosque spaces, without any separations. The concept of inequality between the genders and the persistence practices amongst different culture and faith groups have led to patriarchy (Little & McGivern, 2014, p.32); referring to “set of institutional structures (like property rights, access to positions of power, relationship to sources of income) that are based on the belief that men and women are dichotomous and unequal categories … dominant gender ideology toward sexual differences: the assumption that physiological sex differences between males and females are related to differences in their character, behaviour, and ability (i.e., their gender). These differences are used to justify a gendered division of social roles and inequality in access to rewards, positions of power, and privilege” (Little & McGivern, 2014, p.32). Our Mosque does not allow the men and the women to worship together in the same room. This is to prevent distractions. Since women are not obligated to attend the Mosque as men are, the women’s worship space is smaller. I believe

It is an amazing place for Muslims and non-Muslims to understand each other. The Mosque is very welcoming to everyone of different faith background, race, ethnicity, gender and socioeconomic status. It is also a place where they take care of the elderly and the youngsters who just arrived at Canada, by providing them with tools and resources to intergrade into the society: they also provide them with ideas to change some of their old fashion practises and allow them to view the world a little different. The people that attend the Mosque are extremely nice and diverse people and the Mosque recognizes it. Parents--including mine--would send their kids to charity festivals, which the Mosque holds once every year: it allows the kids to be around and more tolerant towards people of different faith background, race, ethnicity, gender and socioeconomic status. Despite all the great things our Mosque does for our community, the issue of gender segregation and female leaderships have led an increase number of conservative female Islamic movements in Ottawa, which eventually led our Mosque take some