Kudus

The Corona crisis has given us much time to do things, neglected for a long time. One of these was to read (and admira!) a beautiful book on the Mosque, Minaret and Grave of Sunan Kudus. It is a splendid book, given to us during the visit to the place on a crowded Thursday evening, in October 2019.
 In fact, one of the first book to read again was by Pramoedya: Arus Balik, on the process of islamization of the northcoast of Java, which makesTuban the centre of the epic story.

The book which I read now is on the left side: text by Revianto Budi Santosa and M. Rizal Abdi, pictures by Bambang Tri Atmojo. On the right of it is the English translation of a book by Syafii Maarif, published by Leiden University Press in 2018. The minaret in the centre is the same as on the left copy. However in the Ma'arif book on the fight we see the new dome of the mosque, while in the lift side there is the mosque without the dome from the eastern side, before the dome was added.
 The authgors regret that Ayafii Ma'arif  took his picture of Kudus in order to stress the specifric Islamic Indonesian identity as shown in Kudus, but in the text of his book there is no reference at all to this remarkable structure built about 1550.
The building is in the style of Majapahit architecture, from the last Hindu kings of Central Java. Many of the stories are close to folk religion, many miracles, entertaining  episodes of a glorious past: not the strict rules of the modern Salafi Islam with its emphasis on Arab texts. Of course, the great texts here and the formulaes of the prayer are Arab as well, but this local pride wants to be traditional Indonesian Islam.
Page 119 has picture of the Greek Cross (here not the salib Yunani, but palang Yunani), which we also saw last October

With the elements from Hindu rulers the inter-religious tolerance of very clearly prised. Here it is just an ornament taken from a 'Greek cross''  without firther explanation.