Plutocrats of Mecca, a Sinai Madness, a Taxing Prophet…………
“A “controversial” Egyptian writer has suggested that Egypt should build a new Kaaba in Sinai for all religions, where people of all faiths can go on pilgrimage, with the goal reducing the importance of Mecca. Alaraya daily of Qatar reports the writer claims his proposal will earn the Egyptian treasury about 40 billion Egyptian pounds a year. The daily reports that he has claimed in the past that the world hates “us” because of Islam and that Islam ended with the death of the Prophet Mohammed……….”
I replaced the term they had with “controversial”. Even then, it is an understatement. I am surprised he is still breathing somewhere in the Middle East. Or maybe he is not in the Middle East.
I believe the Egyptian man is unbalanced (impolite people would call him crazy), even if we allow for something like a First Amendment, which does not exist anywhere in the region.
The whole idea of a new Kaaba is absurd. But my economics-trained mind can’t help but explore the impact on all the oligarchs and plutocrats who own all the five-star hotels crowding out the House of God in Mecca. The Prophet himself was a believer in a form of “market socialism”, with taxes and all that (tea-baggers not welcome). He would be outraged at all the new idols surrounding the Kaaba, a bare fourteen centuries after he destroyed the original idols of Mecca. The plutocrats of Mecca have always made money off pilgrims, since long before Islam.
Cheers
mhg
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