Islamicide?

Just when I think I've seen it all, the GWOT deck gets reshuffled yet again:

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

Almost all of the rich and multi-layered history of the holy city is gone. The Washington-based Gulf Institute estimates that 95% of millennium-old buildings have been demolished in the past two decades.

Now the actual birthplace of the Prophet Mohamed is facing the bulldozers, with the connivance of Saudi religious authorities whose hardline interpretation of Islam is compelling them to wipe out their own heritage.

It is the same oil-rich orthodoxy that pumped money into the Taliban as they prepared to detonate the Bamiyan buddhas in 2000. And the same doctrine - violently opposed to all forms of idolatry - that this week decreed that the Saudis' own king be buried in an unmarked desert grave.

A Saudi architect, Sami Angawi, who is an acknowledged specialist on the region's Islamic architecture, told The Independent that the final farewell to Mecca is imminent: "What we are witnessing are the last days of Mecca and Medina."

Well, now. I can understand opposition to idolatry, but this is taking the notion to Gnostic proportions. The Gnostics were a first century AD Hellenistic sect that believed that the spirit was inherently virtuous and the flesh and anything material was inherently wicked. This is why they were such a problem for the burgeoning Christian church of that time, since Gnosticism naturally clashed with the notion of the Incarnation and the Resurrection.

This Wahhabist interpretation of the Koran appears to be similar by not allowing any artifacts or buildings or physical reminders of any sort of Islam's heritage and history for fear that Muslims will, or are already, worshipping them instead of Allah. It would be like Catholics taking a wrecking ball to the Vatican on the grounds that their members were worshipping the building or the Pope instead of the risen LORD - which sounds just as silly and self-defeating as it really is.

An honest question at this point would seem to be, "If the Wahhabis are right, how did Mecca and Medina become 'holy' cities in the first place?" And what reaction will the Muslim world have to their demolition by the sites' own designated keepers?

The voracious iconoclasm of Wahhabism and radical Islamists will do what Muslims feared the West wanted in the first place - the destruction of the Prophet's cities. It won't take long before the Ka'aba stone itself will disappear as well. Once that happens, the Islamists will find themselves surrounded by a whole new class of enemies, enemies from the ranks of moderate Islam whose religion insists that Muslims must make at least one pilgrimage to Mecca in their lifetime. [emphasis added]

The notion of "moderate Islam" is, of course, a myth; it is, rather, a matter of degree between jihadis and non-jihadis, with the overwhelming majority sharing the same goal of the global caliphate, if not the means of attaining it. But this may be a case of runaway fundamentalism itself departing from the comprehensive fundamentals of the faith it purports to champion.

The parallel that comes to mind is Senator Joseph McCarthy and his early-1950s red hunt, which enjoyed considerable success and wide public support until he got carried away and turned against the U.S. Army, one of the icons of his core constituency. His public backing evaporated overnight, his investigation collapsed, he was censured, left the Senate, and died, all within the ensuing three years.

In the same way, Islamic fundamentalists bulldozing Mecca and Medina would seem to be the answer to the question, "If anything could cause the Muslim world to reject Islamic fundamentalism, what would it be?" As well as a remarkable real-life example of religious cannibalism.