Ce que les grues de La Mecque sont, en plus de choir mortellement dans la tempête
The Property Regime : Mecca and the Politics of Redevelopment in Saudi Arabia
▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/22588/the-property-regime_mecca-and-the-politics-of-rede
The Saudi regime has marketed the remaking of Mecca as necessary to enhance the infrastructure of the pilgrimage in order to accommodate a ballooning Muslim population in a now easily accessible city that has more to offer than its historical and religious material heritage. Accordingly, the aim of the construction (and destruction) is to bring the religious capital into the twenty-first century and to turn it into a model global city for development and modernization. In the words of Mecca’s governor Khalid ibn Faisal Al Saud, modernization is meant to transform Mecca into the most beautiful “First World” city. The lucrative construction projects have in reality also changed the religious experience of the modern pilgrimage, along with other Islamic rituals. They have, for one, increased class inequalities and created “gated communities” where rich worshippers can separate themselves from the crowds. Effectively, people who can afford the four-to-five million-dollar apartments or pay upward of three thousand dollars per night for a hotel room do not have to hear, smell, touch, or be near other pilgrims. They can pray in group [jama‘a] from the luxury of their homes or hotel rooms, a practice sanctioned by former Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia Abdulaziz ibn Abdullah ibn Baz in 1998. This separation defeats the purpose of the pilgrimage and the sense of spiritual communion it is meant to generate as well as the erosion, if only temporarily, of boundaries (national and class) that it customarily enforces, represented in the humble, white robe that pilgrims wear. In addition to creating class inequities and distinctions among pilgrims, these mega projects have thus far forced a hundred thousand residents of Central Mecca from different socioeconomic classes out of their homes. The former residents have received meager compensation in return and are without legal recourse. Some have ended up in slums less than a mile away from the Grand Mosque, hidden from visitors’ eyes by the Abraj al-Bayt Towers and other large-scale developments.