67. MALACCA REVISITED

link: post 65 - North of the border

Huh! Never expected to spend a short weekend in Malacca so soon after a recent visit, but I did'nt mind. It gave me the chance to check out a couple of mosques whose architecture I found fascinating.

Across the narrow Straits of Malacca is Indonesian Sumatra. The Tengkera Mosque and the Kampong Kling Mosque have strong Sumatran influences, together with Chinese and Malay touches make them special and unique from the ugly modern day mosques. 

The early settlers and local residents had more open minds and were more accepting of those who did not share their religious beliefs. They truly practised that all are the same, worshipping the same 'God' in perhaps a different form.
As with everything else, the humans have destroyed all that's good and beautiful. The Inter-Faith Dialogue won't be necessary if clerics (almost all are men) reigned in their egos, ambitions, pride, smugness and greed

It's all about power, control and dominance. Organised religions has become organised crime - it's a corrupt business 

 
























 















This beautiful pagoda-like minaret is like those incense and joss paper burners one sees in Chinese temples.

 






The Sumatran architecture has strong Hindu influences. Its wooden pulpit has Hindu and Chinese-style carvings with phoenix and bats and lotuses, painted gold - they look very peranakan. I like the fact that in its restoration, these features were not replaced by typically islamic stuff. Credit must go to the tourism people and other planners behind this...

Some extra touches may have been added during rebuilding to achieve this

The entrance to the Kampong Kling Mosque looks like a Hindu temple - Kling meaning Indian

This interesting building is the Sri Poyatha Venayagar Moorthi temple (1781) property of the Chetty Melaka Community. It's very Hindu decorated with cows and the trinity of Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu, it's not the typical Sth Indian-style temple with its pantheon of gods and whatnots. The Chetty Melaka folks are considered peranakans, so the term can be regarded as 'bumi', or aboriginal.