Saudi
Arabia's War Of Steel And Concrete On Islam - Critical
Approach
30 November 2010By Zainab Cheema
"Art Rocks in Saudi Arabia"! trumpeted the glossy
cover of an issue of Saudi Aramco World, a journal on
culture and society in the Kingdom. The accompanying
article by Peter Harrigan looked at pre-historic rocks
scrawled with drawings of camels and other animals,
querying why the international community has ignored
study of ancient rock in the Najd. However, Harrigan
eagerly forecasts that this unfortunate oversight will
soon be addressed. After all, old rock is a resource
on par with the black gold that Aramco excavates from
beneath the desert.
The laborious preservation of "art rock" in The
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia contrasts with on-going
demolitions of the monumental structures and sacred
sites mapping the Hijaz's Islamic geography. Since the
House of Saud's takeover of Arabia, following its
foundational alliances with British imperialists and
Wahhabi ideologues, it is an open secret that the
princes-cum-businessmen are waging a war of steel and
concrete against great sign posts of Islamic history
that even neo-Qurayshi dictators like Yazid ibn
Mu'awiyah had dared not disturb.
A list is in order here a mere slice of the nearly
300 Islamic structures that have been dynamited,
bulldozed, and paved down in the past 80 years. It is
a remarkable testament to Muslims' gifts of
preservation that the homes and other intimate
structures of the early Makkan period of Islam have
stood secure through the long centuries of dynastic
change and political uncertainty. These landmarks of
the close associations and fraternal bonds through
which a fledging Islam gained a social presence have
now disappeared in the region's necro-commercialization.
Abu Bakr As-Siddiq's house is now the Makkah Hilton
Hotel. The Prophet's (pbuh) mother, Aminah bint Wahb's
grave was paved down and burnt with gasoline. His
first wife Khadijah's house, where the Prophet's (pbuh)
children were born, is now a public lavatory.
The garbage of history is a term used for painfully
reconstructing the past through the remnants and
remains but this sheds a neon-colored light on how
history itself can be rendered as garbage.
Archaeologists now estimate that less than 20
structures dating from the Prophet's (pbuh) time are
left in the Hijaz. Yes, that means 90% of Islamic
sites have now disappeared, a memory of a memory. Even
as outrage sparked in the Muslim countries, from
Palestine to Pakistan to Turkey, the Wahhabization of
the Hijaz's social landscape has mobilized local
zealots in overseeing the demolitions. The alchemy of
their logic turns demolitions of Islamic spaces into a
sign of piety. Far better to transform these venerated
sites into public bathrooms than to allow the shadow
of a possibility that non-Wahhabi visitors would lapse
into idolatry before them.
Besides the structures materializing memories of the
Prophet (pbuh) and his Companions, the very geography
of the Sirah has been wiped away. The routes followed
by the Muslims to the battlegrounds of Badr and Uhud
have been cleared. Hamzah ibn 'Abd al-Muttalib's grave
is gone. The famous seven masjids of Salman al-Farsi,
Abu Bakr, 'Umar, Fatimah, 'Ali, Bilal and al-Fath
(built on the rock where the Prophet (pbuh) stood
during the Battle of the Trench, praying for victory)
have been razed and replaced by ATM machines. Dar-al-Arqam,
the first meeting place of the Muslims and indeed, the
first Islamic school where the Prophet (pbuh) tutored
the early Muslims, now hosts the escalators of a
high-rise. The king's palace stands on the bones of
the Abu-Qubays Masjid.
Graveyards are known to be a magnet for Wahhabi ire.
The 1806 razing of the Baqi' Cemetery in Madinah is a
famous chronicle: the domes and markers of the great
Islamic personalities interred there were flattened
out into an anonymous field. Other graveyards met the
same fate, with no aftertaste of infamy. The graveyard
of Maqbarah al-Muala (in Makkah), where Khadijah is
buried, has likewise been razed. All this is part of
King Abdullah ibn 'Abd al-'Aziz's quest to
"re-envision" the holy cities. Toward this end, he has
hired diva architects like Norman Foster, Lord Foster
of Thames Bank and Zaha Hadid to blast the area into
accommodating another million pilgrims who can afford
the deluxe Hajj packages now going for $8,000 and
above. "We are witnessing now the last few moments of
the history of Makkah," said Sami Angawi, an expert on
Islamic architecture
Local residents of these spaces are not entirely
immune to the costs of this demolition derby. Makkans
rescued the house where the Prophet (pbuh) was born,
pressing to transform it into a library rather than
permit its disappearance under a shopping mall.
However, post-9/11 oil bonanza and the ensuing
development boom have placed these remaining sites
under a timer. Profits flowing in from the skyscraper
hotels and other commercial venues proved too
seductive for the Saudi capitalists the area around
the Haramayn is prime real estate, and why say no to
the clown when McDonalds comes knocking? The house
where the Prophet (pbuh) was born is now slated to
become a parking lot. Presumably the princes' Mercedes
were too inconvenienced by the city's existing parking
facilities.
This conflagration of the visible traces of the men
and women who translated the Qur'anic word into social
and political reality, has even aghast some Saudi
citizens. Irfan al-Allawi channeled his outrage into
the Islamic Heritage Foundation, an online website
meticulously documenting each site destroyed by the
Saudis and the corporate monstrosity erected over it.
