- Joined
- May 29, 2013
- Messages
- 21,005
- Reaction score
- 2
Well that article's title is misleading. Since when is renovation=destruction?
It's not just renovation: it's commercial expansion at the expense of historical sites and buildings are that are central to Mecca and Islam, such as The Grand Mosque.
The mosque expansion project, intended to accommodate an additional 1.6 million worshipers in the Grand Mosque, is just one element of this upgrade. The lavish Abraj al-Bait Towers, a hotel complex featuring shopping malls, a helipad, luxury residences, and the world’s largest clock face, is another. Its centerpiece, the Fairmont Makkah Clock Royal Tower hotel, is the third-tallest building in the world, the size of six Big Bens, built at a cost of $15 billion. A new 10,000-room mega-hotel, set to become the biggest in the world when it opens in 2017, is Mecca’s next expansion target.
The additional cost of Mecca’s construction campaign, besides billions of dollars, has been what observers refer to as an assault on the city’s aesthetic and cultural character: Development has displaced or destroyed dozens of historic sites and shrines around the holy city — and incensed critics around the Muslim world.
The Ajyad Fortress, a sprawling stone citadel built in the Ottoman era, once overlooked the Grand Mosque from the crags of Mt. Bulbul south of the shrine, a bulwark for more than 200 years against threats of invasion and banditry. When construction crews leveled both the fortress and Mt. Bulbul in 2002, Turkey’s then-culture minister called the act a “cultural massacre.” The Makkah Clock Royal Tower now stands in their place.
Within the mosque complex, pillars dating back to the Abbasid era, many marking traditionally significant sites, have been torn down, ostensibly for being in the path of construction. As Sami Angawi, founder of the Hajj Research Centre, told the Guardian in 2012: “They are turning the holy sanctuary into a machine, a city which has no identity, no heritage, no culture, and no natural environment.”
Other historical sites relevant to the life of the Prophet Mohammed have also been demolished or built over in recent decades. A Hilton Hotel and a Burger King now stand over the house of the Prophet’s closest companion and Islam’s first caliph. The home of the Prophet’s wife, Khadija, is now the site of 1,400 public lavatories.
These actions, critics say, are the realization of the ultraconservative Salafi ideology of Wahhabism endorsed by the Saudi monarchy, in which historical and cultural trappings are gateways to the sin of associating divinity with anything other than God. The prescribed solution to those trappings in Wahhabi Salafism is, frequently, obliteration. “The plans could have been easily implemented and worked around the historical sites,” Alawi said, calling the destruction of traditional landmarks and historic sites “a deliberate cost.”
This website has some pictures of the transformation, specifically the Grand Mosque being torn down and rebuilt for tourists:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...y-relics-are-being-demolished-in-8536968.html