The Grand Mosque is now loomed over by the second tallest building in the world.... The hotel rises 600m (2,000ft) into the air, projecting a dazzling green laser-show by night, on a site where an Ottoman fortress once stood – razed for development, along with the hill on which it sat.ADDED: Do you think much about the problem of idolatry? It's strange where such thinking leads people, but one reason it is strange is that we've lost touch with idolatry as a significant sin. We use the word "idol" with complete casualness.
The list of heritage crimes goes on, driven by state-endorsed Wahhabism, the hardline interpretation of Islam that perceives historical sites as encouraging sinful idolatry – which spawned the ideology that is now driving Isis’s reign of destruction in Syria and Iraq. In Mecca and Medina, meanwhile, anything that relates to the prophet could be in the bulldozer’s sights. The house of Khadijah, his first wife, was crushed to make way for public lavatories; the house of his companion Abu Bakr is now the site of a Hilton hotel; his grandson’s house was flattened by the king’s palace. Moments from these sites now stands a Paris Hilton store and a gender-segregated Starbucks.
May 24, 2015
"These are the last days of Mecca. The pilgrimage is supposed to be a spartan, simple rite of passage..."
"... but it has turned into an experience closer to Las Vegas, which most pilgrims simply can’t afford," says Irfan Al-Alawi, director of the UK-based Islamic Heritage Research Foundation. "The city is turning into Mecca-hattan... Everything has been swept away to make way for the incessant march of luxury hotels, which are destroying the sanctity of the place and pricing normal pilgrims out."
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One country's idolatry is another's touchstone to their past; an honoring and remembrance of where they came from. Gender separated Starbucks seems appropriate to the occasion and location.
I'm writing as an evangelical christian, and YES, idolatry is a problem, even amongst evanglicals.
Wahhabis take it much too far, with their intentional destruction of historical treasures, for their view of idolatry is that anything before Mohammed is idolatrous. That is as barbarian as it is SICK.
But I live in the Christian world, and there's plenty of idolatry to be found. Not so much the Roman Catholics and their statues, and especially not the Orthodox with their icons -- intended to draw focus to God -- but here in the clearly decadent west there's plenty of idolatry right in the church.
Amongst certain evangelicals, idolatry is directed towards immense buildings, huge congregations, a TV ministry (as though anybody under 55 even watches TV). Or marquee pastors, who end up being caught as found-ins at some whorehouse or gay massage parlor.
And they *need* their fancy cars, or their private jets and helicopters. This attitude, of course, filtres down to the parishioners, and it's no accident that essentially 100 percent of "mega-churches" are in wealthy suburbs.
Don't even get me going on people like Osteen and the "prosperity gospel".
I have spent way too much time with sincere amerindian believers in tiny wooden Arctic churches -- and way too much time in small Andean villages where the Adventists (Saturday worshippers) and Nazarenes (Sunday worshippers) have together built a humble common worship space and labor together to improve the lives of the town they both wish to serve -- to have anything but a negative reaction to the crushing majority of suburban churches in the over-educated, over-fed West.
Idolatry is a huge problem *IN* the church. Maybe moreso than amongst non-believers, though that's probably a toss-up.
Not all of us.
A false idol is just something someone else believes in.
But really, the idea of idolatry is still alive and well, the terms have just changed.
The dominant secular culture doesn't use the term idolatry, but instead condemns "religious" beliefs -- used in a pejorative sense, by which they mean superstitious bunk.
When that culture wants to express the same idea that a Christian would use "idolatry" for, the (also religiously derived) term "fetish" is more often used. As in: the right fetishizes their guns. Or confederate flags. Or American ones, for that matter.
Images of gods is culture still as alive and well as it was in classical Greece and Rome from which we have never cut ties for long. Maybe a few fanatics such as the Pilgrims circa 1620 had too much to do to worship the gods, but they rule again just about everywhere now.
I think detonating a small thermonuclear weapon right above the Ka'bah would rid the world of the negative effects of Islamic idolatry.
Would the Laslo Pillow count as idolatry?
I am Laslo.
Gosh Bart, how 'bout a little grace.
"Vegas" is apt, at least judging from pictures I've seen.
It both saddens and disgusts me to see a religion with such a magnificent architectural heritage reject it all (the simple and the glorious) in favor of schlock.
That goes for Islam, too.
