The city of Mecca, unsurprisingly, has many sites and buildings that are associated with the life of the prophet Muhammad and other figures in the early history of Islam. Much more surprisingly, the Saudi authorities seem to have a systematic strategy going on of tearing down such sites and building them over with modern developments, a process that has been much written about in the media in recent years. What’s their policy rationale for this? Given that the Kings of Saudi-Arabia take great pride in, and receive much prestige in the Muslim world from, their status as Custodians of the Holy Mosques, I would have thought that such sites would be held in the highest esteem.
They are seriously serious about discouraging the worship of false idols.
More details:
The Wikipedia article doesn’t mention Mecca but the Motivation section goes into the “why” part of it.
This OpEd from the New York Times (gift link) describes some of the destruction. “The house of Khadijah, the first wife of the Prophet Muhammad, has been turned into a block of toilets. The Makkah Hilton is built over the house of Abu Bakr, the closest companion of the prophet and the first caliph.” And regarding the house that Muhammad lived in, the writer predicts it, too, will be demolished, “The clerics fear that, once inside, pilgrims would pray to the prophet, rather than to God — an unpardonable sin. It is only a matter of time before it is razed and turned, probably, into a parking lot.”
The writer says that Mecca should be for all Muslims, no matter what sect they belong to but that the “Salafist brand of Saudi Islam” is threatened by any other idea or belief.
Also, from a strictly practical standpoint (though cultural heritage destruction is, of course, horrible), Mecca needs a lot, a LOT of infrastructure to support the Hajj every year. Something’s gotta give.
This from what I’ve read is a particular sect or school of belief in the Islamic world (Wahhabism - Wikipedia) that feels that any sort of respect for artifacts, locations, etc. risks being turned into idolatry - worshipping the relics and sites, not the spiritual idea of Allah.
You can see the opposite of this in traditional Christianity, where traditional churches have relics of saints, and the saints themselves, or merely their statues, are prayed to almost like demi-gods. (With the excuse “to intercede with God on your behalf”) Indeed, one aspect of Protestantism is to deprecate these aspects of the Catholic and Orthodox world.
The Wahabi groups have been slowly destroying anything that might steal the attention of the Islamic faithful - such as the sites associated with the Prophet and his family and followers around Mecca and Medina.
I was amazed to see in the museum in Istanbul (not Constantinople) that they still had a sword that belonged to Mohammed and a lock of his hair. These are the sorts of things that in Saudi Arabia would have been destroyed as being distracting from true worship.
Other forms of Salafism also feeds into this attitude.
Which attitude seems in my simple / simplistic understanding to conflict with the very idea of the Hajj. “Visit sacred places and walk in the footsteps of the Prophet” seems awfully close to “Visit sacred artifacts.”
Of course it’s a coincidence / accident of history that the ancient sacred sites are located in a country nowadays officially devoted to Wahhabism.
But this does suggest that at some time in the indefinite future there’s going to be a collision between the two impulses: preserve the Hajj vs. destroy the evidence.
I’ve been there. They also have the staff which Moses used to part the Red Sea, and one of King David’s swords! Frankly I have some suspicions about how thoroughly the chain of custody on some of these acquisitions has been verified.
Topkapi museum. They pretty much outright say that they have little provenance for most of the Biblical stuff. They swords of early Islamic leaders are better attested though.
You need to know the Provenance of Providence.
While the Wahhabi cite spiritual justification for their practice of demolishing historical sites, I wonder if there is another ulterior motive at work. Destroying the past is a common tactic of totalitarian regime. History has often been used as a bridge by resistance; when people can see that there was a time before the regime, they can think about a time after the regime.
So totalitarian regimes try to destroy the past. They want to create the illusion that the regime has always been in power and, by implication, always will be in power.
As a corollary of the above, the Wahhabi like to imply that their origins go back to the era of Muhammad. This is not true. It’s a relatively recent movement.
Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, the founder of the movement, was born in 1702. He was a contemporary of Benjamin Franklin.
I would imagine the sword of the Prophet in the possession of a kingdom originally pretty much established by him would have a passable provenance - particularly as the religion is generally hostile to the concept of relics and holy artifacts. It’s not like pieces of the true cross or shrouds of Turin, where there was an active market for as many pieces as you could produce. It struck me as more of an imperial heirloom. Fun fact - the monks of St. Catherine’s monastery at the base of Mt. Sinai have a letter allegedly written by (dictated by?) Mohammed also, promising them their safety.
Considering the durability of the islamic regimes and how recent they are versus biblical events, I am more confident there are verifiable artifacts.
There’s also the issue of renown. Muhammad was recognized as a great historical figure in his own lifetime. A person coming into possession of a relic belonging to Muhammad would have treated that relic as a valuable item.
Jesus, on the other hand, was a fairly obscure figure in his own lifetime. There’s little reason why somebody who had access to the cross Jesus was crucified on would have felt there was anything special about it. He would have just seen it as just another cross, no different than any of the other hundreds of crosses the Romans used to execute criminals.
They are Wahabis, not the Khmer Rouge. They genuinely believe that these sites lead to idolatry.
Wahabis also have a strong intellectual tradition. They will cite examples from history of such sites becoming places of worship.
I figure the leadership of the Khmer Rouge may have really believed that they were helping the Cambodian people by eliminating class enemies and advancing to an ideal communist state. Killing three million people was just the price they had to pay to achieve that goal.
Which just illustrates that sincere beliefs can cause terrible actions. In Cambodia, it turned out that killing all those millions of people did not produce the desired result of a communist utopia. In Saudi Arabia, there is no evidence that destroying historical artifacts has achieved the desired result of making people live in closer alignment with God’s will.
As a general rule, I’d say any plan which is set in motion with the goal of pleasing God is a suspect plan. There is no objective evidence that God exists or has any preference over what happens on Earth. So doing things to please God is essentially just a random process. Which means the best plan is to stick to actions which produce a desirable result here on Earth and hope that as a possible side benefit those actions also please God if he exists.
The Wahhabi are going to feel pretty silly if they die and Allah tells them he wanted people to worship old buildings.
The Ka‘bah itself is a ship of Theseus. It’s been demolished and rebuilt several times in history, most recently only a few centuries ago. It had been wrecked by a flood in Muhammad’s time and he helped rebuild it. With wood. During a 7th century rebellion by Mecca against the Umayyad caliph Yazid, the Umayyad commander shot fire catapults at Mecca and burned down the Ka‘bah. The Black Stone was stolen by the 9th century Qarmati rebellion and broken into many pieces; when it was returned they had to glue all the pieces back in place.
It’s a rough world out there. But I agree with Little_Nemo that the present destruction is a deliberate totalitarian power move. Downright Orwellian. Dismayed to see one of our Dopers carrying water for the Wahhabis. They make themselves the enemies of all other Muslims.
One of my standard jokes / stories:
Somebody dies & they find themselves facing St. Peter with a gate behind him, a trapdoor in front of him, and a clipboard in one hand. He gives the clipboard to his new visitor saying “Here, fill out this intake form.” Newbie starts down the form: name, languages spoken, last earthly address, etc. Gets to the last question:
Religion:
Jehovah’s Witness
Other
Oops. Turns out that trapdoor gets a lot of use.
Alternatively, when you die, you go stand in a staggeringly huge crowd of people standing on the bank of the River Styx, with a very irate Charon, destitue after a thousand years without a paying passanger.