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Posted by admin in Hypocrites in Islam, Islam: The Universal Message of Peace, ISLAMOPHOBIA on February 11th, 2013
Courtyard of the Prophet Mohammed(PBUH) Mosque in the Saudi holy city of Medina (AFP Photo / Mahmud Hams)
The key Islamic heritage site, including Prophet Mohammed’s shrine, is to be bulldozed, as Saudi Arabia plans a $ 6 billion expansion of Medina’s holy Masjid an-Nabawi Mosque. However, Muslims remain silent on the possible destruction.
Work on the Masjid an-Nabawi in Medina, is planned to start as soon as the annual Hajj pilgrimage comes to a close at the end of November.
“After the Hajj this year, in one months’ time, the bulldozers will move in and will start to demolish the last part of Mecca, the grand mosque which is at least 1,000 years old,” Dr. Irfan Alawi of the Islamic Heritage Research Foundation, told RT.
After the reconstruction, the mosque is expected to become the world’s largest building, with a capacity for 1.6 million people.
And while the need to expand does exist as more pilgrims are flocking to holy sites every year, nothing has been said on how the project will affect the surroundings of the mosque, also historic sites.
Concerns are growing that the expansion of Masjid an-Nabawi will come at the price of three of the world’s oldest mosques nearby, which hold the tombs of Prophet Mohammed(PBUH) and two of his closest companions, Abu Bakr and Umar. The expansion project which will cost 25 billion SAR (more than US $6 billion) reportedly requires razing holy sites, as old as the seventh century.
The Saudis insist that colossal expansion of both Mecca and Medina is essential to make a way for the growing numbers of pilgrims. Both Mecca and Medina host 12 million visiting pilgrims each year and this number is expected to increase to 17 million by 2025.
Authorities and hotel developers are working hard to keep pace, however, the expansions have cost the oldest cities their historical surroundings as sky scrapers, luxury hotels and shopping malls are being erected amongst Islamic heritage.
A room in a hotel or apartment in a historic area may cost up to $ 500 per night. And that’s all in or near Mecca, a place where the Prophet Mohammed(PBUH) insisted all Muslims would be equal.
“They just want to make a lot of money from the super-rich elite pilgrims, but for the poor pilgrims it is getting very expensive and they cannot afford it,”
Dr. Irfan Al Alawi said.
Stephen A. Schwarzman is Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of Blackstone and the Chairman of the board of directors of its general partner, Blackstone Group Management L.L.C. He has been involved in all phases of the firm’s development since its founding in 1985.
Mr. Schwarzman began his career at Lehman Brothers, where he was elected Managing Director in 1978 at the age of 31. He was engaged principally in the firm’s mergers and acquisitions business from 1977 to 1984, and served as Chairman of the firm’s Mergers & Acquisitions Committee in 1983 and 1984.
Mr. Schwarzman is a member of The Council on Foreign Relations and The Business Council. He is on the board of The New York Public Library, and The Asia Society. He serves on The JP Morgan Chase National Advisory Board, The New York City Partnership Board of Directors and The Advisory Board of the School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing. Mr. Schwarzman is a Trustee of The Frick Collection in New York City and Chairman Emeritus of the Board of The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He also was awarded the Légion d’honneur by President Jacques Chirac.
Mr. Schwarzman holds a BA from Yale University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He has served as an adjunct professor at the Yale School of Management and on the Harvard Business School Board of Dean’s Advisors.
Jabal Omar complex – a 40 tower ensemble – is being depicted as a new pearl of Mecca. When complete, it will consist of six five star hotels, seven 39 storey residential towers offering 520 restaurants, 4, 360 commercial and retail shops.
But to build this tourist attraction the Saudi authorities destroyed the Ottoman era Ajyad Fortress and the hill it stood on.
The Washington-based Gulf Institute estimated that 95 percent of sacred sites and shrines in the two cities have been destroyed in the past twenty years.
The Prophet’s birthplace was turned into a library and the house of his first wife, Khadijah, was replaced with a public toilet block.
Also the expansion and development might threaten many locals homes, but so far most Muslims have remained silent on the issue.
“Mecca is a holy sanctuary as stated in the Quran it is no ordinary city. The Muslims remain silent against the Saudi Wahhabi destruction because they fear they will not be allowed to visit the Kindom again,” said Dr. Al Alawi.
The fact that there is no reaction on possible destruction has raised talks about hypocrisy because Muslims are turning a blind eye to that their faith people are going to ruin sacred sites.
“Some of the Sunni channels based in the United Kingdom are influenced by Saudi petro dollars and dare not to speak against the destruction, but yet are one of the first to condemn the movie made by non Muslims,” Dr. Al Alawi said.
