The Islamic Arts Museum in Kuala Lumpur is one of my favourite museums in the world. I was in KL last year for several weeks in transit to India. Unfortunately, my Indian visa didn’t come through soon enough to enable me to head to Kerala as planned.
My first real contact with Islam came a few years prior during my time working for GOOG launching products in the European and African emerging markets; namely Egypt, Turkey, Dubai and Israel. It’s a faith that revealed itself to me from a multitude of angles. Hotly contested in Jerusalem on the foot of The Dome of the Rock. Hauntingly beautiful in the early morning call for salah in Istanbul. Mysterious and shrouded on the streets of Cairo amongst burqa’d women in the boiling heat.
I can’t ever claim to know everything there is to know about Islam. And I’m hesitant, even, to talk of what I’ve seen and heard during my time in these Muslim countries. What I do know is that it’s a faith surrounded in breathtaking art.
The mosques, the calligraphy, the intricate floral designs – all of it is astoundingly beautiful. You can’t look at Islamic art and deny that it was inspired by man’s personal relationship with the divine.
