Friday 31 December 2010

Meccan Openings? Islam's Holy City at the Mercy of Urban Developers

The New York Times is carrying an article by Nicolai Ouroussoff, with a biting criticism of the architectural monstrosity which is disfiguring the holiest city in Islam. With the blessing of Saudi Arabia's government, an eyesore called Abraj al-Bayt in Arabic and referred to as the 'Mecca Royal Clock Hotel Tower' has been constructed on a hill near the Haram al-Sharif or Great Mosque. According to Ouroussoff:
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.
Abraj al-Bayt Towers in Mecca
Ouroussoff is not alone in his rejection,  he is joined by 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 critic. Mincing no words, he has called it  “It is the commercialization of the house of God.” Angawi also features in another piece on this Arabian nightmare.

Dr Sami Anqawi
In Ourousssof's assessment:
The city’s makeover 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.”
Prince Sultan bin Salman bin Abd al-Aziz Al Saud
  This from the man who once hitched a ride on the Space Shuttle.....

Tuesday 21 December 2010

New Journal on Islamic and Social Sciences

IUR Press, the publishing arm of the Netherlands-based Islamic University Rotterdam (IUR) has launched a new academic journal. The maiden issue of the Journal of Rotterdam Islamic and Social Sciences (JRISS) was released recently. According to the journal homepage, IUR seeks to corner part of the higher education market catering to Muslim chaplains and moral guides, which was increasingly appropriated by the secular universities. The university sees it as its task to help educate and integrate Muslims into Dutch society through programmes taught by both Muslims and non-Muslims (see the podcasts of lectures (in Dutch) on such topics as the Mu'tazila and Hadith criticism broadcast by uirtv). The journal was founded as an outlet for the university's research findings and to act as a bridge between the Muslim world and Western countries by impacting on public opinion and engage in public debates.

Although the university and its journal appear to be initiatives primarily run by educationists of Turkish origin, cooperation with non-Muslims is also reflected in the composition of the journal's international advisory board, which includes scholars such as Professor Colin Turner of Durham University, Karel Steenbrink, Emeritus Professor of intercultural theology at Utrecht University and for many years associated with Indonesia's Islamic State Universities (UIN) in Jakarta and Yogyakarta, and Dr. Jan Peters, an Islamicist and former vice-chancellor of Radboud University Nijmegen, who also serves on IUR's supervisory board. The university's principal (or 'rector' in Dutch), Prof. Dr. Ahmet Akgündüz, is the journal's editor-in-chief.

Aside from an editorial and keynote article by the chief editor, the first issue contains contributions by both Muslim and non-Muslim scholars on the Qur'an and on the origins of Islam, Islamic law (Maqasid al-Shari'a or objectives of Islamic law; Islamic law of tort), and Sufism (the notion of dhikr; and articles on the ideas and works of Said Nursi and Muhyiddin Ibn al-'Arabi).

The journal website contains a very extensive and useful list of links to academic societies, institutions, universities, and journals dealing with Islam and the Muslim world or religious studies worldwide, as well as organizations active in the integration of ethnic minorities in the Netherlands and in the field of interfaith dialogue.