Mosque-Visiting: Motivations and Experiences of Non-Muslim Visitors at the Al-Azhar Mosque in Egypt

Mosque-visiting is a form of religious tourism worthy of special consideration due to the intense, mainly negative, media attention to Islam around the world. Despite a long scholarly tradition of looking at the relationship between Islam and tourism, the topic of non-Muslim visitors' motivations and experiences in visiting mosques has not been researched. Therefore, this paper explores non-Muslim visitors' motivations and experiences when visiting Al-Azhar mosque in Egypt. This paper presents the findings of semi-structured interviews with twenty six non-Muslim visitors. Three key themes were revealed of commonly reported motives and experiences shaping how non-Muslim visitors came to appreciate the site, namely: curiosity in learning more about Islam and its heritage sites; viewing icons of religious difference and taking photos; and personal interaction. Such experiences were explicitly secular and corresponded predominantly to the divergence paradigm of religious tourism. Important issues to be considered for the development and growth of non-Muslim mosque tourism are discussed. Finally, the paper indicates avenues for future research.