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24УРБАНИЗИРОВАННЫМ ИСЛАМ В НИДЕРЛАНДАХ ЧТО МОГУТ РАССКАЗАТЬ МЕЧЕТИ
Вельмот Бондер
■ж.ЪоепйеУ@Ьит.1е1йепип1у.п1
В Нидерландах за последние десятилетия возросло число новых мечетей,привлекая внимание ученых, политиков и обычных граждан В этой статье представлена авторская классификация голландских мечетей, которая позволяет оценить, каким образом мечети интегрировались в городской ландшафт голландских городов и поселков. Каждый тип подчеркивает конкретные образы материального выражения этнической/социальной/религиозной идентичности мечети в голландском обществе. Приложен иллюстративный материал, наглядно демонстрирующий обоснованность этой классификации. Данная классификация будет служить аналитическим инструментом, призванным обеспечить понимание истории политики идентичности и динамических представлений об эстетике.
Ключевые слова: мечети, ислам, Нидерланды, типология, городская эстетика, политика идентичности.
Лейденский университет, Нидерландский институт перспективных исследований гуманитарных и социальных наук Вельмот Бондер
URBAN ISLAM
IN THE NETHERLANDS: Welmoet Boender
WHAT MOSQUES CAN TELL w.boende@hum.leidenuniv.nl
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24848/islmlg.08.L02
In the Netherlands the number of newly built mosques has grown fast in the past decades,attracting attention of academic observers,politicians and citizens alike. This paper presents a seven-fold typology of Dutch mosques,as one possible way to discuss how mosques have integrated into the urban landscape of Dutch cities and towns. Each type emphasizes a specific imagery of the material expression of the mosque's ethnic-social-religious identity in Dutch society. Providing illustrative examples that support this classification,the typology will serve as analytical instrument to provide insight in the history of identity politics and dynamic notions of aesthetics. Keywords: Mosques, Islam, The Netherlands, Typology, Urban aesthetics, Identity politics.
Every mosque in the Netherlands has a story of its own. But taken together, the mosques tell the story of integration of Islam in the Netherlands. In this contribution, I will present a typology of seven different types of mosques which we can ideal-typically observe in the Dutch urban landscape. Each type emphasizes a specific imagery of the material expression of the mosque's ethnic-social-religious identity in Dutch society.
The Netherlands is a strongly secularized society with deep Protestant, Catholic and humanist roots. At present half of the population is not affiliated to any religion. 39 per cent is Christian, 5 per cent is Muslim and 6 per cent adheres to another religion (Central Bureau for Statistics, February 2015). In recent years, the country has experienced growing sentiments of Islamophobia, influenced by the global rise of Islamist extremism.
There are currently almost 500 mosques in the Netherlands. The majority of the Dutch mosques used to be housed in pre-used buildings that were turned into mosques with a limited amount of financial resources by the first generation of Muslim immigrants. However, by now, almost half of the mosques is purpose-build, as many local communities have invested in new housing, particularly in the last decade1. For these new buildings, mosque boards have ordained architects — often of Dutch background — to design a mosque that would integrate certain symbolic forms, shapes, colors and artefacts that refer to how they envision their Islamic heritage in a non-Islamic society. Mosque design thus
1. To compare: in Flanders, Belgium, 11 out of 190 mosques were housed in new purpose built buildings in 2011 (Kanmaz 2011). Also in Belgium, the number of new buildings has grown in the past years.
Dr. Welmoet Boender
Leiden University and Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences
has become an important and publicly visible way to express authenticity of living as Muslims in the Netherlands. As markers of Muslim presence, mosques are "dynamic and contested sites" that play an important part in what Murat Es called "the production of ethno-religious subject positions" (Es 2012:iii).
One way to understand certain choices made in exterior mosque design is to see them as part of "identity politics" of Muslim communities. Muslim stakeholders seek to identify their interests as a specific socio-religious minority group and realize their legal claims and consolidate their position in society based on citizenship rights. Part of this process is (the need) to form coalitions with members of the majority society. At the same time, one must be careful not to exclusively understand the mosque designs in terms of socio-political integration of a subaltern migrant community. We will also have to consider whether mosque design can or even should also be understood in the context of changing notions of urban aesthetics in plural Dutch society, in which buildings are never neutral objects, but "always wait to be imbued with meaning by people" (Tamimi Arab 2013).
