Beyond the Divide: A Century of Canadian Mosque Design

Canada’s first mosque, the Al Rashid mosque in Edmonton, was built in 1938. In the years since, as Canada’s Muslim population has grown, close to two hundred mosques, Islamic centres, prayer spaces, and jamatkhanas have been built across the country. Beyond the Divide explores the mosques of Canada in their diversity, beauty, practicality, and versatility. From east to west and to the north, Tammy Gaber visits ninety mosques in more than fifty cities, including Canada’s most northern places of worship in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories. For nearly a century Muslims have made mosques in a variety of spaces, from converted shops and vacated churches to large, purpose-built complexes. Drawing on site photographs, architectural drawings, and interviews, Gaber explores the extraordinary diversity in how these spaces have been designed, built, and used – as places not only of worship, but of community gathering, education, charitable work, and civic engagement. Throughout, Beyond the Divide provides a groundbreaking analysis of gendered space in Canadian mosques, how these spaces are designed and reinforced, and how these divides shape community experience. The first comprehensive study of mosque history and architecture in Canada, Beyond the Divide reveals the mosque to be a dynamic building type that adapts to its context, from its climate and physical environment to the community it serves. Above all, mosque designs depend on the people who gather in them, and what those people strive for their mosques to be.

About the Author :
Tammy Gaber is director and associate professor at the McEwen School of Architecture, Laurentian University.

Review :
“As the first comprehensive book on the mosque in Canada, Beyond the Divide is a timely entry into the field of social architecture and gender studies, covering an important contemporary issue for Muslims and other groups.” Hasan-Uddin Khan, School of Architecture, Art and Historic Preservation, Roger Williams University “Beyond the Divide is thoughtfully and necessarily constrained as a text, while addressing an important lacuna in Canadian architectural history and in Canada’s built environment. The surveyed buildings and their parallel social contexts of local and immigrant histories, peoples, ideas and efforts are given centre focus, and deservedly so. We have here, at last, a collected and more complete image of the history of Canada’s diverse Muslim communities, and of their attempts to build home, hub and community, in new geographical, climatic and social geographies.” RACAR “Beyond the Divide: A Century of Canadian Mosque Design provides a critical contribution to the international scholarship on the architecture of mosques and the social roles they play in diaspora Muslim communities throughout the world. Tammy Gaber has gifted our profession with a timely, welcome, and first-of-its-kind comprehensive study of Muslim sacred/social architecture here in Canada.” Canadian Architect