An eternal battle goes on between those who see beauty as a path to the transcendent, and those who see it as a snare and a delusion. Which of course it can be. But so can ugliness.
Or maybe it's just the eternal battle between tasteful people and tacky people.
Read about this a couple months ago. Reportedly, the archeological site that's historically been believed to have been the birthplace of Muhammed was slated to be destroyed back in 2014, though when I wrote about it in March I was unable to find confirmation or any update.
And the reason for why other Muslims don't protest to any degree was not that they're OK with it all but that Saudi Arabia punishes dissenting Muslim countries by sharply cutting back the number of visas they issue for the Haaj.
Worshipping the Koran - not just the words - but the paper they are printed on - is also idolatry.
Tourism, for lack of a better word, has been huge business, perhaps the dominant business, in the western part of the Arabian peninsula for hundreds of years.
Nothing new, really.
What is new is the conquest of that region by the Saud family and its incorporation into "Arabia of the Saud Family" or Saudi Arabia. People there live under Saudi occupation just as much as the Shi'a in eastern Arabia do.
The Saudis are going to face a three-front war from the south via Iranian proxies, from the east from Iran, and probably soon enough from ISIS who will target the insane decadence of the royal family whose legions live in infinite decadent luxury.
I blame Billy.
Hagar nails it, and it's a sick idolatry that leads to mass murders.
As to the fate of Mecc and environs, I find it funny as heck.
"Do you think much about the problem of idolatry?"
No. I do, however, think quite a bit about the absurdity and cruelty of Islam, the depredations committed by Muslims for the sake of islam, and how the rest of the world is going to stop the madness emanating from the Muslim heartland.
The Wahhabi or IS attack on "idols" is just a symptom.
I found Bart's concerns to be interesting. I agree, of course, but had not thought of it in that way.
In response to the original question, my theory is that Christianity picked up idolotry when it assimilated Greek and Roman culture. I suspect that Jesus and his Jewish disciples would be horrified to see themselves portrayed as they are in the Roman and Orthodox churches. Getting back to basics is part of what the Reformation was about, and part of that was restoring the prohibition against idiolitry in the 10 Comandments (by accepting the Jewish, and not the Roman Catholic version).
But Roman Catholicism has gone mainstream in this country. 6 of 9 Supreme Court Justices are RC, as well as a surprising number of the top tier Republican Presidential candidates. My grandparents, who were born in the late 1800s refused to let their kids marry Catholics, and likely didn't have any real Catholic friends. But by my time, it was mostly gone, likely at least partly a result of the intermingling of units during WW.II. My last three female partners have been Roman Catholic, including the one I have been with for 15 years now. It is now a non-issue in much of this country. But one of the things that comes with this acceptance of Roman Catholicism and the Eastern Orthodoxy by the mainstream here is the acceptance of their idolotry. On the flip side, I think that Roman Catholicism in this country has softened some of the edges that drew such stark contrasts with Protestantism.
I have always found the parallels between Protestant/Catholic and Sunni/Shia interesting. I doubt that my Puritan ancestors would complain nearly as much about this Wahhabi extremism as they did about Roman idolotry (which their ancestors had rejected just a couple generations earlier). The more relaxed Sunni stand is probably comfortable to many, if not most, Protestants (ok, maybe excluding Episcopals, who used to be Roman Catholic with a Royal English Pope). The only human depictions in the church that I have belonged to for a half a century are small photos of former pastors in the coffee room used after services.
Idolatry, being the worship of a false god, is harder to avoid now that there is no true god.
Laying the path for ISIS to take control and re-spartanize things because that's what Mohammed would want.
The celebrities are our idols. We worship them if at all possible.
Funny that Osteen and the "prosperity gospel" come under attack here. The extremist positivism they represent is truly the dominant religion of our time
Allah is a rock?
Religion tends to always be obsolete, because if it isn't ancient it is philosophy rather than religion. Wise people see the value of religion as something for those who don't feel quite up to differentiating between the 90% of newfangledness that is stupid or corrupting rubbish and the (in comparison) few beautiful new moral ideas that are improvements and respect those ancient ways that are right. Nothing particularly wrong with being religious, but it's almost always wrong to be fanatically religious, as though there have been no good new moral ideas in the past millennium or whatever (even if one may understandably be unsure what they be).