After provoking Saudi criticism in even US and UK
newspapers, the website was yanked by the Saudi
government, and Allawi has been placed under house
arrest. Clearly, even memories are too dangerous a
political capital to be left untampered with whether
present in stone or in digital pixels on the
information highway.
There are other sites that are threatened, sites tied
to the very presence of the Prophet (pbuh). Wahhabi
authorities are planning to destroy Jabal al-Nur,
where the Cave of Hira' is located. Visiting the
mountain, one can find a signpost blazened with a
fatwa, "The Prophet Mohamed (pbuh) did not permit us
to climb on to this hill, not to pray here, not to
touch stones, and tie knots on trees
"
In short, keep away don't get too close to site of
the first Qur'anic revelation, the place that first
witnessed the communication between Allah (swt) and
the Prophet (pbuh) that was to alter the geography of
the world. If there is a location that rivals this in
early Islamic history, it would be the Prophet's (pbuh)
grave itself. And yes, that too is slated for
destruction.
Construction underway has already partitioned the
graves of the Prophet (pbuh), Abu Bakr, and 'Umar from
the rest of the Masjid in preparation for razing them
into rubble. A pamphlet published in 2007 by the
Ministry of Islamic Affairs and endorsed by the Grand
Mufti of Saudi Arabia, reads, "The green dome shall be
demolished and the three graves flattened in the
Prophet's Mosque." The removal of the iconic Green
Dome from over the graves is a preliminary step to
this plan that has already been checked off the to-do
list. Even the body of the Prophet (pbuh), the medium
of Allah's (swt) mercy to the worlds, is to disappear
under the rubble and dust of Saudi-Wahhabi demolition.
The question of why is always a hazardous one when
discussing the House of Saud and their Wahhabi
henchmen. But any work of destruction is only a
precursor to some project of reconstruction. What are
the signs and traces of prophetic history to be
replaced with? And while the Wahhabi cadres are
hamstrung by the ideology wrapped around their minds
like metal bands, the Saudi royal family's priorities
are a bit different. If Islamic history is being
systematically dynamited from the surface of the
earth, then it is a precursor to the construction of a
new history that fully justifies Saudi sovereignty.
At a 1989 New York conference on "cultural
preservation" in Saudi Arabia, Saudi diplomats,
ambassadors and businessmen met with hired
archaeologists and preservationists to trumpet their
success in cementing the institutional memory of the
House of Saud. The model being followed is Colonial
Williamsburg, that charming Virginia town restored to
produce a sanitized memory of US colonial times.
(Tourists enjoy hooped dresses, handicrafts, and
colonial music, without unpleasant reminders of black
slavery and Indian genocide). "You in the United
States have preserved places uniquely associated with
the founding of your nation," said Saad Nazer, Saudi
Arabia's New York consul-general, "we too have now
preserved the sites at Riyadh and Dar'iyyah where
Saudis can learn how King 'Abd al-'Aziz formed our
modern kingdom.ζ
In a word Saudi restoration projects en process are
not in Makkah or Madinah, but in Riyadh, Jeddah, and
Dar'iyyah, locations that had been crude desert
outposts before the House of Saud's fortunes struck
gold. And unlike past dynasties like the Ottomans, who
had integrated their cultural, religious, and
political structures into the layout of the two holy
cities, the Saudis laid out an alternate geography
from day one. A secular geography that preys on the
prophetic one, gorging on it to render the love and
faith of billions into cash. Dollars only, please.
So, if the Prophet's (pbuh) geography is too visible a
reminder that the House of Saud is an upstart tribal
pretender that views Islam's sedimentation throughout
the Hijaz with distaste, then which past is the valid
one? Nation-states are a modern invention, dating a
mere 400 years on the European heartland. However,
each new-born nation state must manufacture its
existence back in time, colonizing history as it were.
The Saudis, who market themselves as custodians of the
Haramayn to justify their fabulous Hajj profits, only
want to remember the pre-Islamic annals of beduin
tribes and the founding of their political dynasty.
As graves, masjids and mountains fall around Makkah
and Madinah, elaborate new structures take form in
Riyadh and Jeddah. The National Museum at Riyadh has
built an elaborate pre-Islamic wing, featuring
multi-media installations intermingling with
pre-historic "art rock" helicoptered in from the Najd
sands. Various plush museum complexes such as Darat
al-Malik 'Abd al-'Aziz, dedicated to the founding
patriarch, have literally risen from the dunes. In
assigning the multi-million dollar contrasts for these
memory projects, Riyadh Development Authority opened
the competition to celebrity architects from around
the world. The goal was to erect "cultural focus for
the whole nation" and create "a sense of continuity
and dignity for all Saudis". Apparently, the Saudis
didn't fear that their citizens would fall into
idolatrous devotion before the gleaming, high-tech
relics commemorating 'Abd al-'Aziz Aal Saud and the
pre-historic ancestors.
The death of sacred structures is not just the
perishing of stone and mortar it is the destruction
of those compasses with which we orient ourselves in
landscapes of history and memory. It is the erasure of
traces of the personalities that traded blood and
treasure so that Islam could survive. It is the fading
of the material inscriptions nourishing our memory and
indeed, the very consciousness of ourselves as
Muslims. What elegy shall we sing to the crumbling
bones of the Companions? What words are appropriate to
the vanishing presence of our Prophet (pbuh)?
source
Hadith: "When Allah desires good for someone, He gives
him understanding of the Deen." Rasullullah (saw) also
said, "Allah makes the way to Jannah easy for whoever
treads a path in search of knowledge."(Muslim)
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