Sacred and profane – we are all too familiar with this distinction. So familiar that we assume the act of definition of sacred religious space is an absolute one, by which space contained inside becomes sacred and that left outside profane, a distinction clear as black and white. And that sacred space is recognisable and clearly inviolable because the sanctity of prayer can never be compromised. This is a universal ideal. The mosque embodies this ideal.

But can sanctity be experienced equally by every person?
Sanctity is a construct. Meaning is not intrinsic to form. It is contingent on the cognitive comprehension of the user. The mosque can be experienced as sacrosanct, transcendental space, as a manifestation of the divine spirit or as simply as a building, an artifact of the city. The building is essentially as sacred as we make it. The Prophet himself claimed the world as a mosque, in that a house can function as a mosque, if it is symbolically accepted by the community using it. By a simple act of signification, space within is sanctified, and the house is recognised as a mosque. For that community, the space is now inviolable in a state of ritual impurity, but for another it remains just a house. The supposed black and white dulls into grey.

This is not to suggest that sacred space is indistinguishable from profane in an unfamiliar environment. People assign symbolic meanings to form and space and these associations are consolidated or rejected over time, with those that endure becoming more widely acceptable. So the dappled clerestory light in the sanctuary, the flamboyant calligraphic compositions, the awe-inspiring courtyards and lofty volumes of the Friday Mosques or the complex geometric ornamental patterns on wall or ceiling have come to represent Islamic religious space and persist in the repertoire of elements used in mosque architecture. Even a glimpse of the minaret or a suggestion of an arch or dome suffices to establish a mosque today. But whilst the quest for demarcating sanctity tends to essentialise certain qualities of architecture, these qualities cannot be understood as constant and universally accepted. They are manifest differently across time and space. Though certain significations are explicit, accessible to all, there are often those implicit and intelligible only to specific individuals or communities. They constitute a complex of forms well-established and those lesser known specific to cultural and regional differences that may render them unrecognisable to a visitor.

The photographs represent these varying conceptions of sacred and profane in their explicit and implicit modes in the architecture of Islamic religious buildings. For a specific community, sacred and profane are like black and white and the material construct of the mosque dissolves into a spiritual understanding while for an outsider, the separation is not as clear, a manifestation of recognisable and unrecognisable forms that constitute the greying of sacred and profane space.

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