The Dutch case is interesting in itself and must be understood in its very own Dutch historical, legal, political and societal context. But it is to be expected that the empirical and theoretical considerations will be interesting also for the study of the urban Islamic landscape in Russia and elsewhere. Below, I will first provide background information on the history of Muslim immigration and the construction of mosques, before presenting seven types of mosque appearances, illustrated with empirical examples. Google street view enabled me to pass by hundreds of mosques from behind my desk. The addresses were found on www.moskeewijzer.nl, a website initiated by a Dutch convert in 2009, as a practical tool for Muslims and interested others to easily find a place to pray, while also being informed about the (expected) language used in the sermons. As the pictures taken by Google street view can be one or two years old, in some cases I did an internet search to collect the most recent information. In the final part, I will discuss how in recent years new claims to public space are being made, and how ideas on mosques are being advanced and perceived in the Dutch urban landscape.
Ethnic and denominational diversity of Muslims in the Netherlands
The number of Muslims in the Netherlands is currently estimated at 5,5 per cent of the total population of 17 million people. This means that there are about 660.000 Dutch adults who are Muslim. The number of Dutch Muslims below 18 years is estimated at 337.000 (polderislam.nl). This includes children who are counted as so-called third generation, whose grandparents have migrated from Turkey, Morocco or Surinam. The first large flow of Muslims to the county came at the end of the 1960s and early 1970s with the coming of labor migrants from Turkey and Morocco, to work in industries, like mining and steel industry, but also the flower industry and factories. After a few years, these men started to get their families to the Netherlands as well, so the number of Muslims grew. And with their coming, the need for a better religious infrastructure increased, with the provision of prayer halls, halal food and religious education.
In the 1980s and 1990s the number of Muslims increased again because of the coming of refugees and asylum seekers. The latest group of refugees is evidently formed by Syrians. There are also converts, but that group is relatively small; estimations vary between 20.000 to 50.000.
Country of origin (first, second, and third generation) Absolute number Percentage of total number of Muslims Number of Muslims among this ethnic group
Turkey 389.000 87% 338.000
Morocco 356.000 92% 327.000
Surinam 354.000 10% 34.000
Afghanistan 40.000 84% 34.000
Iraq 53.000 63% 33.000
Somalia 31.000 95% 29.000
Pakistan 19.000 100% 19.000
Iran 33.000 43% 14.000
Other countries 634.000 11% 67.000
Approximately 25% of Muslims weekly visits a mosque. Approximately 50% of Muslims never visits a mosque.
Figure 1. 2012, www.polderislam.nl, last accessed 6 April 2018
Ethnic, religious and socio-political heterogeneity of mosques
The ethnic and denominational heterogeneity of the Muslim community in the Netherlands is clearly apparent in the organization of mosques. There are almost 500 mosques. We can find mosques everywhere, from the metropolitan area of the four big cities (Amsterdam — Rotterdam — Den Haag — Utrecht), to small towns and villages (figure 2). The first Dutch mosques were established in the early 1950s. In Balk in the province of Frysland, the Dutch government provided a space for prayer to former soldiers of the Royal Dutch Indies Army and their families that were moved to the Netherlands. In the same period, the Ahmadiyya community managed to build the first purpose built mosque (Mobarak mosque, The Hague).
Figure 2. www.moskeewijzer.nl, last accessed 9 April 2018
From the 1970s onwards, the Turkish and Moroccan labor migrants and their families started to organize their religious lives along the lines of language and religious orientation. Turkish families set up mosques where they spoke Turkish. Imams were recruited from Turkey, first independent from the Turkish government, later the Turkish Presidium for Religious Affairs (Diyanet) sent imams to Europe as civil servants. Moroccan mosque boards also recruited imams from their home country. In religious services Arabic is used, whereas the mosque visitors often speak Tamazight amongst each other as the main language, as many first generation migrants originate from the rural areas in the Moroccan Rif. Arabophone mosques increasingly have been using Dutch as old and new immigrants (from Iraq, Somalia, Syria, Eritrea or elsewhere), third generation and converts use this as common language.
