ASSALAM O ALAIKUM WA RAHMAT ULLAHAI WA BARAKATAHOOi would like to draw ur attention toward a serious issue,that is suadi rulers r destroying many historical things in makkah n madina to prevent shirk n biddah but on the other hand they r destroying our history,our islam is based upon history n fact,if we destroy our history,after 100 or 200 years, our true religion ll become a story its very good to stop people from shirk n biddah but we should adapt the "middle way"darmiyana rasta,what is that?i think,kings should preserve all the historical things n dont allowed people to c them,guards kharay kar day ya kohi chardiwari bana dah but dont destroy them but afsos the people who live in golden palace,cant understand the importanc of history aap ka kiya khayaaal hai
Re: saudi kings r destroy islamic history
And what exactly is that they are destroying ? How can I tell my khyal if I do not know what are they destroying ?
Re: saudi kings r destroy islamic history
Actually there are other more important things that we should be asking all our leaders about. With regards to heritage the truth is things like the prophets Muhammad's (SAW) prayer mat, laathi and such things are still kept but under lock and key kept hidden away. But the buildings have been torn down to allow space for pilgrims and some old things create safety hazards also.
Peace
Re: saudi kings r destroy islamic history
After you pointed out I did some research on internet and found this article on this subject.
Source
Zvika Krieger, The New Republic Published: 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 woollen 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 America 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 unsavoury 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.”
Zvika Krieger is a deputy web editor at The New Republic.
MY DEARS: If not so suprise to read all the above artical, These WAHABI`s has a great plan to distroy all ISLAM. In name of Shirk They gona remove all the importants of Islam. These fanatics belongs to ABu Sufyan and Yazeed (Lannat Ullah)…who mission was not only stoned Mecca or to kill Grandsons of Mohammad(pbuh)… They have many more things to Do.
WE STRONGLY BELIEVE THAT , A DAYS IS NOT FAR WHERE Prophet Grandson (Mohammad Al Muntazir) (pbuh) will be at Mukam-e-Ibrahim to distroy the Abul Azeez dynasty and DAJJAL.
CURSE BE UPON THEM WHO HATE MOHHAMMAD (PBUH) AND HIS HOLY FAMILY…
MY DEARS: If not so suprise to read all the above artical,, These WAHABI`s has a great plan to distroy all ISLAM. In name of Shirk They gona remove all the importants of Islam. These fanatics belongs to ABu Sufyan and Yazeed (Lannat Ullah)..................who mission was not only stoned Mecca or to kill Grandsons of Mohammad(pbuh)............. They have many more things to Do.
WE STRONGLY BELIEVE THAT , A DAYS IS NOT FAR WHERE Prophet Grandson (Mohammad Al Muntazir) (pbuh) will be at Mukam-e-Ibrahim to distroy the Abul Azeez dynasty and DAJJAL.
CURSE BE UPON THEM WHO HATE MOHHAMMAD (PBUH) AND HIS HOLY FAMILY..........
Peace unhealthymind
You really need to keep your topics in the correct threads. This thread has nothing to do with the Sunni-Shi'a issues. Why is everything bent towards this difference? SubhanAllah!
This thread has nothing to do with the Sunni-Shi'a issues.
Actually it does. You are being naive if you think it does not.
Sunnis destroy the graves of personalities that Shias adhere to. Hence, the issue.
Actually it does. You are being naive if you think it does not.
Sunnis destroy the graves of personalities that Shias adhere to. Hence, the issue.
Maybe because certain muslims start to cross the thin line between respect and somewhat shirk, when they start chanting certain stuff while visiting the shrines, or asking of the dead, what even alive cannot do.
As i see it, there is a very fine line between respecting and worshipping. In ignorance and lack of religious literacy, folks will start to kiss the stones or collect the dirt, or bow. Trust me, it happens. Maybe that's the reason for it.
Or it's just simply to accomodate pilgrims. Allah knows best.
MY DEARS: If not so suprise to read all the above artical,, These WAHABI`s has a great plan to distroy all ISLAM. In name of Shirk They gona remove all the importants of Islam. These fanatics belongs to ABu Sufyan and Yazeed (Lannat Ullah)..................who mission was not only stoned Mecca or to kill Grandsons of Mohammad(pbuh)............. They have many more things to Do.
WE STRONGLY BELIEVE THAT , A DAYS IS NOT FAR WHERE Prophet Grandson (Mohammad Al Muntazir) (pbuh) will be at Mukam-e-Ibrahim to distroy the Abul Azeez dynasty and DAJJAL.
CURSE BE UPON THEM WHO HATE MOHHAMMAD (PBUH) AND HIS HOLY FAMILY..........
How did Wahabi's destroy Islam? And you think that Allah should have asked you before giving the keys to his house and the house of prophet Mohammad's (PBUH) Roza mubarak?? Allah probably considers Saudi's are capable to take care of Mecca and Medina and that is why Allah has given them the control. Otherwise if they were doing something wrong, Allah can switch it to someone else in no time.
