One of the Good Things is Ensuring that the Prophets House & So Forth Are NOT
Turned Into Places of WORSHIP. As It is There is Enough of Grave WORSHIP
Prevalent in the Muslim World specially in the Sub Continent. Those Individuals
& Organizations Who are Agitating for the Preservation of these Sites Are
Better Advised to Use Their Resources to Seek An End to the Jewish Occupation
of Islams 3rd Holiest Site. - AB
Mecca's Hallowed Skyline Transformed
By SALAH NASRAWI, Associated Press Writer
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070812/ap_on_re_mi_ea/mecca_lost_heritage;_ylt=Am9IPeUdyvSVGZlZudrrVcMUewgF
MECCA, Saudi Arabia - These days it's easier to find a Cinnabon in Mecca than
the house where the Prophet Muhammad was born. The ancient sites in Islam's
holiest city are under attack from both money and extreme religion. Developers
are building giant glass and marble towers that loom over the revered Kaaba
which millions of Muslims face in their daily prayers. At the same time,
religious zealots continue to work, as they have for decades, to destroy
landmarks that they say encourage the worship of idols instead of God.
As a result, some complain that the kingdom's Islamic austerity and
oil-stoked capitalism are robbing this city of its history. "To me, Mecca is
not a city. It is a sanctuary. It is a place of diversity and tolerance. ...
Unfortunately it isn't anymore," said Sami Angawi, a Saudi architect who has
devoted his life to preserving what remains of the area's history. "Every day
you come and see the buildings becoming bigger and bigger and higher and
higher."
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.
The towers are the biggest of the giant construction projects that have gone
up in recent years, as the number of Muslims attending the hajj, the annual
pilgrimage to Mecca, has swelled to nearly 4 million last year. Saudi Arabia is
trying to better serve the growing upscale end of the pilgrimage crowd, while
investors many of them members of the Saudi royal family realize the huge
profits to be made.
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.
Three of the towers, each nearly 30 stories, are already completed, and the
others are rapidly going up. A mall at their base has already opened, where
customers many of them in the simple white robes of pilgrims shop at
international chains such as The Body Shop and eat at fast-food restaurants.
Other nearby complexes include upscale hotels.
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.
The holy sites have also been targeted for decades by the clerics who give
Saudi Arabia's leadership religious legitimacy. In their puritanical Wahhabi
view, worship at historic sites connected to mere mortals such as Muhammad or
his contemporaries can easily become a form of idolatry. (Worship at the
Kabaa, which is ordered in the Quran, is an exception.) "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.
The house where Muhammad is believed to have been born in 570 now lies under
a rundown building overshadowed by a giant royal palace and hotel towers. The
then king, Abdul-Aziz, ordered a library built on top of the site 70 years ago
as a compromise after Wahhabi clerics called for it to be torn down.
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.
At Hira'a Cave, where Muhammad is believed to have received the first verses
of the Quran in the mountains on the edge of Mecca, a warning posted by Wahhabi
religious police warns pilgrims not to pray or "touch stones" to receive
blessings.
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. "You shouldn't do that," a bearded policeman tells
pilgrims trying to pray at the site.
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.
"It is pretty sad that our imams do not even have tombstones to tell where
they are buried," said Indian pilgrim Zuhairi Mashouk Khan, who was weeping
because he was barred from praying at the site. "They deserve a shrine as
monumental as Taj Mahal."
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."
AB
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"For to us will be their return; then it will be for us to call them to
account." (Holy Quran 88:25-26)
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