Apart from language and ethnicity, we see that religious-political orientation is an enduring differentiation. The majority of Turkish mosques (147) is governed by the Turkish Presidium of Religious Affairs, Diyanet, which sends and pays the imams. Thirty nine mosques are affiliated with Milli Gorus, 48 belong to the Sufi current of the Suleymanli, and 26 to Nurcu or other Turkish denominations (www.polderislam.nl).
The infographic below (figure 3) shows how a central feature of mosques in the Netherlands is that they are established and organized along ethnic and denominational lines. As a result, we see that in many towns, there are two or more mosques. The vast majority of the mosques is Sunnite, less than ten percent of the Muslims in the Netherlands is of Shi'ite or Alevite (who do not have mosques) background.
Ethnic orientation Numbers
Turkish mosques 242 (147 governed by Diyanet)
Moroccan mosques 179
Surinamese/Pakistani 52
Bosnian 3
Indonesian 2
Shi'ite 2
Ahmadiyya 11
Total 491
Figure 3. Source www.polderislam.nl, last accessed 9 April 2018
Each mosque community is responsible for its financial maintenance, including the salary of the imam. The Dutch state does not finance them, as religious activities cannot be funded by the state according to the Dutch arrangement of the separation between Church and State. However, it is possible for a mosque organization to apply for subsidies to organize socio-cultural and non-religious educational activities.
The Dutch mosque-scape: a typology of mosques
Each individual mosque has a story of its own. Many anthropological ethnographies and journalist documentaries have been made of particular mosques (e.g. Strijp 1998; De Rijk 2006; De Koning 2008; Tamimi Arab 2015). Also the roles of imams, female religious leaders and mosque boards have been studied (Boender 2007). These studies carefully explore how in each single mosque setting, there are meaningful interactions among its users
in the broadest sense: the members of the congregation, men and women, residents of the neighborhood, the municipality, but also social workers, social housing companies, police and health care organizations. These can be Muslims and non-Muslims (Boender 2015).
One can, however, say something meaningful on a more general level as well. Different scholars are currently debating about meaningful ways to understand the political, religious and architectural dynamics of the contemporary mosque design in the Netherlands (e.g. Sunier 2005, Maussen 2008, Roose 2009, Verkaaik 2012). As one possible way to look at the physical appearance of mosques in the Netherlands, I discern a sevenfold typology. This could be called a "mosque-scape" (Tamimi Arab 2013). The term points at the public place of a mosque in the physical as well as a symbolic landscape, as complex and dynamically perceived in the eyes of different beholders. Below, I will make a classification on the basis of certain outward publicly visible appearances. I mark the outward presence of one or more minarets, domes, geometrical patterns, the use of colors (notably green, white, pink and sand), and the prayer niche (mihrab) as typical references to Islamic imageries (Hillenbrand 2004). I also take the absence of these markers as meaningful. This absence can be the result of pragmatic historical circumstances, a result of (enforced) compromises with the non-Islamic surrounding, or a deliberate choice. The account does not include the interior appearance, as this remains invisible in the urban landscape.
This seven-fold typology also reveals a chronology. The institutionalization process of Islam in the Netherlands roughly follows the decades (1970s-1979, 1979-1989, 1989-2001, 2001-2010, 2010-present). In each period, national government policies regarding the integration of Muslims as religious minority changed. Until the 1990s, the integration of ethnic minorities with a Muslim background was more considered within the perspective of socioeconomic integration. From the mid-1990s, the emphasis came on the socio-cultural integration of Muslims as a collectivity. From 2001 onwards a general anxiety against Islam and Muslims — so called Islamophobia, — has strongly influenced public and political debate. It is important to realize that in recent years the number of threats and physical attacks to mosques have drastically increased. In the past ten years, 40 per cent of the mosques have experienced violent incidents and attacks against their mosque (figure 4). A study of 2015 reports that 179 out of 475 mosques have reported vandalism, threats, or violent attacks such as arson (Van der Valk 2015; Verkaaik 2012).
