{"id":8652,"date":"2014-04-22T21:02:29","date_gmt":"2014-04-22T21:02:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/?p=8652"},"modified":"2014-04-22T21:02:29","modified_gmt":"2014-04-22T21:02:29","slug":"anyone-who-saw-mecca-before-the-90s-is-in-for-a-terrible-surprise-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/anyone-who-saw-mecca-before-the-90s-is-in-for-a-terrible-surprise-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Anyone who saw Mecca before the 90’s is in for a terrible surprise today"},"content":{"rendered":"

Choose a city and imagine what it would look like if it was 95% razed and rebuilt in the course of 20 years. Think about all the history and culture that would be destroyed.<\/p>\n

This dystopian vision isn’t hypothetical. Rather, it’s happening in Mecca, the Saudi Arabian city to which faithful Muslims embark on an annual pilgrimage. Mecca has\u00a0lost the vast majority\u00a0of its historical and religious landmarks to development. Centuries-old cemeteries, the houses of important figures, the sites of battles, the earliest mosques,\u00a0the birthplace of Prophet Mohammed (saw)\u00a0\u2014 all are gone or critically endangered as bulldozers destroy the city to build skyscrapers, malls and infrastructure.<\/p>\n

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Image Credit: AP. View of Mecca in 1951.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Image Credit: AP. What Mecca looks like today.<\/em><\/p>\n

When the Chinese government destroys religious sites in Tibet on this scale, it’s labeledcultural genocide. But no outside forces are responsible for the destruction in Mecca, just the Saudi royal family, whose austere strain of Wahhabi Islam forbids\u00a0shirq<\/i>, or idol worship. Under their stringent criteria, most religious landmarks are considered forms of idols, so there is no harm in destroying them. Meanwhile, why bother with millennium-old landmarks when you could be scoring cute handbags\u00a0in Paris Hilton’s store?<\/p>\n

You read that right:\u00a0Shrines aren’t welcome\u00a0in Mecca, but Hilton, Gucci and Dior should\u00a0feel free\u00a0to set up shop.<\/p>\n

If you visit Mecca today,\u00a0the Kaaba, the most sacred spot in Islam, stands dwarfed by skyscrapers. Critics lament that the city is turning into little more than\u00a0a Red Sea Las Vegas; the\u00a0Atlantic<\/i>\u00a0called it “McMecca.”<\/p>\n

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\nImage Credit:\u00a0Wikimedia<\/em><\/p>\n

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From time to time, the outcry rises and construction stops, but never for long. The bulldozers and cranes keep coming back.\u00a0Supporters\u00a0say this stimulates the economy and gives people confidence. Skeptics claim the cost of making the Hajj pilgrimage\u00a0is skyrocketing, depriving many of a fundamental religious rite.<\/p>\n

Institutions disappoint us every day, but to see this one do so this flagrantly makes it all the worse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Choose a city and imagine what it would look like if it was 95% razed and rebuilt in the course of 20 years. Think about all the history and culture that would be destroyed. This dystopian vision isn’t hypothetical. Rather, it’s happening in Mecca, the Saudi Arabian city to which faithful Muslims embark on an …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8654,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[432],"tags":[556,349,363,163],"class_list":["post-8652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-supreme-leader","tag-arabia","tag-middle-east-2","tag-saudia-arabia","tag-ticker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8652"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8656,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8652\/revisions\/8656"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}