Translating Modern Ideas into Postcolonial Mosque Architecture in Indonesia

Abstract

This paper tries to narrate the story of translation practices on the ideas and forms of modernity in the history of mosque architecture design development in Indonesia. The allow interactions to produce various approaches wider beyond religious context. The translation theory in postcolonialism field offers an alternate history on how postcolonial subjects actually define and take significant role for their own culture in compromising the overcoming globalism and modernities. This attitude will question our historical narratives socio-political postcolonial subjects engage through such basic elements. In that way, previous common image of mosque design thus ought to be reinvestigated, as well as notion of “modern” in Indonesia history would be redeveloped while layering mosque architecture periodization. The mosque architecture types which were inspired from both Western—Eastern styles inevitably involved colonial-postcolonial contextuality in how dynamism of interchanges since Independence period interlinked to Dutch-Indies colonial times, Old and New Order regimes, to the Post-reform era interwoven present. Understanding this modernity translation tranformations on each period following the spirit of the age may conclude that modern mosque architecture in Indonesia is not in a stagnant or linear but rather a complex flow periodization of its development. This also indicates the notion of “modern” has multiple intentions to culture and socio-political factors that always never solidify to any single universal definition.