Engaging the Mosque

[Chiropetra]

I believe it is important to keep the various roles of the mosque separate, in part because there are some roles, such as the purely religious, where we don't really want to engage and there are others, such the social and economic where it's important in COIN to engage them.

As Tom pointed out there is no such thing as a cookie cutter mosque. However you can say broadly that every mosque has a social and economic component -- with the amount of influence in the community varying widely.

We need to understand what we are engaging, but we need to engage with most mosques in COIN areas.

A lot of COIN operations go against a warfighter's grain. But that doesn't make them any less important.

[skiguy]

I believe it is important to keep the various roles of the mosque separate, in part because there are some roles, such as the purely religious, where we don't really want to engage

Why not? You can't nor would you want to change the way they worship God, but it would be a good idea to understand their religion and what they believe. Not everyone is interested in religion, so not everyone should be involved. Religion is just one of the many aspects of COIN, maybe just a small part or perhaps it's a big part that's being ignored too much - I haven't figured that out yet...experience needed. But, IMO, engaging in more inter-faith dialogue is a good idea.