من هناك
03-28-2008, 03:48 PM
السلام عليكم
في الماضي، تم هدم منازل كثيرة للصحابة في تلك المدينة المكرمة إكراماً لعيون "مكة هيلتون". واليوم يفسحون المجال لواحدة من اقذر الشركات الصهيونية كي تفتح في مكة وتقدم قهوتها الأمريكية المجبولة بدم الكولومبيين الرخيص ودم إخواننا الفلسطينيين....
هناك معارضة اليوم لتوسعة الصفا والمروة ولا اظن ان للعلماء اي دور او رأي في بناء تلك الأبراج العاجية وتلك القهاوي الصهيونية.
هل من داعٍ لشرب قهوة ستاربكس في مكة ولديهم قهوة عربية طازجة نقية دوماً؟
لست انا من استغرب الموضوع اصلاً ولكنها زفيكا كريغر ولا اظن ان مكة تعني لها ما تعنيه لنا...
THE NEW REPUBLIC
Mecca Bucks
by Zvika Krieger
Why Wahhabis[!!!] invited Starbucks to Islam's holiest city.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Multinational capitalism and its edifices rise in the shadow of
Mecca's Grand Mosque. According to some popular Muslim accounts, the
marble Kaaba structure at the center of the Grand Mosque in Mecca was
built first by the angels before God created mankind, reconstructed
by Adam, and later rebuilt by Abraham and Ishmael. It's safe to say
that none of these builders could have anticipated the latest use of
the Mosque's image, in a promotional DVD for the Abraj Al Bait
Towers, a giant new skyscraper complex slated to be built just across
the street from one of the entrances to the Grand Mosque. The DVD
shows a beautiful woman sitting in one of the towers' luxury
apartments with floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook thousands of
pilgrims circling the Kaaba below. Eyes flashing a come-hither stare
from beneath her tightly wound headscarf, she asks prospective buyers
in Arabic, "Would you like to be here in this place in front of the
Kaaba year after year?"
Unlike the United Arab Emirates, with its Western-friendly, oil-money-
flush megalopolises Dubai and Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia had, until very
recently, resisted commercializing its major cities--particularly
Mecca, site of Islam's holiest relics, where millions of pilgrims
flock yearly to perform the hajj. But the dramatic rise in global oil
prices, and the construction boom across Saudi Arabia that followed,
has finally caught up with the city where Mohammed was born.
A report by the Saudi British Bank (SABB), one of the kingdom's
biggest lenders, estimates that $30 billion will be invested in
construction and infrastructure in Mecca over the next four years
from local and foreign companies. Up to 130 new skyscrapers are
anticipated, including the $6 billion Abraj Al Bait Towers, a seven-
tower project that, once completed in 2009, will be one of the
largest buildings in the world, with a 60-floor, 2,000-room hotel; a
1,500-person convention center; two heliports; and a four-story mall
that will house, among 600 other outlets, Starbucks, The Body Shop,
U.K.-based clothing line Topshop (Kate Moss is a guest designer), and
Tiffany & Co. En route to the hajj, pilgrims already have the
opportunity to stop at cosmetic superstore MAC, perfumery VaVaVoom,
and Claire's Accessories. H&M and Cartier are on the way. "All the
top brands are flocking here," says John Sfakianakis, SABB's chief
economist. "The only thing missing is Filene's Basement."
The boom is coinciding with Saudi Arabia's efforts to diversify its
economy, as well as its joining of the WTO in 2005, which forced the
kingdom to open its retail sector to foreign companies. Still, it's
not surprising that multinational capitalism has honed in on this
market: Lots of tourists on vacation, no matter how holy, tend to
have a lax grip on their wallets. But, to pull off this remarkable
transformation of Islam's spiritual seat, including the destruction
of many sites with sacred histories to make way for malls and luxury
condos, the luxe brands of the world have had to lean on some
unlikely allies.
