Religions Field Trip Reflection

Yesterday we toured a mosque, a Chinese temple, and a Hindu temple. These places of worship are located in the oldest part of the city of Kuala Lumpur. As a result, the area is very rich culturally and is full of interesting sights, sounds and activities. On your blog, post at least one photograph from each place of worship. Describe the photo and what it shows. Then in your reflection, compare and contrast the religious places we visited. What was similar? What was different? What are the common values that these religions might hold? Finally, which of the three did you find the most interesting and why?

On the religions field trip, we visited three different places of worship. We visited a mosque, a Chinese temple, and a Hindu temple.

This is a picture of the entire mosque. In this picture, you can see a minaret, which is where they call the prayer. You can also the praying area which has a marble floor.

The two pictures above were taken from the Hindu temple. From the picture on the left you can see the main chamber. The picture on the right is someone praying, and in the background you can see many pillars.

This picture on the left was taken inside the Chinese temple. You can see several tables with offerings such as oranges.

The mosque, which we visited first, contrasted a lot from the Hindu temple. Although we did visit the mosque at a time where there weren't many people, it was very quite. To go in the mosque, we had to put on a headscarf, and we couldn't go step into the praying place because we weren't muslims. However in the Hindu temple, except for the fact that we had to take off our shoes, we were free to just go in and wander around the grounds. There were no restrictions and it was quite free. Also, while the mosque was fairly quite, there was a lot of music playing in the Hindu temple. The mosque differed from the Chinese temple as well. The Chinese temple wasn't exactly what you call quite; there were a lot of people, and once in a while the drum would be played. Also, while the mosque didn't have a particular smell, the Chinese temple had a very strong smell of burning incense sticks. While both the Chinese temple and the mosque had once place for praying, the Hindu temple had small chambers spread out. The similarties that all three places had was that they all had very large grounds. In addition, the praying areas were the center of the places of worship. Both the Hindu temple and the Chinese temple had many pillars as well.

I found the mosque as the most interesting. I thought so because although we didn't get to see the people, the place itself was very interesting to me. It all seemed very "organized". I'm not saying the other places weren't, but I noticed a lot of geometrical shapes around the mosque. There were the stars with 8 points everywhere in the mosque, and the marble floored praying area felt grand. I also like the small domes and towers placed around the entire mosque.