"Sikit boleh jadi cukup, banyak boleh jadi lebih. Tapi boleh jadi sikit tu sempit, banyak pulak tak cukup. Apa dia?"
I know I nearly skipped the whole January without blogging. As anyone would have expected, the beginning of the final semester in Perak (with another year left to be gone through in Shah Alam) is busy. And dramatic, nonetheless. Study-wise it has been too interesting. Somehow I'm reintroduced to the whole process of learning, and somewhat I'm reintroduced to a whole substance that I thought I have known all along: Islam.
The verdict: we are to design a mosque for this semester. And (not but) things are never simple. Just like any other spaces, a mosque, perhaps correctly a masjid, is a space not to be 'given just like that', to quote Encik Li. As the always famous quote says, architects are not mere space givers. So?
The last three weeks have been a celebration of a re-looking into the Qur'an and the Sunnah. What does Allah says about building? Did our good Prophet Muhammad ever set a guide on how to build, the Islamic way? How is a masjid becomes a masjid? This includes rampaging the library for all books pertaining the jurisprudence of erecting buildings in Islam and the jurisprudence regarding all activities related to the usage of masjid. And that's a lot.
All these traces us back to the classic, and nearly rhetoric, question: what is Islamic architecture? Or, in the words of Encik Li himself, is there such thing as Islamic architecture? Don't get my lecturer or me myself wrong. But seriously, whose idea was it that a masjid must come with a dome, a minaret, and some insertion of so-called arabesque patterns?
Whatever it was, things are going deep. "Are architects to be blamed if the design of a masjid is a contributor to the invalidity of one's ibadah towards Allah -- thus a contributor to the fatal social problems to what we Muslims face today?" Encik Li asked.
Why are Muslims failing even though their mosques today, in all parts of the world, are all pleasant and splendorous? Why, with its very utilitarian form of only date-palm columns and mud walls -- palm leaves and sky as the roof and the desert's earth -- the Prophet's mosque in Madinah in its heydays has successfully turned Islam to a super global civilisation, a feat that its 1 billion followers today are still not able to repeat?
Questions that we are yet to answer. The essence that we are yet to insert in our up-and-coming design. What is clear now is, to design a masjid is to design on the ways of our blessed Prophet, mentioned by Allah in the Qur'an: to be built on the basis of taqwa. This semester, the more we unlock the keys to questions, more doors are open to even more questions.
This is Project Islam. Semester 6. And here we go again. And the question asked in the beginning of the post? It's something called barakah.
Posted in Seri Iskandar.
I know I nearly skipped the whole January without blogging. As anyone would have expected, the beginning of the final semester in Perak (with another year left to be gone through in Shah Alam) is busy. And dramatic, nonetheless. Study-wise it has been too interesting. Somehow I'm reintroduced to the whole process of learning, and somewhat I'm reintroduced to a whole substance that I thought I have known all along: Islam.
The verdict: we are to design a mosque for this semester. And (not but) things are never simple. Just like any other spaces, a mosque, perhaps correctly a masjid, is a space not to be 'given just like that', to quote Encik Li. As the always famous quote says, architects are not mere space givers. So?
The last three weeks have been a celebration of a re-looking into the Qur'an and the Sunnah. What does Allah says about building? Did our good Prophet Muhammad ever set a guide on how to build, the Islamic way? How is a masjid becomes a masjid? This includes rampaging the library for all books pertaining the jurisprudence of erecting buildings in Islam and the jurisprudence regarding all activities related to the usage of masjid. And that's a lot.
All these traces us back to the classic, and nearly rhetoric, question: what is Islamic architecture? Or, in the words of Encik Li himself, is there such thing as Islamic architecture? Don't get my lecturer or me myself wrong. But seriously, whose idea was it that a masjid must come with a dome, a minaret, and some insertion of so-called arabesque patterns?
Whatever it was, things are going deep. "Are architects to be blamed if the design of a masjid is a contributor to the invalidity of one's ibadah towards Allah -- thus a contributor to the fatal social problems to what we Muslims face today?" Encik Li asked.
Why are Muslims failing even though their mosques today, in all parts of the world, are all pleasant and splendorous? Why, with its very utilitarian form of only date-palm columns and mud walls -- palm leaves and sky as the roof and the desert's earth -- the Prophet's mosque in Madinah in its heydays has successfully turned Islam to a super global civilisation, a feat that its 1 billion followers today are still not able to repeat?
Questions that we are yet to answer. The essence that we are yet to insert in our up-and-coming design. What is clear now is, to design a masjid is to design on the ways of our blessed Prophet, mentioned by Allah in the Qur'an: to be built on the basis of taqwa. This semester, the more we unlock the keys to questions, more doors are open to even more questions.
This is Project Islam. Semester 6. And here we go again. And the question asked in the beginning of the post? It's something called barakah.
Posted in Seri Iskandar.
3 comments:
Buat masjid bentuk piramid boleh tak?
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