At the edge of a steep slope in Wollo Kemise stands a harima, a residential area in the mosque’s vicinity where boarding religious students live and study, called Turusina. It sits quietly at the top, far from the rush of daily life. After receiving an ijaza from the Sheikh of Aman Amba—a permission authorising him to transmit knowledge and guide others in the tradition—Sheikh Mohammed Aman chose this place with intention, not convenience. The path to reach it is long, and the climb demands your effort but so does anything sacred and valuable. And for me, something about this hill wafted with a peculiar kind of clarity.

It was not only spiritual, but also ecological. Sustainability at Turusina runs deeper than its materials. In fact, the place feels more organically grown than built by human hands. The mosque and its compound are made of earth, straw, and wood that breathe with the land itself. Much of the harima is cleansed for prayer, and people walk barefoot so as not to bring in any dirt from outside with their shoes. There are no mats or carpets rolled inside the mosque, just the scent of thick straw spread across the floor, grounding the body, breath, and spirit of anyone who is blessed to enter. The earth underfoot holds a certain intimacy; it calls the body to return and reminds the spirit of its source. This sensory experience with the warm, textured, lively earth creates a tactile theology. Everything here feels close to the origin. Close to meaning.

People often say they build architecture, but in places like these, you begin to realise that architecture quietly builds us back. It shapes how we move, how we sit, how we feel, and, most importantly, how we connect. As Seyyed Hossein Nasr once wrote: “The spiritual function of Islamic art and architecture is to open the soul to the transcendent, to remind it of its Origin, to make it remember.” And when I learned that the sheikh himself was the architect behind every detail, I felt quite amazed. I knew there was more to this space than how it first appeared to me. I became even more curious.

In a place where everything seemed to carry intention, seeing the women’s compound placed on a higher landscape stirred something deeper in me. Beyond the elevation, it was the quiet confidence of its presence, the way it stood there: whole, calm, and unhidden.

Inside the mosque, fifteen-metre-tall wooden poles rise from the ground. The height of the ceiling lifts your gaze and steals your breath. While the central main pillar anchors the space like a spiritual spine, other poles surround it, creating a rhythm of vertical lines. It feels spacious, yet gathered, suitable for isolation as much as for union. Above, the roof is lined with odd-numbered patterns: mystical, mathematical, and somehow comforting. And along the wooden walls are openings, slim and uneven, where light enters and air moves through them with ease. Even birds slip in quietly sometimes, circling the silence. These small cracks are not imperfections; they are invitations, and the invitees are part of the sacred.

In a place where everything seemed to carry intention, seeing the women’s compound placed on a higher landscape stirred something deeper in me. Beyond the elevation, it was the quiet confidence of its presence, the way it stood there: whole, calm, and unhidden. And as I stepped into that space, many thoughts began to rise. Thoughts I didn’t know I carried. Questions about belonging, about femininity, and about the nature of the sacred.

The women’s mosque carried the same aura as the rest of Turusina. But its shape offered something more. While the men’s prayer hall is rectangular in form, it creates the illusion of a circle through its roof. But the women’s mosque is a real circle and that matters. It is a shape long associated with the feminine, with inclusion, return, and origin. Inside, I found women of all generations: dubartis—elderly women who’ve spent years in prayer—young women submerged in their studies, mothers, daughters, women who are married and those who chose not to—not out of obligation, but out of their commitment to seeking knowledge. All of them sit within this ring of stillness, belonging without needing to explain. And at the front, a woman leads the prayer. In that circular space, things don’t need to be argued. They simply are.

Islamic space, at its heart, is about balance. It is about honouring difference without erasing belonging. When shaped with sincerity, Islamic architecture does not close its doors to women. In fact, it opens within them the same depth it asks from men.

The essence of a truly Islamic space is not in dividing men and women, but in offering each what their inward state requires. Yet over time, this wisdom has sometimes hardened into walls. What was meant as resonance has been misread as restriction. In many places, separation has turned into absence to the point that women are removed from the public landscape, as if presence itself is a threat. This is not the spirit of Islamic space.

Islamic space, at its heart, is about balance. It is about honouring difference without erasing belonging. When shaped with sincerity, Islamic architecture does not close its doors to women. In fact, it opens within them the same depth it asks from men.

To reimagine sacredness and femininity in space, we must begin not with a sense of entitlement, but with a grounded recognition. Sacredness is not only a matter of purity or silence, and femininity is not defined by softness alone. A space becomes sacred and feminine when it welcomes the entirety of womanhood, its clarity, its courage, its quietness, and its voice. Such a space does not reduce women to roles or reflections; it receives them as whole beings, carrying presence and meaning within themselves.

A woman’s space does not have to be a derivative because her presence never was. Her soul is not secondary. Her light is not a reflection. Her dignity does not require permission.

This vision goes deeper than design. It requires an atmosphere, a memory, a spirit that holds and honours the complexity of the feminine. As Nasr writes: “The feminine is not merely passive or receptive but possesses its own mode of activity, which is profound and inward.”

To understand the feminine is to go beyond sentimentality. The feminine carries force. It gathers and transforms. It listens with intention and births with meaning. Sacred architecture doesn’t need to add this quality but to be humble enough to recognise and reveal it as the sheikh of Turusina did.

I’ve read the books. I’ve listened to the lectures. I’ve heard the many ways people explain women’s rights in Islam through verses, traditions, and legal frameworks. But what I saw in Turusina was a quiet embrace of something I had only encountered in pieces: a space where the spiritual presence of women was not defended, just lived. A woman’s space does not have to be a derivative because her presence never was. Her soul is not secondary. Her light is not a reflection. Her dignity does not require permission.

I came to Turusina with the hope of documenting its history. I thought I was going to trace the past. But what I found was more than memory; I found a vision.

And in that clarity, I couldn’t help but ask: why is it that when Muslim women express such rooted visions, they are accused of importing “Western” ideas? Is it not because we have forgotten our own women? True, we know their names, but in meaning? Especially the first among them: Fatima. 

Fatima, daughter of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), the wife of Imam Ali—who is the gate of divine knowledge, the mother of Hasan and Hussein, through whom the Prophet’s legacy continues. Each of these roles is sacred. Each relationship is a line of light.

But Fatima was also Fatima. Her presence stood whole on its own. She spoke with courage. She walked with truth. Her presence was didn’t require permission. Her example should never be frozen as a relic of the past. She is not a figure only meant to be kept in memory; she is a compass, a living presence in the way we shape our spaces, our voices, our expectations, and our elevations.

I came to Turusina with the hope of documenting its history. I thought I was going to trace the past. But what I found was more than memory; I found a vision.

A quiet, grounded reminder of what we—as women, as communities, as souls seeking sacredness—are still capable of becoming.