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In prayer, Jews face Jerusalem but Muslims face Mecca Victor Sharpe  Sunday, May 29, 2011 The late Israeli Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren Sounds the Shofar (Ram’s Horn) upon the Recapture in June, 1967 of Jerusalem’s holy Jewish site, the Western Wall, from Jordanian Muslim occupation Jerusalem Unification Day has again been celebrated in Israel and throughout the world with the exception of that 7th century alternate universe: the Muslim world.It marks 44 years since the amazing and miraculous event took place when the Jewish people’s 3,000 year old capital city was restored to the Jewish state in the 1967 Six-Day War....

Last week, Saudi Twitter pages began to promote the message that ‘the direction of Jewish prayers do not matter to me”. The campaign, designed to emphasize the importance of Mecca and Medina as the holy places of Islam, and to eliminate the importance of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, has caused considerable controversy online. Among the most prominent messages in the campaign were those who wrote that "the direction of the prayers of the Jews is not important to us, what is important to us is only our homeland," referring to Saudi Arabia. This tweet was written by a well-known...

The newly revealed structure consists of a 184-by-161-foot (about 56-by-49-meter) platform that encloses a slightly smaller platform originally paved with flagstones. The east side of the interior platform had been lined with a row of columns that once crowned a monumental staircase. A small 28-by-28-foot (8.5-by-8.5-meter) building was centered north-south atop the interior platform and opened to the east, facing the staircase. This enormous open platform, topped with a relatively small building and approached by a monumental facade, has no known parallels to any other structure in Petra. It most likely had a public, ceremonial function, which may make it...

An overhead image of the monument photographed from a drone, and a detail overlay of the surface features in which the image is rotated 90 degrees clockwise. Photograph by I. LaBianca (Left) and Photograph by I. LaBianca; graphics by J. Blanzy (Right) ============================================================================================== Satellites and drones helped reveal huge ceremonial platform near the ancient city’s center. An enormous monument has been hiding in plain sight at the World Heritage site of Petra, according to a study recently published in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. Archaeologists Sarah Parcak, a National Geographic fellow, and Christopher Tuttle, executive director...

Islamic Places in Petra Dan Gibson 43.9K subscribers Dan Gibson introduces a new on-line tool that takes visitors on a tour through the Islamic places in Petra. Gibson explains that the original place names in Petra have been lost over the centuries, and that most of the place names are from the last several hundred years. Then using the descriptions of the earliest Islamic places, this tool takes the viewers through the Islamic places in Petra, including AlAqsa in Jiranah, Zamzam, the Ka'ba, the Cave of Hira, Arafat mountain, the Plains of Arafat, Muzdalifah , Mina, Jumrat, and the temple...

"The Sacred City presents compelling evidence that suggests the holy city of Mecca is in the wrong location and that the worlds 1.6 billion Muslims are praying in the direction of the wrong city. Compiling evidence from both historic sources and new technologies point to the correct location in this seismic, revelatory new film.

AS THE governor of Mecca, Prince Khalid bin Faisal Al Saud has been able to compensate for earlier failings. He came to his role in 2007 from Asir province, where his plans to erect modern tower blocks in the city of Abha were largely unfulfilled. He successfully erased Abha’s quaint old town, with its beehive houses made of wattle, only to replace them with squat breeze-block bungalows. Not a high-rise was to be seen.

Saudi Arabia is reportedly planning to modernise Mecca by building a retractable roof over the Kaaba - the most sacred site in Islam - in what critics fear will 'destroy the cradle' of the religion. Although the new roof has not been officially confirmed, a video of the 'umbrella project' circulating on social media shows a scale model on display in the holy city demonstrating how the retractable roof would operate.

Millions of hajj pilgrims are preparing to head home, after five days performing ancient rites, revering a God omnipresent in the city of Mecca. They have stoned figurative devils, they have slept in the world’s largest tent city, they have drunk water from the Zamzam well together: a heaving throng of nearly two million people from all over the world. Circling the Kaaba, the black cubic epicentre of this sanctuary city, pilgrims would have looked up to see one of the minarets of the Grand Mosque, dwarfed by Abraj al-Bait clocktower, a much-maligned luxury hotel and commercial complex and the...

