Creating the Incomprehensible “Us”

Architecture, Islam, Modernity, and Nation

(Forthcoming) 5 May 2026
Priyanka Hutschenreiter and Sadia Rahman

Image: Rasel Chowdhury

Image: Nabil Shahidi

A Bangladesh Reader: Beyond Nation and State

Editors: Mirza Taslima Sultana, Parsa Sanjana Sajid, Sayeed Ferdous
Routledge India
May 2026

Abstract

This chapter explores how prolific cultures of private and public new mosque construction embody and spatialize local discourses through imaginative, iterative and varied practices in architecture and, by extension, shape and orient constructions of architecture, the modern, the Islamic and the nation in contemporary Bangladesh. We focus on local formations of new mosque architecture and congregational practice through four internationally well-known twenty-first century congregations (jamaats) and congregational spaces (jame masjids) in Dhaka district that have been widely discussed in both scholarly and general literature: Bait Ur Rouf Masjid (Marina Tabassum, 2012), Doleshwar Hanafia Jame Masjid (Kashef Chowdhury/URBANA, 2017), Gulshan Society Jame Masjid (Kashef Chowdhury/URBANA, 2017), and Biswa Ijtema (Tablighi Jama’at, annually since 1954). We use thick description and creative ethnography to explore how architecture is subject to and formative of the discursive traditions of Islam, nation, modernity, and architecture itself.

Keywords: Contemporary Mosque Architecture, Modern Mosques, Bangladesh, Dhaka, Urban, Muslim, Islamic, Congregational, Anonymous architecture, Jame Masjid, Biswa Ijtema

Preorder: https://www.routledge.com/A-Bangladesh-Reader-Beyond-Nation-and-State/TaslimaSultana-SanjanaSajid-Ferdous/p/book/9781032614380
ISBN: 978-10-3261-438-0