The world laughed when Islamists in Egypt recently threatened to destroy the Giza pyramids – despite the insane precedent of the Taliban’s dynamiting of the majestic Bamiyan Buddhas. But clearly the Twin Towers were not alone on the hit list.
The Australian
THE $15 billion Abraj al-Bait is the world’s second-tallest building. It has the biggest floor area of any structure and the biggest-ever clock in its enormous tower.
And this perpendicular palace of hotel rooms and condos, this crowning achievement of architectural ugliness, casts its monstrous shadow across the holiest place in Islam: the Mosque of Mecca. The black granite of the Kaaba, central to the Hajj pilgrimage, looks like an ant beneath an elephant.
Ignoring international protests, the Saudis demolished a 1781 citadel and levelled a hill to accommodate Abraj al-Bait – and that’s just the tip of the monolith. The House of Saud is forging ahead in its bulldozing of Islamic heritage. Not even Mohammed is safe from the Wahhabists, an Islamic version of Whelan the Wrecker. In 2007, Saudi’s Ministry of Islamic Affairs published a pamphlet calling for the demolition of the Prophet’s Dome, of his grave. Yet, while the Muslim world erupts over political cartoons, this was not protested. Nor was the sweeping away of the house of the Prophet’s first wife to make room for public lavatories.
Tomb of the Holy Prophet Mohammad in Medinah
The Washington-based Gulf Institute estimates that 95 per cent of the 1000-year-old buildings in Mecca and Medina have been destroyed in recent years – to make way for shopping malls. What’s going on? And why the deafening silence?
Categories: Arab World, Asia, Middle East, Muslim Heritage, Saudi Arabia
Feeling sad and sorry at the state of affairs as mentioned in the posting, one could only wish and pray that the better sense of sanity and fairness will prevail over darkness of mind and soul of the utterly worldly rulers’ of the most holy places of the world of Islam, Mecca Mukarrama and Medina Munawwara. What sort of heartlessness of the cruel Al-Saudi ruling family of the Arab Land which makes us stunned to know that 95 percent of 1000 years old historical buildings, around these two cities, have been demolished to make room for the construction of commercial buildings and plazas. Inna lillahey wa InnailaheyRajeoon.A verse:- Ek wuh hain jinhain tasweer bina aati hai; Ek hum hain keh liya apni hi surat ko bighar.( Alas! they make or shape themselves,while we destroy and disfigure ourselves?)