Type 1, mosques in used buildings: "whatever was available and affordable"
The first type of categorization includes those mosques that are housed in existing buildings. In the early phases of Muslim immigration, a local community would find a space to pray, organize Qur'an lessons for the children, and recreate in old school
Figure 4. Map of reported incidents, www.volkskrant.nl, 16 March 2016
buildings, living houses, or empty offices. One mosque community renovated an old gin (jenever) distillery into a spacious mosque. Characteristic is that many of these buildings are relatively invisible as a mosque, as they do not have a minaret or dome. Often only a sign at the entrance marks them as a mosque (figure 5). Based on a search on Google street view, I estimate the percentage of mosques housed in pre-used buildings at just over 50 percent.
Figure 5. Mosque El-Hijra Leiden, pre-used building © Welmoet Boender 2018
Type 2, mosques in former religious buildings: "mosques that were previously churches"
The second type are those mosques in buildings that used to be churches or synagogues. Though the number is relatively small (estimately 5 percent of the pre-used mosques), it deserves to be mentioned as a separate category. From the 1970s onwards the number of operative churches rapidly declined as a result of secularization. This meant that exactly in the period that Muslim migrants wanted to obtain their own mosques, suitable buildings became available. A shift from the provisionary prayer spaces to more decent housing in a building of a suitable size, could now be made. The former churches were centrally located in residential areas. Muslim organizations could often buy these empty buildings for affordable prices.
From the outside, the building in this type is still recognizable as a church, but it has pragmatically been changed into a mosque. Inside, these former church interiors had to be changed. This was often done in a pragmatic way, by removing the church furniture and the altar, and putting prayer carpets on the floor, often laid diagonal, as the qibla (prayer direction to Mecca) obviously does not follow the structural lines of the church building. Sometimes the original pulpit is kept in use. Also provisions for the ritual ablution (wudu) had to be made. Another often made change was a provision for the women: the creation of separate prayer space, and a separate entrance. The way this was done, and thus how much space women get, has been very much depending on what was logistically possible.
Figure 6. Fatih mosque Amsterdam (picture Wikipedia.nl)
One example is the Fatih Mosque in Amsterdam (figure 6). This is originally a Catholic church built in 1929. It was bought in 1981 by members of the local Turkish Muslim community. In the Fatih mosque in Amsterdam, a screen was placed to separate the women's prayer space.
The re-use of church buildings in the Netherlands is wide-spread. In Amsterdam alone, there are around fifty church buildings (and other Christian sites) that have been converted, for religious or secular uses. Around six of these have been converted into mosques. Today, however, re-use of church buildings as mosques has become less likely, as this has been ruled out by the Dutch leadership of the Catholic Church and is generally not favored by Protestant churches (Beekers and Tamimi Arab, 2016: 143). Some mosques used empty synagogues — not so much a result of secularization, but of the fact that only a fragment of the Jewish community survived World War II.
Characteristic of the two early types (mosques in pre-used buildings) is their relative invisibility in the urban landscape. From the outside, they are not readily recognizable as mosques. A misleading term to refer to them is to call them "hidden mosques" (schuilmoskeexn). This term obviously reminds of the "hidden" or clandestine churches (schuilkerken) that infamously exemplify the political strategy of dealing with religious diversity in the officially Calvinist Dutch Republic. Catholic and non-Calvinist Protestant churches were banned, but tolerated in practice as long as they remained out of public sight. This well-known history means that the notion of the hidden church is ready at hand as a metaphor to describe today's houses of worship that are not, or scarcely, identifiable as such from the outside, as is the case for many mosques. Yet, so-called "hidden mosques" importantly differ from the clandestine churches of the past: their "hiddenness" does not result from legal arrangements that restrict the public presence of particular religious communities, but rather from social-economic factors and the early phase of institu-tionalization.
Starting from the 1990s, however, the need for larger mosques became more urgent, because of several reasons. The communities were growing and needed much more space inside. The old buildings often needed extensive and costly renovation. Moreover, the buildings often did not meet local fire regulations anymore. Apart from these pragmatic considerations, in this period, a next step was set in the integration process of Muslim migrants. Whereas erstwhile both the Dutch state and Muslim migrants expected that their stay in the Netherlands would be temporary, half-way the 1990s, the realization surfaced that Muslims were here to stay. In this context, the local mosque boards — that were, and still are, almost always from one single ethnic background and religious-political denomination — had to take decisions on whether to renovate, or to build something new.
