Defiling Mecca

"We dismounted to gaze at the venerable minarets and the green dome which covers the tomb of the Prophet. The heat was dreadful, the climate dangerous, and the beasts died in numbers. Fresh carcasses strewed our way, and were covered by foul vultures. The Caravan was most picturesque. We traveled principally at night, but the camels had to perform the work of goats, and step from block to block of basalt like mountaineers, which being unnatural to them, they kept up a continual piteous moan. The simoom and pillars of sand continually threw them over."
 "Then I performed the seven circuits round the Ka'abah, called the Tawaf. I then managed to have a way pushed for me through the immense crowd to kiss it. While kissing it, and rubbing hands and forehead upon it, I narrowly observed it, and came away persuaded that it is an aerolite. It is curious that almost all agree upon one point, namely, that the stone is volcanic. Ali Bey calls it mineralogically a 'block of volcanic basalt, whose circumference is sprinkled with little crystals, pointed and straw-like, with rhombs of tile-red felspath upon a dark ground like velvet or charcoal, except one of its protuberances, which is reddish'. It is also described as 'a lava containing several small extraneous particles of a whitish and of a yellowish substance'."
The Hajj, 1853, Sir Richard Burton

Seems the sacred can be defiled, after all. Muslims, particularly the gatekeepers of Mecca and Medina, feel that the presence of a non-Muslim in those heritage sites would be sacrilegious, so it is forbidden for foreigners who are not Muslim to even think of approaching these places sacred to Islam. Sir Richard Burton famously, in the 19th Century as an incurable romantic and Islamophile ventured to camouflage himself as a Muslim pilgrim, travelling from Egypt, first to Medina then to Mecca.
Sir Richard Burton, intrepid 19th Century British adventurer-traveller

Sir Burton embarked on his exploit knowing full well it was forbidden, and knowing as well the danger inherent in his adventure. He lived to tell the tale, and tell it he did.

Saudi Arabia, the gatekeepers and responsible for the upkeep of the most venerable and sacred sites in Islam, as the birthplace of the Prophet Mohammed and from where the Prophet received directly from the Almighty the precepts of Islam and the direction from above to promulgate its primacy as God's final word, are sworn to protect and enshrine forever that holy place in the minds of believers, acting as hosts to the annual Hajj, an obligation of all pious Muslims to make the pilgrimage at least once in their lives.

Mecca from Jabal Nur

The government of Saudi Arabia has dedicated itself as the keeper of these holy sites to their venerated preservation. What a noble undertaking. And what a responsibility. One gladly taken on as it confers to the Saudis the honour of hosting those sacred sites and being honoured in turn to have that responsibility. It is also an onerous task to ensure the safety and security both of the sacred sites and that of the millions of Muslims who travel there from all over the world. Some two million Muslims from many countries of the world are converging on Mecca this month.

Abraj-al-Bait Towers/Makkah Royal Clock Tower Hotel

The Kaaba, the symbolic focus of Muslims everywhere, is situated at the Sacred Mosque. And towering over that historic site of immeasurable heritage value is, alas, the Makkah Royal Clock Tower hotel, listed among the world's tallest buildings at 1,972 feet in height, its shadow thrown directly over the mosque, minuscule in comparative height, its sublime presence dwarfed by -- a commercial hotel, of all things. And the operative word here is - commerce.

The hotel is part of a mammoth development of skyscrapers and among them are luxury shopping malls and other hotels whose purpose is to cater to the whims and delights of the wealthy. No longer is the skyline dominated by the surrounding peaks; the ancient mountains have been effectively levelled, the city surrounded now by the steel and concrete of immensely tall buildings whose presence and what they represent are prized by the guardians of the Holy City.

They bespeak wealth, modernity, commerce. Numerous ancient buildings inclusive of a mosque dating from the time of Prophet had been bulldozed by Saudi Arabia in the 1970s to make way for the transformation of the city into a "modern" one with multi-lane highways, junctions, hotels and shopping malls. The old Ottoman-designed houses and their elaborately hand-carved doors and latticework windows were considered unattractive relics of the past, to be dispensed with.

The Makkah Royal Clock Tower itself, completed in 2012, was built over the graves of 400 sites of cultural and historical significance. Torn down were the city's millennium-old buildings. Families that had lived in the area for centuries were displaced, as bulldozers destroyed all that was familiar to them. The home of Abu Bakr, the first caliph after the death of Mohammad who was also his uncle, was destroyed. Of the inner core of the Sacred Mosque not much reflecting history remains but the Kaaba.




The intricately carved marble columns inscribed in calligraphy with the names of the prophet's companions, dating from the early 16th Century are all that remains of the Sacred Mosque's inner core, but for the Kaaba itself. The mosque too is slated for demolition, to be replaced with an ultramodern building. Under the Saudis, with their strict Salafist interpretation of fundamental Islam, literal interpretation of Islam is the norm, all other sects are regarded as false.

The historical hajj has become a packaged tour, where pilgrims move from hotel to hotel in groups; neutralized of history and religious and cultural plurality. The sacred transforming, once-in-a-lifetime spiritual experience has been altered to a mundane rituals-and-shopping extravaganza.