After having just returned from a
stopover in Dubai, some more thoughts on mosques and their
characteristics come to mind. It was Murcutt’s new mosque that
stimulated this continuing interest – see:
http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2017/01/murcutts-mosque-meanings-sources.html
and
http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2014/10/the-most-beautiful-building-in-world.html
We were in a silver shop in the Gold
Souk near the creek, considering a few pieces of silver, when the
tonal growl of the loud speakers high in a minaret somewhere, started
to sound the name of God in the call to prayer. It was the middle of
the day, and extremely hot. The sojourn in the trinket shop that
boasted of its quality ‘Italian silver,’ was as much a retreat
into the refreshing relief of the air conditioning as it was a giving
in to the annoying encouragements of the spruiker, or a declaration
of some interest in a minor, modest purchase of a decorative piece,
perhaps a token souvenir,# some remembrance of this time in this
different place and culture. All of the gold looked over-exuberant,
too bright, too richly indulgent; the spruikers just far too eager to
encourage, achieving the very opposite of their intent very quickly.
The presence of the mosque in the
complex, shady shambles of the souk was not known until the
intonation began. The building could not be recognised or identified,
although the mosque was the immediate neighbour, intricately
intertwined with the everyday fragmented bits and pieces of trade and
its trash – the commerce and haggling; the chatting and touting;
the sweaty, tolerant standing and sinewy struggling that is work in
this culture, always it seems, left dangling on an ad hoc shoe string
that appears fragile, crude and rough when it, in truth, holds
everything in the flux of life, living, together with a vital,
expressive, raw rigour.
Right in the middle of this apparent
mess stood the mosque, fully integrated in the tangled lanes and
alleys shaping piecemeal left-over spaces that were never wasted;
every portion, however tiny or awkward, was used without apparent
care or apology, nonchalantly but effectively. The mosque’s own
certain identity appeared above, in its height, beyond the shabby
canvas and rusted corrugated awnings tied with ropes to flimsy
framings, as it declared the presence and significance of God, loud
and clear.
There are two things that come to mind
here: the unapologetic location of the mosque in the middle of the
everyday; and the sounding of its call to prayer, that beautiful,
rhythmic resonance that reminds one of other worlds while engaged in
the tawdry events of life that touch self-interest and greed. One
might say that the mosque ‘de-centres’ our attentions with a
remembrance of other things. Here it sounded just as we were
finalising our haggling over insignificances: it appeared meaningful
in some strange way.
In severe contrast to these qualities of
the Dubai mosque that was expressed in amongst the busyness of the
souk more clearly only in the small patch of sky profiling the
traditional dome and minaret – not as beautifully tiled surfaces,
but ones painted a soft, monotone, ‘boring’ desert-sandy beige -
the Murcutt mosque is slick, isolated and silent: a neutered monument
to ‘transparent’ worship. Sadly, all of these unique features say
something about the mosque in Australia: it seems to be seen as an
unwanted place, a feared zone that has to be isolated for the
different percentage of the ‘multicultural’ population to
participate in without disturbing, challenging or provoking the
‘locals.’ In the same way, and for the same reasons, the Murcutt
mosque is apparently to not only be transparent, but also to be
silent. Murcutt boasts that this is a new expression of an Australian
mosque - this smart new, ‘modern architecture’ identity -
overcomes the secret, dark, mysterious burden of the traditional
images to offer an invigorated expression, a re-interpretation of
this most beautiful of building forms – see:
http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2014/10/the-most-beautiful-building-in-world.html
It is as if traditional beauty, its wonder and explicit delight,
could be remade; that the past had to be relieved of its visual
baggage. This is the cliché intent of all things ‘modern’ - the
rationale and self-importance of modernity, of things
‘International.’ Ironically, it is at Dubai that the very worst
of this ‘new’ expression can be seen and experienced on the
fringes of the old and interspersed in between.
The Dubai mosque challenges this
explanation, and the Murcutt strategy in general. The Murcutt mosque
can be seen as everything that a mosque should not be in a country
that offers itself as a great example of tolerance, its acceptance of
others. What might Australians of other faiths learn from this mosque
other than difference and isolation; and that things ‘old’ are
irrelevant, ugly? The Dubai mosque hums with an ordinary richness, as
a bland and unselfconscious place for prayer, the celebration of life
in a messy world of wonder and work. This is the place that sounds
the first light of the new day as the kookaburra does, and reminds
one unexpectedly throughout the day that there is more to living than
getting and spending. Where else might this occur in Australia –
only, perhaps once on Sunday that has now been demystified,
de-scaralised? - (apart from on Lewis: see -
http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2017/03/stevenson-lighthouse-butt-of-lewis.html
)
Why are we so scared of the mosque?
Murcutt’s mosque only heightens our cliché perceptions,
misconceptions, confirms them with its total isolation in the
industrial edginess of Melbourne where it is forced to exist in smart
silence, having no minaret - “It would never be used,” was the
apparent explanation. Would any mosque dare declare itself as sound
in Australia? We have here a gagged mosque kept in solitary
confinement in order to avoid polluting place and things
‘Australian.’ The slick ‘new’ - modern, ‘transparent’ -
look can be seen as a shroud to pretend that things are perhaps
otherwise: a mosque by Australia’s greatest living architect –
our ‘living treasure.’ The cultural ‘elite’ proclaim the work
in a premature exhibition – could it not wait? - as great and
grand. (Here one can only think of the film, GOLD, and the
over-exuberant, foolish Wall Street response.) This silence and
separation, so seems to be the intent, should prevent the resident
Aussies from complaining about the Muslims and their ‘strange
ways,’ while the efforts of the local ‘genius’ with the
appropriately appointed Muslim mate, should hopefully send a message
to those of this faith that we care; truly care.
Forgetting the domeless, glass-walled
mosque for one minute; one has to ask: can the Murcutt ‘genius’
match the traditional carpet? What prayer carpets does his mosque
have? Is there anything ‘traditional’ in this work? What
re-invention of ‘old’ beauty has Murcutt orchestrated here, where
‘one cannot marvel enough’ (Martin Lings); where, traditionally,
longing and delight intertwine into an experience of wondrous
otherness suspended in an untouchable, unknowing knowing.
And as this text is typed in the quiet
dark of the very early morning, light breaks in the silent sky
without any celebration of this marvel other than the seeming joy of
the nearby kookaburras, so-called laughing that goes unnoticed apart
from, perhaps, being seen as a nuisance for those choosing to ignore
the beauty of our world in their dazed dozy dreamings. If only we had
a call to prayer to tell us that there is more, much more to this
world than snoozing, snorting, saving, swimming, swaggering and
selfies; yes, much, much more: yet we choose to ignore it, separate
it, neuter it, to ensure that it is kept apart, that the cliché
‘Australian way of life’ is never challenged - “She’ll be
right mate!”
No ‘she’ will not be right. Dubai,
old Dubai, was a real delight – truly ‘un-Australian.’ We have
much to learn beyond our silly, cliché nationalistic preconceptions.
#
For more on
souvenirs, see:
and
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.