Irfan Al Alawi, the founder and former Executive director the Islamic
Heritage Research Foundation and the most vocal opponent of the
destruction of Mecca's historic sites, lives in a house in Mecca
built mostly out of salvage from demolished Meccan buildings: hulking
wooden doors, intricately carved panels, and ancient stone columns.
As the scion of a prominent Hadhrami family descending from the
prophet Mohammed, the 40 year old historian has a significant amount
of leeway to criticize the government-- often joking with the secret
police guards stationed outside his house to track his comings and
goings (Saudis are thrown into prison on a daily basis for much less).
Alawi uses his freedom to rail against the transformation of his
hometown, giving presentations to groups of businessmen about the
obliteration of Islam's most significant places. Alawi estimates that
over 300 antiquity sites in Mecca and Medina have already been
destroyed, such as the house of the first caliph, Abu Bakr, which was
leveled to make room for the Mecca Hilton Hotel. (According to Ivor
McBurney, a spokesman for Hilton, "We saw the tremendous
opportunities to tap into Saudi Arabia's religious tourism segment.")
"It's not just our heritage, it's the evidence of the story of the
Prophet," Alawi says, sitting in his incense-filled living room,
dressed in his trademark woolen cloak and intricately wound turban--
itself an act of rebellion against the austere white robes and simple
headdresses that Saudi men are expected to wear. "What can we say
now? 'This parking lot was the first school of Islam'? 'There used to
be a mountain here where Mohammed made a speech'? ... What's the
difference between history and legend?" he asks. "Evidence."
Over protests by groups like the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada
and the Muslim Canadian Congress, Saudi authorities have authorized
the destruction of hundreds of antiquities, such as an important
eighteenth-century Ottoman fortress in Mecca that was razed to make
way for the Abraj Al Bait Towers-- a move the Turkish foreign
minister condemned as "cultural genocide." An ancient house belonging
to Mohammed was recently razed to make room for, among other
developments, a public toilet facility. An ancient mosque belonging
to Abu Bakr has now been replaced by an ATM machine. And the sites of
Mohammed's historic battles at Uhud and Badr have been, with a
perhaps unconscious nod to Joni Mitchell, paved to put up a parking
lot. The remaining historical religious sites in Mecca can be counted
on one hand and will likely not make it much past the next hajj,
Alawii says: "It is incredible how little respect is paid to the
house of God."
Ironically, however, some major culprits in disrespecting the "house
of God" are Wahhabi clerics, crusading to destroy Mecca's historical
landmarks, which they fear will lead to idolatry. Developers are
often tipped off by the cleric-run ministries about future
construction plans. And the Abraj Al Bait Towers are being partially
funded by the government through the King Abdul Aziz Endowment, which
the towers' developers describe as "a religious property" created to
serve interests "vital to the welfare of Islamic society."
Prominent clerics often speak out against conservation efforts like
Alawi's--in fact, it was Wahhabis who ran him out of his job in Mecca
in the first place, after his increasingly bold criticisms of
government policy irked the clerical elite.
"It is not permitted to glorify buildings and historical sites,"
proclaimed Sheikh Abdulaziz bin Baz, then the kingdom's highest
religious authority, in a much-publicized fatwa in 1994. "Such action
would lead to polytheism. ... [S]o it is necessary to reject such
acts and to warn others away from them."
A pamphlet published last year by the Ministry of Islamic Affairs,
endorsed by Abdulaziz Al Sheikh, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, and
distributed at the Prophet's Mosque, where Mohammed, Abu Bakr, and
the Islamic Caliph Umar ibn Al Khattab are buried, reads, "The green
dome shall be demolished and the three graves flattened in the
Prophet's Mosque," according to Alawi, executive director of the
London-based Islamic Heritage Research Foundation. This shocking
sentiment was echoed in a speech by the late Muhammad ibn Al
Uthaymeen, one of Saudi Arabia's most prominent Wahhabi clerics, who
delivered sermons in Mecca's Grand Mosque for over 35 years: "We hope
one day we'll be able to destroy the green dome of the Prophet
Mohammed," he said, in a recording provided by Al Alawi.
