JIDDA, Saudi Arabia — It is an architectural absurdity. Just south of the
Grand Mosque in Mecca, the Muslim world’s holiest site, a kitsch rendition of
London’s Big Ben is nearing completion. Called the Royal Mecca Clock Tower, it
will be one of the tallest buildings in the world, the centerpiece of a complex
that is housing a gargantuan shopping mall, an 800-room hotel and a prayer hall
for several thousand people. Its muscular form, an unabashed knockoff of the
original, blown up to a grotesque scale, will be decorated with Arabic
inscriptions and topped by a crescent-shape spire in what feels like a cynical
nod to Islam’s architectural past. To make room for it, the Saudi government
bulldozed an 18th-century Ottoman fortress and the hill it stood on.
The tower is just one of many construction projects in the very center of Mecca,
from train lines to numerous luxury high-rises and hotels and a huge expansion
of the Grand Mosque. The historic core of Mecca is being reshaped in ways that
many here find appalling, sparking unusually heated criticism of the
authoritarian Saudi government.
“It is the commercialization of the house of God,” said Sami Angawi, a Saudi
architect who founded a research center that studies urban planning issues
surrounding the hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, and has been one of the
development’s most vocal critics. “The closer to the mosque, the more expensive
the apartments. In the most expensive towers, you can pay millions” for a
25-year leasing agreement, he said. “If you can see the mosque, you pay triple.”
Saudi officials say that the construction boom — and the demolition that comes
with it — is necessary to accommodate the ever-growing numbers of people who
make the pilgrimage to Mecca, a figure that has risen to almost three million
this past year. As a non-Muslim, I was not permitted to visit the city, but many
Muslims I spoke to who know it well — including architects, preservationists and
even some government officials — believe the real motive behind these plans is
money: the desire to profit from some of the most valuable real estate in the
world. And, they add, it has been facilitated by Saudi Arabia’s especially
strict interpretation of Islam, which regards much history after the age of
Muhammad, and the artifacts it produced, as corrupt, meaning that centuries-old
buildings can be destroyed with impunity.
That mentality is dividing the holy city of Mecca — and the pilgrimage
experience — along highly visible class lines, with the rich sealed inside
exclusive air-conditioned high-rises encircling the Grand Mosque and the poor
pushed increasingly to the periphery.
There was a time when the Saudi government’s architecture and urban planning
efforts, especially around Mecca, did not seem so callous. In the 1970s, as the
government was taking control of Aramco, the American conglomerate that managed
the country’s oil fields, skyrocketing oil prices unleashed a wave of national
modernization programs, including a large-scale effort to accommodate those
performing the hajj.
The projects involved some of the world’s great architectural talents, many of
whom were encouraged to experiment with a freedom they were not finding in the
West, where postwar faith in Modernism was largely exhausted. The best of their
works — modern yet sensitive to local environment and traditions — challenge the
popular assumption that Modernist architecture, as practiced in the developing
world, was nothing more than a crude expression of the West’s quest for cultural
dominance.
These include the German architect Frei Otto’s remarkable tent cities from the
late 1970s, made up of collapsible lightweight structures inspired by the
traditions of nomadic Bedouin tribes and intended to accommodate hajj pilgrims
without damaging the delicate ecology of the hills that surround the old city.
Fifty miles to the west, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s Hajj terminal at King
Abdul Aziz International Airport is a similar expression of a form of modernity
that can be sensitive to local traditions and environmental conditions without
reverting to kitsch. A grid of more than 200 tentlike canopies supported on a
system of steel cables and columns, it is divided into small open-air villages,
where travelers can rest and pray in the shade before continuing their journey.
The current plans, by contrast, can read like historical parody. Along with the
giant Big Ben, there are many other overscale developments — including a
proposal for the planned expansion of the Grand Mosque that dwarfs the original
complex — in various mock-Islamic styles.
But the Vegas-like aura of these projects can deflect attention from the real
crime: the way the developments are deforming what by all accounts was a fairly
diverse and unstratified city. The Mecca Clock Tower will be surrounded by a
half-dozen luxury high-rises, each designed in a similar Westminster-meets-Wall
Street style and sitting on a mall that is meant to evoke traditional souks.
Built at various heights at the edge of the Grand Mosque’s courtyard, and
fronted by big arched portes-cocheres, they form a postmodern pastiche that
means to evoke the differences of a real city but will do little to mask the
project’s mind-numbing homogeneity.
Like the luxury boxes that encircle most sports stadiums, the apartments will
allow the wealthy to peer directly down at the main event from the comfort of
their suites without having to mix with the ordinary rabble below.
At the same time, the scale of development has pushed middle-class and poor
residents further and further from the city center. “I don’t know where they
go,” Mr. Angawi said. “To the outskirts of Mecca, or they come to Jidda. Mecca
is being cleansed of Meccans.”
The changes are likely to have as much of an effect on the spiritual character
of the Grand Mosque as on Mecca’s urban fabric. Many people told me that the
intensity of the experience of standing in the mosque’s courtyard has a lot to
do with its relationship to the surrounding mountains. Most of these represent
sacred sites in their own right and their looming presence imbues the space with
a powerful sense of intimacy.
