The news of a tower with a clock face in the NZZ brings a lot of devastating urban developments in the Middle East days. With Saudi Oil money (Remember: Saudi Aramco) and developers such as the Bin Laden Group (Bush-Friendly) gebulldozert are centuries old structures and replaced by parking lots, highways and Neo-pomp-skyscrapers. Spirituality is replaced by oil-worship, made the car as a sacred cow to the center of the movement.
madness, hubris and greed get in the Middle East fixed form ... and advice for the mechanics of the largest one day point blade comes from Switzerland.
A lone article in the Independent from 2005 warns of the devastating development:
The destruction of Mecca: Saudi hardliners are wiping out their own heritage
Historic Mecca, the cradle of Islam, is being buried in an unprecedented onslaught by religious zealots.http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-destruction-of-mecca-saudi-hardliners-are-wiping-out-their-own-heritage-501647.html
Almost all of the rich and multi-layered history of the holy city is gone. The Washington-based Gulf Institute estimates that 95 per cent of millennium-old buildings have been demolished in the past two decades.
Now the actual birthplace of the Prophet Mohamed is facing the bulldozers, with the connivance of Saudi religious authorities whose hardline interpretation of Islam is compelling them to wipe out their own heritage.
It is the same oil-rich orthodoxy that pumped money into the Taliban as they prepared to detonate the Bamiyan buddhas in 2000. And the same doctrine - violently opposed to all forms of idolatry - that this week decreed that the Saudis' own king be buried in an unmarked desert grave.
A Saudi architect, Sami Angawi, who is an acknowledged specialist on the region's Islamic architecture, told The Independent that the final farewell to Mecca is imminent: "What we are witnessing are the last days of Mecca and Medina."
According to Dr Angawi - who has dedicated his life to preserving Islam's two holiest cities - as few as 20 structures are left that date back to the lifetime of the Prophet 1,400 years ago and those that remain could be bulldozed at any time. "This is the end of history in Mecca and Medina and the end of their future," said Dr Angawi.....
Dominating these new developments is the Jabal Omar Which scheme will feature two 50-storey hotel towers and seven 35-storey apartment blocks - all within a stone's throw of the Grand Mosque.
Dr Angawi said: "lot Mecca should be the reflection of the multicultural Muslim world, not a concrete parking."
And here is the architectural masterpiece''(right) with London's equivalent of ...
sorry for the long post. but most go to the quote back in almost full length.
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