Posted by admin in Hypocrites in Islam, Islam: The Universal Message of Peace on February 11th, 2013
In the Grand Mosque of Mecca, is an elegant, Ottoman portico from the 17th century. In the latest development plan developed for the city of Mecca by Saudi authorities, the portico has been ordered destroyed. Its demolition, a familiar sight in Mecca, would have proceeded unnoticed, were it not for an objection raised by a Saudi historian based in the United Kingdom who raised his voice against what he saw was an ordered evisceration of Meccan history. Irfan Al-Alawi, Director of the Islamic Heritage Foundation described what the Saudi Government is doing in Mecca as an act of “cultural vandalism”, a systematic destruction of the heritage of Islam. In response, Mohammad Jomaa of the Bin Laden Group that is overseeing the redevelopment of Mecca simply said that the destruction of the portico was justified because it would triple the amount of space available.
Of course, it is not only the portico that stands to be slayed by Saudi bulldozers. In the past several years, several other historic monuments in Mecca and Medina have fallen to rubble when the space argument is deployed by the Saudis. At the end of October last year, as the Hajj season was coming to a close, Saudi authorities announced that they were planning to raze the shrine of the Holy Prophet in order to accommodate a 6 billion dollar expansion of Masjid-Al-Nabawi in Medina. Also not accommodated in the new plan was the Masjid Ghamama where the Holy Prophet was said to have given his first Eid sermon. Back in Mecca, the Masjid al Haram compound is dwarfed by the Abraj Al Bait skyscraper apartment and hotel complex, whose incongruous and ugly clock tower looks down on pilgrims inside the mosque. This apartment complex was built by destroying the Ottoman era Aiyad Fort and the hill it stood upon. The argument then as now, was that the demands of now, of new hotels and glitzier malls, far outweigh the concerns of preserving the past.
Technically speaking, since both Mecca and Medina fall within the nation state boundaries of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the rest of the world’s Muslims, history loving or not, have limited rights over what happens to the structures within the two cities. Just like no Hajj pilgrimage is possible without a Saudi visa, no objection against the taking down of mosques and porticoes and forts is possible as a non-Saudi Muslim. Given this equation enabled by a world divided up into nation states, Saudi sovereignty is the last judgment over what is history and what is heresy and whether all vestiges of the past, from the holiest to the most ancient are replaced by clock towers and luxury hotels.
Because the most frequent argument employed by the Saudi Arabian Government in favor of destroying ancient sites is space for pilgrims; one method to protest against the destruction of history, and argue for the preservation of the past would have been for the world’s Muslims to protest such desecration by not participating in the pilgrimage. Since this is impossible, clashing as it does with the religious duties of the individual Muslim, the Saudis trump card in determining what counts as part of Islamic history and what can be relegated to the dust is revealed. The destruction of a portico or a part of a mosque or an ancient tomb in this sense is not simply as a matter of difference of opinion but as an analogy of the tension between individual salvation and collective action.
Individual salvation for the believing Muslim dictates the Hajj pilgrimage at least once in a lifetime, however altered with towers and tourists and malls the holy space designated for spiritual seeking may be. To rebel against the keepers of the space, against their capitalist judgments of the worth of this or that, of the aesthetics of holiness or the sanctity of preserving the sites that tell the story, means a rebellion of the collective that the individual, which in the calculations of faith and duty the individual Muslim cannot afford. Trapped in this conundrum, the old towers and porticoes will fall, like the mosques and tombs before them and Mecca and Medina will be forever changed to accommodate the salvation of the millions that pass through them.
Rafia Zakaria is a columnist for DAWN. She is a writer and PhD candidate in Political Philosophy whose work and views have been featured in the New York Times, Dissent the Progressive, Guernica, and on Al Jazeera English, the BBC, and National Public Radio. She is the author of Silence in Karachi, forthcoming from Beacon Press.
Posted by admin in BOOT THE SCOUNDRELS OR SHOWDAZ, Hypocrites in Islam, Islam: The Universal Message of Peace, Pakistan-A Nation of Hope on February 10th, 2013
RIYADH: Saudi Arabia beheaded a Pakistani man in the eastern Khubar province on Wednesday after he was convicted of drug trafficking, the interior ministry announced.
Arshad Mohammed was arrested for smuggling heroin and hashish into the kingdom, the ministry was quoted as saying by the official SPA news agency.
His execution brings to four the number of people executed in Saudi Arabia so far this year.
Last year, the kingdom beheaded 76 people, according to an AFP tally based on official figures. The US-based Human Rights Watch put the number at 69.
