Inside the Grand Mosque...

First off, Eid Mubarak (essentially Happy Eid). Second of all, I lucked out by being able to take these pictures, I did this with permission of all parties involved and if I accidently get information wrong, I do appologize in advance (I am an infidel). The Grand Mosque is hosting an open-house type of event for Eid geared tward ex-patriots and tourists to explain Eid, Islam, and Ramadan. That's how I got to take pictures of the place (and they said up front that it was ok, if not encouraged to do so for this event only but not when they were having prayer and certainly not on Fridays)

Ok, Explaination of these pictures--if it looks like a pulpit, it is a pulpit, a very nicely decorated one at that. Arabic is a very artistic language. The red and white boarder looking artwork is also Arabic. It's passages of the Qur'an written in stylized Arabic called kufi (don't shoot me for bad spelling on this post please).



Mosques have domes--this one is no exception. It's rather pretty. There is a lot of geometric art everywhere. In Islam there are no icons, no picture of living creatures within the mosque or in much of the art for that matter so they have lots of geometric art and stylized Arabic. Personally, I think it's beautiful within it's balance of simplicity (geometry) and it's complexity (Arabic).

The pic with the pulpit on the wall with people to show scale also shows the spot that is the direction of Mecca and more specificly the Ka'ab (very holy site in Mecca- for more explaination e-mail me).

With our tour of the Grand Mosque, we were shown the proper way to pray and such. I got a lot of reading materials on the in's and out's of Islam. Very interesting. Sorry, I'm not converting, but I do like some of the philosphies that Islam professes.