What a mecca for certain interests, huh?
"Two million in Mecca for start of hajj" by Mokhtar Shehata and Benjamin Wiacek | Associated Press October 03, 2014
MECCA — Saudi Arabia sought to assure the public that the kingdom was safe and free of health scares as an estimated 2 million Muslims streamed into a sprawling tent city near Mecca on Thursday for the start of the Islamic hajj pilgrimage.
Earlier this year, Saudi authorities banned those from Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea — the countries hardest hit in the Ebola epidemic — from getting visas as a precaution against the virus. The decision has affected a total of 7,400 pilgrims from the three countries.
Ebola is believed to have sickened about 7,100 people in West Africa and killed more than 3,300, according to the World Health Organization.
The hajj sees massive crowds from around the world gather at the Kaaba in Mecca as part of a five-day spiritual journey meant to cleanse the faithful of sin and bring them closer to God. All male pilgrims dress in simple, white robes as a sign of equality before God.
The kingdom has not found a single case of Ebola so far and is taking all measures to ensure the safety and health of the pilgrims, said Manal Mansour, the head of the Saudi Health Ministry’s department for prevention of infectious diseases.
‘‘The most important precaution that [the kingdom] has taken was to restrict visas from the affected areas,’’ she said.
Upon arrival to the kingdom, pilgrims were asked to fill out ‘‘medical screening cards with data’’ and asked about their travels in the past 21 days, Mansour said.
That didn't work in Dallas.
There were other health concerns related to the hajj earlier this year. The kingdom had to improve its antiinfection measures after it was hit by an upswing in the number of people who had contracted a respiratory virus known as the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome in the spring. There have been more than 750 cases of MERS in the kingdom since 2012, of which 319 people died, including several health workers.
See: Globe Shows Saudi Arabia MERSy
Major General Mansour Al-Turki, spokesman for the Saudi Interior Ministry, told AP the kingdom also faces continuous threats from terrorists, but is prepared to ensure a safe hajj.
They are the terrorists through their $upport in terms of money and manpower, so....
Saudi Arabia and four other Arab countries are taking part in US-led airstrikes against the Islamic State group and Al Qaeda fighters in Iraq and Syria. Militants have vowed revenge.
I will be getting back around to ISIS at some point this month.
Al Qaeda militants launched a series of deadly attacks in Saudi Arabia aimed at toppling the monarchy a decade ago, though none were directed at Mecca. No major attacks have occurred in recent years during the hajj.
‘‘We have confronted Al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia and we have defeated them,’’ Turki said. ‘‘But of course at the same time being we are still considering the threat, which is a continuous threat, and therefore we have actually enforced our security readiness at all the borders.’’
Pilgrim Zaid Ajaz Amanea from the United Kingdom said he felt safe. ‘‘I don’t have to fear anything from anybody because I’m coming to God’s house,’’ he said.
It's when he returns home to England that he has something to fear.
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And look at the make-over by Jewish War Daily gives its Sunni Saudi ally:
"Saudi overhaul reshapes Islam’s holiest city Mecca" by Aya Batrawy | Associated Press October 02, 2014
MECCA — As a child, Osama al-Bar walked from his home past Islam’s holiest site, the Kaaba, to the market of spice and fabric merchants where his father owned a store. At that time, Mecca was so small, pilgrims could sit at the cube-shaped Kaaba and look out at the serene desert mountains where the Prophet Muhammad walked.
Now the market and the homes are gone. Monumental luxury hotel towers crowd around the Grand Mosque where the Kaaba is located, dwarfing it. Steep rocky hills overlooking the mosque have been leveled and are now covered with cranes building more towers in row after row.
‘‘My father and all the people who lived in Mecca wouldn’t recognize it,’’ said Bar, who is Mecca’s mayor.
As Muslims from around the world stream into Mecca for the annual hajj pilgrimage this week, they come to a city undergoing the biggest transformation in its history.
Decades ago, this was a low-built city of centuries-old neighborhoods. Over the years, it saw piecemeal renewal projects. But in the mid-2000s, the kingdom launched its most ambitious overhaul ever with mega-projects that, though incomplete, have reshaped Mecca.
