Mosque of the Indian Captain

Masjid Kapitan Keling, Penang, Malaysia

Here’s a short post for Raya. Wishing all my Muslim friends a Happy Aidilfitri! Selamat Hari Raya! Eid Mubarak!

Unlike Malaysia, here in the UAE, we’re still waiting for the experts to try to see the moon tonight to decide whether Eid Al-Fitr will be tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. Our company has already, in advance, decided it’ll be on Wed, 6 July, and if it falls tomorrow, …well hard luck company, we get an extra day off! Don’t blame us, blame the moon!

OK, I’m gonna put some photos of a mosque here to match my Raya posting. Here’s the Masjid Kapitan Keling, of Penang. In English, it’ll literally be the Mosque of the Indian Captain, since Kapitan means Captain, and Malaysians have been calling Indians ‘Keling’ for ages. I think it’s from the ancient name of India, Kalinga. Malaya (or Malacca) used to be a bustling maritime trade centre in the past due to it being located halfway between China and India, and used to have people from India, China, Arabia, etc stopping by for trading. The Indian leaders were called Kapitan Keling, while the Chinese leaders were known as Kapitan Cina.


Another view of the Masjid Kapitan Keling, Penang


OK, here’s a nicer photo of the mosque taken from the web (this marks a first for me, first time I’ve ‘borrowed’ a photo from the internet) – compliments of virginmojito.wordpress.com. I hope the photographer doesn’t mind