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MINA, Saudi Arabia - Millions of white-robed pilgrims threw pebbles at pillars yesterday, symbolically stoning the devil in an act of purification - a ritual made safer this year because of remodeling that widened bridges and reduced congestion. The construction work was undertaken to prevent the crushes of people that have led to fatal stampedes in the past - such as the ones that killed 1,426 pilgrims in 1990 and 244 last year. The stoning, which lasts several days, is one of the main rituals in the annual hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. Across the Muslim world, the faithful marked the...

Historic Mecca, the cradle of Islam, is being buried in an unprecedented onslaught by religious zealots.Just a link.

Millions of hajj pilgrims are preparing to head home, after five days performing ancient rites, revering a God omnipresent in the city of Mecca. They have stoned figurative devils, they have slept in the world’s largest tent city, they have drunk water from the Zamzam well together: a heaving throng of nearly two million people from all over the world. Circling the Kaaba, the black cubic epicentre of this sanctuary city, pilgrims would have looked up to see one of the minarets of the Grand Mosque, dwarfed by Abraj al-Bait clocktower, a much-maligned luxury hotel and commercial complex and the...

Saudi Arabian authorities have detained an Indian national for posting a controversial photo of Mecca's Grand Mosque juxtaposed with Hindu religious symbols on Facebook. The photo depicts Al Masjid Al Haram mosque as a temple, photoshopped with Hindu symbols over the Kaaba, the holy building at the centre of the mosque, according to Gulf News, which cited a local daily's report on Tuesday.  A Saudi citizen who saw the post brought it to the notice of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, the kingdom's religious police. The Indian was detained when he was at an...

Egyptian Ministry of Culture Publication: The Al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock were Built to Divert the Pilgrimage from Mecca; Jerusalem was Not the Center of Worship for the Followers of the Prophet Muhammad On August 5, 2003 Ahmad Muhammad 'Arafa, a columnist for the Egyptian weekly Al- Qahira, which is published by the Egyptian Ministry of Culture, wrote an article rejecting the established Islamic doctrine that the Prophet Muhammad's celebrated "Night Journey" (Koran 17:1) took him from Mecca to Jerusalem. 'Arafa, presenting a new analysis of the Koranic text, asserts that the Night Journey in Surat Al-Isra' (that...

By Jack Wheeler jwheeler@politicalusa.com9/27/2001   The most sacred spot on earth to all members of the Islamic religion is the Holy City of Mecca, revered as the birthplace of Mohammed. It is one of the five basic requirements incumbent upon all Moslems that they make (if their health will allow it) a pilgrimage to Mecca once in their lives (the other four: recognize that there is no god but Allah, that Mohammed is Allah's prophet, ritually pray five times a day, and give alms to the poor). The founding events of Islam are Mohammed's activities in Mecca and Medina,...

Last week, Saudi Twitter pages began to promote the message that ‘the direction of Jewish prayers do not matter to me”. The campaign, designed to emphasize the importance of Mecca and Medina as the holy places of Islam, and to eliminate the importance of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, has caused considerable controversy online. Among the most prominent messages in the campaign were those who wrote that "the direction of the prayers of the Jews is not important to us, what is important to us is only our homeland," referring to Saudi Arabia. This tweet was written by a well-known...

Day 293 of the Dictatorship of COVID-19 The British Police State: When Do The Sanctions Begin??????... Sone clips of Anthony Quinn in a movie where he played the role of a Communist prisoner who became a Pope. I thought of Anthony Quinn Warner and the act he is said to have been involved in on Christmas morning. The taking of one's own life is a selfish, egotistical act my dark thoughts because of my own selfish obsession with a woman in my past... Spain says it will create a list of those who refuse the vaccine and share it with...

Right now, most of the pitched battles between Muslims and Jews in Jerusalem concerns Jews trying to pray in the vicinity of the spurious Al-Aqsa. I say spurious since any competent historian, with only the must rudimentary knowledge, could dismiss Muslim claims in five minutes or less. The Muslims assert that Mohammed rode al-Buraq -- a mule with the face of a woman -- to Al Aqsa (the Furthest Mosque), in Jerusalem, where from thence, he ascended to heaven. The ascent to heaven is called: al-Miraj, from where we get the word: mirage. A more ridiculous and fantabulous story could...

Islamic Places in Petra Dan Gibson 43.9K subscribers Dan Gibson introduces a new on-line tool that takes visitors on a tour through the Islamic places in Petra. Gibson explains that the original place names in Petra have been lost over the centuries, and that most of the place names are from the last several hundred years. Then using the descriptions of the earliest Islamic places, this tool takes the viewers through the Islamic places in Petra, including AlAqsa in Jiranah, Zamzam, the Ka'ba, the Cave of Hira, Arafat mountain, the Plains of Arafat, Muzdalifah , Mina, Jumrat, and the temple...

