Solar panels and rooftop prayers, yet renewed mosque reclaims traditional role
The teacher writes the equation on the whiteboard in a blue-tip marker, a simple proof in preparation for final exams.
Some two dozen young men in the classroom scribble furiously on their notepads. In a half-hour, they will be taking their science course.
Downstairs, a woman is getting a dental exam, and the final touches are being put on a doctor’s clinic and a minor surgery room. Across the way, a group of women are taking a life-skills course. Up on the fifth floor, several men in their sixties and seventies close their eyes and meditate, counting on prayer-beads while feeling the breeze.
This is not a commercial complex, university, or a hospital. This is a mosque. It is what organizers hope will be the future of mosques.
At the Al Arab Mosque in Zarqa, an impoverished city of 1.35 million in
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