On Tuesday morning, for some inexplicable reason, I felt awful. I think perhaps I was dehydrated...but I drank 4.5 liters of water that morning, so I'm not really sure.
In any case, after class, even though I was feeling crappy, I had to tag along with the group to the Religious Harmony Centre. It was an interesting place - it was kind of like a museum set up in a mosque to present a peaceful, positive representation of Islam and to "foster inter-faith tolerance and discourse." This makes a lot of sense in the Singaporean context, a tiny island with so many different religions living so closely together.
I didn't really take any pictures, though, and there really isn't much else to say about the centre. It did present Islam in a light that it doesn't usually receive, but it was nothing new to us. We aren't ignorant fools who think that all Muslims are terrorists. Honestly, the way the exhibits were set up at the Harmony Centre, and the way the students we got to speak with talked, didn't sound that much different from Christianity. I mean this in a secular kind of way - not that what they believe is similar, but rather how they view and interact with their religion, and how it affects their lives reminded me a lot of the Christian context in the U.S. The centre also spurred a lot of interesting discussion amongst our group, so that was cool.
Anyway, the pictures here are from the surrounding area. Sorry, they're the only ones I can offer! After the centre, I went with a few people to a mall across the street to get lunch (even though it was halfway between lunch and dinner). I got this thing called Yong Tau Foo, and it's kind of like "build-your-own-soup." You pick different vegetables and put them in a bowl, give it to the worker, choose a sauce, and voilà! It wasn't that great, though. Oh well.
No comments:
Post a Comment