The clerics' stance permits the Saudi government to play it both
ways, in a perfect marriage of the secular and spiritual. It can
destroy ancient sites and still maintain doctrinal credibility; the
massive, capitalistic accumulation of wealth becomes a religious
necessity, not an evil. "The government has finally woken up to the
commercial value of religious tourism," Sfakianakis says, "and they
are really the ones driving this construction boom in Mecca."
Saudi officials excuse the unsavory aspects of the development by
arguing that it will help ease the housing and services crunch caused
by an explosion in the number of pilgrims (while about 2.4 million
hajjis visited Mecca last year, some estimate that, over the next
decade, the number could rise to 20 million per year). They dismiss
critics like Alawi as having an overly sentimental attachment to
historical sites. "It is equally fundamentalist to say that we have
to keep everything exactly the way it was while the world around us
is changing every day," says Nabeel Koshak, an associate professor at
the government-funded Umm Al Qura University in Mecca. Habib Zain Al
Abideen, the Saudi deputy minister of municipal and rural affairs,
head of all the kingdom's hajj-related construction projects, calls
the hajj "a good opportunity to visit Mecca and Medina, do some
shopping, make a vacation out of it."
Taking his advice in a Topshop less than 100 yards from the Grand
Mosque one day in December was Fatima, a twenty-something housewife.
Trying to decide between the pink silk-screened tank-top and the
lycra scoop-neck blouse, she stood in front of the mirror,
frantically holding one and then the other over her black abaya robe.
Her friend urged her to hurry up, flashing a Visa card to pay for her
stretch jeans and oversized sunglasses at the register so they could
make it to the Grand Mosque in time for prayers. But Fatima had been
waiting all year to splurge at Topshop. "The store is closing soon,"
she snaps at her friend. "You can pray any time."
في الماضي، تم هدم منازل كثيرة للصحابة في تلك المدينة المكرمة إكراماً لعيون "مكة هيلتون". واليوم يفسحون المجال لواحدة من اقذر الشركات الصهيونية كي تفتح في مكة وتقدم قهوتها الأمريكية المجبولة بدم الكولومبيين الرخيص ودم إخواننا الفلسطينيين....
هناك معارضة اليوم لتوسعة الصفا والمروة ولا اظن ان للعلماء اي دور او رأي في بناء تلك الأبراج العاجية وتلك القهاوي الصهيونية.
هل من داعٍ لشرب قهوة ستاربكس في مكة ولديهم قهوة عربية طازجة نقية دوماً؟
لست انا من استغرب الموضوع اصلاً ولكنها زفيكا كريغر ولا اظن ان مكة تعني لها ما تعنيه لنا...
THE NEW REPUBLIC
Mecca Bucks
by Zvika Krieger
Why Wahhabis[!!!] invited Starbucks to Islam's holiest city.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Multinational capitalism and its edifices rise in the shadow of
Mecca's Grand Mosque. According to some popular Muslim accounts, the
marble Kaaba structure at the center of the Grand Mosque in Mecca was
built first by the angels before God created mankind, reconstructed
by Adam, and later rebuilt by Abraham and Ishmael. It's safe to say
that none of these builders could have anticipated the latest use of
the Mosque's image, in a promotional DVD for the Abraj Al Bait
Towers, a giant new skyscraper complex slated to be built just across
the street from one of the entrances to the Grand Mosque. The DVD
shows a beautiful woman sitting in one of the towers' luxury
apartments with floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook thousands of
pilgrims circling the Kaaba below. Eyes flashing a come-hither stare
from beneath her tightly wound headscarf, she asks prospective buyers
in Arabic, "Would you like to be here in this place in front of the
Kaaba year after year?"
