Talk:Tag:building=mosque

Should amenity=place_of_worship + religion=muslim applied on a always result in building=mosque ? Or are there cases where building=yes is acceptable ? Is building=mosque only relevant for mosques that look like a sterotypical mosque ? --liotier (talk) 23:43, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Many mosques in Europe are in former apartments, sports centres, even pubs: in that case building=yes is not just acceptable but appropriate, and building=mosque is not.

The opposite (buildings built as mosques but no longer used as such) is vanishingly rare, because of the principle in Islam that land once used as a "masjid" may never be used for any other purpose. However, the tagging system doesn't know that, so amenity=place_of_worship + religion=muslim must be added in (almost?) every case.

So, roughly: yes, building=mosque is for 'a stereotypical mosque' (although note the vast worldwide variation, from Mali to China to the UK). eteb3 (talk) 14:15, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

Women's access

I think it would be useful to have an indication of whether women are able to use a mosque. My initial ideas:

For women coming to use the mosque to pray:

women=yes	Provision is made for women and there is no difficulty using the mosque as a woman.
women=no	No provision is made for women and/or women are very unlikely to be able to pray there.
women=description	See description for further details. E.g., Provision for women only at certain times; or welcome to pray but no wudu facilities; or only with a bit of asking around; or formally possible but in practice disapproved of. See description for further details.

I'm not a tagging maestro, so critical thoughts on this welcome. I am clear, however, that this is worth putting into the database. eteb3 (talk) 16:52, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

I would rather use Key:female that is already used for indicating sex-based accessibility. I would also use female=no in case of heavy restrictions. Maybe combined with female:conditional using Conditional restrictions. Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 20:19, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

See for example https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/232081251 that I just tagged. This one is rather a Christian monastery, but situation is the same - church where women may enter on 12 days in each year, according to regulation dating to 1610. Nothing will parse female:conditional tag, but maybe tool can give hint like "women generally are not allowed but there are exceptions" Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 20:32, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for that. The neat and tidy 1610 regulation does seem appropriate for the conditional tag, as it is a clear rule. An analogous situation here might be where (as often) a mosque is open to women except for Friday prayers - I assume that could be coded? (I couldn't see an 'except' or NOT function in the wiki.)

Most cases are much more fuzzy though, which is why I thought to have a tag that directs people to the description where a short narrative can be given. I'm not sure how you could code 'women can pray but there is no ablution space for women'. Thoughts?

"except for Friday prayers" - is it also happening at the same hour on every Friday? In such case something along female=yes + female=no @ (Fr 12:00-12:30) may work for tagging this. In this specific example it would mean that women are not restricted from using it, except Friday from 12:00 to 12:30. Hours obviously would require adjusting.

"there is no ablution space for women" - tag ablution space as separate object and add female=no+male=yes to it? Invent a new tag like female:ablution_space=no?

And yes, in case of very fuzzy cases description may be sole solution. But at least in some cases it should be avoidable.

One general note - OSM Wiki talk pages have quite low traffic, tagging mailing list or https://osmus.slack.com/ is likely to give bigger audience if you would like more feedback. Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 10:59, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Great, thank you. I will try the lists at some point. No, Friday prayers aren't always at the same (clock-)time. In Europe they tend to have two times through the year, for with/without daylight saving time. I don't know about worldwide - traditionally it was purely solar, though I suspect that's unlikely to be done anywhere that the map has reached in a big way. We could say female:jumua=no? (Cf below.) I have an even more tentative thought about incorporating Islamic timings into opening_times here: your thoughts welcome there. eteb3 (talk) 13:44, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Friday prayers or not

It would be very useful to say whether a mosque has Friday prayers or not: many are too small and Friday prayers take place elsewhere; and yet they may be open so opening times may not be appropriate.

I would suggest jumua=yes;no.

Jumua is the term in use among Muslims of all languages as far as I know, and there's a good case for counting it as a loan-word in English. But it could be friday_prayers=yes;no if necessary.

eteb3 (talk) 16:59, 17 October 2019 (UTC)