Innocent houses of worship, or a sign of the rise of islamic fundamentalism? We all have our own ideas about mosques, and many of those go beyond the domain of architecture. In Europe, mosques are a central issue in the debates about the integration of Muslims and the potential dangers of Islam. The aim of this book is to stimulate a greater understanding and meaning of the debate around mosques. Time is used as the main visual aspect to emphasise the speed of social, functional and architectural changes within the Dutch Muslim society.

Politician Frits Bolkestein, architect Wilfried van Winden, sociologist Willem Schinkel, theologist/philosopher Tariq Ramadan, anthropologist Eric Roose and Ole Bouman, director of the Netherlands Architecture Institute, collectively share their interdisciplinary perspectives as whole on the emergence of this new architectural typology and explain its narrow and broad social impact.