Unlike the United Arab Emirates, with its Western-friendly, oil-money-
flush megalopolises Dubai and Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia had, until very
recently, resisted commercializing its major cities--particularly
Mecca, site of Islam's holiest relics, where millions of pilgrims
flock yearly to perform the hajj. But the dramatic rise in global oil
prices, and the construction boom across Saudi Arabia that followed,
has finally caught up with the city where Mohammed was born.
A report by the Saudi British Bank (SABB), one of the kingdom's
biggest lenders, estimates that $30 billion will be invested in
construction and infrastructure in Mecca over the next four years
from local and foreign companies. Up to 130 new skyscrapers are
anticipated, including the $6 billion Abraj Al Bait Towers, a seven-
tower project that, once completed in 2009, will be one of the
largest buildings in the world, with a 60-floor, 2,000-room hotel; a
1,500-person convention center; two heliports; and a four-story mall
that will house, among 600 other outlets, Starbucks, The Body Shop,
U.K.-based clothing line Topshop (Kate Moss is a guest designer), and
Tiffany & Co. En route to the hajj, pilgrims already have the
opportunity to stop at cosmetic superstore MAC, perfumery VaVaVoom,
and Claire's Accessories. H&M and Cartier are on the way. "All the
top brands are flocking here," says John Sfakianakis, SABB's chief
economist. "The only thing missing is Filene's Basement."
The boom is coinciding with Saudi Arabia's efforts to diversify its
economy, as well as its joining of the WTO in 2005, which forced the
kingdom to open its retail sector to foreign companies. Still, it's
not surprising that multinational capitalism has honed in on this
market: Lots of tourists on vacation, no matter how holy, tend to
have a lax grip on their wallets. But, to pull off this remarkable
transformation of Islam's spiritual seat, including the destruction
of many sites with sacred histories to make way for malls and luxury
condos, the luxe brands of the world have had to lean on some
unlikely allies.
Irfan Al Alawi, the founder and former Executive director the Islamic
Heritage Research Foundation and the most vocal opponent of the
destruction of Mecca's historic sites, lives in a house in Mecca
built mostly out of salvage from demolished Meccan buildings: hulking
wooden doors, intricately carved panels, and ancient stone columns.
As the scion of a prominent Hadhrami family descending from the
prophet Mohammed, the 40 year old historian has a significant amount
of leeway to criticize the government-- often joking with the secret
police guards stationed outside his house to track his comings and
goings (Saudis are thrown into prison on a daily basis for much less).
Alawi uses his freedom to rail against the transformation of his
hometown, giving presentations to groups of businessmen about the
obliteration of Islam's most significant places. Alawi estimates that
over 300 antiquity sites in Mecca and Medina have already been
destroyed, such as the house of the first caliph, Abu Bakr, which was
leveled to make room for the Mecca Hilton Hotel. (According to Ivor
McBurney, a spokesman for Hilton, "We saw the tremendous
opportunities to tap into Saudi Arabia's religious tourism segment.")
"It's not just our heritage, it's the evidence of the story of the
Prophet," Alawi says, sitting in his incense-filled living room,
dressed in his trademark woolen cloak and intricately wound turban--
itself an act of rebellion against the austere white robes and simple
headdresses that Saudi men are expected to wear. "What can we say
now? 'This parking lot was the first school of Islam'? 'There used to
be a mountain here where Mohammed made a speech'? ... What's the
difference between history and legend?" he asks. "Evidence."
Over protests by groups like the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada
and the Muslim Canadian Congress, Saudi authorities have authorized
the destruction of hundreds of antiquities, such as an important
eighteenth-century Ottoman fortress in Mecca that was razed to make
way for the Abraj Al Bait Towers-- a move the Turkish foreign
minister condemned as "cultural genocide." An ancient house belonging
to Mohammed was recently razed to make room for, among other
developments, a public toilet facility. An ancient mosque belonging
to Abu Bakr has now been replaced by an ATM machine. And the sites of
Mohammed's historic battles at Uhud and Badr have been, with a
perhaps unconscious nod to Joni Mitchell, paved to put up a parking
lot. The remaining historical religious sites in Mecca can be counted
on one hand and will likely not make it much past the next hajj,
Alawii says: "It is incredible how little respect is paid to the
house of God."
