The Great Mosque Of Bogor – The Pluralism Trail

The Great Mosque of Bogor, like the above picture, is one of the symbol of pluralism life of Bogorians (as well as Indonesian).

Foreigners may have heard a lot about intolerant behavior of people from majority religion to another. However, they may have not heard about many things that are in contrary with what reached their ears.

This building was started to build in 1970 and it was just completed in 1979.

What makes The Great Mosque so special was because the architect who design the structure was not a moslem. The architect was indeed a devout believer of Protestant. His name is Friederich Silaban.

This guy was also the one who designed the biggest mosque in Indonesia, Istiqlal Mosque in Jakarta.

F Silaban was a talented and brilliant architect. He never formally studied architecture during his life and all of his knowledge about how to design building was obtained self-taught

The Great Mosque of Bogor is not actually big in terms of size. The building occupies only 500-600 square meter area and much smaller than Istiqlal Mosque. However, it is one of the biggest mosque in The City of Bogor.

It has two main building . The first one is the main hall for prayers and the other one with a tower is for administrator office.

The style of the mosque can be seen to have been influenced by Islamic culture of Middle East but at the same time, we can see some Indonesian cultural ornament adopted as well.

Not big. Not phenomenal. However, it contains a meaning that is greater than its size. It symbolize a pluralism living of people in the city, tolerance. No matter what media says about this city, the Great Mosque is one of the proof that Bogor was not what many people have thought.