I read this news piece on Makkah becoming a skyscraper city.
Islam’s holiest city set for 130-skyscraper redevelopment
The following poem came to mind
OZYMANDIAS
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.Percy Bysse Shelley, published in 1818
For those of us who have that emotional attachment to the Islam of the quaint villages and towns, this is a disaster.
The reason I put this up was not because I am some luddite, but because I fear the ‘Dubai-ification’ of Makkah and Madinah are well underway. If one looks at Masud Khans video on hotels in Makkah, it is clear something needs to be done. There isn’t an easy answer, but that poem still sticks in my mind. The other reference that popped up was to the tribe of Thamud. Maybe this is displaced frustration at what is happening in the Emirates.
What tears at my heart is the destruction of the ancient places connected with the history of Islam in the name of preventing shirk, to put up these monstrosities.
someone should blow it up to….. erm.. -20x magnification
Considering that more and more people are going to Hajj and Umrah every year..is it really a bad thing that these skyscraper hotels are being built?