"The Sacred City presents compelling evidence that suggests the holy city of Mecca is in the wrong location and that the worlds 1.6 billion Muslims are praying in the direction of the wrong city. Compiling evidence from both historic sources and new technologies point to the correct location in this seismic, revelatory new film.

The newly revealed structure consists of a 184-by-161-foot (about 56-by-49-meter) platform that encloses a slightly smaller platform originally paved with flagstones. The east side of the interior platform had been lined with a row of columns that once crowned a monumental staircase. A small 28-by-28-foot (8.5-by-8.5-meter) building was centered north-south atop the interior platform and opened to the east, facing the staircase. This enormous open platform, topped with a relatively small building and approached by a monumental facade, has no known parallels to any other structure in Petra. It most likely had a public, ceremonial function, which may make it...

An overhead image of the monument photographed from a drone, and a detail overlay of the surface features in which the image is rotated 90 degrees clockwise. Photograph by I. LaBianca (Left) and Photograph by I. LaBianca; graphics by J. Blanzy (Right) ============================================================================================== Satellites and drones helped reveal huge ceremonial platform near the ancient city’s center. An enormous monument has been hiding in plain sight at the World Heritage site of Petra, according to a study recently published in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. Archaeologists Sarah Parcak, a National Geographic fellow, and Christopher Tuttle, executive director...

First Lady Michelle Obama arrives at the Hamad Airport in Doha, Qatar, Nov. 2, 2015. U.S. first lady Michelle Obama arrived in Qatar on Monday as part of a two-country Mideast tour, with plans to visit a crucial air base in America's war against the Islamic State group and give a speech on the importance of girl's education. Obama touched down in Doha, the Qatari capital, on Monday night, the state-run Qatar News Agency reported, without elaborating. While in Doha, she'll visit the al-Udeid air base with comedian and late-night talk show host Conan O'Brien. The base hosts the forward...

French archeologists find Marcus Aurelius 'head' AMMAN, April 22 (AFP) - French archeologists have unearthed a perfectly preserved head of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius in the ancient Nabatean city of Petra south of Jordan, the head of the mission told AFP Thursday. "A monumental white marble head, in excellent condition, belonging to a statue the emperor Marcus Aurelius was found in Petra by French archeologists," Christian Auge said. The head of the 2nd century AD Roman leader who was also known as the "good emperor" or the "philosopher-king" was found in the Qasr al-Bint area of Petra, a Nabatean...

It’s Palm Sunday and the new Pope Francis I celebrated his first Palm Sunday Mass at the Vatican. Yesterday the Pope warned the faithful of the “tyranny of relativism;”  (SNIP)  “We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one’s own ego and desires.”  -Pope Benedict XVI And I think by now we all know the pitfalls of setting goals based on Won’s own ego and desires: I AM the Dream That reminds me, Big Guy finally wrapped up his Mideast tour yesterday with a visit to the...

About 15 km to the east of the ancient city of Petra, archaeologists from the University of Leiden have discovered an impressive network of ancient water conservation measures and irrigated field systems... In Antiquity, an ingenious system of underground canals, hacked out of the limestone bedrock, in addition to specially built aqueducts and reservoirs with capacities of millions of litres of water, transformed this marginal region into a complex man-made landscape. This is a fantastic example of ancient water-management technology, constructed to irrigate the surrounding terraced field systems... It is possible that parts of this agricultural system -- which was...

The Christian rock band, Petra, has come together again with the original members: Bob Hartman, Greg X Volz, John Lawry, Louie Weaver and Mark Kelly. They have a new CD called Back to the Rock. I have it and it IS classic Petra. There are two new songs, Back to the Rock and Too Big to Fail. The others are redone and STILL GREAT. They will be on tour but unfortunately, so far it's only a few places in the US. Thursday June 30 Cornerstone, Chicago, Ill Sunday July 31 Kingdom Bound, Darien Center, New York Thursday August 4th Soulfest,...

"Winds of Change" or "Blinded Eyes" - what is the song for these times? The breathless chortling of "democracy" in Egypt and the Middle East, is it really a replay of thirty years ago at the Berlin Wall? Is the song "Winds of Change" by German rock group "The Scorpions" for today? Or is a larger, more sinister movement taking place, not of "democracy", but of mob rule, directed hate-filled theocrats? Is the unrest in Madison, Wisconsin being run in the same way. I'm sure everyone here on FR has thought about all of this. The amount of suffering that...

I'd like to challenge you to consider that the "good news" we celebrate during the Christmas season really is true. You may choose to believe the Bible is merely a book of fables with nice moral lessons, but there is more abundant and accurate manuscript evidence for the New Testament than any other book from antiquity. Moreover, the number of witnesses to Christ's life, death and resurrection, as well as the nature of their testimony, is strong evidence of the reliability of the scriptural accounts, as are the corroborating secular testimony and archeological evidence. In fact, the New Testament writers...