They are different religions with different beliefs and practices. The architectural differences are vast and mostly obvious the minute you walk in. Mosques and churches both have a number of unique elements like the mihrab, confessional booths, pews, floor carpets, altars, and so on and so forth. These all translate into vastly different experiences both during worship and in everyday life. For example, Catholic churches have confessional booths facilitating confessions to priests. Mosques don’t, as (as far as I know) Muslims believe more in direct confession to God, not to an intermediary. You can see how this would result in a different social structure.
The experience of attending mosque on Friday is quite different from Sunday mass. This is intra-religion as well; compare a New England church with St. Peter’s in Rome, for example.
Sure, there are some similarities, but this is such a broad distinction that I question its usefulness, and dividing the world into secular and religious (architecture) is a very recent phenomenon. Saying they all are basically the same is to miss millennia of culture.
Anyway I don’t mean to be hostile or critical here, I just think religious architecture is pretty fascinating and has a much bigger effect on culture, even supposedly secular culture, than people realize. I encourage anyone interested to read more about it.
The substantive culture that I think I know about in a mosque, church, synagogue, or temple, is ethical guidance and community aid. The other substantive cultural element, although this is not always the case, is a lack of tolerance for groups that strongly hold one of the other sets of beliefs.
They definitely have variations in the nonsense that they use to justify themselves, although it could be argued that there as many similarities as differences.
Whether they sit in the floor or not or what types of songs they sing and when are surface level details to me.
My takeaway from history, geography etc. has always been functional.
It’s so weird how normally people are loathe to appear ignorant and uninformed, yet there are some topics about which they are proud of their lack of knowledge.
There is no virtue or happiness in being Too-Smart-to-Care about the lives, beliefs, or histories of other people in the world. Its certainly ok not too care, but to feel the need to signal this and imply some kind of superiority with it is a short road to a bitter solipsism.
But the actual buildings of churches and mosques are quite different. The only ones that are similar tend to be newer constructions or were previously the other thing; e.g. the Hagia Sophia.
I think ultimately it just matters your comparison tolerance levels. You could just as easily make the argument that most churches are different from each other as well.
In my opinion, churches/mosque/temples are very similar because I live in a younger part of the world where the modern buildings look similar and the eventual purpose is them being a place of worship.
They are different religions with different beliefs and practices. The architectural differences are vast and mostly obvious the minute you walk in. Mosques and churches both have a number of unique elements like the mihrab, confessional booths, pews, floor carpets, altars, and so on and so forth. These all translate into vastly different experiences both during worship and in everyday life. For example, Catholic churches have confessional booths facilitating confessions to priests. Mosques don’t, as (as far as I know) Muslims believe more in direct confession to God, not to an intermediary. You can see how this would result in a different social structure.
The experience of attending mosque on Friday is quite different from Sunday mass. This is intra-religion as well; compare a New England church with St. Peter’s in Rome, for example.
Sure, there are some similarities, but this is such a broad distinction that I question its usefulness, and dividing the world into secular and religious (architecture) is a very recent phenomenon. Saying they all are basically the same is to miss millennia of culture.
Anyway I don’t mean to be hostile or critical here, I just think religious architecture is pretty fascinating and has a much bigger effect on culture, even supposedly secular culture, than people realize. I encourage anyone interested to read more about it.