Buildings

From the earliest days of the Messenger's mosque in Madina,

the mosque was seen as a place of teaching and learning.

Of course there were all the studies of the Qur'an,

learning it and understanding its meaning and relevance,

but the mosque was also a place for the teaching and learning

of all the vast range of knowledge that is known as 'Ilm,

not just words, but also numbers and the sciences

This teaching was there for all who wanted to learn,

girls and boys, men and women,

but obviously young ones don't learn the same things as the older ones,

they need to learn the basics,

the first and most important things to learn.

So these classes for young people would be given their own space in the mosque complex,

along with spaces for more specialised adult teacbing,

the mosque acting as a college or university,

with its own library

and paid residential teachers.

many years before the University of St. Andrews,

or Oxford or Cambridge,

in Qarawiyin, in Fez, Morocco,

a very wealthy woman called Fatimah al-Fihri

built a large mosque university for the community,

and Sankar University in Timbuktu

was also financed by a wealthy muslim woman.

These universities were world renowned,

and had many students from distant countries studying there,

not just Qur'anic studies, theology and law,

but also history, geography, astronomy, maths and the sciences,

as well as medicine and surgery.

This association of education with the mosque,

from the youngest beginners to the peaks of intellectual attainment

could be found all around the muslim world,

but where medicine and surgery are being taught,

they really need a place where they can be put into practice,

where all the studies of biology and anatomy,

herbal treatments and surgery

could find a practical use.

They need a hospital.

And that is what the mosque university complex provided,

a hospital section with free treatment for anyone in the community,

with wards dealing with all manner of complaints,

and even separate areas for the mentally ill.

So what started in the Messenger's mosque

in such a simple way,

Qur'an studies, reading and writing,

science and medicine,

looked outward towards a world of knowledge,

'Ilm,

that spread without limit in every direction,

from that centre the benefits of that knowledge

spread out to benefit the community.

In this way, the mosque is at the heart of knowledge,

spiritual knowledge

with our moral understanding of good and bad,

intellectual knowledge

using the sciences to look towards an understanding of true and false,

and medical knowledge

probing biological understanding of the nature of Health and Sickness,

and all these three

affect the health and well-being of the community.

What is good and true is of benefit,

and what is bad and false just spreads sickness.

It is what is good and true

that leads to the muslim Deen,

a life-enhancing cohesive way of life,

but it must be asked

Why no more mosque universities?

why is it that the mosque seems to have lost

its place at the heart of muslim knowledge of the world,

setting knowledge of the world in a context of knowledge of its Creator.