Mosque - a Muslim Community Centre By Arslan Shehzad

In Islamic society, mosque with basic definition of "place to worship" got a hidden message of path for the development of Islamic society. Basic concept of mosque in Islam was "Community Development Center" where Muslim can learn social as well as religious ethics.

With reference to the function of mosque, Lets overview life of our prophet; The Prophet's Mosque in Medina was also used in the same manner as a social, political and religious center. There are hadiths which includes the functions of a shelter, an educational institution, a health care facility and a prison. The traditions record political pronouncements and diplomatic exchanges taking place at close proximity to the Ka'ba. The mosque was used as a gathering place for all the nobles of the Arab society. The Prophet had engaged in many debates, discussions and preaching at the Holy Mosque. The mosque was also a grim stage to pass judicial decisions and the implementation of punishment in the form of stoning. Let me quote some hadith here:

“One of the protents of the Day of Judgment is that you will vie with one another in building mosques”
“I was not commanded to build high mosques.”

From the said hadith we can understand that the idea of mosque does not approach that of a monumental building meant for a single ritual worship act. The mosque it seems was a place where the Muslims gather to interact and discharge many responsibilities for the benefit of Islam. All of these seem to indicate that the idea of sanctity in religious structures is not one in which only a particular ritual is intended. Of course, some historians might argue that the Arabs were not civilized enough to know the difference between a town hall and a religious building. The historian might even go as far as suggesting the Arabs were too poor to have separate edifices for the secular and religious functions. This manner of argument has the flaw of stereotyping every society into neat little packages of entities that must follow a universal religious and political law.

In Pakistan, we tried to implemend this idea in the form of madrissa's within the vacinity of mosque. But unfortunately, those madariss became the route for promoting extremism within the country. The basic reason behind was the isolation of these institutes. As i explained before the social factor; we always considered mosque a worship place apart from the previous fact that Islam guided us to take mosque not only a preaching center but an educational school. In order to evacuate from this situation, we must take initiatives to consider these mosques as institutes and social center where muslim community can interact. Every mosque should have school and health care centre. For a long term solution, Government should take initiatives to build some infrastructure within the mosques where basic role of Islam must be taught to community in shape of seminars, workshops and trainings.
Aside from prayers, every member of the society had many social obligations to fulfill. To accomplish those social factors we need create a conductive religious as well as social peaceful environment. These social centers may help us to finish the isolation between a madrissa and school.

Arslan