People who want to live near "holy" sites tend to be fanatically religious. So no one but archaeologists, historians and others catering to tourists or those who want a somewhat better understanding of history, or a people who happen to have lived there a long time should want to live near such a place, because it is dreadful to live near religious people fanatic in this sense. Feeling otherwise is basically the sin of idolatry, I think.
Understanding the past is important, though, and so preserving history is important. And nothing wrong, I'd say, with seeing beauty in a meteorite. Some beauty is in rock rather than life. I myself on the corner of my table keep a 20-pound or so hunk of (mostly) zinc ore (Franklinite) we (with permission) got on a tour of Franklin Furnace, New Jersey, the place renowned as being perhaps the most geologically interesting on the East Coast. It's (somewhat) special, so, yeah, I like it, notwithstanding mineralogy is something I've never studied much.
They paved al Jannah,
and put up a parking lot.
Ooo-oooh, la-la-la-la...
Psychiatry is worship of a false mind.
Thou are Peter and thou shalt pick pecks of picked peppers.
Hagar,
Jorge Luis Borges writes somewhere that the Qu'ran is an attribute of Allah, like His justice or His mercy. I find that very difficult to understand. (The original is in Heaven, surrounded by angels.)
In another place, he mentions, btw, that the name of the flying horse Muhammad rode to Heaven is "Barak," which means "shining." I will let others connect the dots here.
Bruce Hayden,
I am curious about your take on idolatry and iconoclasm. I think of the Reformation, which, in addition to the paltry business of despoiling the monasteries of England, incidentally systematically destroyed images of Mary and the saints, on the grounds that they had been worshiped in place of the Trinity.
Me, I think images of the blessed are an aid to prayer. It isn't that you pray to an image; it's that you pray using the image as a way to connect to the one it represents. Thomas Cromwell and his lot basically wiped that out of 16th-c. England, and I think it was a huge loss.
Calling the Koran an attribute of Allah would come close to something like the Chistians' Holy Ghost and could get him killed in today's world.
But it is supposed to have been dictated by Allah, and it is not to be questioned in any manner, shape, or form.
Though, iirc, Mohammed himself was illiterate, and the Koran was written down after his death from the recollections of his family and associates.
Isn't that icon in Mecca indicating the birthplace of Mohammad an idol as well??
There's some confusion here between idolatry (which is the sin of worshiping anything other than God) & iconoclasm, which is the doctrine that holds that artistic representation of the divine inevitably leads to idolatry.
Iconoclast is another of those words, like "idol", that has now lost it's original theological meaning. Iconoclasm has had a long & varied history as a stick with which to beat the Roman Church by various Protestant Churches. But, while various Protestant denominations, the Eastern Orthodox, & Orthodox Judaism all are iconoclasts to some extent, nobody's as iconoclastic as Salafist Islam, which not only bans sacred representation, it bans representation of any living creature, and has often in its history destroyed the artistic heritage of previous cultures.
Every time I hear about some musician who killed himself, and the press idolizes them, I think ISIS and the Wahabi's have the right thinking on this.
Destroy it. Make it go away. Build something new and original.
Coupe -
The goal of Islam is to destroy everything that came before it, which includes the Pyramids and the Sphinx. The Buddhas in Afghanistan were destroyed by the Taliban, but they weren't the draw that the Pyramids are, so their loss is not keenly felt in the West.
One day they will destroy the Pyramids, or make a serious, damaging attempt. There was a big push to destroy them when I lived in Saudi Arabia in the 1990's. The Sphinx lacks a face now because Islam invented "defacing", and when it was encountered by Muslims they ruined its face. They knocked at least the noses off all statues wherever they found them. One day they will level the Sphinx.
The world will not be better off for the loss of these monuments, nor for the loss of the ruins in Greece and Rome, which will also be destroyed when enough rabid Muslims get there. I expect the ruins at Palmyra, Syria, to be destroyed as soon as ISIS can get around to it, within days or months.
