You can't clone the Ka'bah

[Al-khiyal]

Egyptian writer's call for new Ka'bah shrine causes international uproar

March 18, 2010 -- An award-winning Egyptian writer has caused an international row after he appeared to propose the construction of a second Ka'bah, the cube-shaped building in Mecca that is the focal point of prayer for a billion Muslims. Progressive thinker Sayyed al-Qimni suggested in an interview with an Egyptian television listings magazine that a religious shrine on Mount Sinai would provide an affordable alternative destination for poor pilgrims as well as generating an income of more than £3 billion for his country. He also said it could improve relations between the three Abrahamic faiths because Mount Sinai is significant in Christianity, Islam and Judaism.

Qimni is a divisive figure in his home country, attracting opprobrium and sometimes death threats for his views. His detractors have accused him of blasphemy and apostasy because of his critical approach to Islam and his fondness for secularism. His previous brush with controversy was last year, when he received the State Award of Merit in Social Sciences from the ministry of culture. It sparked a legal and media campaign to have him stripped of the prize. But it is his comments about the Ka'bah, said to have been built by Abraham and his son Ishmael, that have inflamed opinion outside Egypt. In London the Saudi embassy said: "This is impossible. There can only be one Holy Ka'bah. This is a sacred place, sacred to all Muslims." The Saudi writer and journalist Muhammad Diyab said in his Asharq al-Awsat column that Qimni had "fallen into an abyss" and had "officially shifted from the list of fools to the list of madmen". The Association of British Hujjaj, a national organisation for British pilgrims, also condemned the "atrocious proposal" for turning Mount Sinai into a place of pilgrimage and a tourist attraction.

Qimni sought to defuse the anger by insisting he was talking about a place of worship and spirituality that all three religions could benefit from, rather than a substitute for the Islamic site, and that he had used the word Ka'bah because of its immediate religious connotations. He said: "There is no difference between the religions at that place [Sinai]. Ignoring that place constitutes a great mistake, not only religiously but economically. The Bedouins have no source of income. I am not denying the religious obligation on Muslims to perform the hajj [pilgrimage], I am not interfering in it. All I asked was for good and not evil. What I thought about was religious tourism. I used the word Ka'bah so it would be more acceptable to Muslims. It is not intended to be a substitute. This would not be an obligation, it would be a choice."

Qimni said there were many poor people in north Africa, especially Egypt, who could not afford to go to Saudi Arabia to perform the hajj, which is the fifth pillar of Islam. The Ka'bah is the focal point for prayer and, five times a day, a billion people turn in its direction. It is instantly recognisable to Muslims throughout the world. It also plays a pivotal role in the hajj, with millions of people orbiting the structure. The building itself has been demolished and rebuilt several times in the course of its existence. It has always been in Mecca. This city – and Medina – fall under the aegis of the Saudi monarch, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz.

[Al-khiyal]

You can't clone the Ka'bah

March 20, 2010 -- You wait for a story about Mecca all year and then two come along at once. First it was Egyptian writer and academic Sayyed al-Qimni suggesting Mount Sinai as an affordable religious tourism destination for members of the Abrahamic faiths. Now a Saudi cleric at a Riyadh university has called for the construction of extra floors just for women at the Grand Mosque in Mecca in order to prevent them from mingling with men during tawaf and prayers. I'm no builder but even I realise the latter would require, at the very least, demolition of the Grand Mosque and a temporary shutdown of pilgrimage facilities lasting months, probably years.

Qimni's idea – and it is just that – was well-intentioned and he makes several valid points. Not everybody has the finances to perform the hajj, Mount Sinai has special significance in Christianity, Islam and Judaism and the Bedouin have no income. I would also concur with his assertion that there is not much in that neck of the woods except the mount itself, St Catherine's Monastery and the Burning Bush. It might be fruitful, in an economic sense, to develop the area further. Where al-Qimni comes a cropper is his use of the word Ka'bah, which has immediate and almost non-negotiable connotations of a particular granite building in Mecca. The word itself, or so my rudimentary Arabic tells me, means cube or cubic. It could be applied to any similarly-shaped structure but it isn't, because that would be offensive, right?

Al-Qimni, who was once described as being more fatal to Islam than Salman Rushdie, is the theological and ideological opposite of Dr Yousuf al-Ahmed, the professor of Islamic jurisprudence at Imam Muhammad bin Saud Islamic University, who called for the knocking down of the Grand Mosque in order to reintroduce the principal of gender segregation in a country that institutionalises the practice to devastating effect. Creating women-only enclaves in the Grand Mosque would not only be impractical, disruptive and expensive, but it would kill off the hajj by driving women away – and they would be right to stay away. Elsewhere men and women are, in the main, separated in mosques, a cause of chagrin for many, but not so in Mecca where, for logistical reasons if nothing else, everybody circumambulates and prays together. Free mingling in Mecca through accident, rather than by design, is preferable to none whatsoever.

Islam's holy city has undergone a huge physical transformation in the last 20 years, responding to consumer demand and an unstoppable rise in religious tourism, yet to many it is a thing that must still be protected from innovation. It is no use pretending that Mecca, its Grand Mosque or the Ka'bah are exactly like they were in Muhammad's time. That bird has flown.