Old neighborhoods have been erased for hotel towers and malls built right up to the edge of the Grand Mosque. Historic sites significant for Islam have been demolished. Next to the Kaaba soars the world’s third-tallest skyscraper, topped by a gigantic clock, which is splashed with colored lights at night.
Looks like sacrilege to me, and a failure to uphold the covenant as guardian with Muslims worldwide.
‘‘It’s not Mecca. It’s Mecca-hattan. This tower and the lights in it are like Vegas,’’ said Sami Angawi, an architect who spent his life studying hajj and is an outspoken critic of the changes. ‘‘The truth of the history of Mecca is wiped out ... with bulldozers and dynamite. Is this development?’’
Critics complain that the holy city is being stripped of its spirituality. They also say the hajj is being robbed of its more than 1,400-year-old message that all Muslims, rich or poor, are equal before God as they perform the rites meant to cleanse them of sin, starting and ending by circling the Kaaba seven times.
Mecca is revered by hundreds of millions of Muslims worldwide. They face the Kaaba every day in their prayers. The Grand Mosque is one of the few places where Muslims of all stripes gather — Sunnis and Shi’ites, secular Muslims, mystics, and hard-liners.
And no fights?
Overseeing Mecca is also a key source of prestige for Saudi Arabia’s monarchy. The past two kings — the current one, Abdullah, and his predecessor, Fahd — have adopted the further title of ‘‘custodian of the two holy mosques’’ to boost their status, referring to Mecca’s Grand Mosque and Muhammad’s mosque in nearby Medina.
Now Mecca is being molded to a particularly Saudi vision that bolsters the rule of the Saud royal family.
Well, it's not like $hit rulers never used religion before.
Two forces shape that vision. One is raw, petrodollar-fueled capitalism.
Critical to understand the tangled relationships in the region.
Mecca’s planners are largely catering to wealthier pilgrims by constructing five-star hotels, surrounding the Kaaba in marble-sheathed luxury. Nearby, pilgrims can shop at international chains, including a Paris Hilton store and a gender-segregated Starbucks.
Like all governments.
The other force is Wahhabism, the strict, puritanical interpretation of Islam that the Saud rulers elevated to the country’s official doctrine. Saudi kings, for example, have given Wahhabi clerics a monopoly over preaching at the Grand Mosque. In return, the clerics staunchly back the monarchy.
Yeah, somehow the beheadings as official government policy never drew the rage ISIS did. Must be the oil.
One tenet of Wahhabism is that Muslim tombs or sites connected to revered figures — even the Prophet Muhammad, his family, and companions — should be destroyed to avoid veneration of anything other than God. It is the same iconoclastic zeal that has prompted militants from the Islamic State group to blow up Muslim shrines in Iraq and Syria.
Yeah, how odd that the "terrorists" would be about destroying Islamic history. Makes you wonder for jwho they are really working.
In Mecca, few sites associated with Muhammad remain. Many were destroyed in previous expansions of the Grand Mosque in the 1980s and 1990s, and the new development is finishing off much of what remains. In 2008, the house of Abu Bakr, Muhammad’s successor as leader of the Muslim community, was razed to make way for a Hilton.
The country’s top religious official, Grand Mufti Abdul-Aziz Al-Sheik, backed such demolitions last year, saying ‘‘the removal of such things within the expansion is necessary.’’
They backed them, huh?
The urban renewal is necessary, officials say, to accommodate hajj pilgrims whose numbers are expected to swell from around 3 million currently to nearly 7 million by 2040.
The $60-billion Grand Mosque expansion will almost double the area for pilgrims to pray at the Kaaba. About half the cost went to buying about 5,800 houses that had to be razed for the expansion, said Bar, the Mecca mayor. Domes and pillars dating back to rule by the Ottoman Empire are being pulled down to put up modern facilities.
The Grand Mosque’s expansion is being headed by the Saudi Binladin Group, which also built the clock tower. The Binladin family has been close to Al Sauds for decades and runs major building projects around the country.
And world.
Al Qaeda’s late leader Osama bin Laden was a renegade son disowned by the family in the 1990s.
That was the cover story mission he was given.
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Generally positive treatment for a country where most of the 9/11 hijackers were allegedly from (if you buy into the official cover story, that is), and one that has been integral in creating ISIS (as it vows to fight ISIS).
It's all whatever pri$m you are seeing the news through, 'eh?
