Bush's pals are wiping out the heritage of Islam.

[onehandle]

That nutball Republican that suggested nuking Mecca didn't count on fundamentalists doing it themselves.

Saudi Arabia. A grand model for the Middle-East.
_________________________________________________

The destruction of Mecca: Saudi hardliners are wiping out their own heritage

Historic Mecca, the cradle of Islam, is being buried in an unprecedented onslaught by religious zealots.

Almost all of the rich and multi-layered history of the holy city is gone. The Washington-based Gulf Institute estimates that 95 per cent of millennium-old buildings have been demolished in the past two decades.

Now the actual birthplace of the Prophet Mohamed is facing the bulldozers, with the connivance of Saudi religious authorities whose hardline interpretation of Islam is compelling them to wipe out their own heritage.

It is the same oil-rich orthodoxy that pumped money into the Taliban as they prepared to detonate the Bamiyan buddhas in 2000. And the same doctrine - violently opposed to all forms of idolatry - that this week decreed that the Saudis' own king be buried in an unmarked desert grave.

A Saudi architect, Sami Angawi, who is an acknowledged specialist on the region's Islamic architecture, told The Independent that the final farewell to Mecca is imminent: "What we are witnessing are the last days of Mecca and Medina."

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article304029.ece

[roguevalley]

1. this is too bad. I hate this kind of stupidity. This stuff needs

protecting.

[donkeydude]

2. Like China

Reminds me of something that was in the news awhile ago about China bulldozing ancient parts of Beijing to build apartments or highways or something.