Finding a place to pray in the office
Quartz is moving to a new office in New York. We’re documenting it here because many of our questions apply to other startups. Our introduction explains more about what we’re up to. Follow our publication for updates.
As an American Muslim, a question I ask myself almost every day is, “Where should I pray?” Depending on the time of the year, three of the five daily prayers fall within the work day: dhuhr (early afternoon), ‘asr (late afternoon), and maghrib (sunset). But praying at the office isn’t easy.
Prayer, or salat, requires a space the size of a yoga mat to do the ritual movements: standing, bowing, and prostrating towards the direction of Mecca. In New York City, that’s 58° Northeast. The space should be relatively clean. When praying alone, salat is done silently. But even with such few requirements, that much space can be hard to find. When I can’t find a mosque, I’ve prayed elsewhere: sidewalks, parks, stairwells, hotel lounges, subway cars, and countless dressing rooms.
A lot of Muslim-owned restaurants, shops, and office buildings also offer prayer spaces, or musallahs. To make it easier to find these, my husband and I are actually designing a musallah-finding app (called Musallah, of course).
But you can’t always leave the office three times a day to find a mosque, or even a musallah. A few companies, like Facebook and Metlife, now offer interfaith prayer spaces within their campuses. But what I’ve learned from working in New York City is that space is tight, and news organizations love open office plans, which means few walls and little privacy.
At my last job at the World Trade Center, I’d pray in the lactation room. (I initially prayed at Park51, a.k.a. “the Ground Zero mosque,” but it closed for renovations.) Quartz’s new office in New York is a huge open workspace with a bunch of glass conference rooms, similar to its previous space. When I started at our previous office, I wasn’t ready to pray in a conference room in front of 100+ colleagues I barely knew. Since I’m only in New York about twice a month, I didn’t bother asking for a prayer space, like I’ve done in previous jobs. I began praying in the stairwell platform on the 3rd floor: private, convenient, a little dusty.
I’ll be curious to see where I’ll pray in the new office.
Having a private space to pray isn’t completely necessary. While I was in college at UNC, I’d often pray publicly in the quad or in the pit. It was only after my 3 friends were murdered for being Muslim in Chapel Hill that I cut down on praying publicly. But you can’t hide forever.
As long as my office colleagues are comfortable with me praying quietly, I’m not opposed to praying more publicly in the new office. The library might be a good spot—or maybe, since I’m a video journalist, our new video studio. There’s also the halal African restaurant, B&B, across the street from the new office, which has a gigantic musallah.
Regardless of what happens, I don’t think this will be the last time I’ll find myself praying in a stairwell.
