Bloody Catastrophes

The anniversary of the earth-shattering calamity that overtook the United States on September 11, 2001 has been remembered with solemn ceremonies taking place, the families of the almost three thousand who died in the collapse of the World Trade Center two towers, in the attack on the Pentagon and in the hijacked plane landing in a field in Pennsylvania whose destination of the White House was interrupted by American passengers who decided they would die with courage and dignity, in attendance.

Much has happened in the world since then, and much was anticipated to happen, but it isn't too likely that anyone, even those who follow world events closely, might ever have been able to accurately prognosticate what might emerge. Most of the men involved in the hijacking of the passenger liners to make use of them and their hapless passengers as living bombs bringing down the edifices of American power and prestige were of Saudi Arabian ancestry. They were Saudis who became part of the infamous Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda jihad.

And while there were official expressions of condolences that came out of the Arab and Muslim world, deploring that anyone could plot and carry out such a horrendously nefarious scheme to take innocent lives as a message to America that Islamists were going for the jugular, there were just as many within that same world who celebrated wildly that America had been brought to its knees with weeping and despair. In places like the Palestinian Territories, Pakistan, Syria and elsewhere, sweets were handed out in celebration.

At the same time there were denials, that Muslims would never ever embark on such a mission; that the cause and the consequences were not reflective of the religion of peace. And while American authorities were quick to assure their Muslim counterparts and their own Muslim citizens that it was understood that this was a rogue faction within Islam, and Muslims would be no less respected despite the dreadful occurrence, Muslims themselves denied that from among them could come such treacherous skills as to commit such a monumental victory.

Conspiracy theories abounded, among them that insiders had full knowledge of what had actually occurred, and it was not what was assumed had occurred. These were not Muslims, let alone Saudis who were involved in the execution of the barbaric act of mass murder but those employed by the U.S. State Department in collaboration with the Israeli secret intelligence group Mossad. It was all an elaborate hoax; the sacrifice of so many American lives for the greater purpose of implicating and blaming Islam for what the U.S. itself was guilty of. The legendary war on Islam by Western crusaders and Zionists: Islamophobia.

Although this too is a tragedy, there is a kind of macabre, bleak, black poetry in that on the very day, fourteen years later, the largest, most famous mosque in the world has been damaged. While the World Trade Towers represented U.S. economic influence on a global scale, the Saudi government has been busy surrounding its most sacred theological site dedicated to the Prophet Mohammad and Allah, by commercial enterprise. The mosque itself, already gigantic; so large it is estimated that 800,000 people were in and around it yesterday, is in the process of being enlarged.

Saudi Arabia's civil defense authority says dozens of people have been killed after a crane collapsed on the Grand Mosque in the holy city of Mecca on Sept. 11, 2015. (Photo: 2014 photo by Khalid Mohammed, AP)

There are an estimated 16 huge construction cranes surrounding the mosque. Giant shopping malls, luxury hotels and upscale apartment buildings are being built to complement the sacred presence of the Grand Mosque. If the New York Twin Towers represented American financial power, it can be said that Saudi Arabia is flaunting its oil wealth in the building of these ostentatious examples of what Saudi financial power is capable of producing; in the process soiling the divine with the presence of symbols of filthy lucre.

Bad weather producing violently heavy rains is said to have caused a towering construction crane to collapse in Mecca where Islam's holiest site sits, just as the annual Hajj pilgrimage is set to begin. Just as well the calamity didn't wait until then to happen. As it is, the death count stood at 107 and growing, with over 238 people injured. The Grand Mosque, containing the sacred black, cube-shaped Kaaba within it, has sustained considerable damage, with collapsed concrete slabs having smashed down within part of the ornate mosque.

Khaleej Times

Where once rolling hills and traditional buildings surrounded the mosque, it is now encircled with modern luxury buildings, including the world's third-tallest structure; a giant clock tower standing as the centrepiece of the Abraj al-Bait complex. The giant construction Binladen Group is involved in the expansion construction of the mosque. The Saudi Binladen Group also built the Abraj al-Bait complex. The wealth of the Binladen family, originally from Yemen, but now firmly Saudi citizens, accrued through its familiarity with the ruling Al Saud family.

Osama bin Laden was obsessed with destroying the reign of the imperial Saud family controlling the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Their despised collaboration with foreign oil giants and in particular the United States of America, was offensive to the bin Laden scion. It was his intention to inflict deadly jihad both on America and on the Al Sauds. Ironically, it is the Saudi Wahhabist form of Salafist-style rigid Islamism that has been imported world-wide through Saudi financing of madrassas, and which also informed Osama bin Laden and now ISIL that is collapsing Islam, the religion of peace.