Saudis will open Kaaba-view villa

CAIRO: For £263,000, families can lease exclusive vista over the Prophet’s birthplace.

A modest and attractive woman invites us to a skybox view of the Grand Mosque in Mecca. ‘There is nothing more precious than a view of the Holy Kaaba,’ says the advertisement on display on two of Cairo’s main highways.

For £263,000 (approximately Rs2.36 crore) a family can lease this exclusive vista of Islam’s holiest site. Owners are promised 25-year Saudi visas, and uninterrupted access to the Kaaba.

The view might be inspiring, but few Muslims know what will lie underneath when the residential complex opens next year. According to Irfan al-Alawi, an Islamic scholar who studied at al-Azhar in Cairo and is an attorney based in London, the Prophet Mohammad’s birthplace will be covered by the building’s parking lot.

The project, Le Meridien Mecca, boasts winning views of the Grand Mosque, a health club, five-star dining, and the peace of mind that comes with knowing it’s all in accordance with Islamic law, according to the project’s Web site. A London-based spokeswoman for the project, which is set to open next year, didn’t return a call for comment.

A Saudi government official, speaking anonymously, said the kingdom’s priority is improving conditions for the millions of Muslims who visit each year. The official said he wasn’t familiar with the project, but, speaking in general terms, said religious authorities are concerned that historical sites ‘don’t become a place of worship’. He added that much of the land in Mecca and Medina is privately owned, and that ‘Saudi Arabia takes very seriously the right of private property’.

Prayer at tombs or birth sites is against the Wahhabi tradition of Saudi Arabia. From Ottoman times the Prophet’s birthplace was commemorated by a domed structure, which was torn down by the Wahhabis. Locals convinced them to put a library on the site, until developers bought the property to build the hotel. In its campaign to eliminate any location that might invite ‘idolatrous’ prayer, religious authorities in 1998 bulldozed the grave of the Prophet’s mother and poured petrol into it.

‘It is accommodating the very wealthy pilgrim to be in a position to overlook - in a very improper manner, in my opinion - the house of God,’ said Sami Angawi, director of the Amar Centre for Architecture in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Gregory Gause, an expert on Saudi Arabia at the University of Vermont, said the preservation effort is part of a larger question of Saudi identity. Mecca and Medina lie in the Hejaz region, which is ‘much more pluralistic in its interpretation of Islam’ than the ruling Al-Saud family, which comes from the desert Nejd region.

The Saudi embassies in New Delhi and Washington, DC, declined to comment.