Posted on 08/12/2007 11:09:37 AM PDT by LurkedLongEnough
MECCA, Saudi Arabia - These days it‘s easier to find a Cinnabon in Mecca than the house where the Prophet Muhammad was born.
As a result, some complain that the kingdom‘s Islamic austerity and oil-stoked capitalism are robbing this city of its history.
Abraj al-Bait is a complex of seven towers, some of them still under construction, rising only yards from the Kaaba, the cube-like black shrine at the center of Muslim worship in Mecca. "Be a neighbor to the Prophet," promises an Arabic-language newspaper ad for apartments there.
Saudi Arabia boasts that Abraj al-Bait — Arabic for "Towers of the House," referring to the Kaaba‘s nickname, "the house of God" — will be the largest building in the world in terms of floor space. Developers have said the completed building will total 15.6 million square feet — more than twice the floor space of the Pentagon, the largest in the United States.
The building boom is in some cases destroying Mecca‘s historic heritage, not just overshadowing it. In 2002, Saudi authorities tore down a 200-year-old fort built by the city‘s then-rulers, the Ottomans, on a hill overlooking the Kaaba to build a multi-million-dollar housing complex for pilgrims.
"Obviously, this is an exaggerated interpretation. But unfortunately, it is favored among officials," said Anwar Eshky, a Saudi analyst and head of a Jiddah-based research center.
Other sites disappeared long ago, as Saudi authorities expanded the Grand Mosque around the Kaaba in the 1980s. The house of Khadija, Muhammad‘s first wife, where Muslims believe he received some of the first revelations of the Quran, was lost under the construction, as was the Dar al-Arqam, the first Islamic school, where Muhammad taught.
In Medina, 250 miles north of Mecca, Muhammad‘s tomb is the only shrine to have survived the Wahhabis, and a monumental mosque has been built around it. But religious police bar visitors from praying in the tomb chamber or touching the silver cage around it.
Outside the Prophet‘s Mosque, Wahhabis have destroyed the Baqi, a large cemetery where tombs of several of the Prophet‘s wives, daughters, sons and as many as six grandsons and Shiite saints were once located. Grave markers at the site have been bulldozed away, and religious police open the site only once a day to let in male pilgrims. The visitors are prevented from praying.
Several Islamic groups, such as the U.K.-based Islamic Heritage and Research Foundation and the U.S- based Institute for Gulf Affairs, are campaigning to restore ancient sites. Khaled Azab, an Egyptian expert on Islamic heritage at the Bibliotheca Alexandria, suggests that the Saudi government should bring in UNESCO to help.
But after years of campaigning, Angawi is on the verge of giving up.
"I have been saying this for 35 years but nobody listens," he said. "It is becoming hopeless case."
I just read the link up a few posts...wow...I didn’t know they’d ruin all their own history in fear of idolatry. Apparently some historians are trying to keep some Abrahamic sites secret, so they won’t be destroyed!
It’s an idea.
Hey, Meccans....
I was hoping for a major saturation bombing.
What a disappointing thread.
It's hard to believe that things have changed so much but this picture of the Ka'aba is supposed to be from 1371 AH = 1951 or 1952. I suppose the relatively primitive state of the surrounding structures at that time is related to the fact that the Saudis were just beginning to get their oil money.
Test of nuclear artillery piece, Nevada test range, 1953
Saudi Arabia is PERFECT for this stuff!.
I don't speak Arabic all that well. Is the Arabic word for prophet synonymous with the Arabic word for pedophile?
FYI- Muslim business associates of mine have told me that Mecca is not really that nice of a place, and that the millions of poor folks who come for their hajj have a tendency not to clean up after themselves.
This was still going on long after Rome had taken over all of Greece.
One of the deals Mo made with the existing power structure in Mecca was to keep the Kaaba, sans it's hundreds of "gods", for purposes of drawing the ever valuable religious pilgrims. Negotions were made regarding who got to peddle meat, who sold the bread, who got to deal tents and houses for sleeping, and who would secure the concession to direct traffic to caravans.
In short, a new and ever more commercial skyline is really well within the traditions of this city.
I would imagine a penthouse suite overlooking Abraham's Altar would be worth hundreds of millions!
Not sure, but I’m pretty sure that a “Cinnabon” means a “God-fearing gentleman”. lol
That’s part of the religious sternness of the Wahhabis. They approve no shrines, no pilgrimages to birthplaces or tombs or anyplace but the Kaaba, no images, no memorials, no honor to the hallowed dead or anything like it.
Wahhabis are very much like Puritans. They see the Shiites, who honor Islamic “blesseds” like Khadijah, Fatimah, and so forth, as something like Catholics with their saints.
I’m put in mind of the Protestants of Holland, who 400 years ago smashed all the statues of Apostles which were on the Cathedral in Alkmaar; and Cromwell’s men, who gouged the eyes of icons.
Though better late than never.
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