But that experience, too, is certain to be lessened with the addition of each
new tower, which blots out another part of the view. Not that there will be much
to look at: many hillsides will soon be marred by new rail lines, roads and
tunnels, while others are being carved up to make room for still more towers.
“The irony is that developers argue that the more towers you build the more
views you have,” said Faisal al-Mubarak, an urban planner who works at the
ministry of tourism and antiquities. “But only rich people go inside these
towers. They have the views.”
The issue is not just run-of-the-mill class conflict. The city’s makeover also
reflects a split between those who champion turbocharged capitalism and those
who think it should stop at the gates of Mecca, which they see as the embodiment
of an Islamic ideal of egalitarianism.
“We don’t want to bring New York to Mecca,” Mr. Angawi said. “The hajj was
always supposed to be a time when everyone is the same. There are no classes, no
nationalities. It is the one place where we find balance. You are supposed to
leave worldly things behind you.”
The government, however, seems unmoved by such sentiments. When I mentioned Mr.
Angawi’s observations at the end of a long conversation with Prince Sultan, the
minister of tourism and antiquities, he simply frowned.
“When I am in Mecca and go around the kaaba, I don’t look up.”
MECCA, Saudi Arabia (AP) -- Nearly 3
million Muslims from around the world, chanting and raising their hands to
heaven, marched through a desert valley outside Mecca on Thursday on the first
day of the annual hajj pilgrimage.
Dressed in seamless white robes symbolizing the equality of mankind under God,
the pilgrims hiked through the eight-mile valley to Mina, starting a series of
rituals to cleanse themselves of sin.
This year's hajj takes place amid increasing worries across the Islamic world --
over the bloodshed in Iraq, violence in the Palestinian territories and a new
war in Somalia. Amid the crises, tensions have increased between the two main
sects of Islam, Sunnis and Shiites, who come together in the five days of hajj
rituals centered around the holy city of Mecca, birthplace of Islam's Prophet
Muhammad.
''We will not allow sectarian tensions from any party during the hajj season,''
Saudi Arabia's Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz told reporters ahead
of the rituals.
''The pilgrimage is not a place for raising political banners ... or slogans
that divide Muslims, whom God has ordered to be unified,'' Saudi Islamic Affairs
Minister Sheik Salih bin Abdulaziz told pilgrims Thursday. ''The hajj is a
school for teaching unity, mercy and cooperation.''
For pilgrims streaming in from all continents, the hajj is a crowning moment of
faith, a duty for all able-bodied Muslims to carry out at least once. On
Thursday morning, as they have for the past few days, hundreds of thousands
circled the Kaaba, the black cubic stone in Mecca, Islam's holiest site, which
Muslims face when they perform their daily prayers.
''For us it is a vacation away from work and daily life to renew yourself
spiritually,'' said Ahmed Karkoutly, an American doctor from Brownsville, Texas.
''You feel you part of a universe fulfilling God's will. It's a cosmic motion,
orbiting the Kaaba.''
On Wednesday, pilgrims packed the streets surrounding the Kaaba, some
prostrating in prayer, others diving into the traditional outdoor markets to buy
perfumes, fabrics and prayer beads. In gleaming shopping malls overlooking the
Kaaba, pilgrims checked out the goods at stores like the Body Shop or lined up
at a Cinnabon.
Announcements in Arabic and English came over loudspeakers as families lay out
blankets and sat on pavements outside the Kaaba. ''Please do not sit in walkways
to allow your brother pilgrims to move freely,''
Along one curb sat a group of Nigerian women, their robes printed with the name
of a charity organization that helped them make the pilgrimage, while nearby
were dozens of Afghan women, with bright red ribbons tied to their headscarves
to mark their tour group.
Saudi authorities estimate nearly 3 million pilgrims are attending this year's
hajj -- more than 1.6 million from abroad, with the rest Saudis or other
residents of the kingdom.
More than 30,000 police and other security forces have fanned out to help smooth
traffic around ritual sites that have been plagued with deadly stampedes. More
than 360 people were killed during last year's hajj in a stampede at Mina during
a ritual symbolizing the stoning of the devil, sparked when some pilgrims in the
crowd stumbled over luggage.
Saudi Arabia spent more than $1 billion over the past year on a project to
renovate the stoning site, where huge crowds file past three stone walls
symbolizing the devil to pelt them with stones. New entrances and exits were
added around the walls to ease the flow, and this year authorities made repeated
announcements to pilgrims not to bring luggage to the site.
On Thursday, the crowds filtered out of Mecca toward Mina through the desert
valley, chanting, ''Labbeik, allahum, labbeik,'' Arabic for ''I am here, Lord.''
They will spend the night in a tent city in Mina before heading Friday for Mount
Arafat, the site where Muhammad gave his final sermon in 632. There they spend
the day and night in prayer and meditation before returning the Mina for the
stoning ritual.