Building a new mosque is a very laborious and costly process, in which many legal, political, bureaucratic and financial issues have to be resolved (Verkaaik 2012:162). In a highly and densely populated country like the Netherlands, it is a very laborious and expensive to buy land and get permission to build something on it. During the process of architectural design and construction works there are important choices to make about how a community want to physically and symbolically express their material presence in public space. These preferences have important consequences on how mosques will appear to be publicly visible2. For our ideal-typical, analytical purpose, we can downsize these to three prototypical choices. A mosque design can prototypically refer primarily to an "Islamic cultural repertoire"; it can refer primarily to a "Dutch cultural repertoire"; or it can emphatically attempt to blend the two. Below, I will provide different examples of these prototypical choices, while explaining how these are often the outcome of negotia-
The first type of purpose-built mosques is what has often been called "nostalgia mosques". In these designs we see a tendency "to replicate the world from which [immigrants] have come" (Robinson 2009:353). The architectural styles include prominent references to what the migrant community considers "home" — their country of origin. For the Turkish mosques this means that references to the Ottoman prototype, as originally designed by the famous Mimar Sinan (d. 1588) (figure 7). The Surinamese mosques refer to the Moghul Indian prototype, with its onion shape domes (figure 8). Moroccan mosques include Moorish architectural references and a rectangle minaret (figure 9). Integrating these architectural physical and symbolic references could be regarded as ways to bring the country of origin closer to the "new" country. They are alternatively called "homesickness mosques" by some.
Interestingly, the choice to emphasize what they perceive as typically representing the architecture of the home countries, is also driven by the possibility for immigrants to proudly present their Islamic cultural heritage to the Dutch broader community. Whereas in Dutch society, the first and second generation of migrants often occupy low socio-economic positions, they have now an opportunity to show the grandeur of their tradition. They have financed these mosques through their own savings, "Euro by Euro", although donations from abroad, including from Gulf states or the Turkish state, also were accepted in some cases. It is considered by observers as a way to get beyond their marginal position at least in the religious realm, by contrasting the socio-economic and social position in the Netherlands and the way they remember the mosque "at home" (Kanmaz 2011).
These mosques are very visible and recognizable as mosques, because they have one or more minarets and domes as explicit Islamic references, thus adding a new architectural fla-
2. To compare: in Germany, 100 out of 2000 mosques have a dome or minaret (Ozdil 2011:186).
tions between different stakeholders.
Type 3: "Nostalgia" mosques
Figure 7. Mevlana mosque Rotterdam, purpose built
vor to the Dutch landscape. One example is the Turkish Mevlana mosque in Rotterdam, built in 2001 (figure 7). An earlier example is the Surinamese-Pakistani-Indian Taibah mosque in Amsterdam, built in 1985 and enlarged in 1998 (figure 8). This mosque was commissioned by a group of Surinamese Sunni Muslims who came to live in the Netherlands after the independence of Suriname in 1975 or already prior to that when Suriname was part of the Dutch Kingdom. A considerable part of the Surinamese mosques is affiliated with the World Islamic Mission. The initiators of the Taiba mosque maintained strong relations with the Pakistani maulana Shah Ahmad Noorani, who himself was a prominent leader of the World Islamic Mission (Landman 1992: 211, 215). This orientation explains why the Dutch architect of the Taiba mosque explicitly based himself on Pakistani and Indian mosque architecture. On their website, the mosque presents itself as "The white mosque, with large domes and large minarets contrasts with its environment" (tai-bah.nl), which is the Amsterdam-Bijlmer. This residential area has gone through a gentrification process, housing people from 130 nationalities who often have low socio-economic status. Based on my search on Google street view, I estimate the percentage of purpose-built mosques that emphatically stress the Islamic regional landmarks, while limiting the references to the local surroundings, on 20 percent.
Type 4x "Medina mosques"
Another type of purpose-built mosques choses not so much to mark the ties with the country of origin, but to emphasize their membership of the global umma, more particularly as the one that is led by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. We could call this type "Medina-mosques".
