"CHANGE" - Saudi Arabia Tears Down Column Marking Muslim Claim to Jerusalem.

"CHANGE" - Saudi Arabia Tears Down Column Marking Muslim Claim to Jerusalem.HT: FrontpageMag.  By Daniel Greenfield.
Those who are fans of imaginary archaeology, the Muslim claim to Jerusalem is based on the “night journey” that Mohammed took on a flying horse from Mecca to Jerusalem.

The Night Journey was a fiction of mythological colonialism allowing Muslims to lay claim to Jewish sites and their history. It also played a role in the Muslim infighting that led to a boost in the importance of Jerusalem after its conquest. Developing the legend compensates for the fact that Jerusalem is not mentioned in the Koran.

Muslims seized the holiest site in Judaism, planted a mosque on the site and routinely wail about Jewish incursions on a Jewish holy site. (This isn’t unique, Muslims have done the same thing to Christian and Hindu holy sites. Not to mention outright destroying Buddhist holy sites.)

One problem.

Muslim vandalism isn’t just limited to other people’s holy sites. Islamists are notorious for destroying even Muslim shrines. That is how Wahhabism began. It’s what Salafis are now doing in Libya and Mali.

And now the Saudi royal family has destroyed a whole bunch of Islamic heritage sites… including the column from which Mohammed supposedly took off on his flying horse from Mecca.

Photographs obtained by The Independent reveal how workers with drills and mechanical diggers have started demolishing some Ottoman and Abbasid sections on the eastern side of the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca.

Many of the Ottoman and Abbasid columns in Mecca were inscribed with intricate Arabic calligraphy marking the names of the Prophet Muhammad’s companions and key moments in his life. One column which is believed to have been ripped down is supposed to mark the spot where Muslims believe Muhammad began his heavenly journey on a winged horse, which took him to Jerusalem and heaven in a single night.

To accommodate the ever increasing number of pilgrims heading to the twin holy cities of Mecca and Medina each year the Saudi authorities have embarked upon a massive expansion project. Billions of pounds have been poured in to increase the capacity of the Masjid al-Haram and the Masjid an-Nabawi in Medina which marks where Muhammad is buried. King Abdullah has put the prominent Wahabi cleric and imam of the Grand Mosque, Abdul Rahman al-Sudais, in charge of the expansion while the Saudi Bin ladin Group – one of the country’s largest firms – has won the construction contract.

The Washington-based Gulf Institute estimates that 95 per cent of Mecca's millennium-old buildings have been demolished in the past two decades alone. Dozens of key historical sites dating back to the birth of Islam have already been lost and there is a scramble among archaeologists and academics to try and encourage the authorities to preserve what little remains.

Many senior Wahabis are vehemently against the preservation of historical Islamic sites that are linked to the prophet because they believe it encourages shirq – the sin of idol worshipping.

Surprisingly, pictures of demolition of the ancient mosque, which were taken secretly and then smuggled out of the kingdom, reveal the Saudi religious police hailing and celebrating the collapse of the Islamic monuments. Apparently Israel has respected Islamic sites more than Saudi Arabia, the custodians of Mecca and Medina, have. But now the Saudis have destroyed the basis of their colonialist fairy tale claim to Jerusalem.Read the full story here, more here.