A sketch shows the look of the new Islamic Center of America, which will include a school, auditorium, mosque and community center. Ground is to be broken in Dearborn on Sunday. Thirty-eight years ago, he and a few dozen other men and women, tired of holding prayer services in homes and storefronts, cobbled together enough money to build a modest mosque on Joy Road in Detroit. A mosque is a building used for public worship by Muslims. Like churches, synagogues or other places of worship, most mosques have a large prayer room, administrative offices, classrooms for religious education, a kitchen and a banquet hall for social gatherings.
Mosques also have ablution areas so congregants can wash before certain religious ceremonies.
Mosques can often be distinguished from other places of worship by their domed roofs and minarets, which are tall slender towers from which criers would summon people to prayer. In some Muslim countries, criers still make the call to prayer from the minaret, but at most U.S. mosques, the minarets are just for decoration. The only required communal prayer is at noon Friday, meaning many mosques are full then. In metro Detroit, most mosques also have a weekly service, similar to a Christian or Jewish service in which the religious leader gives a lecture. The day of the week depends on the mosque.