Figure 8. Taibah mosque Amsterdam, purpose built ©Masha Ru 2018
Figure 9. El-Hijra mosque Leiden, purpose-built ©Welmoet Boender 2016
We see that the architectural style tries to follow the structure of the first mosques in Mecca and Medina, with a square structure and the shape and positioning of the minarets. Importantly, the major financial resources come from rich sheikhs who live in the Gulf and seek to invest in mosques abroad.
There is a limited number of these mosques in the Netherlands, but their presence is not uncontroversial, both within the religious communities as in broader society. The most prominent example is the Es-Salaam-mosque in Rotterdam, opened in 2010 (see figure 15). Not only is this mosque controversial because of its size (advertised as the largest in Western Europe), but very much because of the relations with Wahhabi thought. In April 2018, the board of this mosque decided to disconnect financial ties with Al-Maktoum foundation in United Arab Emirates, as reported by the national newspaper Trouw (3 April 2018).
The next type of purpose built mosques choses to emphasize the entanglement of the two cultures: Islamic and Dutch. Its architects have deliberately chosen to mix architectural styles — answering to the wishes of the commissioners. I call this the "blended mosque". A prominent example of such "blending" is the Aya Sofya or Wester mosque in Amsterdam, belonging to the Milli Goriis organization North Netherland (figure 10). Here, the community intended to replace the old mosque which was housed in a derelicted garage. The architecture, a design of French Jewish architects, emphatically combines the Amsterdam School and Ottoman classical mosque architecture. This blending of regional and Islamic architecture locates the mosque as part of the neighborhood. Also the name Wester mosque could be considered a statement. It reminds of the iconic Wester church in the Amsterdam city center, internationally known through the diary of Anne Frank. The mosque was opened in 2013 (Erkocu and Bugdaci 2009:22-27).
A substantial part of purpose built mosques combine a basic building style with one or two Islamic landmarks, mostly a minaret and sometimes also a dome or
ge°metrical patterns (figure 11 and 12). Local mu- Figure 11. Imam Malik mosque Leiden., nicipalities often prefer this integrative style (Roose purpose built © Welmoet Boender 2018
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Figure 10. Aya Sofya or Wester mosque Amsterdam, purpose-built ©Welmoet Boender 2018
Type 5: "blended mosques"
Figure 12. Small town Turkish mosque, purpose built, print screen Google Street view, April 2018
2009). The mixing of different ethnic Turkish, Moroccan, or Indian Islamic styles and non-Islamic architecture results in a high variety of architectural styles throughout the country.
One couldarguethatitissubjective whether oneclassifiesacertainmosqueas"nostalgia" or "blended". This must, in the end, be decided by studying the perceptions of both users and observers. However, we should not stop here, as there is another type that blends Islamic and Dutch cultural repertoires in a specific way.
Type 6: "Compromise mosques"
Relations between Muslim and non-Muslim local communities can be tense. This becomes clear when we look at a sixth category, which we could call "compromise mosques"3. Particularly in this category, it becomes clear how the outcome of the process to negotiate visibility and acceptance by majority society, is conditioned by the surroundings.
Each plan for a new building, whether religious or not, must go through a bureaucratic process of approval by the municipality. In this process of obtaining licenses, citizens have the right to raise formal objections. Also special government committees have to give formal approval which specifically concerns the question whether the architectural style fits into the already existing architectural landscape.
We see that in the Netherlands, when a local mosque community enters this legal procedure, in most cases there can be quite fierce objection from local groups. Protests often concern practical objections such as the lack of parking space and the fear of disturbing noise, particularly during the month of Ramadan. But it can also concern more anti-Islamic protests. Moreover, a designated area that is made available by the municipality can be at the outskirts of a town, like an industrial area, far from the residential neighborhood of the intended users. In these cases, the physical appearance of a mosque can be the outcome of compromise.
3. I first heard this term used by Dr Meryem Kanmaz in a television reportage that showed different types of mosques in Flanders, Belgium in 2015.
