WOMEN FRIENDLY MOSQUE: AN OVERVIEW

Abstract

Mosque is a place where people prostrate to Allah S.W.T and Islamic religion greatness symbol, that stand firm in every corner of the world. The mosque is also a place for muslims gather with no differences in gender, ethnicity and status. In the time of Prophet Muhammad, peace upon him, has raised awareness of the mosque’s role as community builder without ignoring the women. In Malaysia, some mosque designs less emphasize the need for woman comfort and this raises problems towards women while in the mosque. Prayer area, ablution area, toilet and safety which are the main components that are needed to be emphasized in designing a mosque. Nevertheless, there are still a numbers of muslim women voices their frustration towards the facilities provided to them in mosque. Therefore, this research identifies the problems faced by women using the secondary data which is media content analysis. Besides that, field observation which involved some mosques in Johor to identify issues in facilities and design of mosque. From the field observation, it was clearly seen that the mosques’ facilities provided for the women users still do not comply with ‘women-friendly’ mosque. Some suggestions were provided to improve the mosque's design and to act as reference by future researchers, architects and designers in designing a mosque.