"The first commandment condemns polytheism. It requires man neither to believe in, nor to venerate, other divinities than the one true God. Scripture constantly recalls this rejection of "idols, [of] silver and gold, the work of men's hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see." These empty idols make their worshippers empty: "Those who make them are like them; so are all who trust in them." God, however, is the "living God" who gives life and intervenes in history. Idolatry not only refers to false pagan worship. It remains a constant temptation to faith. Idolatry consists in divinizing what is not God. Man commits idolatry whenever he honors and reveres a creature in place of God, whether this be gods or demons (for example, satanism), power, pleasure, race, ancestors, the state, money, etc. Jesus says, "You cannot serve God and mammon." Many martyrs died for not adoring "the Beast" refusing even to simulate such worship. Idolatry rejects the unique Lordship of God; it is therefore incompatible with communion with God."
The ironic thing about Muslims and idolatry is that, to a non-Muslim, it sure as heck looks like they're worshipping a magic rock when they march around the Grand Mosque.
Do you think much about the problem of idolatry?
Only when I see the idiots fainting at Obama appearances.
I am NOT an idolator!
I'm just READY FOR HILLARY!
(or at least cruelly neutral towards her.)
Is it fair to compare Barak Obama to Barak the flying horse? Absolutely! I figure Barak Obama is about half the horse Mohammed's steed was. If he has no wings, it's because he's headed in the opposite direction.
What are the chances that the Paris Hilton store in Mecca carries copies of the sex tape?
Protestant iconoclasm discredited the Reformation from the outset.
Slightly OT, and idiosyncratic I admit, but as a non-Christian I also think it was a mistake to incorporate the Jewish scriptures into the Christian canon.
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all about the same God, so the Jewish scriptures belong with all three.
However, Islam claims that Mohammed was the last prophet and God's revelations to him as written down in the Koran supercede all previous editions and there will be no further edits - ever.
Phil 3:14 said "Gosh Bart, how 'bout a little grace."
"Grace" is not appropriate in this case any more than it was in the time of the prophets forth-telling against the greedy, corrupt, and idolatrous of their own era, 2700 years before our time.
Idolatry is a human heart issue, and it shall be with us 2700 years from now.
"Slightly OT, and idiosyncratic I admit, but as a non-Christian I also think it was a mistake to incorporate the Jewish scriptures into the Christian canon."
I don't see how you could not include the Jewish scriptures.
Jesus was Jewish. The Gospels cite numerous instances of Jesus fulfilling Jewish scripture. Jesus himself states that he has come to save the Jewish people. Various New Testament verses state that Gentiles have been "grafted" into the Vine that is Jesus. A good portion of the New Testament concerns whether Christians need to obey Jewish Law (Acts 15 relates the first Christian ecumenical council where it is decided that Christians (at least non-Jewish Christians, do not have to follow Jewish religious law.)
And most importantly, since the Jewish Testament is a record of God's interaction with humanity, and we are limited in our knowledge of God to what He reveals to us, throwing out such a record would seem to be counter-productive.
Wahhabism and ISIS are orthodox Islam and follow the core and murderous teachings of the Koran.
Solutions to Mecca include: A 1000-KG celestial object sent by "Allah"; Or, a 0ne-megaton H-bomb sent by some new crusaders.
And nobody bats an eyeless at a gender segregated Starbucks?
Islam is a sick religion.
If it wasn't for the hymen, Islam would be as dead as Jimmy Swaggart.
Is it bad that I'm fixating on a professional journalist not capitalizing ISIS, which is an acronym?
Catholic blogger (The Anchoress) and author Elizabeth Scalia wrote a book on idolatry that is quite good: Strange Gods:Unmaksing the Idols in Everyday Life.
A gender segregated Starbucks, huh? That's liberal values for you.
Jane the Actuary said...
The ironic thing about Muslims and idolatry is that, to a non-Muslim, it sure as heck looks like they're worshipping a magic rock when they march around the Grand Mosque.
What's ironic to me is that so much of what they are destroying in the name of Islam sits on ground that has been dominated by Muslims for over 1,000 years.
Idolatry, being the worship of a false god, is harder to avoid now that there is no true god.
"Now"? Do you somehow believe that there once was a true God, and at some point in the past He passed away? What are you, a Hollywood Atheist? Someone who took Towing Jehovah as documentary fact?
"Slightly OT, and idiosyncratic I admit, but as a non-Christian I also think it was a mistake to incorporate the Jewish scriptures into the Christian canon."
I don't see how you could not include the Jewish scriptures.
There was a second-century heretic who tried to recompile a scripture without the Old Testament. Marcion, I think? Marcionism degenerated quickly into a gnostic mass of bollocks, IIRC.
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