‘Mosques’ Cultures under Market Logic: A Critique

As the main site of religious practices, mosque is perceived to be the heart of cultivating Muslim community. At the beginning of Islam, precisely in the Madinah periods, this site has social functions for instance building solidarity, making social cohesion, and solving public problems.

These functions thus made mosques to be an institution that educates the community with egalitarian values and inclusive participation. From this point, we can understand that the da’wa of Islam is not mere spreading normative values but also how to handle a wide range of social problems. And more interestingly the mosque is frequently used to be the site of musyawara (public discussion). In there, the Muslim community and the broad range of social unit called umatan wahida—according to the Madinah treaty, this social unit is plural in character because comprise cross religions and cross ethnics bounds— establish public spheres.