Overview

The Place of the Mosque: Genealogies of Space, Knowledge, and Power extends Foucault’s analysis Of Other Spaces and the “ideological conflicts which underlie the controversies of our day [that] take place between pious descendants of time and tenacious inhabitants of space.” The book uses this framework to illuminate how mosques have been threatened in the past, from the Cordóba Mosque in the eighth century to the development of Moorish aesthetics in nineteenth-century United States to the clashes surrounding the building of mosques in the West in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Foucault’s genealogy allows us to elaborate and study the subjects that are caught in the emergence of a battle—the social and political will to power, the networks of power and the rituals of power—in the interstitial space which define the subjects and clears a space ruling both the body and space. In going beyond individual buildings to broader geographical and genealogical dimensions of the power struggles, The Place of the Mosque reconciles the public space experience, governmentality, and micro powers, paving the way for a new philosophical language. Expanding architectural and urban regional approaches, Kahera shows the biopolitical significance of the problem of space.

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9781793646873

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Reviews

The Location of Mosques wrestles with Michel Foucault's ideas on space, while weaving together local and global notions of place, as it interrogates today's public spectacles over the Great Mosque of Cordoba near Madrid alongside the Ground Zero Mosque in Manhattan. Akel Kahera expands our discussion about mosque space by assigning it a genealogy, unpacking various sites as a forensic scientist would dissect a human body to determine its birth history, traumatic relations, and lifestyle markings. It is a fresh and contemplative approach. Animating the book is the question, Who Defines place? But what makes this query so intriguing is how its answers revolve around the interlocking dimensions of space, knowledge, and power. Kahera is even cheeky enough to allow musings on the mosque from the great poet, Muhammad Iqbal, which foregrounds his point that the mosque is a ubiquitous presence in the world. And it is this fact that makes works like this one so essential to understand. -- Zain Abdullah, Author of Black Mecca: The African Muslims of Harlem (Oxford University Press)

The Location of Mosques wrestles with Michel Foucault’s ideas on space, while weaving together local and global notions of place, as it interrogates today’s public spectacles over the Great Mosque of Córdoba near Madrid alongside the Ground Zero Mosque in Manhattan. Akel Kahera expands our discussion about mosque space by assigning it a genealogy, unpacking various sites as a forensic scientist would dissect a human body to determine its birth history, traumatic relations, and lifestyle markings. It is a fresh and contemplative approach. Animating the book is the question, “Who Defines place?” But what makes this query so intriguing is how its answers revolve around the interlocking dimensions of space, knowledge, and power. Kahera is even cheeky enough to allow musings on the mosque from the great poet, Muhammad Iqbal, which foregrounds his point that the mosque is a ubiquitous presence in the world. And it is this fact that makes works like this one so essential to understand. -- Zain Abdullah, Author of Black Mecca: The African Muslims of Harlem (Oxford University Press)

Author Information

Akel Isma'il Kahera is professor of architecture and sustainable urbanism at Hamad Bin Khalifa University.

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