Re: saudi kings r destroy islamic history
and dont u ppl think that preventing ppl from shirk is far more important than a house???
and plz dont ask me wat i have seen ppl doing with sum stuff that is left ![]()
Re: saudi kings r destroy islamic history
preventing ppl from shirk is very important bt the way that is adopted by saudi rulers is absolutely wrong,kings ve authority,they ve power thy r the owner,they can do everything in their county,then y r they adopting the way of extrimism to prevent shirk,simple tareeka hai,loggoon ko jany say rokh deh, im against the shirk n bidda but destroying the histroy is a crime, let me explain firstly quran revealed in arab,different ayats revealed acording to different incident,its mean to prove quranic ayats we required some refereces,hamy kuch hawallon ki zarrorat hai for example,some ayat of surrah aazab ravealed on the occasion of gazwa e ghadaq,nw govt is planning to build plaza there,after some years,how ll ve provide a referece of surrah aazab,sach hotay hooway b hum sach ko prove nahi kar sakay gaysecondle,islam presents mohamad salallah o alai wasalam as a role model,sub prophets meh sirf prophet s.a.w ki life mahfooz hai,even choti choti batoon kay b proof hain kay aap nay kaha say pani piya hijra kay liyah koun sa route use kia etc,ab agar hum sub kuch finish kar day to kia ho ga,dosray prophts ki tar app s.a. w ki life b story ban jahay gi,astaghferuallah)but this is the fact,lets tke the example of banu qareeza fort,the facts r 3 kinal ka fort+muslims army laid siege n 70 people surrended,now govt is destroying the signs of that fort then after 100 years,wt ll hitory student do when he ll nt find any sign of that fort?surly he ll believe on his imagination,3 kinal ka fort 30 kinal ka ban jahy ga,the number of people who surrender ll multiply,sub kuch change ho jahy ga sirf aik house kay khatam karnay say,HISTORY AUR FACT PEECHAY RAH JAHY GAY WHILE IMAGINATION AGAY AA JAHAY GI aur islam aur propht s.a.w ki life a story ban jahy gi aur kohi b such ko saabat nahi kar sakay ga
Re: saudi kings r destroy islamic history
saudi kigns are doing fine .. running the oill selling it ... living life .. wats to worry .. this topic is useless close it
Re: saudi kings r destroy islamic history
i think they tried that too they used to do that they stopped ppl but all they did was fighting and crying standing at the sites and complaining to them when the guards stoped them from doing all the chuma chati they did
so its ppl who left them no ther choice
apni ghalti bhi maan leni chahiye kabhi
Re: saudi kings r destroy islamic history
I agree with sister Rida.
These places are of historical importance and should be kept preserved. It is sad that we have to sacrifice our heritage to accommodate western influences, on land which non-Muslims are prohibited from entering!
If they are taking down these sites to make homes for pilgrims, I'm sure other options are available. If they are taking it down from a business perspective, which it appears to be, then its beyond wrong.
Saudi is going out of hand, and they certainly need to revert their direction. They already funded the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, and destroyed countless historical sites (and continue to do so).
I appreciate what they do for the pilgrims, but they cant be bombarding them with malls and high-class shopping centers, at the cost of Islamic heritage.
I have seen the biddah and shirk which takes place at these historical sites, but that is not an excuse to demolish a place, the least they could do is secure it and monitor any activity which seems out of place.
These historical buildings and places are significant in re-igniting our imaan, in connecting us with our past. I dont want to go to Allah's house to be bombarded with flashy lights and shopping centers. This is exactly what the kuffars in the time of jahilliya used to do with the pilgrims who came to worship the idols.
Re: saudi kings r destroy islamic history
no one is allowed to visit famous graveyard janat ul baqi,sirf log dooor say wapis aajatay hain,baqi places ko b aisay he shirk say bachaya ja sakta hai,but yeh thora difficult hai,hamaray paaas sirf aik he rasta hai,the easy one kay sub khataam kar do na rahy bans na bajay bansari,sub khalas
no one is allowed to visit famous graveyard janat ul baqi,sirf log dooor say wapis aajatay hain,baqi places ko b aisay he shirk say bachaya ja sakta hai,but yeh thora difficult hai,hamaray paaas sirf aik he rasta hai,the easy one kay sub khataam kar do na rahy bans na bajay bansari,sub khalas
I hear you, since its sort of helpless on our part, the least we can do is learn for ourselves the significance of these places, where they were, and pass this knowledge to our coming generation so they dont forget.
Re: saudi kings r destroy islamic history
14 gr8 post by crescent
[QUOTE]
This is exactly what the kuffars in the time of jahilliya used to do with the pilgrims who came to worship the idols.
[/QUOTE]
.... esp this part
healthymind you need to chillout a little bit , esp. since we have become best buddies as common admirers of yazid
saudi kigns are doing fine .. running the oill selling it ... living life .. wats to worry .. this topic is useless close it
yeh suadi kings r "the richest "but they cant spend chaar riyaal to preserve the historical heritage
Sunnis destroy the graves of personalities that Shias adhere to. Hence, the issue.
sunni adhere to these personalities too , and saudis even levelled the graves of the uhad martyrs
saudi kigns are doing fine .. running the oill selling it ... living life .. wats to worry .. this topic is useless close it
I hear you, since its sort of helpless on our part, the least we can do is learn for ourselves the significance of these places, where they were, and pass this knowledge to our coming generation so they dont forget.
very true,wat can we do?nothing just debate aur kuch b nahi
but b opimistic,one thing i would like to share u all,
kay jab saudi arab meh kissi place ko sealed kar diya jata hai,to sub samj jatay hain kay iss place ki kohi significance hai,for example,recently gazwa e ahud kay paas aik cave ko sealed kiya giya,sub ko pata chal giya kay yeh woh place hai jahan hazrat MOHAMMAD SALLAHA O ALAI WASALAM ko sahaba nay zakhmi haalat meh laya tha