The dominant architectural site in [Mecca] is not the Sacred Mosque, where the Kaaba, the symbolic focus of Muslims everywhere, is. It is the obnoxious Makkah Royal Clock Tower hotel, which, at 1,972 feet, is among the world’s tallest buildings. It is part of a mammoth development of skyscrapers that includes luxury shopping malls and hotels [...] The city is now surrounded by the brutalism of rectangular steel and concrete structures — an amalgam of Disneyland and Las Vegas. — NY Times
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Robbed by whom? Tired of this trite rhetoric of victimhood surrounding anything that the New York Times finds offensive.
Now i can eat a Big Mac across the street from the mosque in mecca? Like the one time I ate a Burger Royal with Cheese within visible distance of Mao's tomb. McDonalds bitches McDonalds! Sacre Bleu! ........Once when visiting Notre Dame in Paris ( I think) I accidently got in line to kiss what was supposed to be Jesus' crown of thorns. The priest clearly knew I was a tourist with my heavy Canon AE-1 camera in my left hand and water in my right..............these towers with malls may actually be worse than a McDonalds. I can just see it now- NY Times in 5 years - "Pilgrim falls from tower after heavy drinking the night before. The pilgrim, a man with one foot in western secularism, successful stock broker, and the other foot in sacred tradition, patron of mosque so and so in Turkey, was staying at the penthouse of one luxury hotel, drank heavily the night before, mainly Scotch. His friends said he was in good spirits the night before and was quite the romantic about human nature and God while staring down from the cantilevering pool, staring down on the holy site of his pilgrimage. His friends noted that he more than once shouted into the sky and down at the mosque while blasting some trance from the British Ministry of Sound. It is still unclear if the pilgrim fell or jumped. ".........................memoirs of an early morning jumper - "Is it the alcohol that gives me such anxiety or is it that I have forsaken you oh mighty one....in my arrogance I have rebuked and defiled all that is meaningful and holy. I am alone on this cold morning with only sounds of trance, bad trance, what is this Scooter shit? "How much is the Fish?" That is a song title? The lead singer used to be the lead singer of Celebrate the Nun, bad german english goth pop from the 80's. There is no more celebration in this post modern world where all trends and winds of change occur and blow at the dame time. No scarcity, no reason for faith for that which is scarce - sacred. I am a man of God. I am a man of my own will. My will is nothing without imaginary goals, rules regulation and bullshit ethics which bring me happiness, or so they say? I like bacon. How does one live with such blinders, I wish I could. I am only here for my father who never made this trip. I made all this money on wall street for him and now I am here without a cause. The Scotch is empty and so am I. I hope you forgive me as I make my descent..fuck it- maybe I will meet that holy Californian man Jim Morrison and his Greek cousin Dionysus on the other, but first one last puff of this Cuban, a commodity of globalization and capitalism of a forbidden communist product!".........car alarms.......zoning anyone? What city planner allowed this under what pretense. They ought to just make a jumpers pool filled with old Ladas at the base of the tower. Can I have that commision?
I visited the kingdom in 2000, and spent time in Riyadh, Jeddah and Mecca. Yes, they are being robbed of their history, and they are doing it to themselves. There is a desire by the royal family to be "Western" and "modern", and this has led to plenty of bizarre architecture, erasing so much of the local vernacular. It was already well underway fourteen years ago, and I can only imagine how much worse it is now.
Saudi Arabia is, to a very considerable extent, established on ...not exactly the robbing of history but rather the abolition of histories, most histories except that which maintains and guards their ultra-orthodox iconoclastic version of their religion (the Wahabi thread) in marriage with tribal hegemony (Al Saoud, as a family, being on top), rife with corruption, despotism, propped up firstly by the British then guarded and kept under the wings of the US.
In a way, its a dual iconoclasticism: religious iconcolasticism and unadulterated capitalist iconoclasticism inhabiting the body of the despotic self-centric authority.
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