One example of a compromise in architectural style, is a Moroccan mosque in a small village called Hillegom, built in 2016 (figure 13). Whereas the local Muslim community originally designed the building with a minaret, some citizens objected. After a legal process in which new architectural plans were made, the outcome or compromise was a "transparent minaret", a slender shape of a minaret to mark the building.
Figure 13. Mosque Al-Ansaar Hillegom, purpose-built © Welmoet Boender 2018
The fact that compromises were enforced in some cases, does not necessarily mean that local relationships are continuously burdened, neither during or after the building. In Amsterdam, for instance, a process of negotiation between the municipality of Amsterdam and a Turkish and a Moroccan mosque board, resulted in a modern architectural compromise between the boards that opted for a closed façade and the municipality that insisted on openness (figure 14). Instead of emphasizing an Islamic constitutive shape, the result was of a hybrid architecture (Erkocu and Budaci 2009:177).
Figure 14. Fusion Moskee Verzamelgebouw Amsterdam, purpose-built ©Welmoet Boender 2018
Only by studying the particular cases of negotiation between the mosque boards, municipalities, and local residents, we can decide to what extent compromises have been made.
From my observation by google street view of the outside appearances, I argue that the majority of the purpose-built mosques fit into the categories of "blended" mosques. Those mosques include one or more Islamic references, like a minaret or a dome, but also connect to the local surroundings by the use of material, colour of the bricks and the moderate size of the Islamic references. If we include the subcategory of "compromise" mosques, this makes it around 30 percent of the total of mosques.
Type 7: "Polder mosques"
Finally, one more ideal-typical category can be set apart. Driven by an (architectural) avant-garde of Dutch Muslims — born and bred in the Netherlands, whose grandparents or parents migrated to the Netherlands, we see the appearance of mosques that are designed to be open to everyone, Muslim and non-Muslim. Even more so, they want to get beyond the current practice of interethnic differentiation. In the Dutch setting these are typically called "polder-mosque"; in the European setting these are referred to as "Euro-mosque". It concerns "a new mosque-concept that generates more mutual understanding and openness" (Nekuee 2009). Its initiators prefer Dutch as main language of daily and religious communication in the mosque. They do not agree with the "exotic-Orientalist self-imagination" that has been paradoxically stressed by their (grand)parents in the form of "nostalgia mosques". In the designs, there is much emphasis on transparency, which is translated into the use of glass, open shapes and a focus on open connections to the neighborhood.
Although this kind of "polder mosque" is often mentioned in discussions as an intereth-nic, multicultural ideal, it has hardly been realized yet. Nevertheless, it should be included in the typology as next phase of Muslim presence in the Netherlands. Young architects win prices with their design plans (see for instance the design of Memar.Dut©h.concept0031, in Erkocu and Bugdaci 2009:175). By designing "customized mosques" that are also functional for secular users, the young urban architects proliferate the wish of young Muslims to be fully accepted as Dutch citizens.
In the meantime, there are examples of newly built "multifunctional" mosques. One example is the Ulu mosque in the center of Utrecht, notably governed by the Turkish Diyanet-related Islamic Foundation Netherlands. This mosque has opened last year and caters a restaurant, conference rooms (as it is located conveniently next to Utrecht Central Station), and even has a prayer area for other religions that can be booked.
Negotiating identities and altering views on aesthetics
The typology as presented above, is able to meaningfully reveal important dynamics of Muslim integration in three ways. First, the typology helps us to roughly sketch the history of a group of newcomers that claim physical and symbolic spaces, both legal and moral, within the host country, and the perceptive responses of majority society (e.g. Maussen 2009; Zwilling 2015). We have seen that the majority of the mosques — old and new — is organized along ethnic, cultural and religious lines. Many of the choices have been made in the context of migration and subsequent integration. At first instance, these were necessarily mostly pragmatic choices, based on availability and financial
resources, resulting in housing in pre-used buildings. Later, choices were related to new opportunity structures. Particularly from the 2000s onwards, mosque communities move from old detoriated buildings to new mosques. The typology brings into focus how mosque communities have found ways to emphasize their ethnic, cultural and religious belonging to the countries of origin, the Netherlands and the Muslim umma. This has been and still is a highly complex process of negotiation between mosque community and its surroundings regarding the marking of different ligatures. Thus — and this is the second function, the proposed typology is one possible way to order this seemingly eclectic empirical material.
