With all the controversy about building a mosque in Lower Manhattan (not to mention various bills and laws against erecting minarets in Europe), I thought this might be a good time to recycle a photo of the little “mosque” that my daughter and I built when she was seven.

Height: 14 inches. Construction materials: cardboard, plastic freezer baggies, papier-mâché over a popped plastic balloon. Current location: our attic. It is not really a mosque because it lacks a mihrab (to orient people for prayer) or a minbar (the Islamic equivalent of a pulpit). Our motivations in making it were not doctrinal, nor ecumenical, nor political. Rather, this is our amateur homage to one of the world’s finest architectural traditions, the heritage of Islamic religious architecture.