Even in those days when I thought of myself as an agnostic I loved churches. And now being in a mosque, especially a well-designed one, is an intensely restful experience.
But the strangely contradictory thing is that some of my most intense experiences of prayer in mosques are associated with the run-down variety, or when I've found myself praying outside the actual mosque, when it has been packed, in less than salubrious circumstances.
I mention this as today I arrived at Darussalam Mosque quite late and was very much on the periphery of things, staring straight at a bare wall, sitting on a rough bit of concreted floor. Yet it all felt oddly right. I was reminded of a time I was in Indonesia with some teaching colleagues who were Muslims and we were directed to a mesjid that was nothing more than an empty, very run-down, shop unit, and felt entirely, rightly, at home.
In Islamic thought, by the way, the whole world is regarded as a mosque, fit for prayer - assuming the ground has not actually been dirtied in some way. The idea that literally everywhere is sacred is powerfully appealing. And sane.
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