Rape, murder, apostasy, armed robbery and drug trafficking are all punishable by death under Saudi Arabia’s Shariah, or Islamic law.
The prince, who is not in line for the Saudi throne, was one of 10 people handed jail terms of four to 10 years in connection with an operation which landed two tonnes of cocaine at an airfield outside Paris in 1999.
Prince Nayef was convicted of illegally importing drugs, of complicity in the transport, detention and provision of drugs and of criminal conspiracy.
He was accused of providing a jet to transport the drugs from Colombia and using his diplomatic immunity as cover.
A grandson of Saudi Arabia’s founding monarch Abdulaziz, the prince has denied any involvement in the drug-trafficking ring.
His lawyers were not immediately available for comment after Thursday’s appeal court ruling.
The investigation leading to the prince’s conviction began in June 1999, when 800kg of cocaine with a street value of $30 million was seized by police in a raid near Paris.
He was indicted on the basis of testimony from three Colombian former drug barons – Oscar Eduardo Campuzano Zapata, Juan Gabriel Usuga Norena and Carlos Alfonso Ramon Zapata – as part of a plea-bargain in a separate drugs trial in the United States.
The Colombians, also convicted in absentia last year, were respectively handed four-, nine- and 10-year jail sentences.
But the appeals court increased those sentences so now all three face 10 years in jail.
The Colombians and Prince Nayef were ordered by the court last year to jointly pay a total fine of 80 million euros to the French customs service.
On Tuesday the court ordered the Colombians to pay a supplementary fine of two million euros each.
A Spanish art dealer and financier was handed a five-year sentence last year for taking part in a conspiracy with the aim of importing drugs.
Five other defendants were also given 10 years on the same charges as the prince in the 2007 hearing.
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/11/16/18628884.php
The 53-year-old prince was one of 10 people handed jail terms of four to 10 years in connection with an operation which landed two tonnes of cocaine at an airfield outside Paris in 1999. The judge ruled to uphold international arrest warrants against Prince Nayef and the nine other defendants, who include three former Colombian drugs barons.
Prince Nayef was convicted of illegally importing drugs, of complicity in the transport, detention and provision of drugs and of criminal conspiracy. He is accused of using his diplomatic immunity to smuggle drugs to France on board a private jet. A grandson of Saudi Arabia’s founding monarch Abdulaziz and son-in-law to the Saudi deputy defence minister, the prince denies any involvement in drug trafficking. A Saudi representative at the hearing said he intended to appeal.
The investigation leading to his prince’s conviction began in June 1999, when police acting on a tip-off seized 800 kilos of cocaine with a street value of $30 million a raid near Paris. Prince Nayef – who is alleged to have made contacts with Colombia’s Medellin cartel while studying at the University of Miami in the early 1980s – is accused of providing a jet to transport the drugs from Colombia to Paris.
http://www.kuwaittimes.net/read_news.php?newsid=MzM1Mzk1NDcz
http://www.thedossier.ukonline.c
A French court sentenced a Saudi prince to 10 years in prison for abusing his role in a large-scale cocaine smuggling operation. But the prince isn’t likely to see the inside of a cell anytime soon. Saudi Prince Nayef bin Sultan bin Fawwaz al-Shaalan, believed to be living in Saudi Arabia, did not appear at today’s hearing, or the trial which preceded it, and was sentenced in absentia by the court. It also fined him $100 million for his role in the plot to smuggle two tons of cocaine from Colombia to an airport outside Paris in 1999. Nine other defendants were also convicted in absentia for their part in the operation. The prince, who is the grandson of Saudi Arabia’s founding monarch Abdulaziz and the son-in-law to the Saudi deputy defense minister, was found guilty of using his diplomatic status and a 727 jet belonging to the Saudi royal family to transport the cocaine. The United States has also indicted al-Shaalan with conspiracy to possess and distribute cocaine but does not have a policy of trying cases in absentia. In 2005, a U.S. court found two other members of the operation guilty and sentenced them each to 24 years in prison and to pay $25,000 in fines. Former Drug Enforcement Administration official Tom Raffanello, who oversaw the U.S. investigation of Prince Nayef al-Shaalan, applauded the sentence of the French court. “I think it is a great thing. I wish more countries would try criminals in absentia, when it’s obvious they have avoided prosecution.” The prince is said to be living in Saudi Arabia, which does not have an extradition treaty with the United States. It also does not have one with France. “Because of that we have to catch a break in order to catch him,” said Raffanello. Prince Nayef al-Shaalan has denied the smuggling charges and claims he has been cleared of any wrongdoing by the Saudi government.
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