What is going on?

The Saudis are bulldozing Islam's heritage. Why the silence from the Muslim world?

The long-cherished ambition of Saudi Arabia’s ruling Wahhabi sect to smash up the ancient buildings of Mecca and Medina is nearing fruition.

In Mecca, the house of one of Mohammed’s wives has been demolished to make space for public lavatories. His birthplace may disappear, too, as part of King Abdullah’s scheme to complement the skyscrapers and shopping malls with a Grand Mosque fashioned from the same materials as a multi-storey car park in Wolverhampton.

As for Islam’s second holiest place, the city of Medina, a recent article by Jerome Taylor in the Independent revealed a megalomaniac plan to pull down three 7th-century mosques. Taylor added: “Ten years ago, a mosque which belonged to the Prophet’s grandson was dynamited. Pictures of the demolition that were secretly taken and smuggled out of the kingdom showed the religious police celebrating.”

Only a small minority of the world’s billion Muslims are Wahhabis, despite the tens of billions of petrodollars spent by the Saudis propagating their creed. (Bosnia, for example, is now littered with Saudi-style mosques, replacing the graceful Ottoman architecture that Wahhabis detest.) Many pilgrims to Mecca are revolted by the marriage of Puritanism and greed they find there. Yet protests are scattered and muted. Why?

One answer is that the House of Saud, though widely hated, is also feared: its wealth and terrorist connections make it unlikely that, say, a Pakistani politician would speak openly about the desecration of the Hajj.

The West can hardly complain about such gutlessness: this year’s Hajj exhibition at the British Museum was creepily sanitised – no mention of bulldozers or the 2,000ft clock tower built right next to the Kaaba, the black cube-shaped building that is the centrepiece of Islamic devotions.

But what sticks in the craw is the hypocrisy of Muslims who throw a fit if Israeli archaeologists carry out non-intrusive work underneath the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, “Islam’s third holiest place”, as we’re constantly reminded. Such anger would be more convincing if the first and second holy sites weren’t being ploughed up by a police state. Likewise, are cartoons of Mohammed really more offensive than reducing the remains of his life to rubble?

As one Middle East expert put it to me: “Jews disturbing the Dome of the Rock fits into an anti-Western narrative, so Muslims can cope with that. The Saudi destruction of Mecca doesn’t fit into that narrative, and so there’s virtual silence.” Something worth bearing in mind, perhaps, when you wonder why the murder of Muslims by Muslims in Darfur or Syria provokes only limited outrage in the Islamic world. Read more at The Saudis are bulldozing Islam's heritage. Why the silence from the Muslim world? – Telegraph Blogs

Bottom line …

This sort of proves the reality. Arabs are outraged only when they are told to be outraged and only to the extent allowed by the ruler of the kingdom. The issue isn’t the Jews in Israel, it is misdirection, giving “their own people” an alternate target to hate rather than hating a repressive government that does not honor fundamental human rights.

If Saudis were not sitting on all that oil and in control of all those Petrodollars and 9/11 occurred, the survivors would now be worshiping on a sea of glass.

At some point in time, all of the manufactured outrage that supports a corrupt regime must come to light. Sparking a revolt and a reformation of a religion. It is unlikely that it will happen in my lifetime or even within two generations – but it will happen. At some point in time, oppressed people rise up in revolution against their oppressors. Only by financing the expansion of Mosques and funding terrorism in exchange for not overthrowing the kingdom, they are delaying the inevitable. Bribing your citizens with entitlements only goes so far when human rights and dignity are sacrificed in process. They need the mantle of 12th century laws to justify the barbarism to keep their people down. Pretty much why American Arabs only visit their homeland and do not return to live.

-- steve