Two million Muslims have flooded into Saudi Arabia's Mina Valley from Mecca for the start of the Hajj pilgrimage this week. Dressed in simple white garments and freed from their worldly possessions, they are following in the footsteps of the prophet Muhammad. But in Islam's holiest city, there is increasingly little sign of the prophet's legacy – or the frugal life he espoused. “The authorities are trying to destroy anything in Mecca that is associated with the prophet's life,” says Irfan al-Alawi, director of the UK-based Islamic Heritage Research Foundation, who recently returned from a trip to the city. “They have already bulldozed the house of his wife, his grandson and his companion – and now they are coming for his birthplace. And for what? Yet more seven-star hotels.”
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- scan: alt.culture.saudi: Revealed: World's biggest hotel to open in KSA, Sunday, May 24, 2015 - 05:26
- "Heritage Crimes" - As the Hajj begins, the destruction of Mecca's heritage continues, Thursday, October 17, 2013 - 04:13
- [in-enaction] scan: alt.culture.saudi: Urban renewal, Wahhabi-style (Saudi hardliners turn Macca into a Mall), Sunday, January 8, 2006 - 12:26