Ironically, however, some major culprits in disrespecting the "house
of God" are Wahhabi clerics, crusading to destroy Mecca's historical
landmarks, which they fear will lead to idolatry. Developers are
often tipped off by the cleric-run ministries about future
construction plans. And the Abraj Al Bait Towers are being partially
funded by the government through the King Abdul Aziz Endowment, which
the towers' developers describe as "a religious property" created to
serve interests "vital to the welfare of Islamic society."
Prominent clerics often speak out against conservation efforts like
Alawi's--in fact, it was Wahhabis who ran him out of his job in Mecca
in the first place, after his increasingly bold criticisms of
government policy irked the clerical elite.
"It is not permitted to glorify buildings and historical sites,"
proclaimed Sheikh Abdulaziz bin Baz, then the kingdom's highest
religious authority, in a much-publicized fatwa in 1994. "Such action
would lead to polytheism. ... [S]o it is necessary to reject such
acts and to warn others away from them."
A pamphlet published last year by the Ministry of Islamic Affairs,
endorsed by Abdulaziz Al Sheikh, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, and
distributed at the Prophet's Mosque, where Mohammed, Abu Bakr, and
the Islamic Caliph Umar ibn Al Khattab are buried, reads, "The green
dome shall be demolished and the three graves flattened in the
Prophet's Mosque," according to Alawi, executive director of the
London-based Islamic Heritage Research Foundation. This shocking
sentiment was echoed in a speech by the late Muhammad ibn Al
Uthaymeen, one of Saudi Arabia's most prominent Wahhabi clerics, who
delivered sermons in Mecca's Grand Mosque for over 35 years: "We hope
one day we'll be able to destroy the green dome of the Prophet
Mohammed," he said, in a recording provided by Al Alawi.
The clerics' stance permits the Saudi government to play it both
ways, in a perfect marriage of the secular and spiritual. It can
destroy ancient sites and still maintain doctrinal credibility; the
massive, capitalistic accumulation of wealth becomes a religious
necessity, not an evil. "The government has finally woken up to the
commercial value of religious tourism," Sfakianakis says, "and they
are really the ones driving this construction boom in Mecca."
Saudi officials excuse the unsavory aspects of the development by
arguing that it will help ease the housing and services crunch caused
by an explosion in the number of pilgrims (while about 2.4 million
hajjis visited Mecca last year, some estimate that, over the next
decade, the number could rise to 20 million per year). They dismiss
critics like Alawi as having an overly sentimental attachment to
historical sites. "It is equally fundamentalist to say that we have
to keep everything exactly the way it was while the world around us
is changing every day," says Nabeel Koshak, an associate professor at
the government-funded Umm Al Qura University in Mecca. Habib Zain Al
Abideen, the Saudi deputy minister of municipal and rural affairs,
head of all the kingdom's hajj-related construction projects, calls
the hajj "a good opportunity to visit Mecca and Medina, do some
shopping, make a vacation out of it."
Taking his advice in a Topshop less than 100 yards from the Grand
Mosque one day in December was Fatima, a twenty-something housewife.
Trying to decide between the pink silk-screened tank-top and the
lycra scoop-neck blouse, she stood in front of the mirror,
frantically holding one and then the other over her black abaya robe.
Her friend urged her to hurry up, flashing a Visa card to pay for her
stretch jeans and oversized sunglasses at the register so they could
make it to the Grand Mosque in time for prayers. But Fatima had been
waiting all year to splurge at Topshop. "The store is closing soon,"
she snaps at her friend. "You can pray any time."