Rattlesnake Ridge      

 
      BFF

“However there is more at stake than a new interest in heritage or a desire to attract tourists as part of the kingdom’s bid to diversify its overwhelmingly oil-reliant economy. As elsewhere, controlling history is key to power. The House of al’Saud has only ever been able to rule its kingdom with the collaboration and support of the largely ultra-conservative clergy. Reforms can be pushed through – such as the introduction of women’s education, which provoked rioting in the towns of al-Qassem in the 1960s – but only with the consent of the majority of clerics. For religious conservatives in the kingdom, any physical traces of history, even that of the first Muslims, is a distraction from God and raises the spectre of polytheism. So for many years, all traces of early worship within the kingdom, let alone of anything that might be deemed un-Islamic, have been destroyed. Scores of shrines, religious places, cemeteries and historical sites have been razed, damaged or built over. This is true even, indeed especially, in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. There is thus religious – and therefore political – resistance to preserving anything that is left. Mammon as well as God plays a role in the new contest of the kingdom’s history. Most recently there has been a row between developers who hope to build apartments………….”

Nothing in all history has done as much damage to the monuments and artifacts of the Arabian Peninsula’s past as the expansion of Saudi rule to cover the Peninsula some eighty years ago. The theocratic Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has done what centuries of time could not: destroyed monuments from before Islam and especially from the early years of Islam. Ancient houses where the Prophet Mohammed and his early companions were born, lived, and prayed, have been torn down by an alliance of Salafi Wahhabi stupidity and dogma and the greed of the potentates and princes and their developer partners. In their place, high rise hotels and apartment complexes and shopping malls have risen.

Cheers
mhg


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