Saudi Arabian authorities have detained an Indian national for posting a controversial photo of Mecca's Grand Mosque juxtaposed with Hindu religious symbols on Facebook. The photo depicts Al Masjid Al Haram mosque as a temple, photoshopped with Hindu symbols over the Kaaba, the holy building at the centre of the mosque, according to Gulf News, which cited a local daily's report on Tuesday.  A Saudi citizen who saw the post brought it to the notice of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, the kingdom's religious police. The Indian was detained when he was at an...

Egyptian Ministry of Culture Publication: The Al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock were Built to Divert the Pilgrimage from Mecca; Jerusalem was Not the Center of Worship for the Followers of the Prophet Muhammad On August 5, 2003 Ahmad Muhammad 'Arafa, a columnist for the Egyptian weekly Al- Qahira, which is published by the Egyptian Ministry of Culture, wrote an article rejecting the established Islamic doctrine that the Prophet Muhammad's celebrated "Night Journey" (Koran 17:1) took him from Mecca to Jerusalem. 'Arafa, presenting a new analysis of the Koranic text, asserts that the Night Journey in Surat Al-Isra' (that...

By Jack Wheeler jwheeler@politicalusa.com9/27/2001   The most sacred spot on earth to all members of the Islamic religion is the Holy City of Mecca, revered as the birthplace of Mohammed. It is one of the five basic requirements incumbent upon all Moslems that they make (if their health will allow it) a pilgrimage to Mecca once in their lives (the other four: recognize that there is no god but Allah, that Mohammed is Allah's prophet, ritually pray five times a day, and give alms to the poor). The founding events of Islam are Mohammed's activities in Mecca and Medina,...

MINA, Saudi Arabia - Millions of white-robed pilgrims threw pebbles at pillars yesterday, symbolically stoning the devil in an act of purification - a ritual made safer this year because of remodeling that widened bridges and reduced congestion. The construction work was undertaken to prevent the crushes of people that have led to fatal stampedes in the past - such as the ones that killed 1,426 pilgrims in 1990 and 244 last year. The stoning, which lasts several days, is one of the main rituals in the annual hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. Across the Muslim world, the faithful marked the...

Historic Mecca, the cradle of Islam, is being buried in an unprecedented onslaught by religious zealots.Just a link.

The National Park Service has banished God from a key display of America's Christian heritage in Washington, and a California pastor who regularly leads teams of visitors to see markers of the nation's religious history wants Him restored. The reference is an engraving of "LAUS DEO," which is Latin for "Praise be to God," and is on the east side of the 100-ounce aluminum cap of the Washington Monument. Since the actual inscription on the cap, which on the other three sides provides other information, is unviewable atop the 555-foot stone column, the National Park Service has created a replica,...

JERUSALEM – Islamic authorities using heavy machinery to dig on the Temple Mount – Judaism's holiest site – have been caught red-handed destroying Temple-era antiquities and what's believed to be a section of an outer wall of the Second Jewish Temple.

This link: Penn & Teller on Gun Controlis a link to the entire episode of Penn & Teller's awkwardly named series where they address the issues pertaining to gun control. In keeping with their libertarian style, they are very much pro second amendment and say about themselves that: "this is a show about the violent overthrow of the US government". It's been posted before but I'm putting up again since I've been provided a link for the entire episode. I would encourage everyone to forward this link to as many people as possible, particuarly those enlightened and liberal few who...

WASHINGTON: The Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan were destroyed by the Taliban with the help of Pakistani and Saudi engineers. According to an account published here on Saturday, a local Afghan told the makers of a Swiss documentary on the giant statues which had stood there, carved in the side of a mountain for hundreds of years, had been destroyed by engineers from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The dynamiting of the statues took place in March 2001. Swiss documentary filmmaker Christian Frei, who has made several documentaries that have won praise at various international film festivals, shot ‘The Giant Buddhas’ in...

The word iconoclast, when it is used nowadays, most often refers to a person who "attacks established beliefs, ideals, customs, or institution," as Webster's Third puts it -- a definition that turns the iconoclast into a cultural rebel or a free thinker, an individual willing to buck the establishment. By this standard, the Danish cartoonist who drew the controversial caricatures of Mohammed was an iconoclast in our modern sense, and was simply doing what many cartoonists have done before him, using his gifts to poke fun at sacred cows. True, the sacred cow, in this case, was the Prophet...