The societal, political and religious context is indeed full of controversies. On the one hand, local municipalities have often been willing to support the building of new mosques, for instance as part of gentrification projects, or simply because it complies with legal rights. However, the inclusion of a category of so-called "compromise mosques" show that options of the communities are not unlimited or unburdened, despite substantial legal options. It should not be underestimated that there is a tendency of anti-Islamic sentiments. Twenty two percent of the Dutch want mosques in the Netherlands to close. Fifty five per cent is against the building of new mosques (numbers September 2016).
Nevertheless, increasingly, the mosques have become part of the Dutch landscape. They are here to stay. This means that we should not interpret contemporary mosque design in the Netherlands or elsewhere in Western Europe exclusively in the context of identity politics, which demarcates ethnic and cultural differences. We should therefore also try to get beyond a prevailing scholarly discourse that has the tendency to set Muslim minorities apart from majority society. The third function of the typology is that it enables us to discuss how mosques, as all religious buildings, attempt to radiate specific ideas about what is considered beautiful by the faith community. "Western Muslims have moved interior Islamic aesthetics increasingly to the exterior", as Tamimi Arab observed (2013:486). They have done that in different ways and the responses of majority society are dynamic. The above mentioned Es-Salaam mosque in Rotterdam (type 4) now has become a tourist spot, mentioned by Rotterdam Tourist Information among 72 other architectural hotspots like Rotterdam Central Station, the Erasmus bridge and the Market Hall (figure 15). The Rotterdam Mevlana mosque (figure 8) proudly mentions on its website that it was elected the most beautiful building in Rotterdam in 2006, although the same mosque has also been called by non-Muslim locals "sugar pie", or "Efteling mosque", referring to a resemblance of the Orientalist style used in a famous Dutch leisure park.
The typology's emphasis on architectural design and aesthetics opens a way to include the attempts of the younger Muslim generation that considers themselves to be Dutch citizens and who do no longer want to be "perpetually being compared to and subjectively be placed in their countries of "origin" anymore" (Tamimi Arab 2013). With their wish to build a "polder mosque" they want to express that they do no longer want to be understood only in terms of integration, nor in terms of assimilation. They do not want to make themselves invisible, on the contrary. They are proud to be Muslim, but do not want to be set apart — not by majority society, but also not by the devastating actions of Islamist extremists that do their utmost to divide split society. For them, the emphasis on the mosque as peripheral and "exotic" would only assist in the perpetual "migrantization" of Muslims in the Netherlands (Es 2012).
Figure 15. https://en.mtterdammfo/locations/Kpage=1&filter=1231, accessed 3 April 2018
Concluding remarks
Ethnographers have developed different conceptual models to understand outward appearances and inner meanings of contemporary mosques in Europe in all its complexity. Detailed ethnographic studies try to do justice to the complexity and the changes in ideas and perceptions during the course of the process, from original plan to the opening of the mosque and even afterwards. Verkaaik argues that studies about contemporary mosque design in Europe should focus on "the interplay of piety, habitus and the burden of representation in order to do justice to the many facets of the place"
(2012:163).
In this article I have presented a seven-fold typology of Dutch mosques as one way to functionally order their highly varied empirical appearances. Of course, in reality, several of the typical appearances can overlap. Above, Es-Salaam mosque (figure 15) was brought up as an example of a mosque that emphasizes its belonging to the global umma. However,the same mosque could also be classified as "compromise mosque", since it was built on a terrain at the margins of the city, and the architectural design was the outcome of a laborious compromise between mosque board, architect and municipality. Moreover, preferences, perceptions and building plans can change for many reasons during the course of conversations with the stakeholders (members of the mosque community, architects, bureaucrats, journalists, local politicians, neighborhood residents) (Verkaaik 2012:163). Interpretation and appreciation lie in the eyes of the beholder. As an ideal-typical construct, however, the typology has made insightful that many mosques have become integrated in the Dutch urban landscape — either housed in pre-used buildings or newly absorbed through hybrid, blended architectural styles. They increasingly become part of what we could call urban aesthetics, as tourist spots, or just because they are now part of the skyline.
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