The UK's Independent is reporting that a site in Mecca believed by most scholars to be the birthplace of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad is going to be bulldozed by a Saudi company in order to build a modern compound that would include a presidential palace. There's now a small library and shrine at the site, just steps away from Mecca’s Masjid al-Haram, or Grand Mosque, which surrounds the Ka’aba, and contains the Sacred Black Stone, a meteorite Muslims have worshiped since pre-Islamic times. This is the most sacred site in Islam, where Muslims come from all over the world to make the haj, or pilgrimage to Mecca.
The Binladin Group (yes, it's that Bin Laden) which has the contract from the Saudi government for redevelopment estimates the cost at billions of dollars.
“The last remaining historical site in the kingdom is the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad, probably the most important site to the Muslim and Shia community around the world,” The Independent quoted Irfan al-Alawi, a historian and executive director of the UK-based Islamic Heritage Research Foundation, as saying.
“Most people are not even aware there are plans now to destroy it.”
While some Muslims have expressed reservations, the Saudi government is behind the project, because they feel that preserving such relics encourages idol worship.
Contrast this cavalier attitude with the sort of sentiments expressed over the al-Kuds mosque in Jerusalem,which was an abandoned wreck until the fascist Grand Musti Haj Amin al-Husseini rebuilt it in the late 1920's, and the Temple Mount, where Muslims play soccer, defecate, picnic and pray facing Mecca with their posteriors facing the 'holy mosque', but riot and throw stones whenever Jews come near the Temple Mount simply to worship.
Or the murderous rage that occurs when 'kuffrs', non-believers even handle a Qu'ran.
Yes, it's political, and a part of jihad against the infidels. But you knew that, right?
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